Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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 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.

Nixon's Shadow 8

I finished David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image.  In this post, I'd like to comment on Greenberg's discussion of three books about Richard Nixon.  The first two I have read, and the third is one that I am thinking about reading.

1.  Well, actually, the first book will be two books: the ones by Monica Crowley about her time working for Nixon during the 1990's.  On pages 299-300, Greenberg states:

"A final challenge to Nixon's reputation as a wise man came, ironically, from a book that aspired to showcase Nixon's acumen.  In 1996 and 1998, Nixon's former assistant Monica Crowley published two volumes of her conversations with her own boss as she recollected them.  Crowley understood that Americans still craved a glimpse of the 'real' Nixon behind his public facades; by reprinting Nixon's comments to her about Watergate, politics, and world affairs, she hoped to humanize him and to show off his wisdom.  But to many readers Nixon's undifferentiated remarks, from everyday chatter about the 1992 election to freshman-level musings about various political philosophers, came across as embarrassingly banal.  Instead of peeking into the mind of a visionary, readers found themselves eavesdropping on an elderly kibitzer.  If Crowley had hoped to highlight Nixon's mastery of geopolitics, the president's old friend Len Garment thought, her gambit backfired.  Her books, he said, showed Nixon 'at his worst:....craven, pompous, vain, vindictive, and, most unforgivably, silly...'"

I actually thought that Monica's books about Nixon were pretty good.  I wouldn't say that Nixon particularly impressed me in those books, for he did come across as rather vain and petty.  (I did admire him, however, for standing up for his wife after she died and some of the articles about her were negative, for, as Nixon said, Pat didn't ask to be in public life.)  On whether Nixon's political or philosophical insights were "banal" or "freshman-level," well, I can't say: they're probably better than anything I can come up with, and they don't seem to me to be any more banal than other things that I have read.  To be candid, I have read plenty of good books, but I am rarely blown away by people's attempts to be profound.

What I liked most about Monica's books was their description of Nixon the man.  One of the saddest parts of her Nixon in Winter was on page 338, when Nixon got into Monica's car, but he was afraid to go home to see his sick, dying wife and his children who were mourning for her.  Monica drove him around for a while, and they saw Nixon's previous home, "where Mrs. Nixon had enjoyed better health and happier times with her family and death had not loomed as immediately as it now did."  I thought that Monica effectively captured Nixon's vulnerability in the final years of his life.

2.  Greenberg has a chapter about revisionist historians who interpreted President Nixon as a liberal on domestic policy, and, on pages 328-329, he discusses where Stephen Ambrose comes out on that in Ambrose's Nixon trilogy:

"As it turned out, Ambrose's three-volume biography didn't deal with Nixon's social policies much at all...Hewing to the familiar narrative, Ambrose emphasized Watergate and foreign policy more than domestic affairs.  And despite his comments at Hofstra, his judgment of Nixon's domestic policies echoed the journalists of Nixon's own day: 'On the domestic side, Nixon has no claim to greatness,' Ambrose wrote.  '...Nixon might have achieved that level of accomplishment in a number of areas, such as welfare reform, or national health insurance for all, or government reorganization, or revenue sharing, but in each case he failed.'

"In the closing paragraphs of his final volume, Ambrose turned sentimental...Ambrose concluded his trilogy with a ringing endorsement of Nixon's presidency that was informed by the conservatism of the Reagan years.  'Because Nixon resigned,' Ambrose wrote of the man he once hated, 'what the country got was not the Nixon Revolution but the Reagan Revolution.  It got massive, unbelievable deficits.  It got Iran-contra.  It got the savings and loan scandals.  It got millions of homeless and gross favoritism for the rich....When Nixon resigned, we lost more than we gained.'...Ambrose seemed disinclined to end his biography on a bitter note and, by appending his fond summary, inched his judgment toward the revisionist camp."

