Reflections on My Year (or More) of Nixon

Sometime in 2012, I got in the mail a book that I had ordered off of Amazon for a cheap price: Irwin Gellman’s The Contender, which was primarily about Richard Nixon’s years in Congress (both the House and the Senate).  I had seen the book years earlier at one of Columbia University’s libraries (I had library privileges there as a Jewish Theological Seminary student), and it intrigued me.  The book came across to me as a defense of Richard Nixon against detractors who claimed that Nixon ruthlessly and unfairly exploited anti-Communism to advance himself politically.  One of the book’s arguments was that Nixon was actually a level-headed voice of sanity on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

When I received Gellman’s book in 2012, I had a thought: I knew that the centennial for Richard Nixon’s birthday was coming up—-for Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, and it would soon be January 9, 2013.  How about if I read Gellman’s book during the month of January?  But then I thought some more.  Richard Nixon had long intrigued me, for he was socially-awkward, introverted, resentful, and yet rather hard working, like me.  He had a kind side, and also there were liberals and conservatives who were claiming that he was politically progressive in areas, and that was of interest to me.  I had long noticed Stephen Ambrose’s trilogy about Nixon in libraries and I had wanted to read it, yet I did not feel that I had the time or the discipline for such a task.  But what if I were to devote an entire year, or even more, to reading about Richard Nixon?  Instead of just blogging about Gellman’s book in January 2013, perhaps I could devote all of 2013 to reading books by and about Nixon!

I had reservations.  For one, I feared that I would become bored with the topic.  Wouldn’t I be reading the same stories over and over, which would get old after a while?  Second, I feared that my blog stats would plummet because my readers would become bored with the topic, and potential readers would not read my blogs because they would see that I write primarily about Nixon.

But I decided to go ahead with the project.  On my fear of boredom, I reminded myself that I would read thirty pages of a Nixon book a day: I could handle that, even if I became bored.  On my fear of my blog stats plummeting, there was a part of me that said “So be it.”  I felt that I had to do this project for me, even if nobody else appreciated what I was doing.  If I could not blog about my own interests, then what was the point of me blogging?  But another part of me hoped that my posts on other topics would allow my stats to remain as high as they were, or to increase.

I went into the project with a list of books that I wanted to read.  Many of them, I read.  Some of them, I did not.  And there were books that I read that were not on that initial list.  My plan was to read Gellman’s book, the Ambrose trilogy, Monica Crowley’s books about her time working for Nixon, Richard Reeves’ book about Nixon, a psychological profile of Nixon that I saw at a Harvard library years before, all of the books that Nixon wrote, Theodore White’s books about the Presidential races in which Nixon ran, and others.  I read most of these.  I never got to Theodore White’s books, however, but I’ll probably read them during the next Presidential election (in 2016).  As I read Gellman’s response to Roger Morris’ book, and I noticed that I could get Morris’ book off Amazon for a cheap price, I decided to read Morris for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  I also added other books to the list in the course of the year.

I am proud of myself for sticking with this project.  I also think that most of my blog posts for it were good.  The project did not result in a drop in my blog stats.  On my blogger blog, my Nixon posts got the same amount of views that my other posts usually got.  (My hunch is, though, that the 200-plus views for one of my posts on Gary Allen’s Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask was largely due to spam or robotics!)  On my WordPress blog, my stats actually increased in 2013, but that was not due to my Nixon posts: I had a lot of views of posts that I had written in the previous years, or of non-Nixon posts that I had written.  But at least My Year (or More) of Nixon did not hurt my WordPress stats!

I think that I wrote a lot of good posts about life and social skills as a result of My Year (or More) of Nixon, but many might not read them because they don’t have a catchy title.  I titled my Nixon posts in reference to whatever book I was reading (i.e., “Six Crises 3), and that does not exactly catch readers!  I thought that a number of my posts were rather antiquarian, in that they discussed historical situations that many may think are not particularly relevant today.  I can understand why those posts would not attract people, but my hunch is that some of them eventually will.  I won’t be surprised if someone who is interested in learning the nuances of the Alger Hiss case will find my blog after doing a Google search!

Interestingly, I can’t say that I became thoroughly bored in doing this project, for I did it for a year, and there was enough material in the books that engaged me enough for me to write blog posts.  There were stories that crept up in most of the books that I read, but each book had a story or a take that was unique.  Still, I have to admit that I am itching to move on to another project!  I decided to end My Year (or More) of Nixon today because there are books that I want to read for Black History Month, which is in February 2014.

What was my favorite book about Nixon?  To be honest, I think that it would be Conrad Black’s Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.    It was far from being the best book about Nixon that I read, for there were other books that I found far more informative.  I was initially hesitant to read Black’s book because it seemed to me to rely largely on secondary sources, a number of which I had already read.  But I have pleasant memories of Black’s book, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I loved the scene where Richard Nixon’s father was driving Richard and some of his schoolmates, and Black was talking about the improvements around them on this road-trip that were due to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Second, I liked Black’s analysis of issues and his suggestions of what Nixon and others should have done.  Granted, Black did come across to me as somewhat of a know-it-all in these discussions, but I still liked them.

Irwin Gellman's The Contender has a warm place in my heart because it inspired this project and was the book that introduced me to prominent aspects of Richard Nixon's life----the controversy surrounding Nixon's activity at the 1952 Republican National Convention, for example. But, as I read books after Gellman, my conclusion was that he did not say much that was particularly new, that others (I think of Jonathan Aitken) had defended Nixon better than he did, that some of his arguments were not that good, that his representations of the other side sometimes amounted to being strawmen (for example, the biographers Gellman criticizes acknowledge that Helen Gahagan Douglas lost the 1950 Senate race not only on account of Nixon’s attacks of her), and that the authors Gellman criticized themselves presented a fairly decent case.

There were books that I liked, but my liking them had little to do with what they said about Nixon.  For example, Fawn Brodie had some interesting things to say about Nixon’s lying or embellishments of the truth early on in her book, but what she had to say about Nixon got pretty boring as the book proceeded.  But I was fascinated as she told the story about the Kennedys and how Joseph Kennedy had to struggle to become accepted in the United States on account of his Irish and Catholic heritage.  Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland told many of the same stories about Nixon that I had read elsewhere, but it had a number of interesting stories about other political figures, and it, more than any other book I had read, effectively told the story of the political developments and turmoil of the 1960′s-1970′s.

Did I learn more about Nixon as a result of this project?  Well, I learned a number of facts that I did not know before, but I can’t say that my conceptualization of the man is all that different from how it was before the project.  I will say that I am more familiar now with the arguments of those who do not feel that Nixon was overly progressive, with the view that Nixon was a calculating politician rather than a principled leader.

All of that said, I am glad that I did this project, and I hope that some of you got something out of it, or will get something out of it if you stumble upon my posts in the future.

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 1

I started Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life.  Jonathan Aitken was a member of Parliament in Great Britain as well as the Minister of State for Defense.  His biography of Nixon came out in 1993, and Aitken was convicted of perjury later, in 1999 (see here).  This book is considered to be rather pro-Nixon, and I one time read an online commenter who remarked that two of Nixon's greatest defenders in recent history were convicts: Conrad Black and Jonathan Aitken.  Aitken in his book, however, narrates that he was not a Nixon fan at first, but he gained admiration for the man through his interactions with him, and he was impressed by Nixon's knowledge and kindness, notwithstanding Nixon's social awkwardness and clumsy mannerisms.

I was initially reluctant to read Aitken's book because I already had enough books by or about Nixon to read.  Plus, when I read that Aitken relied heavily on interviews with Nixon, I wondered why exactly I should read Aitken's book, since I already got Nixon's perspective through Six Crises and his memoirs.  What more was there for me to learn of Nixon's own perspective?

I checked out Aitken's book, however.  One reason was that I was in the mood to do so, the same way that I was in a mood to read Conrad Black's book, even though I was initially reluctant to read Black's biography of Nixon because I already had enough to read.  Another reason is that I had read about the extent of Aitken's documentation and interviews, especially when it came to controversial times in Nixon's career, such as his 1946 congressional race.

Now that I've checked out Aitken, I am glad that I decided to read it.  Stephen Ambrose praises Aitken's book, saying that Aitken had access to documents and people that many other biographers of Nixon did not have.  I saw that in my latest reading.  More than one of the biographies about Nixon that I had read quote an essay in which Nixon as a student at Whittier College expressed his liberal religious views about the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.  Nixon himself in his memoirs quoted that particular essay.  But Aitken quotes more essays that Nixon wrote as a college student at Whittier, on such topics as creation and evolution, the nature of the soul, and worldwide disarmament (Nixon expressed support for it).  Nixon in some of those essays relates how he evolved in his views from his Quaker religious conservatism and biblical literalism, to a more liberal outlook.  (Aitken goes on to say, however, that Nixon remained quite religious.)  As Aitken notes, those documents are not widely available.  (Whether or not that's still the case, I don't know.)  But you can read more about them in Aitken's book!

