Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 8

For my blog post today about Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life, my focus will be on the Nixon Administration's enemies list.  This will not be a comprehensive post, going into what many authors have said about the topic.  Rather, I just want to highlight some passages that I found interesting.

Richard Nixon, in his book In the Arena, talks a bit about the enemies list.  On page 249, he states: "During Watergate, much attention was paid to the 'enemies list' that a member of the White House staff had prepared.  I never saw it.  Regrettably, some on the list were my personal friends."

(On another topic, as I look at that same page of In the Arena, I see a noteworthy passage that I must have missed when I read the book the first time around.  Nixon says that Harry Truman in the 1948 Presidential election implied that Nazis were supporting his opponent, Republican Thomas Dewey.  Nixon also states that "Ideally, candidates should hammer each other without destroying each other."  That brought to my mind a couple of things.  First of all, I wrote a post in which I critiqued Pat Buchanan's claim that those who supported Harry Truman's "give 'em hell" campaign against Dewey were hypocritical to then criticize Nixon's hard-hitting Senate campaign against Helen Gahagan Douglas.  If Truman was somehow linking Dewey with Nazism, however, then I'd say that Truman's campaign was more below-the-belt than I thought!  Second, while Nixon criticizes campaigns that destroy the other candidate, there are people who contend that Nixon actually destroyed his opponents, Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas.  Roger Morris on the American Experience documentary about Nixon said that Nixon's campaigns destroyed them politically, and nearly personally, and that this engendered a lot of bitterness.  But back to the White House enemies list!)

Julie Nixon Eisenhower, Richard Nixon's youngest daughter, talks some about the enemies list in her biography of Pat Nixon, entitled Pat Nixon: The Untold Story.  On page 376, Julie argues that White House Counsel John Dean, who would reveal the existence of the enemies list in his testimony before Congress against the President, was himself the one who came up with it:

"Among the most titillating revelations from Dean were the 'enemies lists.'  Dean produced a memo, composed by himself, on 'dealing with our political enemies.'  In addition to a list of twenty prime political opponents, whom Dean recommended that the Administration target, were several lists of names running into the hundreds, which were to be referred to in determining who received White House jobs and invitations.  In his book, With Nixon, Ray Price points out that when he learned from Dean's testimony of the existence of the lists, he called them 'Dean's enemy lists,' because 'after all, it was Dean who proposed the unused plan to 'screw our enemies,' and Dean who collected the lists in his filing cabinet.'"

Julie goes on to argue that the Joint Congressional Committee on Internal Revenue Taxation found that the tax audits of those on the lists were no more severe than they were for others.  She also states that there were some on the list who were there "for no apparent reason."  She tells the story of how heart surgeon Michael DeBakey, who was on the list, still extended to her parents an offer of friendship, for he realized that they "had nothing to do with the lists" (page 377).

Going on to Richard Nixon's memoirs, Nixon states the following on page 441 of volume 2:

"[John Dean] talked about my attempt to have the IRS do checks on our political opponents with no attempt to show how widespread the practice had been among the Democrats in previous years.  The fact that we had hired a political investigator was treated as a sinister innovation, when in fact checking up on the political opposition has been part of politics since time out of mind.  We paid our investigator with political funds; other administrations had even used the FBI.  Dean produced an 'enemies list,' which even he has since admitted was vastly overplayed by the media."

Here, Nixon does not necessarily contradict what he said in In the Arena, but his focus is different: he justifies doing research on his political opponents, and even having the IRS do checks on some of them, on the grounds that this was customary in politics.

Jonathan Aitken refers to John Ehrlichman's statement that Nixon was assigning people odd jobs for investigation, some of them having to do with investigating political opponents, or the motives of a writer who criticized Julie.  Ehrlichman became concerned that this type of work "could not legitimately be funded by the taxpayer" (Ehrlichman, quoted on page 417).  Eventually, John Dean would do some of that work.  Aitken refers to Dean's August 16, 1971 memorandum, "Dealing with Our Political Enemies," which (according to Aitken) recommended that a list be compiled of the Administration's political enemies and that "various government agencies such as the IRS should be encouraged 'to screw them'" (Aitken cites for this page 104 of Silent Coup).  But Aitken says that Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman denied seeing the memorandum and that "no action was taken to implement its recommendations" (page 418).  On page 419, however, Aitken quotes Charles Colson's statement that the atmosphere at the White House tended to reward people who brought "negative intelligence" (Colson's words) on the Administration's political opponents.

UPDATE: Was Dean responsible for the enemies list?  On page 297 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves states: "Beginning on January 25, [1971?,] one of those new assistants, George Bell, began to work on implementing a new Nixon idea: organizing the staff to prepare lists of friends and enemies."  Reeves narrates that Haldeman saw a few of the lists, put together by Bell and Charles Colson, and was asking for clarification about them.  If Reeves is correct, then Dean probably was not solely responsible for the enemies list. 

The Selling of the President 1968

I read Joe McGinnis' 1969 book, The Selling of the President 1968.  The book is about the attempts of Nixon's campaign to create an image of Richard Nixon that they could sell to the public.  Incidentally, McGinnis is the same author who moved next door to Sarah Palin's house when he was writing a book about her.

I learned about The Selling of the President 1968 when reading David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow.  See my post here.  Greenberg said that the book's thesis was that "since Nixon’s natural personality was so unappealing, his campaign aides concocted a new persona they projected through TV ads and tightly guarded performances" (Greenberg on page 141).  According to Greenberg, McGinnis observed this by simply hanging around the Nixon campaign: "McGinnis sneaked in under the radar screen, presenting himself to Nixon’s men as such an insignificant fly on the wall that they never thought to swat him away."