I thought that Greenberg left out the best passage in volume 3 of Ambrose's Nixon that reflects some attempt at Nixon revisionism.  On pages 596-597, Ambrose states:

"It was Nixon's advocacy of such programs as student loans and grants and national health insurance for all that most infuriated conservatives like the Buckley brothers.  As did the liberals, the conservatives always assigned to Nixon the worst motives; in this case, the conservatives charged that Nixon was trying to pander to the liberals to save his own skin.  That hardly seems fair.  By the time he was pushing these proposals, in early 1974, Nixon knew that he had no liberal supporters left.  He knew his fate rested with the conservatives in Congress.  Nevertheless he made the proposals.  Would it be too much to suggest that Richard Nixon, who grew up in near-poverty conditions because of the crushing medical expenses his family had to pay and who could attend college only on scholarship, made these proposals because he believed in them?"

That is an excellent question, within a beautiful and a thought-provoking passage.  But I thought the same thing as Greenberg as I was reading Ambrose's revisionistic stance near the end of the Nixon trilogy: it did not fit all that well with the rest of Ambrose's biography.  Ambrose in the first volume of his trilogy does depict Nixon as somewhat progressive on racial issues, but, overall, his trilogy did not strike me as a glowing account of Nixon's domestic policies, at least in comparison to other things that I have read.  I would have been more moved by what Ambrose said near the end had it been more consistent with the rest of the biography.

3.  One of the Nixon revisionists was scholar Joan Hoff, who wrote the book Nixon Reconsidered.  On page 336, Greenberg states the following:

"But while the list of Nixon's progressive programs ran to several pages, it still read as a laundry list; Nixon as a person hardly entered the picture.  Richard Norton Smith had criticized Nixon Reconsidered because 'process crowds out personality' in the book.  'Instead of biographical context,' he wrote, '...we get eye-glazing accounts of White House policy toward American Indians, and of the turf wars between the Council on Economic Policy and the Commission on International Trade and Investment Policy.'  Smith's boredom notwithstanding, the book's problem was not so much its purported tediousness as its sacrifice of context, flavor, and meaning.  No president, especially not Nixon, can be adequately measured as the sum total of his policy decisions, and to dwell only on policy is to reduce the president to just that.  'In pursuing her vision of Nixon without Watergate,' Smith wrote, 'Ms. Hoff comes dangerously close to giving us Nixon without Nixon.'"

I have not yet read Nixon Reconsidered, though I have looked through the book and have read bits and pieces of it.  I have been reluctant to read it because my impression is similar to that of Richard Norton Smith: that Nixon Reconsidered would be a laundry list of Nixon's progressive domestic accomplishments.  Moreover, I've feared that it would be a one-sided laundry list: that Hoff would simply list all the great things that Nixon did, without going into the disadvantages of his policies.  That, in my opinion, would be pretty boring.  But I'll still read her book at some point and see what she does.

I will say, though, that her account in her book of meeting Richard Nixon was quite remarkable.  She said that she had heard that Nixon was shifty-eyed, but that the Nixon she met looked her straight in the eye.  Moreover, from what Greenberg says, Hoff has an interesting story herself: she was part of the New Left when Nixon was President, and she was surprised as a scholar to learn about Nixon's domestic accomplishments.  I hope that her book has some personal dimension to it.  Something that I liked about her protege Dean Kotlowski's book, Nixon's Civil Rights, was that it was not just a tedious, wonky description of Nixon's civil rights policies, for it also got into Nixon the man: Nixon's attitudes about race, Nixon's relationship with Martin Luther King, Jr. and Jackie Robinson, etc.  I'm not sure if I felt that I truly knew Nixon after reading that book----it's hard for me to read any book about Nixon and to walk away concluding that I truly know him.  But I did appreciate the personal dimension in Kotlowski's book.

