Ramblings on Neuhaus' Political Conversion

I was not entirely satisfied with my review of Randy Boyagoda’s biography of Richard John Neuhaus, and I was thinking of rewriting one of the sections.  I have decided not to do so, however.  I have submitted the review, and I do not want to revise it on my blogs, on Amazon, and on the Blogging for Books site.  Instead, I’ll just ramble about it here on my blog.

The part of my review that does not satisfy me is this paragraph: “If there is one weakness to the book, it is that I wish that Boyagoda had explained more fully what made Neuhaus tick when he was a liberal.  What drew Neuhaus to liberalism, and what were his rationales for his positions at that time?  In reading the book, I could understand Neuhaus’ rationales for his conservative positions, but not entirely what made him tick as a liberal.  That being the case, I wondered how he could have gone from one who decried capitalism and what he considered to be American aggression, to one who was more open to those things.  Neuhaus’ conservative older brother said that Neuhaus was rebelling against his father by being a liberal, and that may have been unfair, but why exactly was Neuhaus a liberal?”

I was afraid that I may have been a bit unclear there.  One could interpret me to be saying that I can understand conservatism because I agree with it, whereas I cannot understand how anyone could be a liberal.  That’s not what I’m saying, though.  Rather, I’m puzzling over how exactly Neuhaus made the transition.  How did he conclude that his previous way of seeing the world was inadequate, and that his new way of seeing the world was correct?  And did his new worldview address problems that motivated him to have his old worldview back when he had it?

As I said in my review, there were a variety of factors that led Neuhaus from the liberal camp to the conservative one.  I listed his belief that the U.S. was better than the Soviet Union, his support for democracy around the world, his commitment to Christian orthodoxy, his opposition to abortion, his dislike for the New Left’s libertinism, and his view that localities could handle welfare better, even though he did not propose dismantling the welfare state.  Some of these ideas he held (or may have held) even when he was a liberal.  He was a committed Christian even then, and he may have even opposed moral or sexual libertinism and abortion at that time.

An important factor in Neuhaus’ conversion to conservatism that I forgot to list was Vietnam’s persecution of Christians.  Not only did that contribute to his robust anti-Communism, but it also alienated him a bit from the Left, which did not seem to him to be overly concerned about that issue.
I would also say that perhaps there were traces of the old liberal Neuhaus in the new conservative Neuhaus.  The old liberal Neuhaus was against the Vietnam War and felt that America was being an imperialistic bully that was taking many lives unnecessarily.  The new conservative Neuhaus, by contrast, was critical of pacifism as an unrealistic option and considered the War on Terror to be a just war.  And yet, as Boyagoda argues, Neuhaus was far from trigger-happy, contrary to what some of his critics believed.  Neuhaus did not publicly give George W. Bush a blank check on the War on Terror, and, along with William F. Buckley, Jr., he had some private reservations about the Iraq War.

One consideration that was motivating Neuhaus when he was a liberal was a concern for the poor.  I cannot remember where exactly Boyagoda said this, but I do recall one place in the biography in which Neuhaus criticizes capitalism as exploitative and acknowledges that injustice is systemic, which means that just giving money to charity is insufficient to help the poor.  As a conservative, Neuhaus still thought about poverty: he was against dismantling the national welfare system, but he also believed that poverty was better addressed locally, and he stressed the importance of the family (even gay and lesbian families, though he would oppose gay marriage) as a way to help ameliorate the poverty problem.

On the one hand, this is precisely the sort of thing I’m looking for: how did Neuhaus as a conservative address the issues that troubled him back when he was a liberal?  That would make the conversion more real, more thoughtful.  On the other hand, I am a bit dissatisfied.  As a conservative, did he no longer acknowledge that capitalism was exploitative, or that injustice was systemic?  How, as a conservative, did he account for the facts that motivated his liberal position back when he was a liberal?  Well, I am speaking from my incomplete knowledge, for Neuhaus did write a book about capitalism, and perhaps I should read that if I am curious!  It’s called Doing Well and Doing Good: The Challenge of the Christian Capitalist.  Maybe he came to believe that capitalism was not all bad, that it had some positive effects, and that is was better than socialism and communism.

What about the Vietnam War and the Cold War?  As a conservative, Neuhaus believed that Vietnam was an oppressive dictatorship that persecuted Christians, and that the U.S. was better than the Soviet Union.  Could he not as a liberal see some of that?  I mean, Neuhaus was an intelligent guy.  He was not like me when I was a conservative and had not yet become a liberal: one who was blissfully unaware of certain harsh realities of life.  He had to have been familiar with the arguments of the other side, for he argued with people who made those arguments (i.e., his father, his brothers who were serving in Vietnam, and perhaps others).  Wouldn’t he have heard that North Vietnam was Communist and could be brutal to people, as could the Viet Cong?  Wouldn’t he, as a liberal, have heard the view that the Vietnam War was about stopping Communist expansion, an issue that would concern him when he was a conservative?  How could those arguments have had little or no affect on him as a liberal, only to form a key aspect of his ideology when he was a conservative?

Well, part of the reason could have been that he saw North Vietnam and the Viet Cong as the lesser of two evils.  But he may have also regarded Ho Chi Minh as a patriot and a freedom fighter against colonialism, as well as disputed the idea that Ho Chi Minh’s work was part of some plot of Communist expansion.  M. Scott Peck held similar views (see here).  I also recall something that Richard Nixon said in Monica Crowley’s book, Nixon Off the Record (see my post here).  Nixon was puzzled by candidate Bill Clinton’s apparent disagreement with the Vietnam War, for Nixon truly felt that he himself had been vindicated in his view that the war was a just cause.  Why?  I think it was because Vietnam after the U.S. left ended up being a brutal Communist dictatorship.  There may have been people in the New Left who did not anticipate that.

I may be trying to make Neuhaus’ conversion too neat, though.  I know that, as a liberal now, I have not fully accounted for the things that concerned me when I was a conservative, nor have I come up with ways to address those concerns as a liberal.  Unfortunately, life can be more complex than that, and we often try to choose the lesser of two evils.  Yes, it was bad that Vietnam became Communist, but the massive loss of civilian lives in the Vietnam War was horrible, too.  Maybe President Obama made some bad foreign policy decisions, but George W. Bush’s belligerence had drawbacks.  All I can do is pray that my leaders have wisdom so they can make better decisions in this complex world.