I was thinking about some of the other books about Nixon that I read when I was reading Aitken.  Don Fulsom in Nixon's Darkest Secrets says that "Young Dick favored his mom ('My mother was a saint,' he tearfully asserted, in his farewell speech to his White House staff) while, for unknown reasons, his siblings did not" (page 69).  Fawn Brodie says that Nixon's mother would really eviscerate her children when she gave them her little lectures after they misbehaved, making them feel horrible about themselves.  Brodie and Anthony Summers both refer to someone who claimed to have seen Hannah Nixon holding a switch while her son Richard was playing the piano.  But Aitken quotes Nixon's youngest brother, Ed, saying that: "She had a temper too, but controlled.  She knew how to throttle my Dad if he was hurting one of us unintentionally...she was the great defender of hurt feelings in our family...she always looked beyond an action thinking in terms of consequences two or three moves ahead, but she often did not say much at the time because she had a proper sense of privacy" (page 14).  Apparently, Richard was not the only Nixon child who spoke highly of his mother!

Fawn Brodie paints a picture of conservative Whittier trying to keep the Mexicans outside of the town at bay, appealing to that to explain Nixon's later love for Latino people and culture.  (For Brodie, Nixon was repudiating Whittier's stuffiness.)  Aitken, however, says that there were Mexican students where Nixon went to school.

I'm not pointing these things out to say "gotcha," as if Aitken's story refutes the other stories, or vice-versa.  Rather, I believe that reality is complex, which is why it is difficult at the outset to tell a satisfying, completely accurate tale of what really happened, or what a person or situation was like.

Something that I liked about Fawn Brodie's book is that she talked some about how people who knew Nixon in his younger years reacted to the Watergate scandal years later.  Aitken offers similar anecdotes.  Aitken said that Nixon called his Whittier College mentor and coach, Chief Newman, when Nixon was feeling down in 1975.  (I didn't know Chief Newman was still alive then!)  Aitken also talked about some of Nixon's professors.  One Whittier professor was a liberal and encouraged his students to think outside of the box, and his love for reading was contagious!  He disagreed with how Nixon conducted his political campaigns, and yet he and Nixon continued to stay in touch for years.

The Arrogance of Power 6

I finished Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.  In this post, I'll talk about something interesting that Summers mentions on pages 62-63, then I will offer my overall impressions of Summers' book.

After Richard Nixon graduated from Duke Law School, he went to New York City to look for a job as an attorney, and he was interviewed by a panel that included John Foster Dulles, who would later be President Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State.  Nixon didn't get the job, but he would return to New York in 1945, after his time as a Navy officer.  According to Summers, Nixon would say that he dealt with naval contracts during that time, whereas his wife, Pat, stated that Nixon was working at the Bureau of Aeronautics.  David Wise, who wrote about intelligence, deemed those years in Nixon's life to be a mystery.

But John Loftus, whom wikipedia calls as an "American author, former US government prosecutor and former Army intelligence officer", and whom Summers states was "a former prosecutor with the Justice Department unit investigating Nazi war crimes", claims that Nixon during that time was reviewing Nazi documents that had been captured.  According to Summers, Loftus appeals to interviews with "retired intelligence officers" (Summer's words) in arguing that "Allen Dulles...told [Nixon] to keep quiet about what he had seen and, in return, arranged to finance the young man's first congressional campaign, against Jerry Voorhis" (Loftus' words).  Allen Dulles was the brother of John Foster Dulles and would later be head of the CIA.  Summers refers to pages 221 and 557 of a book by Loftus and Mark Aarons, The Secret War Against the Jews.

What exactly did Dulles want Nixon to keep a secret?  Summers states: "According to some chroniclers, the Dulles brothers had links to the Nazis dating back to pre-war business contacts.  Loftus, who had access to contemporary records, claims Allen Dulles maintained such contacts even during the war and that proof of the ties lies in captured German documents, still classified to this day."  Nixon's opponent in the 1946 congressional race, Jerry Voorhis, would say that someone from a "large New York financial house" (Voorhis' words) came to California and urged that Voorhis be ousted.  Summers appears to wonder: Could this have related somehow to Allen Dulles?

One would have to check Loftus' book to see what documentation he provides for his claims.  The reason that I'm highlighting this passage is that it exemplifies why I enjoyed Summers' book.  For one, it contained stories and speculations about Nixon that I did not find in other books that I read for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  Second, I liked the sense of intrigue, especially when it was discussing what many would probably regard as a rather mundane time in Richard Nixon's life.  Nixon at one time was negotiating contracts (see here), but could he have been doing other things soon after his time in the Navy----interesting things?

Now for my overall impressions of Summers' book.  The book is definitely worth reading.  As I have said, the book says things about Nixon that I did not read in other books about him.  For instance, Summers argues that a Chinese lady named Marianna Liu may have been romantically linked to Nixon during Nixon's marriage to Pat.  Summers does not seem to think that the two of them slept together, but just that they had some sort of romantic connection.  (I should also note that Don Fulsom, who argues in Nixon's Darkest Secrets that Nixon may have had somewhat of a homosexual relationship with his friend, Bebe Rebozo, stops short of suggesting that Nixon and Bebe actually slept together.  As far as alleged physical contact between Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo goes, the furthest it seemed to have gone was them holding hands under a table, according to one eyewitness, and Nixon putting his arm around Bebe.)

The book is very negative about Richard Nixon.  The only positive thing about Nixon that I remember from Summers' book is that Nixon stood against racism in his younger years, and as President increased funding on civil rights enforcement, but Summers also goes into some of the racist things that Nixon said.  Overall, the book argues that Nixon was a liar, was corrupt, broke the law on numerous occasions, was physically abusive to his wife Pat, was involved in a plot to overthrow Cuban leader Fidel Castro, and was drunk and high, sometimes during significant events during his Presidency, when vital issues were at stake.  On some things, Summers presents a rather complex picture of Richard Nixon.  For example, Summers basically implies in one passage of his book that Nixon as President was lazy, yet elsewhere (if my memory serves me correctly) he depicts Nixon as working hard.  When a book makes negative claims about a figure, seeing the author's documentation is important.  In terms of documentation, I'd say that Summers does fairly all-right.  He cites eyewitnesses, but there is also hearsay in his book: he refers to someone saying something that someone else said.  Hearsay is not admissible in a court of law, but I have a hard time thoroughly dismissing its reliability.  Summers also cites secondary sources.

Summers argues that Nixon could have been physically abusive to his wife, Pat.  Overall, Summers relies on hearsay: Seymour Hersh's investigative reporting, in which Hersh claimed to have talked with a source that said Pat was taken to an emergency room, and a doctor who corroborated that this was so; a friend of a former Los Angeles reporter, Bill Van Patten, who related to the friend that Nixon beat Pat; what Governor Pat Brown and Brown aide Frank Cullen heard; and the claim by John Sears, who was an aide to Nixon and would later be campaign manager to Ronald Reagan, that Nixon's family lawyer told him (meaning Sears) that Nixon hit Pat.  Summers also argues that Nixon was the type of person who would do something like that---- one who was aggressive, had a temper that could manifest itself in violence, got drunk, blamed others, and had difficulty dealing with stress.  Later in the book, on page 464, Summers refers to an Executive Protection Service officer who claimed that agents one time rushed to Pat near the end of Nixon's Presidency because Nixon had hit her.  This is an actual eyewitness, and yet his claim has been questioned.  John Taylor, who worked for Nixon after Nixon's Presidency, states the following in his post here:

"Summers' principal source was a former uniformed Secret Service agent who would rarely if ever have been in the White House family quarters. I learned about him after one of Nixon's former pilots overheard the man bragging in a bar about his coming star turn with a British TV crew that was promoting the Summers book. The man's allegations were probably known to Watergate reporter Bob Woodward, who had a family connection with the source, and Pulitzer Prize winner (and thoroughgoing Nixon critic) Seymour Hersh. Neither reporter published the charge."

When is an eyewitness reliable?  Summers refers in one place to an eyewitness whom he does not consider reliable, mentioning criminal activity by the eyewitness.  Yet, I seriously doubt that every eyewitness whom Summers cites was pure, especially some of the ones who claimed that Nixon had ties with the mafia, or was a leader in a plot to kill Fidel Castro.  Summers in his notes in the back mentions times when eyewitnesses contradict each other----one may say that Nixon was drunk at such-and-such an event, whereas another says the opposite----and Summers more than once tries to navigate his way through conflicting accounts.  Moreover, while Summers refers to the eyewitness testimony of John Ehrlichman, Conrad Black made clear that, when considering what Ehrlichman said, we should remember that Ehrlichman was bitter against Nixon after leaving the Nixon White House.  Some say that we should rely primarily on documents, and Summers does do that, at times.  I wouldn't toss out consideration of eyewitness testimony, but perhaps there should be clearly stated criteria for determining what is true and what is false: corroboration, looking at motive, etc.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 33

I finished Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.  On page 1052, Black says the following about Henry Kissinger's eulogy to Richard Nixon at Nixon's 1994 funeral:

"At this critical moment, all rivalry between the two men finally vanished, and Kissinger's own best instincts came naturally to his eulogist's task.  His voice broke slightly at one point, when he referred to hearing 'the final news, by then so expected but so hard to accept, [when] I felt a deep loss and a profound void.'  (He told the author that he felt that 'part of me died with him.')"