Nixon's Shadow 2

On pages 36-37 of Nixon's Shadow: The History of An Image, David Greenberg describes the phenomenon of Nixon-hating in the 1950's:

"With liberal Democrats blazing the way, many Americans came to regard Nixon as a singularly dark and dangerous presence in national life.  And while the hatred had an ideological component, there was far more to it.  Nixon's detractors viewed him as categorically different from other partisan foes.  'All the time I've been in politics,' Harry Truman told his biographer, 'there's only two people I hate, and he's one.'  Adlai Stevenson said Nixon was the sole public figure he ever 'really loathed' and once, upon hearing Nixon's name at a party, exclaimed, 'Please!  Not while I'm eating!'  Eleanor Roosevelt, a biographer wrote, considered Nixon 'the politician she most detested.'  Dean Acheson thought just two or three others as odious.  Averell Harriman once stalked out of a swanky Georgetown dinner party----the kind where Democrats, Republicans, and reporters normally mixed with ease----because he spied Nixon sitting nearby.  'I will not break bread with that man!' the diplomat boomed before exiting.  And John F. Kennedy, speaking to The New Yorker's Washington correspondent Richard Rovere, called his 1960 presidential opponent a 'son of a bitch' and a 'bastard.'"

Why was Richard Nixon so despised?  Nixon asked Monica Crowley this question, according to Monica's second book about Nixon, Nixon in Winter.  Nixon believed it was because of his role as a Congressman in exposing Alger Hiss as a spy for the Soviets, for Hiss was a darling of the liberal establishment.  But David Greenberg does not buy that, for Greenberg says on page 44 that "many liberals and journalists had sided with" Nixon on the Hiss case.  Stephen Ambrose a couple of times in his Nixon trilogy (particularly volume 2) takes Nixon to task for his persecution complex, arguing that Nixon brought some of that persecution on himself.

Greenberg goes into the antagonistic view of Nixon held by many 1950's liberals.  According to a number of 1950's liberals, Greenberg narrates, Nixon was unprincipled and shady, and also dangerous because he could exploit the mass media (i.e., television, as in his Checkers Speech) to sucker the masses.  They regarded Nixon's common-man persona as phony.  They noted that Nixon was a ruthless campaigner----perhaps "demagogue" would be an appropriate word for how they characterized his campaign strategy.  They didn't think that Nixon was genteel or personable enough.  And yet, they still regarded him as a more sophisticated version of Joe McCarthy.

Nixon in Winter 10

I finished Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter, which is about Monica's time working for Richard Nixon in the 1990's.

My latest reading covered a lot of ground, but here are some items that I noticed:

----Monica says that Nixon was a voracious reader, and she discusses her conversations with him about political theory, as Nixon interacted with the thoughts of Plato, Aristotle, Machiavelli, Locke, Rousseau, and others.  I identified with what Nixon said about Hegel: "Most of the time I can't make out a...thing in this stuff, but once in a while I come across something that makes sense" (page 353).  I feel that way about certain books, myself: I may have a hard time understanding them, but they have a jewel here and there.

----Monica talks about Richard Nixon's relationship with his wife Pat.  She portrays it as a relationship of tenderness and mutual consideration.  And, to be honest, I believe Monica on this.  I've read plenty of books that depict Richard and Pat's marriage to each other quite negatively: I've read that Nixon was dismissive of Pat (and a few authors even say he was abusive), that Pat dressed Nixon down in public, that Nixon and Pat hadn't made love with each other in years, etc.  But it wouldn't surprise me if they still had some mutual respect and affection for each other that grew over the years.  And maybe their relationship was better after Nixon left the political arena and could spend more time with her (though he continued to participate in the political arena as an elder statesman).

----I enjoyed reading about Nixon's Halloween party in his lawn, which he opened up to people on Halloween.  Nixon saw a guy wearing a Richard Nixon mask, and Nixon said to him, "Hello, Mr. President!"  As Nixon looked at the party and saw people wearing Nixon and Reagan masks, Nixon remarked to Monica that he never saw that many Presidents in one place in his life!

----Monica's narration of Nixon's response to his wife's sickness and death was sad and highlighted Nixon's humanity and vulnerability.