In one of the books by Nixon that I read----I think it was In the Arena----Nixon referred to a book about his campaign whose author purported to be an eyewitness, but Nixon was denying that this author had firsthand knowledge.  My hunch is that Nixon was talking there about McGinnis' The Selling of the President 1968.  From what Greenberg said, the book made quite a splash when it came out! 


The thing is, whether or not McGinnis was an actual eyewitness, Nixon's campaign was definitely trying to sell to the public a specific image of Richard Nixon, for McGinnis includes in his Appendix memoranda by such campaign advisers as Len Garment, William Gavin, Harry Treleaven, Ray Price, and Pat Buchanan.  At the same time, the narrative part of McGinnis' book contains some pretty scathing material, and this book was released in 1969, some years before the Watergate tapes revealed to the public glimpses of the behind-the-scenes Nixon.  McGinnis tells a story of people on Nixon's campaign who were cynical and even racist.  As far as Nixon's own presence in the book is concerned, he himself is not in the book that much, but McGinnis does present Nixon criticizing "the damn Negro-Puerto Rican groups out there" (page 24).

The reason that I decided to read this book is that I was curious about two things: (1.) What specifically made Nixon's personality so unappealing?  (2.) What image did Nixon's advisers want to present to the public, instead?  This is a personal issue for me, since, like Nixon, I'm socially awkward, rather stiff, and uncomfortable in my own skin.  I wonder how I can project an alternative image of myself, and what exactly I should be projecting.

What made Nixon unappealing was that he appeared to lack warmth, his discussion of issues could be rather dispassionate and lawyer-like, and he had to live down his reputation as a loser, since he lost the 1960 Presidential election, then the 1962 election for Governor of California.  Some of the things that plagued Nixon's reputation in the past, such as the widespread view that he was a brutal campaigner, were not as much of a problem in 1968, in the eyes of some of Nixon's aides.  In their minds, that was all a matter of the past, and many Americans in 1968 either did not know about, or did not care about, Nixon's campaigns against Voorhis and Douglas, or his hard-hitting speeches back when he was Dwight Eisenhower's running-mate and Vice-President.

In terms of the efforts to project an image for Nixon, it seems to me that Nixon's advisers were trying to project an image, without looking like they were projecting an image.  In a memorandum in the appendix, there was the statement that the campaign shouldn't be aiming to depict Nixon as a back-slapper, for Nixon was running for President, not participating in the Moose lodge (or some such group).  The public knew that Nixon wasn't a back-slapper, but many still respected him on account of his experience and knowledge.  Still, the memoranda were saying that Nixon had to appear as a warm human being.  It was good when the public could see, for example, that Nixon played the piano, or had daughters.  When Nixon was answering questions at one of his forums, he needed to add an element of give-and-take: not just lecturing, but expressing interest in the perspective of the person asking the question.  When he was campaigning at a place, he should show that he was interested in some of the place's sites.  He should demonstrate that he understands the human impact of issues rather than merely citing statistics.  Earlier in the book, McGinnis talks about how one can come across effectively on television, where intimacy is communicated more than it is on the movie screen: one should come across as a guest in someone's home, as one who suggests rather than commanding.

These are fine examples of social skills, and many of them overlap with Dale Carnegie's suggestions in How to Win Friends and Influence People.  According to McGinnis, Nixon's Democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey, was not particularly effective on television, for Humphrey tended to shout on TV, which was not exactly the place for oratory.  When I read that, I wondered what McGinnis would say about Richard Nixon's 1952 Checkers' speech, where (in my opinion) Nixon did come across as a personable guest in people's homes and tried to express understanding of their financial situations, and yet near the end of his speech manifested a fighting, orating tone.

On Hubert Humphrey, McGinnis does praise one of Humphrey's television appearances, in which Humphrey was essentially showing people snippets from his life.  McGinnis also criticizes this appearance, but he states that, whereas Nixon's ads often caused people to reflect on the ads, Humphrey's appearance led them to think about Humphrey himself, as if they concluded that Humphrey was showing them himself as he truly was.  As McGinnis states on pages 137-138: "It showed Humphrey wearing a stupid fisherman's hat and getting his lines snarled on a lake near his home and it took shameless advantage of the fact he has a mentally retarded granddaughter.  It was contrived and tasteless.  But it was the most effective single piece of advertising of the campaign."

When should one be oneself, and when should one try to contrive an image?  In one part of the book, McGinnis tells a story about when Nixon was at one of his panels, and he and the moderator were getting confrontational with each other.  According to McGinnis, that was probably one of the most effective panels, even though Nixon was most likely upset that things did not go according to his predictable plan!  Let Nixon be Nixon?  Sometimes, that actually worked!  Many of us probably try to find a medium between being ourselves and projecting an image, for both are necessary, and yet both are inadequate by themselves.  Many of us realize that people will not like us if they were aware of all of our weaknesses, and so we pretend to be better than we are; yet, if we pretend too much, we don't appear real to others, and people don't particularly like that!

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 22

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.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 1

I started Roger Morris' tome, Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.  Morris' book covers Richard Nixon's life up to and including 1952.  It also talks about people, places, and events prior to Richard Nixon's birth.

I was initially reluctant to include Morris' book in My Year (or More) of Nixon, since I don't have a desire to read every single book about Richard Nixon that was ever written.  Eventually, I want for my Year (or More) of Nixon to come to an end, so that I can move on to other books that I want to read!  But I decided to include Morris' book for a variety of reasons.  First, I was intrigued by Morris' story when I found out who Morris was.  Morris served under Henry Kissinger in Richard Nixon's National Security Council, and Morris resigned because he disagreed with Nixon's invasion of Cambodia.  In both volume 2 of his memoirs and In the Arena, Nixon appears to take some whacks at Morris, without mentioning Morris' name.  Second, I was interested in an alternative view on key events in Nixon's early political career, such as the Alger Hiss case and Nixon's controversial fund.  By and large, the books that I have read assume that Alger Hiss was a Communist spy, and Morris seems to disagree with that.  I'd like to read what Morris has to say.  Third, the book was really cheap on Amazon.  Of course, there are a lot of books that are cheap on Amazon, and I don't necessarily want to buy them.  But Morris has been cited so often in some of the books about Nixon that I have read, that I just have to give him a read.

