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 6

A controversial issue that dogged Richard Nixon in his 1960 and 1962 political campaigns was a loan that one of magnate Howard Hughes' companies made to Nixon's brother, Donald.  The loan was so that Donald could expand his business, and Nixon's mother, Hannah, put up a piece of her property as collateral.  There were allegations that Nixon as Vice-President gave Howard Hughes governmental or political favors in exchange for the Hughes Tool Company's loan to Donald.

Aitken does not believe that Nixon gave Hughes any governmental or political favors, even though Aitken does acknowledge that Hughes may have been making the loan in order to get more influence with Vice-President Nixon.  Aitken notes that Attorney General Robert Kennedy's investigation into the matter uncovered no misdeeds on the part of the Nixons.  Aitken also states that the notion that Hughes gave Donald the loan in exchange for favors from the government presumes that Vice-President Nixon had more power over certain government offices than he had.  Aitken observes that the affair turned out to be a catastrophe, since Donald failed in his businesses, so "the resulting embarrassment all round destroyed any prospects for influence peddling" (page 287).  Moreover, Aitken appears to buy Richard Nixon's story that he (Richard Nixon) was surprised by the loan and encouraged Donald (to no avail) to give back the money.

Stephen Ambrose also gives Nixon the benefit of a doubt.  As I said in this post about volume 1 of Ambrose's biography of Nixon: "Another scandal concerned Nixon’s brother Donald, who received money from business magnate Howard Hughes when his (meaning Donald’s) restaurant was in trouble.  There was speculation that Hughes was doing this to get governmental favors from Richard Nixon when he was Vice-President, but Ambrose, as he considers Eisenhower Administration documents, sees no evidence for this."

I have read other books that say differently.  I think particularly of the works of Fawn Brodie, Anthony Summers, and Don Fulsom.  Brodie refers to the account of Noah Dietrich, who was the executive Vice-President of the Hughes Tool Company, and who related that Richard Nixon requested help from Hughes through Washington lobbyist Frank Waters.  Dietrich told his story after he had become estranged from Howard Hughes.

Brodie states that the loan was made in a roundabout way to hide Howard Hughes' name: it went from Dietrich to a Canadian branch of the Hughes Tool Company to Waters, whose name would be on the loan, and then the check was "made out to Hannah Nixon", who "then loaned $165,000 to Donald and used the remaining $40,000 to pay off a loan she had made jointly with him" (page 437 of Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character).

Brodie, Summers, and Fulsom all contend that Hughes may have gotten a governmental favor in return for the loan.  The Internal Revenue Service had been denying Howard Hughes' request that the Howard Hughes Medical Institute be tax exempt, but the IRS changed its mind a few months after Donald Nixon received the loan.  Fulsom's telling of the story calls the Howard Hughes Medical Institute "Hughes's then shady 'medical institute'" (page 87 of Nixon's Darkest Secrets).

Fulsom actually goes a step farther than Brodie.  Fulsom refers to people who claim that the money didn't even go to Donald, but rather to Richard.  One of these people was C. Arnholt Smith, a friend of Nixon, and the other was "veteran California reporter Frank McCullough" (page 162).  Smith said that he thought the loan was intended to help Richard Nixon when Nixon was "a relatively poor man" (Smith's words, quoted on page 162), and Fulsom notes that Nixon soon thereafter put down $75,000 on a new house in Washington, D.C., before he sold his "old home" (page 162).  And McCullough said that Hughes himself told him that the money was for Richard, not Donald, and that it had a political intent.  Incidentally, this sort of accusation was around in 1962, for Nixon accused his opponents of claiming that he himself received some of the money from the Hughes loan.

At the same time, Fulsom earlier in the book states that Donald was an annoyance to Nixon on account of Donald's mischief, such that Nixon as President "bugged Don's phones and put a full-time Secret Service tail on him" (page 88).  Does Fulsom see the Hughes loan as an example of such embarrassing mischief, only later in the book to entertain another possibility (that the loan was for Richard, not Donald)?

One other issue that I want to mention: What about the land that Hannah Nixon put up as collateral?  Brodie calls it a "vacant lot" (page 435), whereas Richard depicted Hannah as sacrificing a piece of lucrative property, as putting up "practically everything she had" (Nixon's words, quoted on page 300 of Aitken).  Obviously, Richard puts Hannah in more of a sympathetic light!

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 2

I was thinking about Fawn Brodie's biography of Richard Nixon while I was reading Jonathan Aitken's more positive portrayal.  Brodie speculated that Richard Nixon was unloved by his parents, and that this contributed to his political hunger.  But Aitken referred to examples of Nixon being loved by his father, and also by his extended family.  On page 84, Aitken talks about how Nixon's father, Frank, worked at Nixon's orange juice company (or, actually, Nixon was one of the owners of it), Citrifrost, for free.  Aitken also tells about how Richard was a favorite of his grandmother, Almira Milhous, and how many in Nixon's family envisioned him accomplishing great things, perhaps even being President.

Brodie chooses to focus on other things, however.  If I recall correctly, she made the point that Frank Nixon required his son Richard to pay him back for the time that Frank contributed to Nixon's expenses at law school.  Sounds cold?  Sure, but Frank also worked at Nixon's orange juice company for free.  Doesn't that count?  Both are part of a larger picture.

I was thinking about Brodie's discussion of Nixon's war record when reading Aitken's narration of that.  Brodie essentially argues that Nixon exaggerated his own war record, and she bases that (among other things) on contradictory stories that Nixon himself told about it.  Aitken, however, appears to accept Nixon's story that he was in foxholes due to bombing.  Incidentally, it interested me when reading Julie Nixon Eisenhower's biography of Pat that Julie did not mention foxholes or bombing when discussing Nixon's war record.

Roger Morris' biography also came to my mind as I was reading Aitken.  Morris argued that Nixon was heavily financed by wealthy special interests in his 1946 congressional campaign.  Aitken, however, depicts a time when Nixon was actually outspent and out-staffed by the Democrats in 1946, and he notes that Nixon used a lot of his poker winnings for his campaign.  Aitken quotes an eyewitness who related that Pat was complaining to him about the lack of money.  Aitken, however, goes on to say that Republican money started to come in.  That makes me wonder: perhaps Morris and Aitken are both correct.  Maybe there was a time when Nixon's campaign was financially struggling, but that problem was soon corrected.  One would have to set up a timeline and plot when authors say events happened in order to get a fairly accurate view of the situation, perhaps.

