I started Richard Reeves' President Nixon: Alone in the White House.
I'm finding that I am having to get used to Reeves' writing-style, but I
am beginning to enjoy his book, even though I don't absorb every single
detail of every single paragraph. Reeves' book is unlike other books
about Nixon that I have read. Rather than taking a step back and
narrating the broad themes and the important events of Richard Nixon's
life, Reeves seems to give the impression that he is following Nixon day
by day, as if he is a fly on the wall. Granted, Reeves did not
actually do that, but the book so far goes into an incredible amount of
minutiae, while occasionally stepping back and commenting on larger
characteristics of Nixon's approach and personality. I'm liking it!
In
many cases, when I have started a book about Nixon, the impact of the
previous book that I had read lingers within me. That's true right
now. Reeves narrates that Daniel Patrick Moynihan gave Nixon a copy of
Robert Blake's book about Benjamin Disreali, who was a Prime Minister of
Great Britain during the mid-nineteenth century. Moynihan in doing so
was encouraging Nixon not to thoroughly repudiate the Great Society but
rather to build on it and to make it better, the same way that Disraeli,
who founded the modern Conservative Party in Great Britain, "pushed
forward great reforms in public health and welfare----reforms initiated
by his Liberal predecessor, William Gladstone" (page 45).
I
thought about Jonathan Aitken's biography of Nixon, which I had recently
finished, as I was reading Reeves' narration here. Blake's biography
of Disraeli comes up a couple of times in Aitken's book. Aitken
actually opens his first chapter by mentioning it, saying that it was
Nixon's favorite biography, and that Nixon marked the opening words of
the book, which said that Disraeli did not have as humble of a
background as many believed, and that "It is possible to overestimate
the obstacles in his way and underestimate the assets he possessed."
It's ironic that this passage stood out to Nixon, since Nixon himself
tended to emphasize, and perhaps even to embellish, his humble origins,
whereas it was some of Nixon's negative biographers, such as Roger
Morris, who would argue that Nixon's family of origin was not as poor as
Nixon would let on.
Later in the book, Aitken talks about the
time that Nixon actually met Blake. This was after Nixon's resignation,
and Nixon went to Great Britain and spoke at Oxford. Blake said that
he could tell that Nixon had actually read his book about Disraeli,
rather than just being briefed about it. Blake himself speculated that
Nixon may have seen parallels between himself (meaning Nixon) and
Disraeli: how both rose to prominence from relatively humble origins,
were rather alienated, inspired animosity on their way to the top, and
bounced "back after apparently permanent defeat" (Blake, quoted on page
549).