In today's post about Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story,
I will use two passages from Julie's book as a starting-point. The
main theme of this post will be resentment and forgiveness.
Throughout
my reading thus far of Julie's book, Julie refers to wisdom, insights,
or advice that her mother, Pat, gave about interpersonal relations. Pat
would give this advice to some of her students back when she was a
teacher, and Pat as the Vice-President's wife sometimes talked about how
she was able to connect with people in other countries, even though she
did not know them and they were from a different culture. She said
that the smile is the universal language! On page 189, Julie quotes a
letter from Pat, which contained advice that Julie said "reflected
[Pat's] philosophy of life". Julie and Tricia were at a camp, and Julie
had complained that some of the girls in her cabin were not
particularly nice. Pat wrote:
"In regard to the girls in your
cabin: Just remember that some people are not as friendly and sweet as
others. The main thing is to treat them in a friendly fashion and stay
your own sweet self rather than becoming like them. When you think kind
thoughts about them they will change for the better. That is true all
through life. I love you very, very much!"
On pages 193-194, Julie talks about some of the shenanigans of the Kennedy campaign during the 1960 Presidential election:
"Once
during the course of the campaign, Loretta Stuart came to our house to
do Mother's hair before a trip. She asked my mother why the Nixon
campaign was not exposing some of the shady tactics of the powerfully
financed Kennedy camp. An example was the anti-Catholic mailers sent
out during the Wisconsin primary to heavily Catholic precincts----all
postmarked Minnesota, to look as if they were from Hubert H. Humphrey,
Kennedy's main opponent in Wisconsin----but in truth they were the work
of a friend of Robert Kennedy's. The demolition of Humphrey in West
Virginia also had included the innuendo that he was a draft dodger.
Humphrey was so angered by the Kennedy tactics that he publicly accused
the candidate and his brother of 'cheap, low-down, gutter politics.' In
a 1976 autobiography, Humphrey would express his unhappiness with the
Kennedy organization in this way: 'Underneath the beautiful exterior
there was an element of ruthlessness and toughness that I had trouble
either accepting or forgetting.'"
So end the readings.
What
is ironic, of course, is that Nixon himself----or at least some of his
underlings----was accused of engaging in ruthless campaigning and dirty
tricks. Nixon may have resented what Kennedy did to him, but there are
many who would argue that Nixon became like Kennedy in that respect, if
he was not like Kennedy already (though some would go further and say
that Nixon was much worse). Pat said that Julie should stay her own
sweet self rather than becoming like her unfriendly cabin-mates. Could
Richard Nixon have benefited from such advice? Or would he have
concluded that it was unrealistic in the rough-and-tumble world of
politics?
I don't know yet if Julie will address her father's
campaign strategies, or the dirty tricks of some of his underlings. So
far in my reading, she has discussed Richard Nixon's races in 1946 and
1950. Overall, she defends her father's controversial campaigns, saying
that he was merely pointing out the records of his Democratic
opponents, Jerry Voorhis in 1946 and Helen Gahagan Douglas in 1950. She
also portrays the campaigns as grass-roots, stating that her family in
1946 invested a significant amount of its own nest-egg in the campaign,
and that ladies in 1950 sewed dresses for Pat. That kind of gives the
campaign a down-home feel, doesn't it? Of course, Roger Morris and
certain other biographers would portray Nixon's campaigns as
heavily-financed by rich special interests. I should note, however,
that Julie does depict the 1950 campaign as rough, on both sides. She
seems to acknowledge that her father attacked Douglas, but she also
notes that Douglas attacked Nixon. What surprised me is that, at least
thus far, Julie is not particularly critical of Murray Chotiner, Nixon's
controversial, take-no-prisoners campaign adviser, even though I have
read in a couple of places that Nixon's family did not really care for
Chotiner. Julie narrates that Nixon came to rely more on the advice of
his aides rather than that of his wife, but Julie also quotes Chotiner's
praise for Pat's toughness!
But back to the topic of resentment
and forgiveness! It's hard for many people to move past resentment and
to embrace forgiveness. Pat, Richard, and maybe even Julie had a
difficult time getting past the hurt that others had done to Richard in
the political arena. Maybe Pat still felt that she was following her
own philosophy of life in that she was still nice to those people,
whenever she came into contact with them. (I don't know for sure if she
was, and Julie in my reading thus far does not explicitly say that she
was, but many of us maintain some friendly veneer when we're interacting
with people we don't like.) But I doubt that it was easy for her to
think kind thoughts about them!
I think that Pat's philosophy of
life is easier when it comes to the everyday snubs that one can
regularly or occasionally experience. If I were to obsess over the
people who are not nice, I would not be functional, so I do need to
follow Pat's philosophy of life, on some level. But there are times
when following her philosophy of life can be extremely difficult: when
one has been attacked in the political arena, for example. In that
case, how would one forgive or at least forget, and move on?