A while back, I was reading a New York Times' review of Irwin Gellman's book about Richard Nixon's early political career, entitled The Contender, and the review praised Morris for his eloquence.  Personally, I find that I'll have to get used to Morris' writing-style.  As I look through the book, however, I have a hunch that I will enjoy reading it.  What stands out most to me is Morris' extensive research (which he gained through interviews and other sources), as well as his attention to detail.  While Morris will undoubtedly cover ground that I have already read in other books, I believe that I will learn things about Nixon from Morris' book that I have not learned from other sources.

Morris' discussion of events prior to Nixon's life also impressed me.  It gives me a cozy feeling when Morris goes into aspects of the history of the state of California, as well as discusses Quakerism and Richard Nixon's grandparents.  I do not entirely know what effect Morris believes these factors had on Richard Nixon himself, but I found something on the inside jacket of the book to be intriguing: "The story begins with the false promise of boomtime California during the early days of the century.  The second son of a Quaker family beset by tragedies large and small, Richard Nixon is first seen as the earnest boy pledged to success in a small town riven by hypocrisy and class division."  Reading this reminded me of Stephen King's IT in that the passage seemed to be implying that a town could have a certain character, if you will.

Something else that stood out to me was the quote that introduced the book.  Morris quotes Nixon's grandmother, Almira Burdg Milhous, who said, "If thee had gone up as thee came down, thee would have come down as thee went up."  I have to really ponder this to understand what Morris is getting at when he introduces the book with this quote.  Morris' book is essentially about how Nixon went up----his rise as a politician.  My impression from reading others is that Morris' book will be rather critical of Nixon: it will present Nixon as ambitious, as one who did not hesitate to destroy others, even as shady.  Morris may believe that these character flaws would contribute to Nixon's downfall in Watergate.  Perhaps Morris' point is that, had Nixon started his political career with the sort of humility that he had attained in the aftermath of Watergate, his outcome would not have been as bad.  But that's just my guess.

I'm not entirely sure how I will proceed in terms of my write-ups on this book.  I don't really want to get into the weeds of Nixon's 1946 congressional race, the Hiss case, Nixon's 1950 Senate race, what Nixon did and did not do at the 1952 Republican National Convention, and the fund, comparing what Morris says with what other authors have said.  I may do some of that, but I don't want it to turn out to be a consuming research project.  I could just write about the passages that stood out to me, whether or not that allows my posts to capture the essence of Morris' arguments.  In any case, we'll see how my posts turn out!

In the Arena 7

I finished Richard Nixon's In the Arena.  I have four items.

1.  On page 325, Nixon talks about the use of linkage when negotiating with the Soviets:

"How we structure and approach talks with Moscow will largely determine our success in them.  Gorbachev will take us to the cleaners in negotiations unless we use the tactic of linkage.  The two sides do not have the same degree of interest in progress on all issues.  Moscow has a greater interest in some areas, such as trade, and the United States has a greater interest in others, such as conventional arms control.  If we let him do so, Gorbachev will gladly negotiate solely on the former.  If we acquiesce to that unbalanced approach----if we fail to link the two sets of issues----he will dominate the negotiating agenda, conclude agreements on his top priorities, and defer resolution of our issues to the indefinite future."

This appears to be common sense: when you negotiate with people, you identify what they want and what you want, and you link the two, offering to do such-and-such for them if they do such-and-such for you.  The reason that I am referring to this passage is that it exemplifies what strikes me as the topic of much of In the Arena: How do you play the political game?  How do you persuade people to do what you want them to do?  A while back, when I was blogging through Richard Nixon's Six Crises, blogger ConsiderAgain said that Six Crises "Sounds like a good book to think about if I ever run for office" (see here).  Nixon would most likely heartily agree that ConsiderAgain should read Six Crises, since it was Nixon's favorite book that he wrote, and Nixon often recommended it to people and gave out copies!  But, in terms of a book that addresses what politics is like----the good and the bad, how to negotiate, how to lead, the players involved, etc.----In the Arena is an excellent book to read, in my opinion.

But why would anyone consult Nixon on how to play the political game, with all of his blunders?  Would Nixon be the person to consult on how to relate to the media, when he tended to alienate the media?  Would he be the one to consult on how to deal with Congress, when he as President arguably did not work well with Congress, such that it went against his agenda and, ultimately, him?  And Nixon himself complains that there were times when he had difficulty getting bureaucrats to do what he wanted!  Maybe one could be edified by what he says about foreign policy, since he did achieve progress in that area. 

That said, I still think that In the Arena is a good book to read.  Nixon may have succeeded in areas, and he may have failed in areas.  In addition, perhaps he magnified certain problems, such as the media (not that the media are a problem, but they can be, at times).  But he still had decades of political experience, and he's a good source to read about the players and motivations that are part of the political game, as well as ways to navigate through that game.

2.  On page 342, Nixon discusses civilian casualties in the Vietnam War:

"Those who opposed our involvement in Vietnam also argued that our tactics indiscriminately killed civilians.  In fact, our forces operated under strict rules of engagement designed to prevent such casualties.  Many American bomber pilots were shot down, ending up dead or as POWs, because their paths across North Vietnam were chosen to minimize the risk of civilian casualties.  In the two weeks of intense bombing in December 1972, only 1,500 civilians----according to Hanoi's own count----were killed, compared with over 35,000 civilians killed in one night of fire-bombing of Dresden in World War II.  Civilians accounted for a much smaller proportion of casualties in the Vietnam War than they did in either World War II or the Korean War."