I'd like to make one more point, which is not particularly relevant to my discussion in this post thus far.  James Stewart----not the actor----served with Nixon in World War II, and Stewart said that Nixon at that time did not particularly care for General Douglas MacArthur.  Stewart stated that Nixon felt MacArthur "was prolonging the hostilities through personal vanity" (Stewart's words, quoted on page 104).  That's pretty intriguing, considering Nixon's support for MacArthur during the Korean War, and Nixon's rather positive portrayal of MacArthur in his book, Leaders (though Nixon does criticize MacArthur's insensitivity at least one time in that book).  That makes me wonder about the stages of evolution of Richard Nixon's belief system, and I have been curious about this topic before.  Irwin Gellman in The Contender narrates that Richard Nixon was not anti-Soviet during World War II, since he deemed Hitler to be the greater threat, and that Nixon's awareness of the threat of internal Communism really took off when he began serving on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  But, if that is correct, I wondered, why did Nixon run a Red-baiting campaign in 1946, before he even became a Congressman?  From what I have read in many books about Nixon, Nixon during his youth was a Republican; and yet that wasn't an absolute, for Nixon admired Woodrow Wilson, and Nixon could manifest certain liberal ideas in an essay that he wrote as a Whittier College student.  One can probably put Nixon into a box as effectively as one can put his father in a box: both had convictions, on some level (Frank probably more so than Richard), but their beliefs could fluctuate.

Anyway, that's my rambling Nixon post for the day!

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.

Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story 2

One feature that I noticed in my latest reading of Julie Nixon Eisenhower's Pat Nixon: The Untold Story, which I haven't really seen in other books about Richard Nixon that I have read, is that Julie quotes extensively from the love letters between Richard and Pat, both from the time when they were courting, and also after they had married and Richard was in the navy.  Other books I have read quote some of those letters, or they refer to bits of information in the letters in an attempt to make a specific argument (in Fawn Brodie's case, that Nixon's later stories about his war record were exaggerations).  But Julie quotes from them more extensively.

When I have read pieces of Nixon's love letters in other books about Nixon, they come across to me as cheesy and over-the-top.  But I actually liked some of the letters between Richard and Pat when I was reading passages from them in Julie's book, and the reason is that each was saying what he or she liked about the other.  Richard commended Pat's energy, and Pat praised Richard for the consideration that he showed at a party.  I'd actually like to quote from the latter letter.  Nixon in the navy had a hamburger stand, where he gave out coffee, juice, and food.  More than once in my reading of books about Nixon, I have seen the navy Nixon compared with Henry Fonda's character in Mister Roberts, a movie that I now want to see!  In any case, after Richard wrote Pat about a get-together at his hamburger stand, Pat wrote back:

"I always like to hear of your get togethers too----you always make people have a good time.  Our parties have always been your successes.  Remember the time you even made the chop suey!!  When I think of all the wonderfulnesses for me----didn't I take advantage?----but, dearest, it was appreciated then and now.  I never shall forget how sweet you were the night Margaret and I had the teachers for a wiener roast----You carted, helped with the salad, bought the pies, went to LA for Mary's gift."

Okay, I'll admit that "wonderfulnesses" is a little over the top, but I still like this letter, for a variety of reasons.  For one, it exemplifies Julie's portrayal of her father, at least in what I have read thus far.  Julie acknowledges that her father was a shy introvert, and yet he comes across as a bit more fun and sociable in her book, as compared with other books about Nixon that I have read.  Second, I like how Pat highlights what she specifically likes about Richard.  Anthony Summers, in The Arrogance of Power, argues that Richard did not really know Pat when he married her, and some people I have read argue that Nixon tended to idealize Pat in his love letters to her, or perhaps even treated her as a project when he was courting her.  I'm not sure what to say about this, but their letters to one another convince me that they genuinely admired qualities in each other.

And, third, what Pat said Nixon did at her party reminds me of what I, as a shy and socially-awkward introvert, would most likely do at a party.   I one time read a post by a lady with Asperger's, and she suggested that what people with Asperger's should do at parties is help out: set out the food, help in the kitchen.  That way, they're at the party, meaning that they're not offending the host by not showing up, but they're not exactly interacting with people and making small talk, for they're busy helping out!  That seems to be what Richard was doing at the wiener roast for teachers that he and Pat attended.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 11

I finished Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character.  On pages 513-514, Brodie states:

"Pat Nixon told Jessamyn West that in the early years Julie and Tricia could make their father laugh, and 'he could make them laugh.'  The fun, the laughter, what Pat described as 'the good times,' had long since disappeared in the relationship between Nixon and his wife.  But he did write her notes.  Dianne Sawyer, secretary in the White House, who accompanied the Nixons to San Clemente in their retirement and remained there until the memoirs were finished, has said that Nixon wrote many notes to Pat, which she was privileged to read, although she would not indicate the number or divulge the nature of the contents.  (She has taken 'a private oath' not to write or give interviews about her experience, at least while the Nixons are alive.)  Publication of these notes to Pat, or even a description of their feeling and content, may reveal a tenderness to Nixon which he has otherwise resolutely kept hidden.  In any case the very recourse to notewriting tells us more of the warping of Nixon's capacity for love."

One thing that this passage tells me is that nobody can write a fully-orbed biography of another human being.  Fawn Brodie, with all of her speculations about the psychology of Richard Nixon, cannot capture the full man.  Nixon, after all, wrote many letters to Pat.  Brodie may call that "the warping of Nixon's capacity for love", but the fact that he wrote letters to his wife may indicate that he did care about her, even though Brodie tells story after story about how that may not have been the case.

Now that Richard and Pat Nixon are dead, I wonder how much Diane Sawyer has chosen to talk about her time working for Nixon.  You can read here her responses to the Broadway play, Frost/Nixon, which later was made into a movie.  Someone played her in that.  Also, if I'm not mistaken, ABC News not long ago did a story on Nixon's love letters to Pat when they were courting.  As far as I can remember, though, Diane Sawyer did not give any indication that she knew much about the topic of Nixon's letters to Pat.  Perhaps she didn't think that was the time or the place for that!