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

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

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

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

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

Nixon in Winter 1

I started Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter.  In April, I blogged through Monica's Nixon Off the Record, which is about Monica's time working for Richard Nixon in the 1990's.  Nixon in Winter is about that, too, only it has a far greater focus on foreign policy; plus, it gets into Nixon's reflections on Watergate and other political scandals, philosophy and religion, family, and mortality.

Nixon's points about foreign policy in my latest reading were not all that new to me, for many of them are the same points that he makes in his book, Seize the Moment, which I read and blogged through.  This is not surprising, for Nixon in this part of Nixon in Winter is working on Seize the Moment, as Monica assists him in researching for the book.  I'll have plenty of opportunities to get into foreign policy in my blog posts about Nixon in Winter.  What I want to highlight here is the more personal dimension of Monica's narration.

Monica asks in her introduction why Nixon was so open with her----how he could trust her after being burned in the past.  Her answer is that it was because she was young and did not have an agenda, and also because Nixon knew that he was sharing his thoughts with posterity when he was sharing them with her.  As Monica says, Nixon was telling his story one last time!

There is a tender part of the book in which Monica comes to Nixon's home to work with him on his book Beyond Peace, and they have dinner together.  Nixon wanted her to come because he was afraid that he would slip on the ice and seriously harm himself if he went outside.  When Monica arrived, he looked out the window to tell her to take hold of the railing so she wouldn't fall.  After talking about the book, they had chili (which Nixon said was the only thing he knew how to make) with grapefruit juice.  He also made Monica a non-alcoholic version of a beverage that he liked in Asia.  And, when he tried to open a bag of sesame-seed breadsticks, he had difficulty, and a bunch of sesame seeds scattered on the floor!

Nixon said that he was lonely on account of his celebrity.  His wife Pat had died, and he mostly stayed in his study, while rarely (if ever) going into the other rooms.  While Pat was still alive, he adopted a dog who was wandering around on his property.  Monica tells a funny story about how Nixon was talking to her about foreign policy, and the dog bit off and swallowed the tip of her pin, without Nixon even noticing!

In my reading so far, this book looks like it will be like Nixon: Off the Record:  a lot of technical discussion, yet also some light-hearted moments.  At the same time, my impression thus far is that Nixon's humanity----particularly his loneliness----is more apparent in Nixon in Winter.

Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 17

On page 509 of Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, author Stephen Ambrose quotes President Richard Nixon's thoughts about the conflict between his National Security Adviser, Henry Kissinger, and his Secretary of State, William Rogers.  Nixon said:

"I'm sorry about how Henry and Bill go at each other...It's really deep-seated.  Henry thinks Bill isn't very deep, and Bill thinks Henry is power-crazy.  And in a sense, they're both right.  Ego is something we all have, and either you grow out of it or it takes you over.  I've grown out of it.  It's really a compensation for an inferiority complex.  Henry has that, of course----and Bill has it too."

This stood out to me for three reasons.

1.  Nixon here has a negative attitude towards the conflict between Kissinger and Rogers, when, earlier in the book, Ambrose argues that Nixon actually wanted conflict between his aides, for a variety of reasons, one being that Nixon figured that they wouldn't go after him if they were going after each other.

2.  I got a laugh out of Nixon's statement that he himself had outgrown ego.  Even in Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, which narrates Nixon's pontifications during the 1990's, Nixon strikes me as one who has quite an ego: he is upset when people don't ask for his advice or when he is not given proper credit for something he did as President.  But he really eats it up when he is consulted or praised.

I thought about a German lady I once knew.  She said that she was not the type of person who took things personally, that she didn't have a thin skin.  Yet, she often did take things personally!  Self-image and reality don't always match up.  But maybe thinking that we're good at something makes us better than we would be if we were negative about ourselves.

3.  What Nixon said about the inferiority complex feeding into ego reminded me of a story that Lou Cannon told about Ronald Reagan: that Reagan as an actor sometimes cared more about the quality of a scene than whether he was in the spotlight.  That is a secure person!  The thing is, not everyone is like that.  I'm not like that.  How can one become like that?

Very Strange Bedfellows 4

For my blog post today on Jules Witcover's Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew, I'll comment on three passages.

1. On page 147, we read: "It wasn't so much that Nixon was down on Agnew, John Sears said later, as that he was up on Connally.  At the same time, he said, Nixon's lack of self-confidence, and his consequent self-loathing, led him to tear down others.  'If you were out of his presence and there were any way to pick you apart, he'd do it,' Sears said.  'That way he didn't feel so badly about himself.  Of all the people who hated Nixon, Nixon had the lowest opinion of himself [of] anybody.  It was always, 'Everybody's against me.''"

The part about Connally and Agnew relates to a key plot-line in this book: President Richard Nixon was seriously contemplating replacing Vice-President Spiro Agnew with Democrat John Connally----who had been a governor of Texas (actually, he was the man who sat in front of John F. Kennedy when Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas) and was later appointed by Nixon to be Secretary of the Treasury.  Agnew was making a lot of blunders, as when he said in Africa that the African leaders were so much better than the African-American leaders in the United States (which Nixon agreed with, but he didn't think that Agnew should have said that).  Meanwhile, Nixon liked Connally because Connally stroked Nixon's ego (as when Connally compared Nixon to Lincoln), was tough, was better Presidential material in Nixon's eyes than Agnew, and offered what Nixon considered to be good advice (as when Connally said that Nixon needs to stop being stiff and become more passionate in public, which probably resonated with Nixon's fighting spirit).  That Nixon thought the world of Connally is evident in Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, for Nixon even during the 1990's was quoting Connally in his conversations with Monica.

Nixon's insecurity comes up a few times in Witcover's book.  According to Witcover, Nixon was drawn to strong men like Agnew and Connally because of his own sense of inadequacy.  Yet, Nixon didn't like to be upstaged, and that was one of his problems with Agnew.  When Agnew in a meeting was advising Nixon to be tough on attacking Cambodia----when Nixon was advocating a more moderate policy than Agnew was----Nixon did not like for Agnew to appear tougher than Nixon before other people.  Connally was tough, and yet he also seemed to be more of a team-player.