I was thinking of not including this item in this blog post.  I've already blogged about the topic of civilian casualties in the Vietnam War (see here, here, here, here, and here), and I'll come across the topic again in my future reading for My Year (or More) of Nixon, since Nixon discusses it in his book, No More Vietnams.  But I decided to include this quote of what Nixon says on page 342 because it does strike me as a fairly reasonable argument, especially the part about how American bomber pilots were shot down because they were in areas where their bombing would not result in too many civilian casualties.  At the same time, there is another side to the debate.  At the library, I saw a book that I may read sometime in the future: Nick Turse's Kill Anything That Moves: The Real American War in Vietnam.  The title of this article in The Nation says what the book is about: "The US Military Regularly Killed Civilians in Vietnam." 

3.  On page 347, Nixon argues that world government will not bring about perfect peace:

"The second myth is the idea that establishing a world government would produce perfect peace...While the UN has played an important role in facilitating the withdrawal of Soviet forces from Afghanistan, the cease-fire in the Iran-Iraq War, and the pullout of Cuban forces from Angola and the independence of Namibia, it has not settled the underlying conflicts in any of those disputes.  Moreover, its contributions to these partial settlements were made possible only because the parties to those conflicts already reached the conclusion that they were better off engaging.

"As Winston Churchill pointed out to me the last time I saw him, in 1958, no nation will ever let an international organization make decisions affecting its vital interests.  That is why the suggestion that the UN arbitrate the Arab-Israeli conflict is a non-starter.  Given the UN's record of repeatedly trying to pass unbalanced resolutions condemning Israel while ignoring the aggressive actions of Arab states, we can hardly expect the Israelis to submit their fate to a stacked jury.  Only after a settlement has been reached by negotiations between the two sides could the UN play a possible peacekeeping role."

This passage brought several things to my mind.  First of all, I thought about Gary Allen's John Bircher-type narrative that Nixon wanted to create a one-world government (see here).  Nixon in In the Arena appears to suggest otherwise.  Second, Nixon seems to be rather critical of the United Nation's stance against Israel.  This stood out to me because Nixon himself says critical things about Israel in some of his books.  But Nixon may not have been gun-ho pro-Israel, per se, but rather one who could see both sides, and who recognized the importance of recognizing the desires of both sides in trying to effect negotiation.  Third, Winston Churchill's skepticism about international organizations surprised me somewhat, since the Worldwide Church of God (I grew up in an offshoot of that) liked to quote Churchill's statements in favor of world government.  (The WCG was arguing that the world needs Christ to rule it for there to be peace, and that Christ would do so after his second coming.)  Maybe Churchill believed different things about world government in the course of his life.  And fourth, this passage illustrates a point that Nixon makes in his chapter about peace: that peace does not mean utopianism.  Nixon acknowledges that human nature is what it is, and that countries have their own self-interests.  It may not be possible to get countries to like each other, Nixon argues, but we should try to encourage them to coexist peacefully. 

4.  On page 367, Nixon encourages young people to visit the elderly in retirement homes:

"I have visited several of the excellent retirement homes near our home in Saddle River.  The facilities could not be better...The staffs are understanding and compassionate...They have everything----good food, good medical care, television, and good people to look after their every need.  Everything, that is, except the one thing that matters most----love.  Nothing can substitute for the love of family or friends.  Only someone who is getting older can appreciate that.  Younger people could enrich their lives immeasurably by visiting, calling, or writing someone in a retirement home, whether they know the person or not.  Most such facilities will allow you to 'adopt' residents who have no friends or relatives to visit them."

Nixon's book offers advice to different kinds of people.  He encourages people to travel when they are still young and have the physical mobility to enjoy what's in other countries.  He provides guidelines about when older politicians should retire.  Nixon's statement on page 367 stood out to me, though, for a couple of reasons.  First, there are times when I fear being alone when I am elderly, since I'm not good at making friends.  But, second, I have thought about visiting retirement homes while I am still young.  I used to do so, either for an internship, or on my own time, and I think that the elderly people I visited appreciated that I took the time to keep them company.  I may do so again.  Of course, the challenge is talking to the right people within the bureaucracy so that I can arrange that, and also bringing theory into practice: not just having a thought to visit the elderly, but actually doing it. 

In the Arena 6

On page 233 of In the Arena, Richard Nixon quotes Senator Frank Carlson saying to him in 1952, "Dick, you're controversial, but everybody likes Pat."  Pat Nixon was Richard Nixon's wife.

In my blog posts thus far for My Year (or More) of Nixon, I have not blogged much about Pat Nixon's warmth, her hospitality, and her humanitarian activities.  I've blogged about such things as her introversion, her toughness and tenacity, her capabilities as a public speaker, her intelligence, and her sharp wit, but not really her kindness.  But her kindness does stand out to me in what I have read about her.  Not only did she open up the White House so that all kinds of people could tour it, and not only did she visit schools, orphanages, a leper colony, and a refugee camp in her travels abroad.  But, as I read Monica Crowley's narration in Nixon in Winter of her interactions with Mrs. Nixon, Pat's warmth and hospitality were salient to me.  They seemed to me to be genuine aspects of who she was.