That's one narrative about Richard Nixon's funeral: that it was an incident at which Americans were brought together.  Similarly, Daniel Frick states on page 4 of his book, Reinventing Richard Nixon:

"Had the Nixon funeral contained only...preaching to the converted, the ceremony could only have been expected to exacerbate old divisions.  Whatever evocative power the funeral service might have had must have come from its enactment of a ritual of political forgiveness between longtime warring camps.  Nixon himself could not have selected a more perfect candidate to fulfill this task than Democratic president Bill Clinton.  First of all, as a Vietnam-era college student who had avoided the draft and protested the war, he effectively symbolized the irresponsibility and lack of patriotism that Nixon had claimed epitomized too many in the baby boom generation.  And, second, Watergate had been pivotal in opening Clinton's political career...So, when in his eulogy, President Clinton affirmed that Nixon had made mistakes and that these were part of his record, no one could miss the unspoken reference to Watergate.  Only someone well-schooled in the catechism of anti-Nixonism could credibly offer the absolution that followed: 'Today is a day for his family, his friends and his nation to remember President Nixon's life in totality.  To them, let us say: may the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close...'  As an attempt to face the past and move on, this moment was the political high point of the ceremony: offering to Nixon's memory a pardon more genuine and complete than the merely legal one that Ford had granted."

Frick goes on to say that divisions still remained, even during and after Nixon's funeral.  But the narrative that Nixon's funeral was a place that healed divisions stood out to me on account of the opposite picture that I was reading in Anthony Summers' anti-Nixon biography, The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.  After Richard Nixon's death, Alger Hiss, the ex-State Department official whom Nixon during the late 1940's said was a Communist spy, said: "I am not going to gloat...There are a lot of things in that man's life that were left unatoned for..."  Summers probably agrees with Hiss' assessment, since his book is about the negative things that Nixon allegedly did throughout his political career.

Summers also notes who did not attend Nixon's funeral.  Some of them (i.e., Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt) did not particularly surprise me.  But some of what Summers said on page xiv did stand out to me:

"Tens of thousands more Vietnamese died in the short time that remained until South Vietnam collapsed, less than a year after Nixon's resignation.  The ousted former president of South Vietnam, Nguyen Van Thieu, was not at the funeral.

"New research strengthens the suspicion that in 1968, on the eve of the election that brought him to the White House, Nixon manipulated the Vietnam War for selfish political ends.  Did he, fearful that impending peace negotiations would swing vital votes to his Democratic opponent, covertly urge Thieu to boycott the talks?  The prominent Republican Anna Chennault, who met secretly with Nixon and acted as a go-between with the South Vietnamese, claims he did.  She eventually came to despise Nixon and stayed away from the funeral."

I didn't know that Chennault came to despise Nixon, after allegedly serving him during the 1968 Presidential election.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 32

On page 1011 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black states: "The real problem had been the endless smearing of the president, the war of a thousand cuts over taxes, Cambodia, CREEP financing, dirty tricks, home improvements, aides making belligerent noises and then plea bargaining and having religious conversions (Magruder became a Presbyterian minister)."

I did not know that Watergate conspirator Jeb Magruder became a Presbyterian minister.  I was familiar with Chuck Colson's conversion, but not that of Magruder.  But, according to this article, Magruder in 1981 got an M.Div. from Princeton Theological Seminary, and he wrote a book in the late 1970's entitled From From Power to Peace, which is about his re-commitment to the Christian faith after the Watergate scandal.  Senator Mark Hatfield, a liberal Republican and a devout evangelical Christian, wrote the foreword to the book.  Why did Magruder become religious after the scandal?  Was it because the moral absolutism of Christianity especially resonated with him after a path of moral ambiguity in the world of politics had led him to disaster?  (I don't know for sure if Magruder himself conceptualized his involvement in Watergate that way, since I have not read his books.)  Was he looking for the peace that Christianity offered in the midst of his troubling times?

I thought about something that I read about Michael Deaver in Lou Cannon's excellent book, President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime.  Deaver was a high-ranking official on President Ronald Reagan's White House staff.  Deaver himself had a sort of rebirth, if you will.  On pages 517-518, Cannon states:

"Deaver's behavior, within the White House and with the media, gave him a reputation for arrogance that undoubtedly contributed to his fall.  Many in the White House complained about Dever's high-handedness, and some of these complainers apparently became sources for the unfavorable stories about Deaver after he left the White House.  These stories and Deaver's greed and determination to build a big-time lobbying business while Reagan was still in office led to a congressional inquiry into his lobbying activities, the appointment of an independent counsel to investigate charges of influence peddling, and Deaver's eventual conviction on perjury charges.  In my own dealings with Deaver near the end of his White House service I sometimes found him furtive and troubled, and wondered if he was ill.  But I had no clue as to the toll being taken by the first lady's obsession with astrology and Deaver's alcoholism.  Like others who had known him as a calmer, happier Mike Deaver in Sacramento, I ascribed his behavior to the poison of White House power and thought his position had gone to his head.  Three years after Bitburg, Deaver told me that the difficulty of the deception in which he was engaged had imposed an inner strain that 'I probably don't even know about yet.'  Since then, with much help from his faith, his wife, and Alcoholics Anonymous, Deaver has courageously struggled to repair his damaged life."

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 31

On page 977 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black characterizes Nixon's typical political strategy as follows: "Nixon's courage...depended on him being alone, on feeling entirely deserted, on going to ground and then surprising the adversary with a dramatic speech or initiative that brought instant redemption: Checkers, the silent majority, Cambodia, the economy in 1971."  But Black argues that this would not have worked so well with Watergate, for the attacks just kept coming, plus "There had been too much petty lawbreaking, sloppy legal bungling, shabby compromise and evasion, and too little loyalty in the inner circle" for Nixon to wage a long battle.

I have three points.

1.  Nixon's typical strategy is not surprising, in light of Nixon's introversion.  Nixon did not accomplish a great deal through cooperation with the Congress, for a number of Democrats in the Congress were against him, and Barry Goldwater himself implied that Nixon had failed to develop relationships with people on the Hill.  But Nixon's strategy was to bypass that when he could by appealing to the American people.  That didn't require a great deal of back-slapping or formation of relationships, for Nixon would simply give a speech to a bunch of people whom he did not know.  If I were in public life, my strategy would probably be the same as Nixon's.  Or at least Nixon's strategy makes sense to me, since I am an introvert who has difficulty forming and keeping relationships.

I can't make a blanket statement about Nixon's strategy, however, for relationships did help Nixon to advance politically.  Thomas Dewey was instrumental in getting Nixon to be appointed as Dwight Eisenhower's running-mate in 1952.  Nixon got a lot of IOUs when he campaigned for Republican officials throughout the nation.  And yet, even here, Nixon's strategy was to dazzle people with speeches, which is quite different from developing relationships with people.  Still, I'd say that relationships, on some level, played some role in Nixon's political advancement.  Nixon at least had enough social competence not to alienate his benefactors!

2.  A while back, I watched Nixon's 1952 Checkers Speech on YouTube, then I watched part of his 1974 resignation speech as President.  It was depressing to watch the latter after the former, let me say that!  In the Checkers speech, Nixon was young, energetic, fresh, convinced of his innocence, and fighting.  In the resignation speech, he had bags under his eyes, and he appeared depressed and defeated.  In the former, Nixon saved his political career, so there was a happy ending for him.  In the latter, Nixon's career as an elected official was coming to a dismal end.

3.  The passage from Black with which I opened this post depicts Nixon as one who fought alone, as if Nixon was an underdog.  That particular image of Nixon has long resonated with me.  But how about Nixon as a well-connected bully?  That repulses me!

On pages 210-211 of Nixon's Darkest Secrets, Don Fulsom talks about Nixon's alleged physically violent acts against people.  He quotes Jim McManus, a White House reporter who said that Nixon slammed his shoulder against him.  McManus said, "One doubts that [Nixon] ever picked on anyone whose relative status----or gender----guaranteed a counter-attack."  And Nixon biographer Fawn Brodie talked about Nixon slapping Zita Remley, a Democrat who alleged that people in 1946 called Democrats and said that Nixon's opponent in the congressional election, Jerry Voorhis, was a Communist.  Brodie states: "There were no cameras or newsmen to catch the happening, and Mrs. Remley, fearful of losing her job, told only a few friends."