The passage on page 147 inspired me to ask: "Can a person truly hate himself?"  Christians debate this.  Some say that Jesus' statement that we should love our neighbors as we love ourselves encourages self-love, in a time when people have difficulty loving themselves.  Others counter that Jesus was taking for granted that people love themselves----that even those with self-pity or low self-confidence wish the best for themselves.  I think that Nixon loved himself in the sense that he desired his own advancement, but I also believe that Nixon was disappointed in himself, seeing himself as limited in areas.

2.  On page 144, we read: "Around this time, the Nixon White House launched new revenue-sharing proposals with the governors, as part of a government reorganization.  Agnew had been led to believe he would be importantly involved.  However, under the label 'the New American Revolution,' the vice-president found himself relegated to the job of salesman of the stump while [George] Schultz, as head of the newly reorganized Office of Management and Budget, and [John] Ehrlichman, as overseer of all domestic affairs, became the policy heavies.  Agnew felt that as a former county executive and governor, he was well-qualified to be in the middle of things rather than simply a huckster for this new 'revolution.'"

Witcover talks about Agnew's attempt to cultivate a role for himself as Vice-President.  It's a problem that many Vice-Presidents throughout history have had, including Richard Nixon when he was Dwight Eisenhower's Vice-President.  Agnew threw himself with gusto into the role of being the President of the Senate, which impressed some of the Senators there.  And Agnew also was a popular speaker, as he attacked liberal elites.  Yet, Agnew wanted more than that.  He desired more influence on policy and more administrative responsibilities.  Perhaps he thought that anyone could preside over the Senate or go across the country delivering a Pat Buchanan-written speech with passion, but that one was truly valued when his opinions on policy were accepted, or when he was entrusted with leading a project. 

Can I identify with this?  Right now, I'd be happy to have a job that makes me some money.  But suppose I already had economic security.  In that case, would I desire something more, such as respect?
On the issue of revenue-sharing, the passage on page 144 calls to my mind an earlier part of Witcover's book, which said that Agnew actually disagreed with Nixon on welfare-reform.  Agnew wanted a single national policy, whereas Nixon was for the states developing their own policy.  Could this have been one factor behind Agnew's exclusion from playing an administrative or policy-laden role in the so-called new American revolution?  I doubt it was the only factor, for Nixon does appear to have been rather clannish in how he ran the White House, trusting only an inner-circle.  But it could have been one factor.

3.  On page 169, Witcover quotes Nixon as saying: "That's the thing.  [Agnew] went to China, he's been to Korea, you know, he's been to all these places....Well, that's the danger.  A little bit of knowledge and you become an expert.  You go to Taiwan once, and 'I know about the China thing.  I know Chiang Kai-shek, I know more than they even think they know.'  But Agnew doesn't see the point there...You know, Henry, the thing about the Agnew thing that irritates me is...we handled this Chinese thing with extreme subtlety and skill and got good credit for it, and [referring to the press] now these sons of bitches will jump on the Agnew thing."

The context of this passage is Agnew's public questioning of a policy of U.S. normalization of relations with Communist China, right when Nixon was supporting this policy.  Agnew was very pro-Taiwan, and his anti-Communism led him to be a fierce critic of Communist China.  But Nixon thought that Agnew had tunnel-vision and was not sensitive to certain nuances in the situation, such as the impact that U.S. normalization with Communist China would have on the Soviet Union, which had differences with Communist China.  Again, in Nixon's eyes, Agnew was not being a very good team player.

The issue of Agnew being one of the more conservative members of the Nixon Administration comes up more than once in this book.  Agnew does not always voice his disagreements publicly, however, for he often sent memos criticizing a person or a policy within the Nixon Administration as too liberal.  Agnew was probably seen as somewhat of a pain within the Administration, and definitely as a loose-cannon when he said something inappropriate in public, even going so far as to disagree publicly with Nixon's policy.

The part about Agnew thinking that he's an expert stood out to me because it made me think about how some people think that they're experts on something, just because they've read a few books.  I am guilty of this as well!  I read a couple of books on foreign policy, and I suddenly see myself as some expert!  But I'm not an expert.  Far from it.  There is much more to read.  Heck, becoming an expert may entail not just reading, but experiencing certain people, places, and situations.  I'm not an expert on much, but I'm learning.  And even experts can learn more than they currently know, which means that we're all learning, even if some are more advanced than others.

Beyond Peace 3

In a blog post that I wrote on Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, I speculated about what Richard Nixon would have thought about President Bill Clinton's policies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Serbia.  In a post that I wrote on Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment, I wondered what Nixon's stance would have been on President George W. Bush's war in Iraq.

In reading Nixon's 1994 book, Beyond Peace, I see that Nixon was actually alive when Clinton was pursuing strategies in Somalia, Bosnia, and Serbia.  On Somalia, Nixon pretty much thought what I speculated that he thought: he believed that U.S. intervention into Somalia was a mistake, but that America's withdrawal from the country conveyed weakness.

On Bosnia and Serbia, I was right that Nixon believed that the region was important to U.S. interests, presumably enough to justify American intervention.  But what I learned in Beyond Peace was that Nixon considered Clinton's policies in that region to be a mistake.  Nixon says on pages 153-154:

"From the beginning of the war [in the former Yugoslavia] there have been excesses on both sides, but the cycle of violence began as a result of Serbian aggression against other former Yugoslavian republics----aggression for which the United States and its allies have consistently and repeatedly failed to exact a price.  As early as 1991, along with a number of other observers, I called upon the United Nations to lift the embargo against the victims of Serbian aggression.  The United States, the United Nations, and the European Community vacillated, equivocated, orated, condemned, and ultimately did nothing to counter effectively the Serbian onslaught...It is unfortunate that the United States did not take action in this protracted struggle until it was forced to do so by a public reaction to bloody images on television."

Essentially, Nixon says that Clinton, the UN, and the European Community were dithering in response to the Serbian aggression against the former Yugoslavian republics.  Nixon's criticisms remind me of former UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick's critique of U.S. policies on the region in her 2007 book, Making War to Keep Peace.  And they also call to my mind the movie The Special Relationship, which is about President Bill Clinton's relationship with British Prime Minister Tony Blair.  In this movie, Blair publicly challenges Clinton to take more action on Kosovo, in a time when President Clinton is hesitant.