Now for my overall impressions of Brodie's book: it was all right.  I didn't read anything earth-shakingly surprising.  I'm not sure if any anti-Nixon book can surpass Anthony Summers' The Arrogance of Power!  Summers drew from Brodie's work and even recommended it, but he had a lot more stories than she did.  Brodie's book has had a mixed reputation: it has been lauded for its interviews, but it has been criticized for its psychological speculations, and also for some of the negative things that it says about Nixon.  One criticism that I have read is that Brodie implies that Nixon had a homosexual relationship with his friend, Bebe Rebozo.  But she did not say that explicitly.  She simply said that they were friends, and that Nixon did not want people to think that he had a homosexual relationship with Rebozo.  She also mentions some of the homophobic things that Nixon had said.  I guess one can draw his or her own conclusions from that, but Brodie did not go as far as, say, Don Fulsom, who told about a lady who saw Nixon and Rebozo holding hands under the table.

Overall, I did find Brodie to be a good writer, and sometime in the future I may read her biography of Thaddeus Stevens, the radical Republican who was played by Tommy Lee Jones in the movie Lincoln.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 10

My latest reading of Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character was a summary of Brodie's psychological analysis of Richard Nixon.  Brodie essentially argues that Nixon was unloved as a child, and she states that Nixon's father was for winning at all costs, whereas his mother tended to stretch the truth when it suited her.  As a result, Nixon had a hunger for adulation, and he sought that through political success.  In the process of this, he stretched the truth, and he tried to win at all costs.  Earlier in the book, Brodie states that Nixon's environment enabled him to have the confidence to pursue his political dreams.  Had Nixon been at Harvard, the competition would have made it much harder for him to do so, but Nixon was at Whittier, where his ambitions were more attainable.

Elsewhere in the book, Brodie raises other considerations.  She speculates that Nixon's lying may go back to when he had to lie or adroitly manipulate the truth in order to avoid the discipline at the hands of his harsh father.  In the endnotes, she cites Bruce Mazlish's claim that Nixon did not rebel as a youth, and, "as a result," he did not bow "so totally before authority" (Mazlish's words, quoted on page 524).  The idea here may be that Nixon was rebelling against his parents' authoritarianism when he did ethically-compromising things as an adult.  Brodie also states that Nixon may have lied to make himself feel better: when someone prominent criticized him, Nixon went on to tell the story that this person had actually praised him.  Lying made it easier for him to cope, in short.

Another point that Brodie makes is that Nixon felt rather strangled by Quaker Whittier, which was one of the places where he grew up.  Brodie states that Nixon liked the "erosion of even the stoutest Quaker virtues" (Brodie's words) that occurred when oil was discovered in the 1920's, and she believes that this sentiment underlies Nixon's frequent statements as President that America was "the richest and strongest nation on earth" (Nixon's words), with "richest" coming first.  Brodie states that many in Whittier felt threatened by "the fantasy world of Hollywood" and the "surrounding Chicano society, with its taverns and dancehalls, its well-attended Catholic churches, with its more spontaneous gaiety" (page 501), and she seems to present Nixon rebelling against this protective Whittier mentality.  Nixon was drawn to acting and celebrities, he thought of practicing law in Havana, Cuba, and he enjoyed vacationing in the Caribbean.

Is there anything to Brodie's analysis?  I don't rule it out.  Nixon biographer Stephen Ambrose did not seem to find that kind of argumentation overly convincing, for, as he notes, many people feel insufficiently loved by their parents, and not all of them turn out as Richard Nixon did.  The thing is, though, people are different, and thus they respond to situations in different ways.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 9

In Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie argues that Richard Nixon had a troubled marriage with his wife, Pat.  This is not new in terms of the books about Nixon that I have read.  Brodie stops short of believing that Nixon was physically abusive of his wife, for Brodie states on page 454 that "There are also unsubstantiated reports that the resulting private quarrel at home was searing and violent."  But she does depict Nixon as rather dismissive and lacking in affection towards Pat.

I'd like to share three items about this topic.

1.  In my post here, I asked about what the reaction of Nixon's daughters was to their parents' relationship.  I wondered how Julie and Tricia could be so supportive of their father, if he was as bad of a husband as many writers say.  I'm planning to read Julie Nixon Eisenhower's biography of her mother, Pat Nixon, after I finish Brodie's book, so it will be interesting to see what Julie writes.  On page 455, though, Brodie states the following:

"Julie, then fifteen, and Tricia, seventeen, it must be remembered, had been brought up with parents who were inordinately proud of the family tradition of self-control and who continually tailored the facade of family happiness...Of Julie's wretchedness we learn more from Earl Mazo than from her father.  He was told that she said, 'All I want is for everyone to love everyone and be happy.  I can't study or do anything when one of us is not happy.'"

The context here was the family's discussion about whether Nixon would run for Governor of California in 1962.  Pat was against it, Tricia was for it, and Julie said that she would support whatever her father decided.

It was after Nixon lost that particular election that he allegedly got violent with Pat.  The "unsubstantiated reports" that Brodie mentioned on page 454 were about this alleged incident.  Anthony Summers, on page 233 of The Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon, portrays Julie's recollection of this time frame as rather shadowy----as if Julie remembered something, but was in the dark about what was really taking place:

"Pat, Julie was to write, was watching television in the den when the television ran the 'kick around' speech.  At the point where Nixon attacked the press, she shouted 'Bravo!'  When her father came home, Julie recalled, 'We were waiting tearfully in the hallway at the front door.  Mother spoke first.  She said brokenly, 'Oh, Dick.'  He was so overcome with emotion that he brushed past and went outside to the backyard.  That afternoon was the first and the only time my parents gave way to their emotions simultaneously, and it bewildered Tricia and me....'

"Domestic life for a top politician is rarely what most families would consider normal.  What happened to bewilder the children that sad Wednesday in November 1962, however, may have been something they never learned of as children."