----Monica appears to portray Nixon as one who was racing against death, who perhaps was hoping to cheat death by keeping active (through writing books and articles, visiting foreign countries, etc.), or was trying to accomplish as much as he could before he died.  But people Nixon loved, respected, or knew----Pat, John Connally, H.R. Haldeman, Tip O'Neill, etc.----were dying around him.  Monica said that Nixon's career, even his life, was characterized by him making comebacks after experiencing setbacks.  Monica even goes back to when Nixon fell out of a buggy at a very young age and got back up again, an incident that some like to mention in attempting to account for Nixon's insecurity, but which Monica highlights as an example of his tenacity.  But Nixon could not make a comeback after death, Monica notes (though the possibility of an afterlife comes up in her book at least once).

----Monica portrays Nixon as somewhat of a scapegoat.  On page 407, she states: "In order to justify both his removal from office in view of our failure to hold others to the same high ethical standards and our provision of excuses for them where we would allow none for Nixon, we have told ourselves repeatedly that we did the right thing to him.  [T]he relentless attack on him, even as others commit crimes as egregious and are allowed to survive, has evolved into a national psychological exercise aimed at convincing ourselves that our recent history is not as damaging as it seems----and that it was solely Nixon's fault...In him, we found a receptacle for all of our self-hatred and misguided upheaval.  In his wrongdoing, we found shelter from our own."

----In light of that passage on page 407, I should say a word or two about Nixon's responses to scandals in Monica's book.  A lot of times, it is Nixon whining about how the Republicans get the shaft while the Democrats get away with immoralities.  Nixon and Monica talked about the issue of sexual harassment during the Clarence Thomas hearings and the Bob Packwood scandal, and, while Monica was explaining to Nixon why sexual harassment was wrong, Nixon's focus seemed to be on partisanship: how Democrats did the same things that Republicans were being criticized for doing, yet it was a scandal when Republicans did them.  (Monica does discuss other things that Nixon asked about sexual harassment, however, such as what it was, how it could be proved, etc.)  That just gets old after a while.  Shouldn't our focus be on what is right and what is wrong, and why, rather than the double-standards that exist in the world?

At the same time, Monica in her book does discuss the degeneration of standards in American politics: that politicians in the past did not get by with the things that politicians today get by with.  An affair sank Gary Hart, but not Bill Clinton.  And Monica on page 320 mentions Iran-Contra and how that was not as big of a deal to many Americans as Watergate was.  Remember that Iran-Contra was a Republican scandal.  There is still arguably a double-standard: as Nixon said, Iran-Contra was no worse than Kennedy going over Congress' head and attempting to overthrow Castro, yet Kennedy is rarely criticized for that.  But there's something more going on than Republicans getting the shaft for things that the Democrats do, too: there is a degeneration going on.  (NOTE: there is more to Monica's argument, so I may not be characterizing it with complete accuracy.  She talks about how "Personal character was deemed less important to the responsible execution of public duties while political character was still expected to be unimpeachable."  She also criticizes certain ethics laws as unrealistic in light of human nature.  Still, my impression is that she does portray a degeneration going on, and she contends that Nixon was in some way a scapegoat for the country's moral failings.)

Nixon in Winter 9

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Nixon in Winter 8

On page 289 of Nixon in Winter, Monica Crowley relates a discussion that she had with Richard Nixon about his course language on his presidential tapes:

Nixon: "I'll tell you, and this may seem like a minor thing compared to the other things on the tapes, but the criticism about my course language bothers me, and it bothers Mrs. Nixon.  If you could have spent five minutes with Johnson or Kennedy, your ears would've curled.  All presidents swear, and everyone acted like I was the first one."

Monica: "That's because we can hear you doing it, but we can't hear the others."

Nixon: "I know.  But it bothers Mrs. Nixon because I don't use that kind of language with her.  I don't use it with you...Well, maybe sometimes."

Stephen Ambrose in Nixon: Ruin and Recovery argues that Nixon's language on the tapes was not all that bad, and that those who made a big deal about Nixon's foul language were blowing it out of proportion.  Nixon's language on the tapes shocked his friend Billy Graham, but that's probably because Graham had high standards, due to his religiosity.  A high school history teacher of mine said that many Americans were shocked by Nixon's language because they believed that Nixon was religious.  That could be.  Or did they believe that such language was unbecoming on the part of the President?