If this is true, then it is horrible.  Nixon could arguably have caused Remley to lose her job, had he wished, since, as much of a loner as he was, he still was politically powerful and well-connected, and thus had the pull to get her fired.  To attack someone who cannot attack back is bullying.  Incidentally, the same can be said about other abuses of power, such as sexual harassment (not that Nixon engaged in that).

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 30

On page 957 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black states:

"Nixon's plucky and generally very popular daughter, Julie Eisenhower, had gone out speaking in support of her father.  She invariably made a very good impression, and even Norman Mailer acknowledged that his demonized view of Nixon did not allow for loyal and attractive daughters."

As I read this, I thought about Don Fulsom's claim in Nixon's Darkest Secrets that Richard Nixon was physically and verbally abusive to his wife, Pat.  On what does Fulsom base this claim?  On page 69, Fulsom quotes a statement by investigative reporter Seymour Hersh that "There was a serious empirical basis for believing [Nixon] was a wife-beater, and had done so----at least hospitalized her a number of times...I'm talking about trauma, and three distinct cases."  What specifically led Hersh to this conclusion, we are not told, but Fulsom is quoting from this article in which Hersh explains why he chose not to write a story about this topic.  On page 71, Fulsom refers to Time magazine reporter Frank McCullough, who came to Nixon's home in 1950 to interview him and heard Nixon call his wife a "dumb f***ing b***h".  McCullough promised Nixon that he would not report this in the magazine, but McCullough did tell Fulsom about it in a 2010 telephone conversation.  And, on page 212, Fulsom appeals to anonymous sources: "In the mid-'60s, clued-in Capitol Hill reporters, including yours truly, heard from completely reliable sources that Nixon had also beat Pat when he was a member of Congress."

Whether or not you consider that to be solid evidence is up to you.  I know that Anthony Summers, in The Arrogance of Power, also argues that Nixon was physically abusive towards his wife, and it will be interesting to see how he supports this claim.  But suppose that Nixon indeed did physically and verbally abuse his wife.  How could his daughters have been so loyal to him?  If Nixon abused his wife, did that take place away from the children?  Was his daughters' loyalty to and love for their father merely an act?  Did Julie write that glowing book about her father and mother just to make money?  I'm very reluctant to question the loyalty and love that Nixon's daughters had for their father.  I don't know them, but their loyalty comes across to me, a simple observer, as authentic.

People nowadays can listen to some of the Nixon tapes online, and I've heard a few of them on YouTube.  I've read some people who comment that Nixon was loving towards his wife, Pat, and they base that on what they heard of Nixon's interactions with her on the White House tapes.  They are entitled to their impressions, but allow me to offer mine, as unreliable as they might be.  Whenever I listen to Nixon's conversations with Tricia, Julie, or Pat, the ladies come across to me as rather nervous, like they don't want to rock the boat.  I could be completely wrong about this, but I know that I tend to talk fast when I am nervous in social situations, as if that will somehow mitigate my nerves.  Tricia, Julie, and Pat, at least on the tapes, seem to me to talk rather fast.  You can judge for yourself by going to YouTube and typing in their names.  Does that mean, however, that they were intimidated by Nixon because he was an abuser?  Not necessarily.  All kinds of people can be intimidated by their father or husband, even if the father or husband is not abusive.  And maybe they weren't even nervous, for there are women who can talk fast without being nervous.  I'm just offering my impressions as a listener, and I may be off-base.  After all, people with Asperger's (like myself) are supposedly inept at reading people!

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 29

On page 912 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black calls Nixon "This most suspicious, morose, generally joyless of men..."  I thought about this characterization as I was reading Don Fulsom's anti-Nixon book, Nixon's Darkest Secrets.  Fulsom talks about the times that Richard Nixon was drunk.  Nixon liked to have drinks with his friend, Bebe Rebozo.  According to Fulsom, there were times when a drunk Nixon would awkwardly hit on women.  Fulsom refers to Nixon ex-aide John Ehrlichman's story in Witness to Power about Nixon hitting on an attractive blonde secretary, whom an editor said was reportedly Shelley Scarney, the future Mrs. Pat Buchanan.  (UPDATE: According to Anthony Summers, Shelley Buchanan said that she did not recall this incident.) On page 199, Fulsom quotes investigative reporter Seymour Hersh, who said that Nixon at a Miami restaurant stopped a nice-looking woman and offered her a White House job.  While I have read elsewhere that Nixon was rather Spartan as a Duke Law School student, Fulsom contends that Nixon even in his younger years had a problem with alcohol.  Fulsom refers to a schoolmate of Nixon's at Whittier College, Philip Blew, who told about a time when Nixon got drunk.  Blew said: "The affair turned into a spree...and we, in effect, had to pour Dick into bed."

I can understand why a "suspicious, morose, generally joyless" person would drink.  (And this is not to suggest that Black would agree with Fulsom's contention that Nixon had a problem with alcohol.)  Life can get pretty drab.  Many would like the sort of life that they see on TV, where romance is often easy, and adventure is commonplace, and they look to alcohol to give them the fun that they want.  Moreover, being unhappy due to resentments can influence people to seek some solace in alcohol, as can being afraid on account of the ups and downs of life.  Alcohol can also give people confidence that they ordinarily may not have.  I remember hearing one recovering alcoholic talk about his observations while people-watching at a local restaurant: guys come in with two left feet, they have a few drinks, and suddenly they're Fred Astaire!  But the recovering alcoholic then went on to ask: Why can't they be Fred Astaire without alcohol?

I can still identify with much of what I said above, and I've not had a drink for six years.  (Yesterday marks the sixth year anniversary of when I quit drinking.)  But I can also see the other side: that sobriety can lead to a quality of life that alcoholism can inhibit.  People who used to spend their time holed up in their rooms drinking become sober and go on to do enjoyable things, such as studying a field of interest, or traveling.  People who used to feel lonely find fellowship in a twelve-step group.  People who used to deal with their resentments and fears by drinking now deal with these things by talking them out with a sponsor, and also by relying on a higher power.  People who could not hold on to a relationship or a job now do both.
The thing is, could such a dream have been realized for somebody like Nixon?  Can it be realized for me, for that matter?  Nixon did enjoyable things: he traveled, he read.  But my impression from reading all of these books about him is that he did not like to share a lot with others.  That being the case, did he really have much of a way to deal with his resentments and his fears?  Speaking for myself, I am often afraid to share my problems because I fear being criticized.  That has happened in the past!  I doubt that I will take a drink anytime soon, since life for me is much more predictable and manageable when I do not drink.  But I wish that I had more joy inside of me.

I'd like to think that Nixon in his later years found more joy.  As I read Monica Crowley's books about her time working for Nixon during the 1990's, I noticed that Nixon even then had his pettiness and resentment, and yet he also seemed to have more fun.  He enjoyed spending time with his grandchildren.  His relationship with his wife, Pat, looked a whole lot better.  He liked opening up his lawn to people on Halloween and joking around with the celebrants.  Did Nixon find some way to feel happy, without relying so much on alcohol?

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On page 902 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black states:

"Nixon would have done better with a more credible and substantial spokesman than [Press Secretary Ron] Ziegler, but as [White House Chief of Staff Alexander] Haig pointed out, there were not a great many qualified people eager to be Nixon's press secretary at this time.  (Pat Buchanan might have been more effective, but most press encounters would have become boisterous shouting matches.)"

Now that's something that I would have liked to have seen!  Pat Buchanan as Nixon's Press Secretary, engaging in confrontational back-and-forth with reporters!

I'm reminded of something that I read in Pat Buchanan's 1990 autobiography, Right from the Beginning.  As a twenty-six year old writer, Buchanan would participate in public debates about the Vietnam War.  Buchanan narrates on page 314 that he wasn't that good at delivering speeches in those days, but that he saw that he had a knack at the question and answer part of the debate.  Buchanan would give quick comebacks to questions.  For example, when someone from the audience said to him that the United States and South Vietnam dragged their feet on elections after the 1954 Geneva agreements, Buchanan retorted that Ho Chi Minh hadn't held a free election in North Vietnam in ten years!  Thirty people lined up to ask Buchanan a question, and Buchanan apparently relished being the villain of the debate.

I've read people who blame Crossfire (which Buchanan often co-hosted) for the current level of political discourse, where left argues against right and partisan debates appear in the place of intelligent discussion.  They may have a point, and yet I have a hard time putting Buchanan in the same category as many of the talking heads who shout at each other on Fox News.  Granted, he has been one of these talking heads on Fox News and MSNBC, but he adds a touch of humor that I don't see among the other talking heads.  I love his laugh!  As Black says on page 919, Buchanan was "humorous" and "likable".

Moreover, while I don't embrace everything that Buchanan has said, I do believe that he has contributed important points to the political discourse.  I recently watched this interview, in which Buchanan was discussing his controversial book, The Suicide of a Superpower (the book that got him kicked off of MSNBC).  Buchanan was asking what exactly united Americans these days.  In the past, America had the melting pot and a common culture and Judeo-Christian ethic.  What unites America now, when those things have been undermined?  Maybe Buchanan idealizes the past, but I still think that he brings an important point to the table.  But does America have to go back to the 1950's to find unity?  Couldn't it unite around other aspects of its heritage, such as pluralism, freedom, and a respect for the rights of all, including minorities?