I don't know Julie, but I doubt that she would publicly endorse Summers' narration.  I'm interested in reading Julie's book to see what she does say about her parents' relationship, however.  Some of the reviews on Amazon dismiss her book, implying that it is a rather idealized portrait of her parents.  But I have read books that are quite critical of Nixon, and they treat Julie's book with a measure of respect----as if her voice is important----and some of the passages that they cite from her book seem to me to be rather honest, in that Julie acknowledges that things were not always rosy in her parents' marriage.  I'll see what my impressions of her book are!

(UPDATE: Brodie later in her book speculates that Julie became angry with her father, especially near the end of Watergate, and Brodie notes that Julie wrote a biography about her mother Pat, not her father.)

2.  Columnist Jack Anderson was a thorn in Richard Nixon's side.  There were even people in Nixon's Administration who wanted to assassinate Anderson, if you can imagine that!  Don Fulsom, in his anti-Nixon book, praises Anderson as a champion of righteousness, a muckraker, and an inspiration to muckrakers.  You can imagine my surprise, therefore, when I read in Brodie's book that Anderson argued that Richard Nixon actually had a good marriage.  After quoting people who claimed otherwise, Brodie states on pages 467-468:

"Jack Anderson, on the other hand, privy to much Washington gossip, described the Nixon marriage as a good one.  He believed Nixon 'loved his family very much.'

"[']At no time have I ever had a suspicion, save from irresponsible sources trying to make something out of nothing, that Nixon did not love her or in any way degraded her.  He held his wife in esteem and affection as far as I have been able to learn.  She apparently had a healthy attitude about him...a little like my wife.  Whenever I get to thinking that I'm important she always says the right thing to pull me right back down to earth.[']

"'Nixon's closeness to his wife,' Anderson said, 'was the only healthy thing about him.'"  Brodie's source for this is her own interview with Anderson on April 19, 1975.

How could Anderson's impression be so different from that of many others----eyewitnesses, journalists, etc.?  Perhaps Anderson saw something different----he highlighted the affection between Nixon and his wife rather than making a big deal out of what many deemed to be Nixon's slights or signs of disrespect.  And, since Anderson mentions his own marriage, perhaps he was looking at Nixon's marriage through those lens: he believed that there was enough similarity between the marriages, that he may have projected elements of his own marriage onto that of the Nixons.  I'm just speculating here!

3.  I recently watched a clip in which Frank Gannon asked Nixon why he did not mention Pat in his speech to the White House staff after he had resigned from the Presidency.  Some have made a big deal about this, since Nixon in that speech was reading about the death of Theodore Roosevelt's wife, without even mentioning his own.  Was Nixon slighting or disregarding Pat?  Nixon clearly indicated to Gannon that he did not care for that claim, then he went on to say that he did not mention Pat out of consideration for her.  He realized that she was saddened by the resignation, and he feared that she would break down publicly had he mentioned her in his speech.  Unfortunately, I cannot find that clip right now.

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What I noticed in my latest reading of Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character was that Fawn Brodie did not criticize John F. Kennedy.  At least she hasn't in what I have read of her book thus far.

I've become somewhat accustomed to seeing snark about Kennedy in some of the books about Nixon that I have read.  After talking about Kennedy's advice to Nixon on the importance of writing a book, Stephen Ambrose said that Kennedy did not really write Profiles in Courage, and that his father pressured the Pulitzer Committee to give JFK the Pulitzer.  I read in one book about Nixon (though I forget which one) that JFK's father, Joseph Kennedy, may not have been just lucky when he managed to thrive during the Great Depression.  Don Fulsom is rather positive about JFK, noting that the mob hated him, and yet he acknowledges that JFK had mob connections at some point.  Anthony Summers goes more deeply into JFK's mob connections, even talking about how some bruisers were at polling stations pressuring people to vote for Kennedy.  Summers also tells a humorous story about when a Kennedy associate in 1960 was doing investigative work on the wild weekend parties that Nixon attended at Bebe Rebozo's home, but he decided not to pursue that line when he learned that Kennedy, too, was at the parties!  And Nixon, and also biographers about Nixon, have claimed that there were ghost votes for Kennedy in the 1960 Presidential election.

I'm reading Brodie's book, and I don't see much of that.  She acknowledges that JFK was a womanizer, but I suppose that this was such common knowledge by the time that she wrote the book that she decided not to omit it.  But she appears to take for granted that Kennedy wrote Profiles in Courage.  She says that Joseph Kennedy luckily dodged the negative consequences of the Great Depression.  While Nixon charged that candidate Kennedy was briefed about the U.S. Government's plots against Fidel Castro, and that Kennedy was really low when Kennedy was publicly accusing the Eisenhower Administration of doing nothing against Castro, Brodie seems to think that Kennedy had not been told about the U.S. Government's plots.  Overall, she portrays Kennedy as a witty person who came across as more authentic than Nixon did.  As far as negatives go, she says that Nixon was healthier than Kennedy because of Kennedy's bad back, and that Nixon was a better orator, even though Kennedy improved by the time he got to the first debate.  But I don't see the snark about Kennedy that I saw in many of the other books about Nixon that I read.

Why didn't Brodie share much dirt on Kennedy?  Anthony Summers wrote an anti-Nixon book, and he didn't shy away from that!  Brodie talks about how Kennedy drove women wild.  Could she have had a crush on the late President Kennedy?  I don't know.

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As Vice-President, Richard Nixon visited Latin America, and he faced down angry mobs in some of the Latin American countries.  When Nixon returned home to the United States, his favorability rating increased, and many esteemed him as a hero.  Some cynics, however, maintained that Nixon was deliberately placing himself in grave danger to make himself into a hero, thereby transforming himself into a more electable candidate for President.

The latter view seems to be held by Fawn Brodie, in Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, and Anthony Summers, in The Shadows of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon.  Summers claims that Nixon was warned that he would encounter danger in certain areas.  Brodie states on page 364 that "Had [Nixon] confined himself to wreath-laying and negotiations there might have been only five instead of six crises for his first book", but Nixon had an "appetite for publicity [and] delight in confrontation."