Nixon says on page 154 that the West would have intervened sooner to help Sarajevo had the people of Sarajevo been primarily Christian or Jewish, and his implication appears to be that the West was slow to act because of Sarajevo's large Muslim population.  In a time when elements of the right-wing have become frighteningly Islamophobic, in terms of condemning moderate Muslims and lumping them together with radical ones, this 1994 statement by Nixon makes me proud of him (whether or not it is entirely fair).

What puzzles me, though, is Nixon's statement on pages 154-155: "The siege of Sarajevo can have a redeeming character only if the West learns two things as a result.  The first is that enlightened peoples cannot be selective about condemning aggression and genocide...The other lesson is that because we are the last remaining superpower, no crisis is irrelevant to our interests.  If the United States had been willing to lead, a number of steps short of the commitment of ground forces----for instance, revoking the arms embargo----could have been taken early in the Bosnian crisis to blunt Serbian aggression.  Our failure to do so tarnished our reputation as an evenhanded player on the international stage and contributed to an image promoted by extreme Muslim fundamentalists that the West is callous to the fate of Muslim nations but protective of Christian and Jewish nations."

It's not that Nixon's sentiment by itself puzzles me: of course the United States should be concerned about genocide.  But it puzzles me in light of what Nixon wrote in Seize the Moment, and even in Beyond Peace.  Nixon appears to maintain that the U.S. should be selective about when it will intervene militarily----that it should do so only when its own interests are involved.  Saying that the U.S. should intervene to stop genocide (if that is what Nixon is suggesting on page 154) strikes me as a departure from that.  And, when he says that "no crisis is irrelevant to our interests", that makes me wonder if that's a blank check for us to interfere militarily anywhere there is a crisis.

Now onto the issue of the Iraq War under George W. Bush.  What would Nixon have thought about that?  On page 121 of Seize the Moment, Nixon criticizes German firms for being "the principal contractors for Saddam Hussein's network of hardened command bunkers."  That makes me think that, had Nixon been alive when Germany was refusing to back up the U.S. on the Iraq War, Nixon would have joined the conservative voices who argued that Germany was doing this on account of the business that it was doing with Iraq.  But would Nixon have supported the U.S. overthrowing Saddam Hussein and undertaking the task of nation-building?  I don't know.  Nixon in Beyond Peace seems to support regime change in Iraq, but here's the strategy that he advocates: "We should actively support the main opposition to Saddam, the Iraqi National Congress, as it seeks to force Baghdad to open up its political system.  We should offer Jordan increased economic incentives and a major role in the Arab-Israeli peace process as encouragement to turn off the spigot of trade until Saddam Hussein falls from power."  That's different from the U.S. directly overthrowing Saddam.  But, as I said in my last post on Beyond Peace, Nixon was open to changing his mind when he felt that situations changed.

Seize the Moment 2

I'm still reading Richard Nixon's 1992 book, Seize the Moment: America's Challenge in a One-Superpower World.  I have five items for today.  Like yesterday's post, my post today will comment on quotations from Nixon's book.  I'll be using those quotations as starting-points to discuss Nixon's broader arguments.

1.  On page 52, Nixon contrasts Mikhail Gorbachev with Boris Yeltsin, who were prominent political figures in Russia:

"Yeltsin's views had grown, evolving to deal with the deepening Soviet crisis while Gorbachev's remained in the quagmire of Marxism-Leninism.  Before the failed coup, Yeltsin had totally repudiated communism, while Gorbachev had not.  Yeltsin supported private ownership of enterprises and land, while Gorbachev had not.  Yeltsin supported immediate independence for the Baltic states, while Gorbachev did not.  Yeltsin called for cutting off all aid to Cuba, Afghanistan, and other Soviet clients in the underdeveloped world, while Gorbachev did not.  Yeltsin wanted to make major cuts in spending on the Soviet military, while Gorbachev did not.  Yeltsin won office in a fully free election, while Gorbachev did not.  Immediately after the coup, Yeltsin spoke of a bold democratic revolution, while Gorbachev spoke timidly of reforming the Communist party."

I grew up when the Cold War was drawing to a close.  At the time, I was one of those right-wingers who thought that the Russians could still not be trusted.  I believed that Gorbachev's policies of Glasnost and Perestroika were a ruse designed to lull the United States to sleep, so that the U.S. would disarm and the Russians would take us over.  In my mind, Communism had not truly collapsed, and it was still a threat to the free world.

What's surprising to me is that Nixon in this book actually overlaps with my views at the time.  No, Nixon didn't regard Glasnost and Perestroika as a ruse.  And yes, unlike me, Nixon believed that the collapse of the Soviet Union was real.  But he still did not think that it was a time for America to be complacent.  As Nixon noted in this book, Gorbachev was still a dedicated Communist, who was providing assistance to other Communist countries; Gorbachev was still cultivating the powerful Soviet military; Gorbachev still did not want to let go of the Baltic states; and Gorbachev was increasing Russian influence in the Pacific, which included an attempt to heal the rift between Russia and Communist China.

At the time, I pointed to the sorts of things that Nixon mentions to argue that Russia was still a threat (only, in contrast to Nixon, the right-wing books, articles, and magazines that I read did not think that there was a real rift between the Soviet Union and Communist China).  But Nixon places these things in a different context than the right-wing literature that I read: for Nixon, Russia was doing these things in a state of desperation, while it was standing on its last leg.  Communism in Russia truly was collapsing.

I recently read Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, which is about Crowley's time working for Nixon during the 1990's.  What Nixon harps on continually in that book is the importance of the U.S. providing aid to post-Soviet Russia, so that her economy would get off the ground and she wouldn't be taken over by Communist hard-liners who would be all too happy to exploit the Russians' economic desperation.  That sort of scenario, for Nixon, could lead to another Cold War.  In Seize the Moment, Nixon expresses more nuance to his view on foreign aid to Russia.  Nixon does not think that a whole lot of foreign aid should go to Russia when Gorbachev is still in charge because that would only be supporting a failed Communist system.  Rather, Nixon wants aid to go to Russia when she is committed to democracy and free enterprise, something that he thought would occur under Yeltsin (even if Yeltsin banned Communist Party activity in Russia).  What happened after Nixon wrote this book, however, was that wealth under Yeltsin got concentrated into the hands of a few.