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On page 857 of Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, we read:

"An unprecedentedly massive air assault on North Vietnam began on December 18.  (Nixon told Haldeman and Kissinger that he didn't want to start on Sunday, December 17, because he didn't want a church service in the White House while he was bombing.)"

Nixon probably thought that he was doing the right thing in ordering the air assault on North Vietnam.  Why, then, did he not want to hold a church service during that time?  Perhaps it was because he saw the bombing as a necessary evil, and he did not want that to occur during an event that was good, a church service.

I thought of II Chronicles 23 which is about the high priest Jehoida leading a rebellion against the brutal Queen Athaliah of Judah.  In v 14, Jehoida tells the captains not to kill Athaliah in the house of the LORD.  They're killing someone, but they're not doing their dirty work in the house of the LORD.  I guess that makes it all right, doesn't it?

I also thought of the final episode of season 5 of Dexter.  The sociopathic motivational speaker Jordan Chase is finally on Dexter's killing table, and Dexter tells Lumen that she should be the one to kill him, since Jordan incited men to rape her.  Jordan laughingly says, "You're talking like there's a polite way to do this, as if there's some etiquette.  Murder is murder!"  See here for the scene.

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I have three items for my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.

1.  On page 822, we read: "[White House counsel John] Dean had set up his own investigation unit and had caused the investigation of the call-girl ring associated with the 'Happy Hooker' Xaviera Hollander, but this achieved nothing useful, since there were as many Republicans as Democrats in it, an unsurprising revelation."

The reason that this stood out to me is that Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin argue in their controversial book, Silent Coup, that John Dean's investigation of the call-girl ring was the motive behind the break-in at the Watergate hotel, as Dean allegedly was seeking information about the prostitution ring and was trying to cover things up, since his wife was supposedly connected with someone in the ring.  Dean would sue Colodny and Gettlin for libel.  It's interesting to me that Black essentially acknowledges that Dean was investigating the prostitution ring.  Black doesn't seem to buy into the idea that this was the motive behind the Watergate break-in, however, for Black appears to accept the prominent narrative that the Watergate break-in was aiming to collect information about Democratic National Committee chairman Lawrence O'Brien.  For Black, Dean was investigating the call-girl ring, but it was with the intent of finding dirt on Democrats.  According to Black, the problem, in terms of Dean's goal, was that Republicans were using the ring's services, too!

2.  On page 825, we read: "The tapes of these June 23 conversations were released on August 5, 1974, and became known as the 'smoking gun,' but they were not as damaging as they seemed when presented two years after the fact as a sort of last straw.  [FBI director L. Patrick] Gray had expressed a concern, denied by [CIA director Richard] Helms, about a CIA covert operation.  Helms told [Nixon aides] Haldeman and Ehrlichman that he would cooperate if given written instructions and an adequate explanation, by which he clearly meant that there would have to be an adequate reason to ask the FBI to desist.  No such instructions were given; no such request [Deputy Director for Central Intelligence Vernon] Walters spoke again to Gray.  The FBI did not desist, and didn't principally have carriage of the matter anyway.  It appeared two years later, and was represented by the press, as an attempt to obstruct justice, and it would have been if it had been pushed, but it wasn't pushed."

The topic here is the charge that President Richard Nixon obstructed justice by encouraging the CIA to restrict the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon's claim was that he was doing this because some of the people involved in the Watergate break-in were connected with the CIA, and Nixon didn't want the investigation into Watergate to blow the lid on any covert operations.  Black contends that, because Nixon didn't press the matter with the CIA, he wasn't really attempting to obstruct justice.

The low-key manner in which Black describes this topic contrasts with what I was recently reading in Don Fulsom's Nixon's Darkest Secrets.  Fulsom notes that Nixon wanted CIA director Helms to know that Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt could start blabbing on about the Bay of Pigs, if Helms did not limit the FBI's investigation into Watergate.  Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman said in The Ends of Power (written with Joseph DiMona), and Fulsom agrees, that "Bay of Pigs" meant the Kennedy assassination.  Fulsom says that the connection between the Bay of Pigs and the Kennedy assassination was probably that "the cast of characters employed in the 1960 plan to invade Cuba at the Bay of Pigs and kill Fidel Castro and the cast of characters employed in the plan to assassinate Kennedy in 1963 were the same" (page 130).

Fulsom refers to the testimony of Haldeman and John Ehrlichman (in their books) that Helms really erupted when they brought up the Bay of Pigs, to the surprise of Haldeman and Ehrlichman!  Haldeman quotes Helms as saying: "The Bay of Pigs has nothing to do with this! I have no concern about the Bay of Pigs."  Fulsom later refers to Haldeman's statement in The Ends of Power that Haldeman told the President that Helms "got the picture" and said he'd "be very happy to be helpful" (Haldeman's words).  But Fulsom narrates that Helms then "had second thoughts and was refusing to cooperate with Nixon's gambit" (pages 135-136).  Fulsom then dryly relates: "For that insubordination, he was eventually banished to be the ambassador to Iran."  Fulsom depicts Nixon as more heavy-handed in his treatment of the CIA than Black does.

3.  On pages 826-827, Black states: "For the reelection committee to pay the legal costs and living expenses of part-time and full-time employees is quite in order.  It has been assumed that this was 'hush money,' payments made in exchange for silence about CREEP or White House involvement.  In all the voluminous material, it is not clear that was even the implicit intended nature of the payments, at least at the outset.  As time went by, what amounted to blackmail was attempted by some of the defendants, and some was paid.  But it is not clear that submitting to blackmail constitutes obstructing justice.  It was, however, both shaming and demeaning to the presidency."

This seems to correspond with Black's overall take on Watergate, at least in what I have read so far: that Nixon did foolish things, things that were beneath the Presidency, and yet he arguably did not do anything that would deserve impeachment.

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On page 804 of Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black states regarding FBI director J. Edgar Hoover: "His finest hour had been his opposition to the internment of Japanese-Americans on the West Coast after Pearl Harbor in 1942."  I did not know that about Hoover.

Why was Hoover against internment camps for Japanese-Americans?  Essentially, he did not think that there was any evidence that Japanese-Americans posed a danger to the security of the United States.  This article states:  "In his Final Report, [General John L.] DeWitt maintained that ship-to-shore communication had led to the sinking of American ships. But on February 9, 1942, J. Edgar Hoover denied the existence of any information showing ship-to-shore communication."  The article also states: "J. Edgar Hoover said that the internment decision was a result of politics and hysteria, not a measure of national security. 'It is interesting to observe,' Hoover noted, 'that little mention has been made of the mass evacuation of enemy aliens.' The FBI had arrested 733 Japanese aliens in the U.S. by 6:30 A.M. December 8, 1941."

This article expresses that part about the enemy aliens a little more clearly: "Even FBI director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the mass relocation of Japanese Americans because he was convinced that the most likely spies or potential saboteurs among that population had already been rounded up in the initial sweep of 'enemy aliens' between December 7 and 13, 1941. During searches of Japanese American residences conducted by the FBI beginning in early February 1942, the Department of Justice reported that 'We have not uncovered through these searches any dangerous persons that we did not otherwise know about.'"  See here (on page 2) for Hoover's memo to FDR aide General Edwin Wilson, stating that the FBI had already arrested Japanese aliens who were deemed to be subversive.

This article says that Hoover thought that the internment of Japanese-Americans was unconstitutional.  I wish that the article went into more detail about Hoover's views on this, but the article itself appears to consider the internment to be a violation of the fifth and sixth amendments of the U.S. Bill of Rights, since it entailed depriving Japanese-Americans of their liberty and property without due process (i.e., criminal charges and a trial).

Ann Coulter says in this column: "Absurdly, liberals claim to hate J. Edgar Hoover because of their passion for civil liberties. The left's exquisite concern for civil liberties apparently did not extend to the Japanese. As President Franklin D. Roosevelt rounded up Japanese for the internment camps, liberals were awed by his genius. The Japanese internment was praised by liberal luminaries such as Earl Warren, Felix Frankfurter and Hugo Black. Joseph Rauh, a founder of Americans for Democratic Action -- and celebrated foe of 'McCarthyism' -- supported the internment.  There was one lonely voice in the Roosevelt administration opposed to the Japanese internment -- that of J. Edgar Hoover...Liberals deemed it appropriate to throw Japanese citizens into internment camps on the basis of no evidence of subversive activity whatsoever."

Ann Coulter and other right-wingers I have read (see, for example, here and here) appear to be quite critical of the internment camps.  (UPDATE: This article seems to suggest that, in 2005, Ann Coulter was saying something different, but it does not include an actual quotation of her.)  I should also note that President Ronald Reagan signed into law a bill granting reparations to surviving Japanese-Americans who had been interned in the camps, and President George H.W. Bush issued a public apology.