Brodie also discusses the reasons that Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon were unpopular in certain Latin American countries: the Eisenhower Administration's apparent endorsement of dictators; the small amount of foreign aid that the U.S. gave to the region; "U.S. tariffs on lead, zinc, and wool, and the dumping of American cotton on the world market" (page 363); and the Eisenhower Administration's apparent lack of concern for Latin America.  As Brodie states on page 363, "[Secretary of State John Foster] Dulles in 1954 had attended an Inter-American Conference in Caracas called to ventilate the hemisphere's appalling economic problems, but had stayed only long enough to introduce a resolution against Communism."

Brodie contrasts Nixon's accounts of certain events with the recollections of other eyewitnesses.  For example, Nixon said that when he visited a Catholic University he was warmly received, whereas someone else stated that Nixon's reception was rather mixed.  Brodie simply states that the stories differ, but my hunch is that she is hesitant to swallow Nixon's version of the story in its entirety, since she has argued in her book that Nixon had a tendency to lie.

What especially stood out to me in reading Summers' book was his argument that Nixon treated his wife, Pat, with callous unconcern on the trip.  Summers states on pages 169-170:

"The 'detachment' Nixon ascribed to himself extended also to his attitude to the long-suffering Pat.  He had made no move to shield her as they stood through the playing of the Venezuelan national anthem in a shower of spit.  He had then insisted that Pat's car drive immediately behind his, breaking the Secret Service's cardinal rule that only agents travel in the follow-up car.  'One remark made by Mr. Nixon stayed with me from this terrible episode,' said Secret Service chief Baughman.  'The agent inside Mr. Nixon's car said to the Vice President after the motorcade had started to roll again: 'I hope Mrs. Nixon gets through.'  To which Mr. Nixon replied, 'If she doesn't, it can't be helped.'"

Baughman's testimony should not be dismissed, but there is another side to the story.  Brodie depicts Nixon showing concern for Pat.  Nixon and Vernon Walters differ on whether Nixon went to see if Pat was all right, or if Nixon sent Walters to check on Pat.  But both are expressions of concern, on some level.

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How do people move forward from a trauma, or from guilt?  In my latest reading of Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie talks about Adlai Stevenson, the Democratic candidate for President in 1952 and 1956.  Stevenson accidentally shot a young girl while thinking that a rifle was unloaded, and he felt horrible about it afterwards.  Brodie states that Stevenson had a "pervasive melancholy and self-doubt barely hidden behind his good humor and wit" (page 311).  When a woman wrote to Stevenson saying that her son accidentally killed a friend, Stevenson wrote back to her, "Tell him that he must live for two."  When Stevenson was complaining to a friend of his about his troubles during his 1948 campaign for Illinois Governor, Stevenson stated, "and so on and on, to the end of time, or until my sins are expiated."

Stevenson still managed to live his life.  He accomplished things, and he had romantic relationships.  But, according to Brodie, there was a pain within him.

According to Brodie, Nixon, too may have felt guilt after the death of two of his brothers.  Brodie states on page 100:

"Robert J. Lifton, who has done much research on survivor guilt, finds that many survivors suffer from a 'psychic numbing,' a diminished capacity for experience, whether of joy or grief.  They fear they have survived 'because someone else died, or that they have 'killed' the other person in some symbolic way by failing to sustain the other's life with needed support, help, and nurturance.'  This may have been a factor in numbing Nixon's already warped capacity for elation, especially seen in his election victories.  In a more profound fashion it may have deadened his general sensitivity and self-understanding, and contributed to the sense of meaninglessness and unfulfillment in his own life."

UPDATE: Later in the book, Brodie talks about how other people's deaths paved the way for Nixon to advance.  His brother Harold's death from tuberculosis freed up money for him to go to law school.  The deaths of Robert Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., may have propelled him to the Presidency.  In the case of MLK, Brodie states, his assassination drew more people to the law-and-order candidate, Nixon.  Brodie wonders what Nixon must have felt about this.  On page 507, she says: "What one does not know is whether or not Nixon suffered an anxiety that the fate helping him was demonic and not divine."  Brodie also mentions the suicides of two authors who were writing books about Nixon, books that were not particularly negative about him.  

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On page 294 of Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie talks about an investigative reporter by the name of Drew Pearson:

"Both [Joseph] McCarthy and Nixon had been castigated by Drew Pearson, Washington gadfly columnist and radio commentator.  Although Pearson had been called a liar by FDR, Truman, and a score of congressmen, he was nevertheless widely feared for the general accuracy of his exposures and his willingness to risk libel suits.  Only long after his death was he recognized as one of the nation's most courageous investigative reporters."  Brodie then goes on to describe the time that Senator Joseph McCarthy beat Pearson up (and I mean literally).

Pearson worked with another famous investigative reporter, Jack Anderson.  On page 277, Brodie refers to a discovery that Pearson and Anderson made in her attempt to argue that Nixon indeed benefited some of the wealthy contributors to his controversial fund: "Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson discovered that two oilmen contributors, who had been refused government permission to explore for oil on a military reservation, were now beneficiaries of a Nixon bill to open up that reservation for exploration."

Don Fulsom in Nixon's Darkest Secrets states that Jack Anderson may have had a religious motivation for his muckraking: "A strict moralist, Anderson's stated lifetime goal was to keep government honest.  A devout Mormon, he viewed his reportorial undertaking as a noble summons from the Almighty" (page 85).  I did not know that Anderson was a Mormon.

I suppose that my attitude towards investigative reporters is love-hate.  It does give me pleasure when wrongdoing is exposed.  When I was growing up, relatives of mine would lament the hypocrisy in the political and religious systems and would say, "Now, when the two witnesses come on the scene, that will be exposed," or "When God is judging these people at the White Throne Judgment, their misdeeds will be exposed."  (The two witnesses are those two prophets in Revelation 11.)  My Dad one time said, "60 Minutes does a better job preaching the Gospel than those Armstrongite churches," or something to that effect.  He was praising 60 Minutes for uncovering wrongdoing.

On the other hand, investigative reporting can mix facts with rumor, and it can wrongfully ruin people's reputations.  This was a concern that was expressed about Drew Pearson, according to this wikipedia article.  Moreover, Nixon did not like the way that his secret plans for negotiating with foreign leaders would end up in Jack Anderson's column, for that sort of hindered the negotiations by tipping the foreign leaders off to our strategies.