There are two images of Pat Nixon that I've encountered in popular culture.  The first is that of Alex Keaton in Family Ties.  Pat Nixon was the sort of woman whom Alex wanted to marry: someone who was warm and supportive.  When Alex told Lauren, a psychology student who was interviewing him, about the type of woman he was looking for, Lauren's response was (if my memory is correct), "Are you looking for a woman, or a cocker-spaniel?"  Many see Pat Nixon as someone who stood by her man and did not have much of an identity of her own.

The second image of Pat that I've encountered in popular culture is Joan Allen's portrayal of her in Oliver Stone's Nixon.  That Pat was very bitter.  She did not care for being in public life, and she was not afraid to tell Nixon off.  She supported her husband, but it was a very reluctant, if not contemptible, support.  She was also tough.  She told her daughter Julie that they must not surrender to their enemies.

Alex's vision of Pat Nixon had warmth, but she did not have much toughness, intelligence, or even a mind of her own.  Oliver Stone's image of Pat was tough and had strong opinions, but she lacked warmth, hospitality, or compassion for those outside of her immediate family.  Both images, in my opinion, are incomplete.  My impression is that Pat Nixon was warm and hospitable, but that she was also strong-willed and tough.

In the Arena 5

I have three items for my blog post today about Richard Nixon's In the Arena.

1.  On pages 147-148, Nixon talks about the importance of remembering people's names and their backgrounds.  Nixon refers to Jim Farley, who "remembered not only names and faces but, even more impressive, usually people's background, family, the places they lived, and jobs."  Nixon says that he himself, as a Congressman and later a Senator, "could almost unerringly remember the names of hundreds of county chairmen, city chairmen, precinct chairmen, volunteer workers, newspaper reporters and publishers, and prominent business people."  As President, Nixon relates, he was not as good at remembering names, since there were more names to remember.  But Nixon made an effort to study the guest list before a social event so that he could refresh his memory about "guests' names, occupations, family backgrounds, and hometowns."  Nixon says that people were pleased with this and probably wondered how Nixon could remember so many people's names and backgrounds.

I wrote a post over four years ago, What Is Your Name?, which was about how my therapist was teaching me social skills, and one skill that he taught me was the value of remembering people's names and using them in conversation.  Whenever I told my therapist that I had a conversation with a person and asked that person about something I remembered was going on in his or her life, the therapist thought that was a good thing.  Not only do people like for us to remember their names, but also some of the things that are going on in their lives.  Asking someone about that conveys that you care, and it also provides material for a conversation (which is not exactly easy for me to come up with).

What my therapist taught me about the importance of knowing and using people's names was a milestone for me, socially-speaking.  I'm certainly in a better place now than I was when I did not know many people's names, and really did not care.  But I still feel that there is much for me to learn in terms of social skills.  For example, I may know people's names, but I don't know much else about them, and that hinders me from doing the small-talk that is essential for forming connections with people. 

2.  On page 155, Nixon mentions Paul Getty (whom I presume is this guy).  Getty's secretary told Nixon that Getty would sit for an hour each afternoon doing nothing but thinking.  Nixon narrates that Getty then "would get up and place a phone call or two which might add several hundred million dollars to his estate."  Nixon says, "I don't know if that is a sure way to become a billionaire, but it would be worth a try."

I think that it's a good idea to set aside time to think----to get out of the hustle and bustle so that one can look at things from more distance.  I can't really testify that setting aside time for thinking has worked wonders for me.  In the past, as someone who walked to where I needed to go, my time walking was my thinking time.  But my mind usually degenerated into bitterness during those times----resentments about the past and present, fears about the future, etc.  At the same time, I can't rule out that I got ideas during those times thinking: ideas for papers or blog posts, or ideas on things I needed to do. 

3.  On page 188, Nixon says about his debates as a Congressional candidate against Congressman Jerry Voorhis that "The debates were not about communism, as some 'historians' have struggled to demonstrate, but about the economy."  This is not the first time in In the Arena that Nixon takes on what people say about his past.  On page 70, Nixon says: "I would not recognize my father from the grotesque caricatures that have appeared in some of the media.  They picture him as a crude, uneducated oaf who did not have the respect of his sons and was disliked by most who knew him.  If they had been privileged to know him as I did, they would have painted a very different picture."

On Nixon's 1946 Congressional race, the historians I read do narrate that the economy was an important issue in that election.  There were businesspeople who were tired of the New Deal's regulations, and they did not particularly care for the wage and price controls that Nixon goes on to criticize on page 188, since those hindered their business.  They wanted to support some viable candidate who would challenge Jerry Voorhis, a New Deal Democrat.  But historians also say that Nixon in that election used Communism as an issue: that Nixon accused Voorhis of having the endorsement of a union in which there were Communists.  Voorhis says that Nixon was unfairly using a Red-baiting strategy against him (see here).  Nixon in volume 1 of his memoirs himself says that he did not think that Voorhis was sensitive enough to the issue of Communist infiltration, since Voorhis had the support of the Los Angeles branch of NC-PAC, which had Communists within it (see here). 

On Nixon's father, I've not yet read anyone who claimed that Frank Nixon was a "crude, uneducated oaf who did not have the respect of his sons and was disliked by most who knew him."  Maybe I will encounter this caricature in the future, but I haven't so far.  I have read portrayals of Frank Nixon as rather abusive and as opinionated and confrontational.  Nixon himself, in his memoirs, narrates that his father's fights with Nixon's brothers made Nixon want peace.  But those whom I have read also portray Frank Nixon as an intelligent man, one who loved learning about politics and who had strong convictions about what went on in the world, one who could inspire people in his Sunday school class. 

In the Arena 4

I have two items for my blog post today on Richard Nixon's In the Arena.