But there are some neo-conservatives who have retrospectively expressed support for the internment camps, implying that this piece of history is somehow relevant to how American Muslims should be treated in the U.S.  See here.  See also here for Michelle Malkin's defense of her book defending the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II.  She states: "Liberal critics always ask if I’ve ever changed my mind about anything. Yes, I take back what I wrote in 2000; I have radically changed my mind about FDR’s actions to protect the homeland."  See here for good reviews of Malkin's book, both pro and con. 

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 24

For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I'll use as my starting-point something that Black says on page 764:

"Nixon's last newsworthy act of 1971 was a commutation of sentence for James R. Hoffa, the former Teamsters' Union president who had served four years of a thirteen-year sentence for jury-tampering, having been the chief target of Attorney General Bobby Kennedy.  Nixon assured the reelection of his friend and supporter, Teamster president Frank Fitzsimmons, and then had Hoffa released, provided he did not engage in union activities for eight years, appeasing Hoffa's followers in his union but assuring Fitzsimmons's position.  This had the additional benefit of a symbolic affront to the Kennedys, and a direct irritation to AFL-CIO chairman George Meany.

"With the leaders of organized labor...all was politics, and Nixon was trying to divide and conquer.  It wasn't a particularly admirable sequence of events, in the one case or the other, but, contrary to subsequent mythology, Nixon did not inherit a pristine system of presidential disinterest in the fermentation of American life, in all its creative and cynical spontaneity, that bubbled and erupted beneath him.  And John Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson weren't saints either."

The reason that this passage stood out to me is that it overlapped with topics that I was reading about in Don Fulsom's anti-Nixon biography: Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President.  Richard Nixon's friendship with Fitzsimmons is obviously important to Fulsom, for Fulsom shows five pictures of Nixon with Fitzsimmons in the pictures section of his book.  Why would Fulsom deem this to be important?  Because Fulsom argues that Fitzsimmons had connections with the mob.  Fulsom says on pages 29-30 that "The president and Fitz quickly colluded on a plan for Hoffa's release, and they started an alliance that was sealed with cold cash----huge payments involving the Mob in return for White House kindness."  Moreover, on page 35, Fulsom states that "Newly released FBI documents show that, in 1978, federal investigators sought to force former president Nixon and Teamster boss Fitzsimmons to testify about events surrounding Hoffa's disappearance."  But the investigators said that upper Justice Department people were hindering this from happening.

Fulsom claims that Nixon received support from mob people, as far back as his 1946 race for U.S. Congress.  Why?  According to Fulsom, Senate investigator Walter Sheridan offered an opinion about why the mobster Meyer Lansky was supporting Nixon: "If you were Meyer, who would you invest your money in?  Some politician named Clams Linguini?  Or a nice Protestant boy from Whittier, California?"  There was also the hatred that many mobsters and mobster-affiliated people had towards the Kennedys.  As Fulsom says on page 23, "Robert Kennedy had been trying to put Hoffa in jail since 1956, when RFK was staff counsel for a Senate probe into the Mob's influence on the labor movement."  While John F. Kennedy himself initially had some support from certain mobsters, according to Fulsom, much of the mob would not care for his administration's tough stance against organized crime.  According to Fulsom, the Nixon administration would be much softer on the mob.  Page 30 of Fulsom's book says: "From 1969 through 1973, more than one half of the Justice Department's 1,600 indictments in organized crime cases were tossed out because of 'improper procedures' followed by Attorney General John Mitchell in obtaining court-approved authorization for wiretaps..."  Page 44: "Nixon's attorney general, John Mitchell, finally put the squeeze on a federal judge to slice Marcello's prison term to six months" (see here to read about Marcello).  Page 30: "...when the New York Times disclosed that FBI wiretaps had uncovered a massive scheme to establish a national health plan for the Teamsters, with pension fund members and top mobsters getting lucrative kickbacks, [Attorney General] Kleindienst again came to the rescue, rejecting the FBI's plan to continue taps related to the scheme."

Fulson also contends that Nixon's close friend, Bebe Rebozo, had ties to organized crime.  He refers to a Miami police report saying that Rebozo was close to Meyer Lansky.  On page 54, Fulson shows a declassified FBI memo that said that "A Philadelphia source who is in a position to provide reliable information was told by a third party that this individual within the last two weeks, observed fugitive Robert Vesco in the Bahamas in the company of former Nixon aide Bebe Rebozo" (the memo's words, only they were all capitalized in the memo).

Regarding the release of Jimmy Hoffa, Folsom refers to an FBI memo that refers to an informant saying that there was a $300,000 payoff from the mob to the Nixon White House to secure Hoffa's release.  But, in the memo itself (which is on page 25 of Fulsom's book), all I see about this is what follows: "Source advised that approximately one to two weeks before the Christmas before HOFFA was released from prison, ALAN DORFMAN and JIMMY HOFFA, JR. delivered $300,000 in cash to the Mayflower Hotel, Washington, D.C., in a black valise and turned this money over to [blacked out].  The purpose of this money was to guarantee the release of JIMMY HOFFA from the Federal Penitentiary."  Does the memo say that the money was for the Nixon White House?  It depends on what it said before it was blacked out!

Do I buy any of this?  To be honest, I do wish that Fulsom cited more primary sources.  Often, when I check in the back to see Fulsom's source for something, it turns out to be a secondary source, such as Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power.  I'd have to look at Summers to see if he cites a primary source!  But I wouldn't be surprised if Nixon had support from mobsters or people with mob connections.  In the world of the powerful, I'm sure that there are many with money and influence who have had relationships with the mob or with mob-affiliated people, on some level.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 23

My blog post on Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full will focus on money supply and the gold standard.

1.  On page 696, we read:

"Unemployment was low, but inflation had risen from 3.3 percent to 5.5 percent under Nixon, and Arthur Burns, who had gone to the Federal Reserve chairmanship in January 1970, was a monetary conservative.  Nixon urged him to expand the money supply, as he had urged during the 1954 and 1958 midterm elections, but Burns declined to do so (as Eisenhower had).  There was virtually no economic growth through 1970."

When the money supply is expanded, that can mean inflation, since, when more money is out there, companies raise prices.  But some people support expanding the money supply as a means to stimulate the economy.  Nixon sometimes favored expanding the money supply for this reason.  Arthur Burns, however, a "monetary conservative" (as Black calls him), was resistant to this.  Ron Paul was a Presidential candidate in 2008 and 2012, and he often spoke in favor of the gold standard and restricting the money supply to combat inflation.  What did Ron Paul think about Arthur Burns?  On pages 115-116 of End the Fed, Paul states: "Following the election of Jimmy Carter in 1976, [Burns] dearly wanted to be reappointed.  He cut the discount rate and accelerated money growth.  True, he was a Republican, but he wanted to go down in history as bipartisan...Sadly for Burns, the courtship failed.  Even more sadly for the country, the courtship wrecked the dollar further."  Paul apparently did not regard Burns as a man of principle in terms of monetary conservatism, at least after Jimmy Carter's election in 1976.

2.  On page 739, we read the following about the Bretton Woods agreement:

"In 1944, the Western countries had agreed at Bretton Woods, New Hampshire, on a new international currency agreement, based on the U.S. dollar and the backing of the dollar by the gold reserves of the United States.  There was gold in the Treasury of the United States to redeem about one-quarter of the outstanding currency, and there were fixed exchange rates with other major currencies, especially the British pound.  This system had worked well for twenty-five years, but now U.S. gold reserves had declined (from $25 billion to $10.5 billion), Europe was back on its feet, Japan was much more powerful economically than it had ever been, the United States was on the verge of running its first trade deficit in over seventy-five years, and gold was clearly under-priced as a commodity, as the dollar was overpriced as a currency.  Gold played an obsolescent and impossible role now because there were at least six or seven other important hard currencies.  Manufacturing in Japan and Western Europe was now extremely competitive..."

That's Black's explanation of the problems in the Bretton Woods agreement, a sort of gold standard (though Ron Paul in End the Fed refers to it as a "pseudo-gold standard"), which Nixon wanted to end.  These problems included a decline of U.S. gold reserves, gold being under-priced, and the need for the U.S. to compete with Europe and Japan, something that the Bretton Woods standard may have been hindering.
Joan Hoff in Nixon Reconsidered is rather critical of Nixon's policy on Bretton Woods.  Her discussion of the rationale behind ending Bretton Woods overlaps with what Black says: "Faced with a gold drain and a trade deficit, the United States allowed the dollar 'to float' on international markets to increase markets abroad and stop any more speculative pressures against the dollar.  This could not be done without causing even more domestic inflation and had to be offset by some deflationary action to placate unions in the form of wage and price controls" (page 140).  But Hoff argues on pages 143-144 that things did not work out as planned:

"Still another unintended consequence arose from the decision to abandon the Bretton Woods system.  This aspect of the NEP represented a deregulation of international currencies.  Since then, economic regionalism has flourished because three rival trading blocs emerged.  Each established a separate regional monetary order based on the yen, mark, and dollar----a situation that has contributed to exchange rate instability and currency speculation since then.  The increased tension among these three major regional trading blocs will continue until the current global recession is over.  What the world learned following the collapse of the Bretton Woods agreement is that floating exchange rates and freer trade do not go hand in hand.  In fact, instability of the former almost always produces complaints about unfair trading practices and pressures for protectionism.  Yet the intensification of regional international competition based on competing currencies...could result in a worsening of worldwide economic conditions in the 1990s.  There is little doubt that the world needs another Bretton Woods system to stabilize currency exchange rates."