Book Write-Up: Young Man Luther, by Erik H. Erikson

Erik H. Erikson.  Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History.  United States of America: W.W. Norton and Company, 1958 and 1962.

Erik Erikson was a psychologist, and this book is his psychological profile of Martin Luther.  There were a couple of reasons that I decided to read this book.  For one, I remembered a professor of mine saying in her Christianity class years ago that Luther may have been a manic-depressant.  I don't recall if she mentioned Erikson's study, but her statement stayed with me for many years, especially when I read Luther's writings.  Luther in his writings vacillates between inner peace and spiritual depression, and he seems to be trying to reassure himself on a continual basis that God loves him, and that his standing with God is secure.  I doubt that I fit the category of manic-depressant, but I could identify with Luther's struggle with his negative emotions, such as religious obsessive-compulsiveness, self-doubt, and a belief that his flaws kept God from loving him.

Second, I will be preaching at my church on Reformation Sunday, and the topic of my sermon will be Martin Luther's life and legacy.  Erikson's book was on my shelf, and so I figured that reading it could help me in terms of my preparation of my sermon.

Martin Luther, in Erikson's depiction (and probably in most depictions), was a man who was on a quest for spiritual inner peace.  Luther was spiritually insecure as a monk, for he felt that God was wrathful, but he found more peace when he concluded that people are justified by faith in Christ, apart from works; at that point, he believed more in God's love.

Erikson believes that important aspects of Martin Luther's life had their roots in his childhood.  Luther as a monk believed that God was wrathful, and Erikson traces this mindset back to Luther's experiences with his harsh father, Hans, as if Luther projected onto his heavenly father the characteristics of his earthly father.  Luther's mother was superstitious and rather mystical, and Erikson seems to believe that Luther's quest for a close relationship with God, as well as his alleged sightings of Satan, have their roots in that.  According to Erikson, Luther had more peace back when he was a really small child, under the care of his mother, and his life would become an attempt to recapture that peace.  Erikson states that the Bible would become Luther's mother: a nurturer, if you will.

Erikson discusses Luther's study of philosophy, which did not help Luther because of its uncertainties.  But Erikson notes that there were Catholics in the monastery and in Luther's study who encouraged Luther to trust in a God of love.  Luther would recognize his debt to them, and yet Luther did not always find convincing some of the Catholic attempts to help him feel better.  Luther was told, for example, that he shouldn't be so preoccupied with feeling bad about his venial sins, since mortal sins were the serious ones.  Luther was puzzled by this, however, for is not a sin a sin before the just and holy God?  Some of the things that Catholics told him would move him towards greater assurance, and yet there were elements of Catholicism that clearly did not assuage his troubled conscience.

Erikson states Luther was helped on his journey by two factors.  First, Luther in the monastery was able to talk with Johann von Staupitz, his mentor, a Catholic who was encouraging Luther to believe in a God of love and forgiveness.  Johann von Staupitz would remain a Catholic even after Luther launched the Reformation, although Luther acknowledged his debt to him in terms of his journey towards peace.  Johann von Staupitz was someone Luther could talk to.  Second, Luther would become a teacher of the Bible at a college, and, according to Erikson, that provided Luther with an opportunity to work through, develop, articulate, and confidently accept his own beliefs.

Luther's father was disappointed with his son for becoming a monk, for Luther's father wanted for Martin to become a lawyer, a husband, and a father.  Erikson makes the point that Luther eventually achieved his father's dreams for him, for Luther (while he did not become a lawyer) became a prominent figure who debated issues, as well as a husband and a father.  But Erikson notes that Luther was not satisfied, for Luther looked back and wondered if he had done the right thing in terms of launching the Protestant Reformation.  Erikson also may have been arguing that Luther had highs and lows in his life, periods of great productivity, but also times of little or no productivity.

The book was not always easy for me to understand, and I can tell from wikipedia's article about it that I missed some points, and that I did not always see the forest of which some of the trees were part.  But I found the book to be helpful to me in terms of exposing me to key aspects of Martin Luther's life, as well as reinforcing my knowledge of them.

Two issues that I was thinking about when reading this book were the impact of our earlier experiences on our later life, and the role of writing or teaching in the shaping of a person's identify.

The first issue overlaps with my reading of Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, for Brodie argues that events in Nixon's earlier life would shape his character.   I do believe that events in our earlier life influence our views and our outlooks, but I shudder to think how fragile human beings are, such that events outside of their control could have an influence on how they turn out.  What parents do or do not do, or say or do not say, can arguably have dramatic repercussions on their children's outlooks, decisions, and lives.  That puts a lot of pressure on parents, doesn't it?  I wouldn't go so far as to be a complete determinist on this issue, however, for people still can make their own decisions, regardless of what their upbringing was, plus there have been people who have had less-than-ideal upbringings, yet they turned out all right.  Perhaps they are able to cope with their issues, or they can bracket them out when they need to function in society.

The second issue inspired me to think about my blogging and how that has shaped my identity.  Before I blogged, I had my doubts, my resentments, and my beliefs, but blogging was what enabled me to step forward and to establish and articulate an identity in terms of my beliefs.  Before I blogged, I had my disdain and my resentment about certain features of Christian evangelicalism, but they became more a part of me after I started blogging about them.  Erikson seems to make a similar point about Luther: that teaching the Bible enabled Luther to become firmer about his beliefs and his identity.  Speaking for myself personally, I'm not sure if that was a good thing, in my case.  Before I blogged, I could actually dialogue with conservative evangelicals, and I was open to asking them questions about their beliefs, and maybe even to learning from them.  I was on a quest, looking to them for answers.  After I started blogging, however, I was putting myself out there as one who had problems with evangelicalism, as I articulated why I had those problems, and dialogue with evangelicals became more difficult for me.  I also think that, around the time that I started blogging, I was beginning to become firmer in certain convictions: that God can work with people outside of a Christian context, that biblical inerrancy is grossly problematic, that universalism has a fairly decent case, and the list goes on.  I lost something when I started to blog, and blogging, incidentally, has made me lonelier.  But my beliefs are my beliefs, whether people like them or not.