1.  On page 125, Nixon talks about the importance of the President meeting with the Cabinet, the National Security Council, leaders within the legislature, and other groups.  Nixon states that meetings can waste time unless people come to them with an agenda, which was why he usually "had the other participants submit their ideas in writing before the meeting began."  Nixon did not want for meetings to be places where the President would have to consider a bunch of half-baked ideas.  Later in the book, on page 137, Nixon says that the process of writing can force an adviser submitting an idea to think through the idea "more carefully", that "Bad ideas and superficial thinking are almost always exposed in the stark black and white of the typewritten word", and that reading ideas on paper rather than listening to them can negate the impact of "spoken eloquence", presumably allowing the reader to focus more on substance.

While Nixon on pages 125 and 137 affirms that reading ideas takes less time than hearing them in an oral briefing, Nixon does not think that the President should "dispense with meetings altogether".  For one, Nixon says, "many executives retain information better when it is presented orally."  Second, Nixon states that officials need to "show and tell", and that Presidents themselves need to preside over Cabinet meetings rather than sending their Vice-Presidents to do so because Cabinet officers, whom Nixon says "have big egos", would not show up to the meeting if the President is not presiding over it, sending their deputies instead.  Third, meetings allow for free discussion and disagreement, and Nixon says that "Sometimes only the clash between two good ideas will produce a better one."  But Nixon also wants for meetings to follow a tight agenda, and he does not particularly find bull sessions to be productive uses of time: "A bull session generally produces precisely what you expect a bull to produce" (page 126).  And fourth, Nixon says that Cabinet meetings allow the staff and Cabinet to feel like they're on a team.  Nixon states: "It doesn't do any good for a quarterback to call a good play if the linemen don't know which way to block."

The reason that these discussions in In the Arena stood out to me is that I was thinking about where they overlapped with and where they conflicted with other things that Nixon and others say about the way that Nixon ran his Administration.  On the one hand, Nixon in his memoirs states that he thought a number of meetings were a waste of time, and he presents his attempts to circumvent meetings as a path to greater efficiency.  A number of Nixon's biographers contend that Nixon did not work that often with his Cabinet or with legislators.  Regarding his Cabinet, Nixon handled a lot of his foreign policy with Henry Kissinger while excluding his Secretary of State (something that Nixon in later years of his life would regret, if I remember Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter correctly).  On domestic issues, Nixon allowed his Cabinet to have a relatively free hand, and that permitted his Cabinet to pursue a progressive agenda that has impressed many liberal revisionists who look back and praise the Nixon Administration.  On the other hand, Nixon did meet with people: Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Dean, Colson, others, etc.  Nixon also had people with different ideological persuasions among his advisers, and that allowed for there to be debate (see here).

Speaking for myself personally, I am mixed when it comes to how I like to absorb information.  As an introvert and as one who tends to be socially-awkward, I prefer to communicate with people through e-mail.  But do I absorb information better through listening or through reading?  My mind can easily wander through both, to tell you the truth, and that's something I'm working on.

2.  On page 140, Nixon states within his chapter on reading: "One of the most difficult questions to answer is to advise someone what to read.  I happen to prefer history, biography, and philosophy.  But I agree with columnist Murray Kempton, a prolific reader who recently told me that one should not rule out great novels.  You can learn more about the revolutionary forces that convulsed Russia in the nineteenth century from Tolstoy and Dostoevsky than from the turgid scholarly histories of the period.  And some of the better current novels are a more accurate portrayal of real life than most of the narrow and biased tomes emanating from the ivory towers of academia."

What should I read?  I read a lot nowadays, but do I read the right stuff?  You may remember the movie Good Will Hunting, in which the Matt Daimon character is telling his therapist, played by Robin Williams, that he (the therapist) is reading the wrong books.  The Daimon character goes on to say that the book People's History of the United States will really knock your socks off!  That phrase in the movie makes me think at times: What books have really knocked my socks off?

Some may look down on me reading books by and about Nixon.  After all, can we really trust Nixon to give us the true spiel of what actually happened, or to enlighten us about what the world is like?  And a couple of books that I have read make the point that Nixon's books on foreign policy did not exactly make an impact on the world of academia.

I remember a professor saying that a relative of hers was wondering if a book that she (the relative) had recently read had been worth the time.  To my surprise, the professor told us that her response to her relative was, "Well, did you like the book?"  My professor did not think that a book had to be on the list of New York Times bestsellers for a person to enjoy it and to get something out of it.

Do I enjoy reading books that are abstract, or books that truly probe the human condition?  For me, that depends on where I am at the time.  There are many times when I do not like dry, boring history books that don't really probe into the lives of real people.  At those times, I'd like to read a history book that is more like a story.  But there are also times when I am rather misanthropic and I prefer to read things that don't talk that much about people, but focus rather on ideas.

This discussion is about what I enjoy reading personally.  But reading can also be social: I have to read certain books to fit in within certain communities, or to gain knowledge that I need for professional development, or to get more readers on my blog, or to look smart.  Those are important considerations, too.

In the Arena 3

I have two items for my blog post today about Richard Nixon's In the Arena.

1.  On page 91, Nixon states the following about churches: "It is significant that the sharp 35 percent decline in membership of mainline Protestant denominations associated with the National Council of Churches has occurred during the period when social and political crusading has increasingly taken the place of religious messages from the pulpits.  As one critic has observed, too many churches seem to have a 'political agenda masked with the veneer of spirituality.'  In the long term, whether a church is on the right or the left, the more political it becomes, the less appeal it has religiously.  In a pathetic attempt to be 'relevant' on current political issues, many churches have become irrelevant to their major mission of giving people inspiration and guidance on timeless moral and spiritual issues."