2.  On page 152, Nixon says that countries in the 1990's were afraid of the possibility of a strong Germany and Japan:

"A resurgent Japanese military would cause great regional apprehensions.  Historical memories from World War II have not vanished.  Despite forty-five years of peaceful policies, the fear in Asia of Japan as a major military power dwarfs European concerns about a united Germany."

I grew up in an offshoot of the Herbert W. Armstrong religious movement.  For years, Herbert Armstrong and his son Garner Ted predicted that Germany would reunite and become a revived Nazi dictatorship, which would be a significant part of the Beast power in Revelation 13, as well as the aggressive Assyrian in the Book of Isaiah.  When the Berlin wall came tumbling down and Europe was on the road to becoming a United States of Europe, Garner Ted Armstrong essentially said that he told us so!

Nowadays, at least as far as I can see, Germany does not look as if it will be a powerful Nazi dictatorship anytime soon----and this is more than twenty years after the fall of the Berlin wall.  But, reading Nixon's 1992 book, I learned that there were more people than Armstrongites in the early 1990's who feared a united Germany and a United States of Europe.  As Nixon says, there were lingering memories about the times when Germany was a powerful and an aggressive nation, and countries in Europe did not know what a newly united Germany----with a sizable economy----would do.  Regarding a United States of Europe, there were apprehensions that this could be a formidable economic force.

What did Nixon propose that the U.S. should do about a united Germany?  On page 137, Nixon essentially says that the United States should provide the "political cover" that Germany needs for a "more active...foreign policy."  For Nixon, if the U.S. helps Germany to become more active in the world, other countries would not fear Germany as much, for they'd see that we're okay with Germany.  It sounds to me like "the friend of my friend is my friend."

3.  On page 129, Nixon talks about a possible role for Eastern European countries in NATO:

"As Europe's only time-tested security structure, NATO should seek to find ways to fill the security vacuum in Eastern Europe, particularly over the next decade when the uncertainty centering on instability within the former Soviet Union will run the highest.  This does not mean that NATO members should immediately extend its full Article 5 commitment----'an armed attack on one or more of them in Europe or North America shall be considered an attack on all of them'----to the new democracies.  But it does mean that we should think in more subtle terms than an all-or-nothing guarantee.  NATO, after all, functions at various levels, including political consultation, military cooperation, and participation in its integrated military command.  Because they share our values and because the current vacuum creates an incentive for adventurism, the East European democracies must be brought into NATO's security sphere without granting them immediate full partnership."

The reason that this passage stood out to me was that it called to my mind Charlie Gibson's 2008 interview with Republican Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin.  As I talk about here, Palin was saying that Georgia and the Ukraine should be in NATO.  This surprised me and a few other people I read.  At the time, Russia was going after Georgia.  If Georgia were in NATO, would NATO be obligated to fight Russia?  And would a war against Russia even be feasible, or desirable?
Palin should probably have read Nixon's discussion of NATO on page 129 of Seize the Moment.  Nixon was for cooperation between NATO and the Eastern European countries, but not for a "you attack one Eastern European country, and we consider that an attack on all of us" approach (my words).  Maybe he would have had the same ideas about Georgia and the Ukraine.

4.  On page 164, Nixon mentions the loss of Chinese Communist dictator Mao Zedong's son:
"While the United States provided aid and troops to prevent Communist victories in Korea and South Vietnam, the Communist Chinese sacrificed tens of thousands of solders----including Mao Zedong's only son----to support the aggression of North Korea and provided indispensable economic and military assistance to the aggressors in North Vietnam."

There are many things that I loathe about Mao----the Cultural Revolution, his killings of millions of people, etc.  But I do respect that his only son went out to fight for the advancement of Communism, knowing that he might die.  There are enough politicians who try to save their own skin or the skin of those they love: they may be military hawks, but they themselves dodged going to war, or they are okay with sending other people's kids to war but not their own.  It's a mark of principle when a leader is the opposite of this.
You can probably detect some respect on Nixon's part for Mao in this case.  Nixon in his books is quite critical of Communism and Communists, but he does at times note things that he finds admirable about them.
I'll probably talk more about China in tomorrow's post.

5. On pages 158-159, Nixon says that the U.S. partly has itself to blame for its trade deficit with Japan:
"...Japan's tremendous economic success represents an easy scapegoat for American politicians seeking to deflect attention from our own economic problems.  First, the combination of a high federal deficit and a low domestic savings rate requires capital imports, which, in turn, are reflected in a trade deficit in goods and services.  Second, many U.S. companies lack the long-term horizons needed to cultivate the Japanese markets.  Third, since 95 percent of Japan's young people but only 75 percent of America's graduate from high school, we have failed to invest sufficiently in our human capital.  Some studies have pointed out that even if Japan eliminated all its import barriers, the U.S. trade deficit would drop by only $5-8 billion.  They suggest that primarily the fault is ours, not theirs."

In the above passage, Nixon appears to overlap with the economic views of Mitt Romney and Barack Obama.  Nixon, like many right-wingers, seems to portray a high deficit and low personal savings as bad for the economy.  Why?  I think that he regards a high deficit as bad because it sucks money out of the private sector: money that could be used for private investment and production is instead being used for an inefficient government program.  And Nixon may believe that people should save more because, once they have saved enough money, they can use that money to pay for capital that builds businesses.  Or people's savings would be in the bank, where it would be available to be loaned out to people who want to start businesses.  For Nixon, because we do not have enough capital ourselves, we rely on a country like Japan to provide us with capital, contributing to the trade deficit.

And yet, Nixon also overlaps with Barack Obama's view that the key to a strong economy is education.  Mitt Romney was all for education, too, but my impression during the 2012 campaign was that Romney emphasized tax cuts as the key to economic recovery----a trickle-down sort of approach----whereas Obama stressed government investment in education as a way to prepare people for the high-skilled jobs of the twenty-first century.  Nixon, at least in my reading thus far, does not say what the government should be doing about education, but he did highlight its importance in terms of helping the U.S. to become economically competitive.

Nixon Off the Record 4

I finished Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, which is about Monica's time working for former President Richard Nixon in the 1990's.

A lot of the book was Nixon lecturing to Monica about policy and politics, but there were a few light-hearted moments.  There was Nixon getting a phone call and it being the wrong number.  I mean, how could one call a former President by mistake?  It apparently happens, though!  There was Nixon saying that he looked too old in his eyeglasses, then Monica put on her glasses and asked if she looked too old.  And then there was an odd moment: a bird hit the window and flew away.  Monica speculates that Nixon may have seen this as a sign.  That wouldn't surprise me, since I blogged about one time that Nixon did look for signs in nature.