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My latest reading of Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character was about the Alger Hiss case.  I won't go into a lot of detail about that, but I will say that Brodie says some things that I did not learn from other books about Nixon that I have read.  For one, as I've said before, there is controversy about whether Congressman Richard Nixon got intelligence information about Hiss from Father John Cronin before Whittaker Chambers and Hiss testified to the House Committee on Un-American Activities.  Nixon in Six Crises said that he first learned of Hiss and Chambers' accusation that Hiss was a Communist when they initially appeared before HUAC, whereas Father John Cronin said for years that he fed Nixon intelligence prior to that point, a claim that Cronin supposedly retracted later.  The debate usually centers around Cronin and whether his retraction occurred or was trustworthy, but Brodie brings in another consideration: that Nixon himself "would mention the Cronin briefing to [biographers] Earl Mazo and Bela Kornitzer, both of whom published the fact" (pages 201-202).  Second, according to Brodie, French and Canadian intelligence cast suspicions on Alger Hiss.  I don't recall reading that elsewhere.  I read about Venona and Soviet intelligence, but not French and Canadian intelligence.

What I want to use as my starting-point in this post is something that Brodie says on page 203.  Whittaker Chambers (who would later accuse Alger Hiss of being a Communist and of engaging in espionage) left the Communist Party, and he went on to write for Time Magazine, eventually becoming the magazine's editor.  Brodie quotes Chambers as saying: "Time gave me back my life.  It gave me my voice.  It gave me sanctuary, professional respect, peace, and time in which to mature my changed view of the world and men's destiny, and mine in it."

The part about Chambers being given the space to mature in his new view of the world stood out to me, for some reason.  Chambers had left an environment that many could label as fanatical and cultish, the Communist Party in the United States.  After leaving his old worldview, where would he go from there?  Could he build another worldview in its place?  What would be his compass and identity?  Being a writer and an editor for Time gave him a chance to explore the world and what he believed, and why.

There are plenty of people in Chambers' sort of situation.  There are people who become Christians, and they wonder how they can mature in their newfound faith.  They may find answers in solitude, as they read the Bible and commune with God in prayer.  They may also receive guidance from communities and people who have been in the Christian faith for a long time.  There are people who quit drinking and join Alcoholics Anonymous, and they are seeking to learn the ropes of a new life.  They do so by going to meetings and by being mentored by other recovering alcoholics, including a sponsor.  There are people who are detoxing from fundamentalist Christianity, after concluding that it has been an unhealthy worldview and an abusive environment for them.  They may do some searching on their own, reading books.  Perhaps they, too, receive help from some sort of community, maybe online.  They're leaving the old and entering the new, and they are looking for ways to mature on their new path.

I myself have been reluctant to get "help" from other people or communities on whatever new path I have found myself on.  I fear that others will try to recreate me into their image, rather than allowing me the freedom to grow as I wish.  On the other hand, there are times when I realize that I need guidance from outside of myself, since my own head can be a lonely place that distorts reality and focuses on the negative.  Perhaps a solution is for me to listen to the advice of others, while remembering that I have the free choice to accept or to reject it.

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On page 129 of Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie says that two published articles that Richard Nixon wrote as a Duke Law School student related to traumas or unfortunate incidents in his own life, or in the life of someone from his family.

One article that Nixon wrote was entitled "Changing Rules of Liability in Automobile Accident Litigation," and it discussed "old horse and buggy accident laws" (Brodie's words).  Nixon fell out of a buggy when he was a small boy, and his father as a motorman on a train got fired after the "train hit an automobile at a crossing" (page 129).  Brodie states that Nixon "cited laws holding that the driver of the automobile must stop, not just look and listen, thus indirectly exonerating his father of the old accident."

Another article that Nixon wrote was entitled "Application of the Inherent Danger Doctrine to Servants of Negligent Independent Contractors."  This related to incidents in which the negligence of a contractor led to injury or death of an employee.  Brodie states that "the choice of subject suggests that he was still seeking an answer to the question 'Who was really responsible for the death of my eldest brother?'  He seems also to have been researching the question 'Could we have sued to collect damages for his dying?'"

Here are two items:

1.  Frodie's discussion here is an example of her overall methodology: to explain things that Nixon did and said in light of what occurred to him earlier in his life.  The book, after all, is about "the shaping of his character".  This is one reason that Brodie's book has been criticized, and it is also one of the characteristics of her book that makes it so interesting.  Although Brodie makes some of the same points that Bruce Mazlish made in In Search of Nixon: A Psychohistorical Inquiry, she does so more artfully than Mazlish did, in my opinion.  When Mazlish made some of the points that he made, he seemed to me to be stretching and reaching, whereas Brodie narrated the same points more effectively----perhaps because she could get the reader to feel for Nixon in terms of his predicaments, or her line from cause to effect was simpler.

At the same time, even when reading Brodie, I feel that some of the connections that she makes are not iron-clad.  Why?  I guess it's because her work and other books about Nixon have shown me how hard it is to define a person and to get a handle on what truly happened in the past.  Brodie herself goes into contradictory or different eyewitness accounts: about what Nixon's mother was like, about events in Richard Nixon's life, etc.  That being the case, can we really pick a couple of things from a person's life, and assert that one event influenced a tendency or a much later event?  The data field is much messier and complex than that, in my opinion.

2.  That said, it is plausible that events in Nixon's early life and in the life of his family shaped his interests, and the sorts of topics that he wrote about as a Duke Law School student.  That encourages me to ask: How does my background influence my scholarly interests?  Well, I grew up in Armstrongism, which professed to observe the Old Testament law.  I suppose that it's not a stretch that I would study Judaism at Jewish schools.  My worldview was rocked when I learned that Jews and historical-critics had different ways of interpreting the passages in the Hebrew Bible that many Christians applied to Jesus, and that set me on a path of wanting to learn more about the Hebrew Bible.  I've also wrestled with the question of how a person can be at peace with God, since I look at myself and realize that my own flaws make me insecure in terms of my standing with God.