I believe in balance.  I think that it's important for churches to encourage and inspire people: to tell them that they are valuable in God's eyes, to offer them insight on how to address their personal problems, etc.  But people should also be told that others throughout the world are valuable in God's eyes, too, like people in the Third World.  How does my church do on this?  Well, we don't get political.  We do, however, give money to some charity each month, as someone from a charity comes to speak to us.  That's a good thing, in my opinion, for it reinforces that Christianity is about more than us feeling good.  Do I believe that my church is wrong for not getting political----for focusing on charity as opposed to the systemic nature of injustice?  I can understand such a critique, but I myself have am satisfied with how my church addresses charity.  We are a mixed group----we have Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives.  Why can't we focus on what we agree on----the importance of food being out there for the poor----rather than on political issues on which we disagree?  If any one of us wants to become politically involved, we can on our own time.

2.  On page 95, Nixon says in his chapter about teachers: "I have always found that the best teachers were those who graded the hardest, just as the best dentists are those who aren't afraid to hurt you in order to clean out the cavities."

Do I find this to be true?  I have had teachers who were hard graders and were good.  In retrospect, they made me a better writer and thinker----not necessarily in their classes (for I usually ended up with a B in their classes)----but in other classes.  For example, one professor continually gave me B's on my papers, saying that my papers weren't three-dimensional enough, or that I should have offered opinion and analysis.  I ended up with a B in her class, but I went into other classes sensitized to the importance of being three-dimensional and offering analysis, and I got A's in those classes.

In the Arena 2

I have two items for my blog post today about Richard Nixon's In the Arena.

1.  On page 44, Richard Nixon says: "What separates the men from the boys in politics is that the boys seek office to be somebody and the men seek office to do something."

A couple of posts ago, I was talking about Richard Nixon's statement in his book Leaders that a winning candidate is one who truly wants the job, not someone who is reluctant.  The reason is that the person who wants the office is the one who will endure the hard road that comes with it----the criticisms, the invasion of privacy that candidates experience, etc.  I wondered if that contrasted with how the Hebrew Bible depicts a number of good leaders: as initially reluctant.  Moses and Gideon, for example, were very reluctant to assume a leadership position, but they were chosen by God, and God used them significantly.  By contrast, there were people who desperately sought to be leaders, such as Abimelech in the Book of Judges, and they were not exactly the right people to lead Israel, for they were bad people.

I think that what Nixon says on page 44 is an important ingredient to this whole discussion: Why does the leader want to lead?  Does he want to lead to help people, or mainly to help himself?  The former characterizes good leaders, whereas the latter characterizes, well, not-so-good leaders.  I can't treat this as an absolute.  There are well-intentioned people who sincerely want to help people, but they are not effective at getting people to follow them and at doing the political work that is necessary to pass their agenda.  Moreover, there are many leaders who accomplish good, and yet they have some self-serving motive: they like the glory that comes with politics.  But, in my opinion, a person who is a good leader cares for the people he leads, or at least he tries to make things better.

I think of the movie, Oliver Stone's Nixon.  Stone depicts Nixon as one who was hungry for power, and yet as one who accomplished good.  Nixon in the movie tells anti-war protesters that he can ride the beast (meaning the power-system) and hopefully accomplish some good.  But Oliver Stone appeared in the movie to have had a New Left perspective.  According to David Greenberg in Nixon's Shadow, the New Left tended to lack faith in the American political system and the likelihood of genuine reform occurring through it.  Greenberg cites Oliver Stone's Nixon as an expression of much of the New Left's feelings about Richard Nixon.  Personally, I thought that Oliver Stone's depiction of Nixon was much more positive than Greenberg apparently believed, and yet I do see a New Left pessimism in more than one of Stone's movies.  In JFK, President John F. Kennedy tries to end the Vietnam War and the Cold War, and he is then assassinated by a conspiracy of dedicated Cold Warriors, inside and outside of the U.S. government.  In Nixon, Nixon accomplishes reforms in terms of the environment, civil rights, and foreign affairs (with detente), and he angers a powerful right-wing cabal.  When one of the cabal (played by Larry Hagman, of Dallas fame) tells Nixon to remember who put him into office, Nixon replies that the American people did.  The cabal-person responds, "Well, that can be changed," and another cabal-person then adds, "In a heartbeat."  In these movies, those who try to do good will likely be attacked by the beast, the powerful interests that do not want reform.

2.  In documentaries that I have seen about Ronald Reagan's Presidency during the Cold War, the message that I get is that the Soviets were really baffled by Star Wars (or SDI, the Strategic Defense Initiative), President Reagan's plan to set up a defense system in space that would destroy Soviet missiles.  According to this narrative, the Soviets thought that Star Wars was more of a reality than it actually was, that the U.S. was actually making real progress in constructing such a system, for the Americans come up with a lot of interesting things!  But, according to Nixon on pages 67-68 of In the Arena, Mikhail Gorbachev told him (meaning Nixon) that the Soviet Union was not against Star Wars "because it feared the huge cost to the economy or because it could not keep up technologically" (Nixon's narration).  After all, Gorbachev told Nixon, the Soviets were making progress on their own SDI program, plus Gorbachev expressed optimism that the Soviets could "evade and overcome any SDI system that the United States might eventually deploy" (Nixon's words).  Rather, Gorbachev said that he was against SDI because he thought that it would exasperate the arms race.

This reminds me of a variety of things.  First of all, I think of Lord John Marbury's argument against Leo McGarry in the West Wing against a missile-defense system: that, if one side constructs a missile-defense system, the other side will only construct a more powerful missile.  Second, I recall reading in a right-wing magazine as a child that the Soviets had their own SDI program, called the Red Shield.