I vaguely understand some of this discussion.  I don't entirely comprehend why countries debase their currency in order to make their exports more competitive.  I did a search online to find an answer to my question.  Some of the articles were too abstract for a layperson like myself.  One comment that I read simply said that debasing currency makes exports cheaper abroad, but it did not explain why.

I think that what I see here is a tension between a desire for flexibility and a desire for stability.  The reason that we ended Bretton Woods was probably that it did not allow for the flexibility that we wanted: it was chaining the dollar (not all, but some) to gold, which was not in great supply, and it was hindering the U.S.'s ability to compete.  But Hoff's concern appears to be that eliminating Bretton Woods led to instability: now that currency is not attached to gold but can float freely, there is not much stability in terms of exchange rates.  And countries are concerned that other countries are debasing their currency in order to give their own exports a competitive edge, a practice that they consider to be unfair, and which can encourage them to retaliate with protectionism.

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For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I'll use as my starting-point something that Black says on page 720 about Richard Nixon's daughter, Tricia:

"She had avoided all public attention after she wrote a supportive letter to Georgia governor Lester Maddox, an Atlanta restauranteur who had refused to serve African-Americans and distributed axe handles to sympathizers, and ultimately closed his Pickrick Restaurant rather than integrate it."

This really surprised me!  I had never heard or read about this before.  I did some searching on the Internet, and I found a couple of articles.

The first article I found was from the September 22, 1969 Harvard Crimson, and it was about Tricia Nixon's boyfriend, Edward Cox (who would later become her husband), who was enrolling in Harvard Law School.  The article states:

"Tricia, who once encouraged Georgia's Governor Lester Maddox to turn his chicken restaurant into a private club to avoid Federal civil rights laws, is reportedly the most conservative member of the Nixon family. Washington columnists say that Cox is politically left of both Tricia and her father."
I suppose that I already knew that Tricia was rather conservative, on some level.  I think that I read about her defending her father's policies when I was reading Nixon's memoirs.  Maybe I chalked that up to her loyalty to her father, since I had a hard time picturing her as particularly political or ideological (not that I know her).  But it turns out that she was quite conservative ideologically, perhaps even to the right of her father.

In this article, there is a quotation of what Tricia Nixon said to a Parade reporter, as she explained her letter to Lester Maddox: "I'm not a segregationist, but private property is private property, and you should be able to do with it as you please.  I don't believe as Lester Maddox does, but our views happened to coincide for different reasons."  That's the sort of rationale that you will find in the words of Barry Goldwater, Ron Paul, and Rand Paul.

I'd like to share a few related items.  First, I liked something that Richard Nixon said on pages 105-106 of In the Arena, as he was talking about his coach at Whittier, Chief Newman:

"He not only talked a good civil rights game, he lived it.  In 1921, when he was a star at USC playing tackle on defense and fullback on offense, Chief went into his favorite restaurant near the campus with Bryce Taylor, one of the first black players ever to play on a Trojan team.  The counterman said he couldn't eat there.  Chief exploded, 'You serve him or you don't serve me.'  Forty-three years before the Civil Rights Act outlawed discrimination in public facilities, it ended at that restaurant."

Second, on page 80 of volume 2 of his memoirs, Richard Nixon shares a diary entry that he wrote about a discussion that he had with his daughters, Julie and Tricia, about the Vietnam War.  Nixon was planning to bomb critical targets, and he was listening to his daughters' feedback.  He stated in his diary:

"Julie seemed concerned about it in terms of whether it would work.  She obviously has done a lot of reading about past failures on the military side in Vietnam.  She also was aware of the fact that many had become so disillusioned with the war that we might not have enough public support for it.  I mentioned the fact that if we did not do this the United States would cease to be a respected world power.  She rejoined with the observation that there were many who felt that the United States shouldn't be a great power.  This, of course, is the kind of poison that is fed into so many of the younger generation by their professors.  She was sure, however, that David would totally agree with the decision, and she seemed sensitive to what the needs were.

"Tricia's reaction was immediately positive because she felt we had to do something, and frankly didn't know what else we could do to avoid a continued deterioration in the battle areas."

Tricia's reaction does not particularly surprise me, in light of her conservatism.  Julie's reaction, however, intrigues me.  I think that it would be too simplistic to say that Julie was a liberal, for Nixon earlier in his memoirs refers to a note Julie left him that said: "You explained the situation in Vietnam perfectly...I feel that the strongest message which resulted from your speech was: We cannot abandon 17 million people to a living death, and we cannot jeopardize the chances for future world peace by an unqualified pull-out of Vietnam" (volume 1, pages 560-561).  But Julie did appear to be open to alternative points-of-view.  Still, at this point, I cannot make dogmatic statements about her political ideology, since I have not yet read her books.

UPDATE: According to this article, Julie in 2008 donated to Democratic Presidential candidate Barack Obama, whereas Tricia donated to Republican Presidential candidate John McCain.

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In my latest reading of Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, what stood out to me was Black's Monday morning quarterbacking about what people could have done better.  In this post, I'll give four examples of this, then I will comment.

1.  In May 1970, National Guardsman opened fire on students at Kent State University, as students were protesting President Richard Nixon's campaign in Cambodia.  Four students were killed and eleven were wounded.  Black narrates that the National Guardsmen did this in response to students who "pursued them, pelting them with rocks and returning tear gas canisters" (page 671).  Black believes that both the Governor of Ohio and the National Guardsmen acted wrongly in this situation, and that the National Guardsmen could have solved the problem in a manner that did not involve bloodshed.  Black states on page 671:

"[The student protesters] were irresponsible and annoying, and the Cambodian activity did not justify the histrionics it attracted even on Kissinger's staff, much less the campuses of the country.  But the governor of Ohio had no right comparing this university student demonstration to Hitler's SA.  And he should have assured that the National Guardsmen had the proper rules of engagement.  They should have had rubber or plastic bullets if tear gas wasn't adequate, and if they went to live ammunition they should have fired in the air, or even right on the ground.  Student demonstrators are rarely hard to scatter, and there is no excuse for students to die from gunshot wounds."

2.  There were people within Nixon's Administration who simply did not get along with each other, and there were some who did not cooperate adequately with President Nixon's agenda.  Henry Kissinger and Secretary of State William Rogers did not get along.  FBI director J. Edgar Hoover was not doing enough (according to Nixon) to investigate and undermine domestic radical groups, and even right-winger Pat Buchanan urged Nixon to retire Hoover immediately, calling Hoover a "'reactionary' who was alienating the young people of the country and whose moral authority was steadily evaporating" (Black's summary on page 680).  On pages 684-685, Black says how he thinks that Nixon could have organized his Administration better, such that it would have been more functional:

"The logical move would have been to move or remove Rogers and give his job either to Rockefeller or Kissinger himself.  Either would have ended the friction between the White House and the State Department and enabled the White House to use the resources of the State Department more extensively.  Rockefeller could have managed Kissinger, but he was becoming rather a defeatist about Vietnam himself...If Nixon didn't want to reward Rockefeller, or create a Rockefeller-Kissinger axis right behind his back, he could have found something else for Rogers, who had no particular aptitude for foreign affairs other than a conciliatory personality, and given the job to Kissinger.  This was the eventual solution.  If Nixon had wanted to make a dramatic move, he would have retired Hoover, replaced him with Mitchell, and Mitchell with Rogers; moved out Laird and replaced him with Shultz, a former marine combat officer in addition to his other attainments; given State to Kissinger with a lecture to desist from some of his more irritating practices; given Finch a serious mandate to turn the new EPA into something important without antagonizing all of American industry; and prepared either Rockefeller or Reagan, depending on which way Nixon wanted to push the party, for the vice presidency in 1972...There were plenty of combinations that would work, and these are just a few of them.  Instead, in the unfortunate manner in which things drifted before events forced Nixon to go into isolation, drink with Rebozo, watch inspirational military films, and then take draconian crisis measures bravely, the squabbling of his administration continued."