The thing is, this was stuff in my past.  I'm not sure if I care about these issues to the same extent, anymore.  Religion and the Bible seem to me more and more to be the product of human beings, and I am feeling that attempts by theologians and evangelical scholars to claim otherwise are wishful thinking on their part, or stretches.  I am getting back into reading about religious studies, however, and there are different reasons for this.  One is that this is my field of study, and I need to learn more so that I can teach and write.  Another reason, I have to admit, is spiritual: I wonder if there is something that I can learn that can make my life make sense to me, or that can encourage me to fall in love with God, as opposed to going through the religious motions.

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On pages 20-21 of Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character, Fawn Brodie states:

"Billy Graham, Nixon's 'spiritual adviser,' who had led the prayer breakfasts at the White House and had given the funeral service when Nixon's mother died, described to his own biographer, Marshall Frady, how he vomited after reading the Nixon tape transcripts.  He said, 'I thought like John Wesley when he said, 'When I look into my heart it looks like hell.''  He did not say 'when I look into Nixon's heart,' but 'when I look into my own.'"

Brodie then goes on to say that Graham "soon saw his own escape from responsibility", and she goes on to quote Graham's statement in which he blamed Nixon's downfall on sleeping pills and demons.

Brodie argues that many people seek to differentiate themselves from Nixon, in an attempt to make themselves feel better about themselves, amidst their own shortcomings.  They ask what made Nixon so bad because they want for him to be worse than them, for their problem is that they see a bit of themselves in Nixon.  On page 20, Brodie gives examples: "We need reassurance that his lying is pathological whereas ours is simply 'white' lying, lying out of kindliness or unwillingness to give offense.  We want to be told that our small evasions, if any, in reporting our income tax do not compare with his fraudulently backdating a deed to win a tax break of half a million dollars."

This sort of theme has come up previously in my reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  Both Joan Hoff and Monica Crowley contend that Nixon was a scapegoat for flaws within the United States.  And David Greenberg in Nixon's Shadow stated (or perhaps he quoted someone who stated----I don't remember offhand) that a number of Americans could identify with Nixon.  Nixon was one who played roles and wore masks in his life, for instance, and many Americans realize that they do the same thing.

I've been thinking of doing a post on the hit TV series, Breaking Bad, but I'll comment on it here, even though I realize that more people would probably read what I have to say were I to write a separate Breaking Bad post.  More than one Christian blogger has stated that the show teaches them about Christian truths, such as original sin, and the slippery slope on which evil can place a person.  I have to admit that I myself do not think about spirituality when I am watching Breaking Bad.  I'm intrigued by the plot, the characters, and all the money that Walter White is making, but I don't contemplate how the show relates to my life.  I tend to identify with something that Matthew Paul Turner said on Facebook: "The '"Breaking Bad can teach us about God' blog posts are beginning to get old. I've seen at least 5 or 6 today. Why can't a good show just be a good show? Must every good show, song, or movie become a tool for Christians trying to make a mediocre Christian point?"

One reason that I was hesitant to learn any moral lessons from Breaking Bad was that I had a hard time judging Walter White.  Walter had cancer and a kid with special needs, and his jobs weren't making him much money, so he went into the meth business to provide for himself and his family.  It's a "situational ethics" sort of scenario, in which none of the options is great.

As I thought some more, however, there did come to be a time when it was no longer a matter of situational ethics.  Walter's cancer eventually went into remission, so he didn't have to worry about that anymore.  But he continued to be in the meth business.  Why?  Well, he was good at it, and he was making a lot of money.  Moreover, he had lingering resentment because, years before, he was part of a scientific discovery, and he was excluded from the huge profits that were made on it.  He thought that he had been cheated out of what he deserved, and he was making up for that by making tons of money in the meth business.

There, I believe, Breaking Bad teaches me something about morality and spirituality: Can greed and resentment lead me to do something that's wrong, something that ends up hurting people I don't see, and people I do see?  In this case, by looking into Walter White's heart, I see the flaws in my own.

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 1

I started Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character.  This is largely characterized as a negative work about Richard Nixon, and it has been criticized for some of its conclusions as well as for its psychological analysis.  I decided to read it, however, because it talks a lot about Richard Nixon's early life, and this is a subject that is actually my favorite part of the books about Richard Nixon that I have read.

I'm thinking of departing from my usual practice of blogging about what I read each day.  There are some days when I notice more than one item in my reading that I would like to blog about, but there are other days when I don't see any topic in my reading that I would like to blog about.  I may just write about whatever passage I want, without regard for whether it is in that day's reading, or was in a previous day's reading.
On page 26, Brodie says the following:

"Walking along the edge of the law.  Some Americans always saw this in Nixon, but many more saw sincerity, piety, small-town virtue, and a disarming na[i]vet[e].  Nixon's extraordinary success in hiding his dishonesty over the years has to do in part with the nature of his lying...Oscar Wilde, in his essay 'The Decay of Lying,' wrote that 'the aim of the liar is simply to charm, to delight, to give pleasure.  He is the very basis of civilized society, and without him a dinner party, even at the mansions of the great, is as dull as a lecture at the Royal Society.'  'Lying, the telling of beautiful untrue things,' he concluded, 'is the proper aim of Art.'"

Brodie goes on to say that "Nixon never lied to delight, although there is evidence that he delighted in lying." 
But I can identify with what she says about Richard Nixon's appeal.  When many people see Richard Nixon, they think he's a deceiver, with his shifty eyes and his equivocations.  Maybe there's truth to that.  What I see is someone like Ward Cleaver: fair-minded, compassionate, wise, sincere, unafraid to be himself.  And I have to admit: there is a part of me that enjoys reading his stories about his life.  They seem to evoke 1950's myths.

At the same time, I also identify with what many consider to be the "real" Nixon: insecure, and bad at interacting with people.  I tend to admire Nixon for rising to a position of prominence, even though he had flaws.  Yet, the way that he politically rose is not exactly admirable to me, for essentially he rose by shredding his political opponents to pieces.  His handling of the Hiss case is something that I admire more, however, for, even according to some of the anti-Nixon narratives, Nixon's political career was on the line when he was going after Alger Hiss.  Nixon was taking a risk, in short.

I guess that I'm the sort of person who likes a mixture of myth and realism.  I like a story that is beautiful and inspiring, while also acknowledging people's flaws.  I'm a romantic realist!  Still, I want to know when the myth is inaccurate, even if that may be disappointing to me.