What has been salient to me in my reading of Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life
are Aitken's stories about Richard Nixon's compassion, generosity, and
kindness. Aitken tells two stories that I particularly enjoyed.
The
first story was Aitken's story about the Donnellys. Dorothy Cox
Donnelly was Richard Nixon's appointments secretary when he was
Vice-President, and her husband was a lobbyist who served on the Civil
Aeronautics Board's staff. Both were Republicans, and there was a
strong possibility that both would be removed from their jobs once
President John F. Kennedy entered office. Their finances were fragile,
and they were worried. But Richard Nixon interceded for them with
Kennedy. Nixon asked if a job could be found for either Donnelly, and
Kennedy replied, "Oh yes, sure, I remember Dorothy from your Senate
office----the little one with the bun on the back of her head." Aitken
goes on to narrate that "To the amazement of the CAB, its Republican
appointee was confirmed to his post a few days later on the orders of
the White House" (page 292).
The second story was set in 1969,
when Nixon was about to enter to Presidency, while President Lyndon
Johnson and Vice-President Hubert Humphrey (against whom Nixon ran for
President in 1968) were about to leave. On the day of his inauguration,
Nixon remembered what it was like back when he was the departing
Vice-President, and President Kennedy and Vice-President Johnson were
taking over. Aitken calls it Nixon's "Cinderella-like exit from the
Vice Presidency in 1960, when all facilities, including his car, were
withdrawn at the stroke of midnight" (page 371). Aitken narrates how
Nixon resolved to treat Humphrey differently when Humphrey was exiting
the Vice-Presidency:
"In addition to the warm public and private
tributes he paid to his election opponent, Nixon personally supervised
all the arrangements for Humphrey's last hours in Washington. These
included putting an Air Force jet at the ex-Vice President's disposal,
choosing a bouquet of Muriel Humphrey's favourite flowers to be handed
to her as she got on to the aircraft, and attaching to them a
handwritten note of presidential thanks for the couple's twenty-five
years of public service. The son of Hannah Nixon had not forgotten the
importance of small acts of kindness."
Bruce Mazlish, in In Search of Nixon,
said that Nixon could be generous from a position of strength, but he
usually could not ask for help himself. What are reasons to be
compassionate for others? So we can feel good about ourselves and have
power as benefactors? Because we don't want someone else to experience
the pain that we experienced? Because we have genuine compassion for
people in a predicament? Because we believe that we have an obligation
to do so, either to God, or to the goal of creating a humane and
generous society?
These are all reasons that people are generous.
Some may be generous for a mixture of one or more of these reasons. In
a number of people, one reason may predominate. I hope to be generous
out of a genuine sense of compassion, or a recognition of the shared
humanity and vulnerability of both me and also the person I am helping.
There has been a tendency within me to treat people who need help as
charity-cases for my benevolence, and perhaps the reason for that is
that I have a hard time appreciating their humanity, since I am
primarily looking to make myself feel better, or I think that looking at
their humanity will turn me off from them, since I don't particularly
like people. (I can, say, help a blind person as a blind person who
needs my help, but, once I look at the blind person as simply a person, I
can begin to feel alienated from him or her, the same way that I feel
alienated from most people.) What I should remember is that we are all
selves, that even those who may not like me are people with thoughts,
feelings, experiences, and lives, and thus they deserve my compassion
when they are experiencing hard times, the same way that I would deserve
compassion were I experiencing hard times.