The sharpness of Richard Nixon's mind, even in his old age, made his stroke and his death quite tragic, in my opinion.  Nixon in old age had a plethora of insights about politics and policy, which he loved to express, orally and in writing.  It must have been terrible for him to have a stroke that took away his ability to speak.  And, after he had invested so much time in influencing the policies and political decisions of prominent political figures, it was sad that he did not get to see how things turned out for them.  Nixon had opinions about the Clinton Administration, and President Bill Clinton turned to Nixon for advice, far more than Ronald Reagan and George Bush did.  And Nixon also advised Robert Dole on how to run effectively against Bill Clinton in 1996.  But Nixon passed on before 1996 came.

Incidentally, Monica's book is copyrighted to 1996, and it was apparently written before the 1996 election had been decided.  On pages 221-222, Monica says the following:

"The art of politics is seldom the art of leadership.  Clinton is an elitist cloaked in populist garb, but Dole is a true and quiet populist cloaked not in illusive image-making but in the certainty that comes from experience.  The contrast between Clinton and Dole cannot be more stark.  Unlike 1992, the 1996 election is to be a contest not about just the next four years but about the next century, when leadership of the kind Nixon spoke of will be required to make it the second American century.  Nixon saw clearly from Clinton's first year that Clinton is not the one to lead America into the new millennium.  Dole, however, is the one, and if he succeeds, Nixon's lessons about leadership will not only endure but live."

It's a profound passage, but I'm not entirely sure what to say about it.  Was it a mistake that Clinton was the one who led America into the twenty-first century?  Nixon passed on (as far as I can see) before the economic boom under Bill Clinton.  He passed on before Clinton and the Republicans passed welfare reform and balanced the budget.  Would Nixon have been proud of Clinton's accomplishments?  Well, I can envision him being happy about the balanced budget.  Maybe he would have been pleased with welfare reform----I'm not sure, for, while Nixon was a strong proponent of welfare reform, he criticized Reagan's domestic policies for not being compassionate enough.  On the economic boom, I have doubts that Nixon would have given Clinton credit for that: I can picture him being like a lot of Republicans, who said that Bill Gates and Al Greenspan deserved more credit for the economic upswing than Bill Clinton and Al Gore.  And yet, Monica notes that Nixon was a supporter of NAFTA, so Nixon probably liked Clinton's trade policies.

What would Nixon have thought about Clinton's foreign policy?  That's a good question.  Nixon didn't seem to care for Clinton's intervention in Haiti.  I'm doubtful that he would have supported Clinton's intervention in Somalia----though, at the same time, I can also picture Nixon adhering to the right-wing notion that Clinton's pulling out our forces from Somalia conveyed weakness and emboldened Al Qaeda; Nixon would probably say that Clinton shouldn't have committed forces to Somalia without seeing the mission through.  On Bosnia and Serbia, I don't know if Nixon would have seen that conflict as meriting U.S. intervention or not.  I can picture him thinking that it would, since the conflict could conceivably impact the rest of of Europe.  Would Nixon support nation-building, or Clinton's strategy of prosecuting the war?  I have my doubts, but I can also envision Nixon supporting elements of Clinton's strategy (i.e., using American air-power).  These are just guesses of mine, and there is still much for me to learn about Nixon's foreign policy views.

I'm sure Nixon would have had an opinion about Monica Lewinsky-gate----an opinion ranging from pleasure that a Democratic President was finally being punished for a scandal (since Nixon thought that Democrats got away with stuff that Republicans never got away with), to beliefs about how Clinton was handling the scandal.  I doubt that the scandal would have surprised Nixon, for Nixon thought that Bill and Hillary did not particularly like each other, and Nixon had opinions about the 1992 Gennifer Flowers scandal.

Was it a bad thing that Clinton led us into the twenty-first century?  I suppose it depends on whom you ask.  If you think that Clinton dropped the ball on Osama Bin-Laden, then your answer would be yes.  If you believe that he was more on-the-ball about Bin-Laden than Bush later was, then your answer would be no.
In any case, this is a good book.  I'll probably wait a while to read the sequel, Nixon in Winter.  Nixon in Winter looks like a heavier read, and it has lots of words on each page.  Right now, I'm too busy to read books about Nixon that are too heavy.

Nixon Off the Record 3

For my write-up today on Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record, which is Monica's recounting of her time working for former President Richard Nixon in the 1990's, I'll use as my starting-point something that Nixon says on page 204:

"You know, I've always been a liberal on health issues because I lost two brothers to TB and an aunt to cancer."

I this post that I wrote in blogging through Richard Nixon's memoirs, I noted some paradox in Nixon's response to Senator Ted Kennedy's Chappaquiddick incident: Nixon had compassion for Kennedy, yet Nixon was also coldly calculating.  Nixon was contemplating the political ramifications of Chappaquiddick, for both Kennedy and also for Nixon himself, who thought that Kennedy might run for President in 1972.

I see a similar vacillation between compassion and cold calculation in Nixon as I read Monica Crowley's book.  On the one hand, Nixon is enjoying the health care debate and watching how it will all play out, making me exclaim while reading, "This isn't a game!  It impacts real life people!"  Yet, on the other hand, Nixon says that the health care issue is dear to his heart because of the family members he lost to disease.  On the one hand, Nixon was intrigued by Vince Foster's suicide and the documents that Hillary Clinton supposedly took from him to hide her guilt in Whitewater.  On the other hand, Nixon laments that government service so often drives people to depression, and he speculates as to what could have driven Vince Foster to kill himself.

Is there a cold side to most politicians?  I wouldn't be surprised.  In Crowley's book, Nixon himself sees Bill and Hillary Clinton as rather cynical.  On page 206, Nixon says about Hillary: "Hillary doesn't give a shit for people.  Well, that's not fair.  She might shed a tear now and then; we all do."  Nixon regards Hillary as tough and as cold.  Yet, he acknowledges that she is more of a doctrinaire liberal than her husband.  (And, whether Nixon likes her or not, he does appreciate that Bill Clinton mentioned Nixon's health care plan in his health care speech before Congress, which Nixon speculates may have been Hillary's doing.)