3.  When President Nixon received the report of Lyndon Johnson's National Commission on Obscenity and Pornography and saw that it "concluded that pornography did not contribute to crime, delinquency, or deviant behavior" (Black on page 696), Nixon was outraged.  He said: "I have evaluated the report and I categorically reject its morally bankrupt conclusions....Pornography can corrupt a society and a civilization....Smut...should be outlawed in every state of the Union."  Black states on page 696 that Nixon's response was inappropriate:

"He could have attacked the report, which was pretty naive and idealistic, and even insensitive to traditionalists, without ranting about the suppression of questionable or offensive literature, which enabled his opponents to conjure up thought police, intrusions into homes, book burnings, and so forth."

4.  In San Jose, Nixon's car was hit by bricks and bottles that were thrown by demonstrators.  Two days later, Nixon gave a speech in which he said: "Those who carry a PEACE sign in one hand and a bomb or a brick in the other are the super-hypocrites of our time."  Nixon directed that this speech be shown on the networks on the eve before the election (in which Senate and House seats were up for grabs).  The Democratic response to the speech was given by Senator Edmund Muskie, who spoke "calmly against fear-mongering from a rocking chair in his house at Kennebunkport, Maine" (page 697).  This was a disaster for Nixon.  Nixon's speech did not come across well on account of the "grainy film", "poor acoustics", and confrontational message (page 697).  Meanwhile, Muskie's response appeared rather cozy and reasonable.  Black says that Nixon would have done better had he shown to the public the news film of the demonstrators' behavior in San Jose, and then followed that up by "giving the sort of address that Muskie did" (page 697).

Now for my comments.  On the one hand, Black's Monday morning quarterbacking is rather annoying. 
On the other hand, Black's Monday morning quarterbacking is interesting.  I think that his suggestions are reasonable, and that Nixon probably would have done better to have done the sorts of things that Blacks suggests.  Something that I ask authors (in my mind, of course) when I read books is, "So you think he did the wrong thing.  Well, what should he have done instead?"  Black offers his opinion on what Nixon and others should have done instead, and that's what makes his book insightful and interesting.

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For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I will use as my starting-point something that Black says on page 654:

Nixon "was also always ordering boycotts of writers and television anchors.  There was no point to his directed hostility to CBS's Walter Cronkite, NBC's David Brinkley, and Time's Hugh Sidey.  They had been in Washington a long time and would still be there long after Nixon left...Nixon should not have paid a moment's attention to any of them, other than normal courtesies when they met."

Hate can be futile.  I can hate someone, but that person probably doesn't care one way or the other what I think, so why should I drain myself with my hatred?  A person who hates can try to undermine those whom he hates, but then he's opening himself up to retaliation.  I have a hard time going to the other extreme and loving my enemies, however, for I really cannot "love" someone towards whom I lack at least some base of emotional affection.  Lately, what I've found myself thinking to myself is: "I hate that person.  Okay, I don't hate that person, since that person is a human being, like I am.  But I don't love that person, either.  Come to think of it, I don't even have to think about that person!"

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For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I will use as my starting-point something that Black says on page 614.  The context is the aftermath of a June 10, 1969 press conference that Nixon gave about the Vietnam War.

"It was a very strong performance, and Nixon engaged in what would become a drearily predictable habit: telephoning supporters to a late hour asking them how they thought he had done.  It is astonishing that a man of Nixon's intelligence would not realize how this demonstrable insecurity, when all he had to do was wait for a few hours and he would learn how people thought he had done, would undermine the confidence of his staff."

How are we doing?  Many of us would like to receive positive feedback, or some indication that we are on the right track.  Sometimes, we get that in this world.  At other times, we don't, and we're left wondering how exactly we are doing, and what we can do better.  I don't think that Nixon was always paralyzed by insecurity about how he was doing.  When he was a Congressman investigating the Alger Hiss case, for example, he just did the work that he needed to do, even though he did not know what the exact outcome would be in terms of his own political career.  (Even Roger Morris, who is quite critical of Nixon, acknowledges this.)  That's a good rule of thumb: just keep on doing the work, sowing the seeds, hoping that there will be a harvest.  If you try, you may or may not succeed; if you don't try, you won't succeed.  While being a self-starter is commendable, though, it's still nice to get a pat on the back, every once in a while.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 18

In my post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I will talk about Richard Nixon's relationship with French President Charles de Gaulle.  Here are some passages, but I will not provide context for them, since I don't want to get into the weeds of de Gaulle's geopolitical views.

Page 389: "Eisenhower and his immediate successors did not...figure out how to deal with de Gaulle (but Nixon did)."

Page 589: After discussing the deteriorating relationship between France and the U.S. under President Lyndon Johnson, Black says that "Nixon was the sixth American president de Gaulle dealt with, and his relationship promised to be the most productive and amicable of all."

Page 604: "[Nixon] invited de Gaulle to come to the United States and added, 'In this age of mediocre leaders in most of the world, America's spirit needs your presence.'  It's doubtful that the rancorous students...would have found much balm in de Gaulle's grandiloquence or erudition, but what Nixon meant was that he would have valued it himself."

Nixon did not exactly have the best social skills in the world, but he still got along with Charles de Gaulle, at a level far beyond what other U.S. Presidents did.  This, according to Conrad Black, was no easy task.  Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson did not really know how they should deal with de Gaulle.  It wasn't always a matter of a lack of mutual cordiality, mind you.  Johnson apparently did not have a good relationship with de Gaulle, but Black states that de Gaulle "liked but disagreed with Kennedy", and that de Gaulle's "relations with Eisenhower...had been cordial but inconclusive" (page 588).  According to Black, de Gaulle had the same sort of relationship with Truman that he had with Eisenhower, and his relations with FDR "were just warming up...after a very difficult start, when Roosevelt died" (page 588).  But de Gaulle had a good relationship with Nixon.

And Nixon apparently had a genuine regard and admiration for de Gaulle.  As Black says on page 604, Nixon wanted de Gaulle to come to the United States because Nixon felt that he needed him, amidst all of the turmoil that the United States was experiencing at the time.

Sometimes, it's the case that a socially-awkward person can succeed in developing and maintaining a rapport with a particular individual, whereas those who are expert charmers either struggle to do so, or flat out fail.  Why is this?  There are probably a variety of reasons.  First of all, a particular individual may be able to smell BS a mile away, and he's not open to being manipulated by charmers.  He'd prefer the company of someone who is low-key and yet real, especially if that person has a genuinely high regard for him.  Second, perhaps de Gaulle and Nixon were drawn to each other on account of their similar personalities.  As Nixon says in Leaders, de Gaulle was quite reserved.  So was Nixon.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 17

My blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full will focus on the use of humor to defuse tensions.  Here are two incidents that Black discusses, followed by my reflections:

1. Within the Nixon Administration, there were differences of opinion between Arthur Burns, a conservative, who would later go on to become chairman of the Federal Reserve, and Daniel Patrick Moynihan, a liberal, who would later go on to serve as a United States Senator.  Both served under President Richard Nixon as advisers on domestic policy.  On page 579, Black mentions an example of Moynihan one time managing to defuse tension between himself and Burns with humor:

"The Urban Affairs Council met for the first time on January 23.  Nixon signed the executive order setting it up and introduced Moynihan.  Burns, who had thought he would be running domestic policy, asked Moynihan if he would produce an urban policy outline.  Moynihan, with the splendid Irish charm that never deserted him, replied that he would be glad to do so, provided that 'no one take it seriously.'  Moynihan's mirthful erudition took the edge off possible abrasions with Burns, and his council got down to serious policy work."

2.  On page 587, Black tells the story of a time when President Richard Nixon was invited to the British prime minister Harold Wilson's place of residence for a private dinner.  The problem was that the recently-appointed British ambassador to the United States, John Freeman, would be there, and Freeman as editor of the socialist New Statesman had written "extremely acidulous comments about" Nixon (Black's words).  Nixon aide H.R. Haldeman attempted to get Freeman disinvited from the dinner, but David K.E. Bruce, an American diplomat, said that "it was not Haldeman's place to say whom the British prime minister could have to dinner in his own house" (Black's words).

The outcome of all this was that both Nixon and Freeman came to the dinner, and Nixon said: "They say there's a new Nixon...and a new Freeman.  Let me set aside all possibility of embarrassment because our roles have changed.  He's the new diplomat and I'm the new statesman."  Black says this broke the tension, and Wilson wrote on his menu a message to Nixon: "That was one of the kindest and most generous acts I have known in a quarter-century of politics".  Wilson also called Nixon a "born gentleman."

3.  How adept am I at using humor to defuse tensions?  Not very.  I'm not that good on my feet.  There are things that I say, however, that strike people as funny, even though I don't intend them to be funny.  That breaks the tension.  But I don't particularly appreciate being laughed at.

How about when people use humor on me in an attempt to defuse tension?  To be honest, I don't particularly appreciate that, at least not all of the time.  Maybe it is better than being yelled at or having an argument with someone.  But I sometimes feel when someone uses humor on me to defuse tension that I am not being listened to, or that my concerns are being trivialized, or that I am being made fun of.  Maybe I'm even resentful that somebody else, and not me, is being the bigger person.

Anyway, that's my whining for the day.