Gorbachev may have been bluffing.  Nixon himself thought that Gobrachev, whatever he said, still feared the cost to the Soviet economy of keeping up with the United States.  Perhaps the Soviets were attempting to construct their own version of Star Wars, but they didn't make any more progress than we did, and they thought that we were making more progress than we were.  Still, I can understand Gorbachev's arguments against Star Wars.  And yet, I wonder: Would a missile-defense system have to lead to an escalation of the arms race?  Reagan offered to share the SDI technology with the Soviets.  Would that have resulted in mutual peace?  Perhaps.  Or perhaps Lord Marbury is right: both sides would then try to create more powerful missiles.

In the Arena 1

I started Richard Nixon's In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat and Renewal.  In this post, I'd like to highlight something that Nixon says on pages 32-33:

"I also relied on support from my friends.  When you win from politics, you hear from everyone.  When you lose, you hear from your friends.  After Watergate, it was a miracle that I had as many as I did.  Some came to see me, some called me on the telephone, others wrote encouraging letters.  As good friends, they did not dwell on the tragedy of the past.  Thankfully, they did not express sympathy, for the only thing worse than self-pity is to be the object of pity from others.  They talked only about the good times we had shared in the past and the even better times we could hope to share in the future.  And finally, the mail----the letters from tens of thousands of people from all over the country and the world, most of whom I had never met----played an indispensable role in bucking up my spirits during a difficult time.  I was, of course, unable to read and answer them all.  But it was heartwarming to know that while there was no longer a silent majority, at least the minority which was left was not silent."

I identified with what Nixon said about not liking to be the object of pity from others.  That passage reminded me of something that Nixon said on page 36 of another book that he wrote, Leaders:

"I saw Churchill for the last time in 1958 when I went to London for the dedication of the memorial to the American dead in World War II at St. Paul's Cathedral.  I hesitated to ask for an appointment with Churchill because I knew he had not been well.  But his aide felt that it would be good for him to talk to someone about problems other than his own physical condition.  I had learned long before never to ask a sick man how he feels, because he may tell you.  But many, and this is especially true of leaders, want to talk about the world rather than about themselves.  When I called on John Foster Dulles in his last months when he was dying of cancer at Walter Reed Hospital, I always asked him for his opinions on current foreign policy problems rather than dwelling on how he was feeling.  Mrs. Dulles, his nurse, and his secretary all told me that my visits gave him an enormous boost because they lifted him out of his own desperate troubles."

Speaking for myself, I don't have a great problem with people feeling sorry for me.  Of course I want for people to care about me and whatever I'm going through!  But I usually don't like for people to express their pity or sympathy for me within a social situation.  That may be because I find that to be depressing, or I'm not sure how exactly to respond.  When I am down, I often prefer to discuss topics----such as politics or TV shows----rather than to have to listen to people's sympathy.

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 17

For my blog post today about Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, I'll quote something that Stephen Ambrose says on page 509.  The context is David Frost's 1977 interview of Richard Nixon.  Frost is reading to Nixon statements that Nixon made as President in a conversation with John Dean, implying that Nixon was ordering hush money to be paid to Watergate conspirator E. Howard Hunt (see here for the YouTube video of Frost doing this).  On page 509, Ambrose narrates:

"'Let me stop you right there,' Nixon cut in.  'Right there....You were reading there out of context, out of order.'  He insisted that because he had refused to grant clemency, he was not submitting to blackmail.  And he claimed that no money had been paid to Hunt 'as a result of a direction given by the President for that purpose.'  The last clause stuck in his mind; he used it again thirteen years later, in his book In the Arena, when he wrote that his accusers never quoted his 'that would be wrong' statement about clemency, and 'ignored the even more crucial fact that no payments were made as a result of that conversation.'  He did not deny that money was paid (within six hours, in fact) after his talk with Dean; he simply denied that it was paid as a result of that talk.  In other words, Nixon told Dean to see to it that the money was paid, quick; Dean saw to it that the money was paid, quick; but the money was not paid 'as a result of that conversation.'"

The passage from Nixon's In the Arena that Ambrose is quoting is on page 34.  There, Nixon states regarding Hunt:

"The most politically damaging myth was that I personally ordered the payment of money to Howard Hunt and the other original Watergate defendants to keep them silent.  I did discuss this possibility during a meeting with John Dean and Bob Haldeman on March 21, 1973.  In the tape recording of this meeting, it is clear that I considered paying the money.  I should not have even considered this option, but the key facts were that I rejected offering clemency to the defendants as 'wrong' and at the end of the conversation ruled out any White House payment of money to the defendants.  Moreover, those who made this accusation ignored the even more crucial fact that no payments were made as a result of that conversation."

I've said before on this blog that I found Nixon's side of the story on Watergate in his memoirs to be rather muddled.  In my opinion, however, his side of the story in that one passage of In the Arena is crisp and succinct.  Nixon is essentially arguing that, while he did consider paying hush money to E. Howard Hunt, he ultimately ruled it out, and the money that was paid to Hunt was not due to what Nixon said in the March 21, 1973 conversation.

Is Nixon correct on this?  You can read the March 21, 1973 conversation here.  I didn't read the conversation from beginning to end, but I'll leave it here for your and my reference.  I read near the end, and I'm not clear whether or not Nixon ruled out payment of money to Hunt.  (UPDATE: see here and here for Nixon's response to Frost's questions about the money.)

I have a hard time understanding the relevance of clemency to the discussion, but Nixon obviously did deem it to be quite significant in determining whether Nixon was blackmailed.  Nixon said that Hunt was not blackmailing him because Nixon wasn't granting Hunt clemency.  I should also note that H.R. Haldeman (if I recall correctly) said that paying money to the defendants would not be obstructing justice, since they were pleading guilty anyway.  But my understanding is that the whole idea behind paying the defendants money was to keep them quiet----so that they wouldn't bring down others in the Administration or hurl accusations at them.  Is that obstructing justice, according to the law?