In another poignant passage of Monica's book, Nixon says that most politicians love a winner, and that many of them are not particularly nice people.  Could this apply to Nixon?  I remember watching an A&E Biography on Joe McCarthy, and it narrated that, after McCarthy's downfall, McCarthy  showed up at a Republican campaign event.  When Nixon saw him, Nixon supposedly told someone, "Get him out of here!"  On the other hand, in Nixon's memoirs, Nixon says some positive things about McCarthy: Nixon sees the human side of this controversial figure, whatever Nixon may think of McCarthy's practices.

I'd like to think that politicians care about the people.  Maybe a number of them do, at least on some level.  There are people who want to make a difference.  But many politicians are quite cynical, calculating, and self-interested----and this may very well apply even to politicians whom I vote for. 

Nixon Off the Record 2

Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record is about the time that Crowley worked for former President Nixon as a foreign policy assistant.  This was during the 1990's.  In my latest reading, Crowley talks about Nixon's pontifications regarding the 1992 Presidential election.

As I read this part of the book, I thought about the time that I was interning at a right-wing political organization in 1996.  This was during the Presidential election between President Bill Clinton and Bob Dole.  We kept a consistent eye on the political events of each day.  The result of that, I think in retrospect, was that we thought that certain things mattered, which turned out not to matter at all.  For example, my boss was all excited that some Clinton aide (or whatever the guy was) pleaded the Fifth Amendment during a Whitewater investigation (if I'm not mistaken).  When my boss told one of the workers at the group about this, the worker replied, "Can you say President Dole?"  But it turned out that the guy pleading the Fifth Amendment had no impact on the 1996 Presidential election, whatsoever.  Clinton went on to win.

I don't want to give the impression that my boss and that one worker were thoroughly optimistic that Dole would win.  My boss also said, "I can have a better time talking with myself on the toilet, than I can listening to Bob Dole!"  But it does seem that monitoring political events on a day-by-day (or even an hour-by-hour or minute-by minute) basis can foster a sort of myopia: we think that certain things matter that turn out not to matter in the long run.

In Monica's book, Nixon was commenting on the 1992 election on a day-by-day basis.  I'm not sure that I can defend the notion that this gave him a sort of myopia.  Nixon did seem to have insights that contradicted each other----for example, he thought that Perot re-entering the race would help Bush because Perot would take away some of Clinton's votes, only later to conclude that Perot hurt Bush.  But that's what happens: we can't see the future, and so we try our best to make sense of the present.

In 1992, I was in high school, and I could not yet vote.  But I liked politics.  And I was a conservative----a social conservative, an economic conservative.  The Cold War had pretty much ended by that point, so it was somewhat up in the air what would constitute a foreign policy conservative.  But I gravitated towards Pat Buchanan's isolationist, anti-New World Order views.  I didn't care for Bush because I didn't think that he was a true conservative, so I rooted for Buchanan in the Republican primaries.  When Bush and Dan Quayle started to turn up the conservative rhetoric, I supported them, perhaps because I hoped that Bush would be more committed to conservative principles in his second term than he was in his first.  I liked Perot at first because he was an outsider, though I wished that he were more socially conservative (i.e., pro-life); when Perot left the race and later came back into it, I lost respect for him.  On Bill Clinton, at first I somewhat liked him, since my understanding was that he was a moderate Democrat----one who was for tax credits to create jobs, a middle-class tax cut, and cutting out government waste.  But then I came to dislike him, for several reasons: his avoidance of the draft during the Vietnam War, his extramarital affairs, his liberal and opinionated wife, his desire to spend more government money as a way to stimulate the economy, etc.  And, while so many people were praising Clinton's charisma, I didn't see what the attraction was.

Nixon in Monica's book overlaps with my impressions (during 1992, that is) in some areas, but not in others.  I'd like to highlight two things that stood out to me.  First of all, Nixon in 1992 did not seem to care for social conservatism.  He appeared to lean to the pro-choice rather than the pro-life side.  He did not like the Republicans criticizing homosexuals, since homosexuals voted (yet Nixon was against gays in the military).  On page 109, Nixon is quoted as saying to Monica: "Tolerance in this party is far too low.  Fifty percent of all families are single parent; sixty-five percent of all women work.  We can't crap on them.  We've got to reach out----and mean it."  My impression is that Nixon was more of a social conservative when he was President, but he changed with time.  Was Nixon the sort of Republican who thought that the G.O.P. should focus on tax cuts rather than social issues?  Well, he wasn't exactly a fan of supply-side economics in 1992----though he did seem to believe that taxes could be cut without damage if the government reduces spending as well.  In terms of where he wanted the party to take a firm stand, an issue of importance to him was aid to Russia: he thought that the U.S. needed to help out post-Soviet Russia to prevent the onset of a new Cold War.  He may have been on to something there, when it came to foreign policy.  But I doubt that issue would have had sex appeal with the voters.

Second, Nixon felt that he had been vindicated about Vietnam.  That's why Bill Clinton bothered him so much.  Nixon was not only upset that Clinton had avoided military service during the war, but also that Clinton years later appeared to think that the Vietnam War was a bad idea.  I was puzzled about why Nixon felt that he had been vindicated.  After all, the Vietnam War took a lot of lives, and we didn't even win it.  Perhaps Nixon felt that he was vindicated because our loss of the Vietnam War led to all of Vietnam becoming a Communist dictatorship, which was a bad thing.  Nixon on page 114, after all, expresses bafflement that "Clinton still thinks that North Vietnam's cause was more just."

Nixon Off the Record 1

I started Monica Crowley's Nixon Off the Record: His Candid Commentary on People and Politics.

You may have seen Monica Crowley on Fox News, MSNBC, or the McLaughlin Group.  She's a conservative pundit, yet she's an educated conservative pundit, for she has a Ph.D. in International Relations from Columbia University.  Incidentally, her sister is married to Alan Colmes, who was the liberal on the Fox News program, Hannity and Colmes.

I first heard of Monica Crowley when I was living in New York City, which was from 2002 to 2004.  I listened to her on the radio.  To be honest, as a listener, I didn't care for her that much.  She just struck me as so uncritically right-wing.  Granted, she backed away from that somewhat when it was becoming clear that Iraq was not using forbidden weapons on American invaders (or liberators, if you prefer), but, overall, her spiel seemed to me to be that Republicans are good, whereas Democrats are bad.  After John Kerry gave his speech to the Democratic National Convention in 2004, her reaction to it, predictably, was that Kerry did a poor job.

When I watched her on the McLaughlin Group and later Fox News, however, I was pleasantly surprised.  It wasn't because she was attractive----I already knew she was attractive when I didn't care for her----but rather it was because she appeared to have a sophisticated, three-dimensional perspective on issues and political personalities, more than seemed to be the case when I was living in New York City, listening to her on the radio.  She was still a conservative on the McLaughlin Group and Fox News, but she was more of a thoughtful conservative than she seemed to be on the radio (at least when I happened to be listening to her).

I knew when I listened to her on the radio in New York City that she had worked for former President Richard Nixon during the 1990's.  Essentially, she wrote Nixon a long letter about foreign policy, and, to her surprise, Nixon responded to her letter and invited her to chat with him, which led to a job.  On one of the episodes of her radio program, she was talking about Nixon and some of her experiences working for him.  Now, I was somewhat of a Nixon fan at the time, so I can enjoy a good anecdote about how Nixon was such a nice guy and was so often misunderstood.  But even I had a hard time stomaching that episode.  It just struck me as a one-sided whitewash, a hagiography, if you will----as if Nixon had few if any flaws.

Years later (well, last year, to be exact), I was planning to do my Year (or More) of Nixon on my blog for the year 2013, which would be the centennial of Nixon's birth.  I took a look at the Amazon reviews of Monica Crowley's books on Nixon, Nixon Off the Record and Nixon in Winter.  And, from the reviews, I concluded that her books were not a hagiography, but rather a balanced, realistic perspective on the man, a man who had his share of sensitivity, vulnerability, grudges, and thoughtfulness, not to mention a desire for people to value his opinion.  So I bought the books.  I'll be blogging through Nixon Off the Record, and, probably in a couple of months or more from now, I'll blog through Nixon in Winter.

In my reading so far, it's basically Nixon pontificating.  At first, that was interesting to me, and yet annoying.  Nixon was talking about how a good leader needs "head, heart, and guts", and he was critiquing leaders who had some of those qualities but not others.  What annoyed me was that he seemed to be upholding himself as the standard.  Part of my annoyance may be due to the fact that I just read two anti-Nixon books for my Year (or More) of Nixon, and so, with the stuff from those books in my mind, I wondered where he came off acting so high and mighty.  And yet, even before I read those anti-Nixon books, back when I was reading Nixon's 1962 book Six Crises, I found Nixon's moralizing to be rather irritating.  I enjoyed his talent as a storyteller, his acknowledgement of his flaws, and his analysis of issues, but not so much his moralistic pontifications about how to meet a crisis.  His memoirs were not as bad in terms of his moralizing, and Nixon appeared to be humbler in his memoirs on account of the mistakes in judgment that he made during the Watergate scandal.  He was still pretty defensive in his memoirs, but humbler than he was in Six Crises.  And yet, ironically, I actually enjoyed reading Six Crises more than his memoirs, perhaps because he seemed friendlier in that book, or his writing was better, or other factors.

But back to Nixon Off the Record!  I started to like the book when Nixon was sharing his opinions about certain Presidents: Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ford, Carter, Reagan, and Bush.  Of all of these Presidents, Nixon appeared to have the highest opinion of Truman, who (according to Nixon) went with his gut, and often turned out to be right.  This is ironic, since Nixon's early political career was largely based on attacking the Truman Administration, plus Truman long held a grudge against Nixon because Nixon supposedly called him a traitor.  On the other Presidents, Nixon is largely ambivalent: he still had hurt feelings from his time as Eisenhower's Vice-President; he did not respect Ford's post-Presidential activities (i.e., making money off of delivering speeches and playing golf); he didn't care for Carter and Carter's meddling in foreign policy after leaving the Presidency, yet he grudgingly respected Carter for building houses for the poor; he admired Reagan's leadership and considered Reagan to be a decent fellow, yet he believed that Reagan was naive about Gorbachev, that Reagan's domestic policies lacked compassion, and that Reagan wasn't very professional when sleeping during cabinet meetings (Nixon was careful in expressing his opinions about Reagan to Monica because her ideology was highly influenced by the Reagan Presidency); and he felt that Bush I was too nice and not tough enough.

What Nixon said about Kennedy disappointed me somewhat, since I want to like Kennedy, who often came across as someone who was funny and likable, and who did not take himself too seriously.  (It's like what Peter Griffin said about Sarah Silverman on Family Guy: he wants to like her, so he hopes she's a nice person!)  According to Nixon, both John and Bobby Kennedy were often mean and rude to the help.  My impression from things I have read and seen on TV is that Nixon tried to be courteous to the help.  In the movies Nixon and Frost vs. Nixon, his character is kind to his butler: he chats with the butler and has listened to the butler's stories.  In either Six Crises or his memoirs (I forget which), Nixon criticizes high officials in the Soviet establishment for seeing themselves as such men of the people, when they ignored the help, as if the help were mere furniture.  There may be more sides to Nixon than this: Whether or not Nixon was kind to the help, Ambrose narrates that Nixon alienated his staff due to his temper!  But Nixon's humble roots may have influenced him to try to be kind to the help.

I was somewhat intrigued by Nixon's opinions on Oliver Stone's JFK in Monica's book, not only because I love the movie, but also because Oliver Stone's Nixon seemed to imply that Nixon suspected that the Bay of Pigs fiasco unleashed forces (anti-Castro forces) that led to Kennedy's assassination.  Reportedly, even Nixon's aide, H.R. Haldeman, thought that Nixon was referring to the Kennedy assassination when he (Nixon) expressed fears that the FBI investigation into Watergate could "open up the whole Bay of Pigs thing" (see here).  But, in Monica's book, Nixon essentially says that Stone doesn't know what he's talking about in JFK, that a lone-gunman killed Kennedy, and that (contrary to Stone's thesis) Kennedy was actually escalating the war in Vietnam, not planning to withdraw.

I'll close this post by quoting something profound that Monica says on page xii:

"My four years with President Nixon were not White House years, vice presidential years, or years in Congress.  They were the last of the post-presidency years.  What Nixon had accomplished during his years in power determined how others would judge him; what he did during his final years out of power would determine how he ultimately saw himself."