I'm just writing from memory, which may be distorted, but I recall hearing Monica Crowley say about ten years ago on the radio that Nixon never said anything racist or anti-Semitic in her presence.  I think that she was trying to defend Nixon (even though, in her book, she offered a more nuanced portrait of the man; in my reading thus far, she doesn't address anti-Semitism, however, but other issues).  But Nixon did say things that were anti-Semitic and racist on the tapes.  And, to be fair, he also asserted that he was not anti-Semitic on the tapes.  But my point is that Monica can't judge Nixon's entire character by what he said in her presence.  Similarly, I don't think that Nixon's entire character should be judged by what he said on the tapes, for Nixon did good things.

Nixon in Winter 7

My latest reading of Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter was about Nixon's discussions regarding the Gulf War in the 1990's.  I have two items.

1.  Why did Iraq invade Kuwait?  I appreciated Monica's background information on page 218:

"The foundation for the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait was laid during Iraq's eight-year war with Iran.  By the war's end, in 1988, Iraq owed more than fifty billion dollars to other Arab states and Western banks.  Kuwait had lent Hussein fifteen billion dollars, and most of the borrowed money was spent on augmenting Iraq's military machine.  Hussein had demanded that Kuwait write off its massive war loan to Iraq and help increase the world price of oil by not pumping in excess of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) quotas.  This excess, coupled with a general international oil glut, had lowered world prices and had, according to Hussein, caused Iraq to lose fourteen billion dollars in oil revenues.  He went searching inside the Kuwaiti border for oil, claiming that the reserves belonged to Iraq."

A lot of the information that Monica presents here overlaps with what conservative Charley Reese said in a November 18, 1990 column, even though Monica and Reese probably had different viewpoints about the Gulf War (my hunch is that Monica supported it, whereas I know that Reese was against it).  Both talk about Kuwait releasing oil into the market in a manner that would reduce the price of oil, thereby hindering Iraq from getting the oil revenue that it needed to recoup from its 1980's war with Iran.  And both mention the idea that Kuwait took oil reserves that belonged to Iraq.  Monica appears to be skeptical that this was the case, but Reese out-and-out states that "the Kuwaitis had advanced the border farther north and begun to take Iraqi oil."  Reese argues that Kuwait was acting so boldly because it realized that it would be backed up by the United States, as part of a strategy to destabilize Iraq's government.

Reese's column was in my local newspaper when I was a kid.  I remember that November 18, 1990 column as the first time that I encountered a different perspective on the Gulf War.  Granted, I was already aware that there were people who were against Operation Desert Shield.  They claimed that the war was about oil, and they expressed apprehensions about another Vietnam.  But Reese was the first person I read who explained Saddam Hussein's side of the story in terms of his invasion of Kuwait.

2.  A question that I have asked a couple of times on this blog is whether or not Nixon would have supported the Iraq War under President George W. Bush (see here and here).  My impression from reading Monica's account of her discussions with Nixon about the first Gulf War is that Nixon indeed would have supported the Iraq War.  Monica doesn't address this topic, of course, since this book was published in 1998, before George W. Bush was even President.  But she states that Nixon wanted for President George H.W. Bush to remove Saddam Hussein from power, and that Nixon called upon Bush to do so.  She also narrates that Nixon thought that Bush I and his Secretary of State, James Baker, were not acting quickly or decisively, but were spending too much time relying on diplomacy.

Nixon in Winter 6

On page 206 of Nixon in Winter, Monica Crowley relates the following discussion that she had with Richard Nixon about China:

"'Some want the United States to build a universal culture,' I said.

"[Nixon] turned to me, horrified.  'You mean like Americanize everything?...That's not only wrong, that's a crime.'

"'I heard from somebody in Guangzhou that when the Chinese decided to build the hotel we stayed in, they brought in an American manager, who gave all the Chinese workers American names because it was easier for him,' I said.

"Nixon's jaw dropped.  'No!  Why, that's...insulting!  I can't believe it.  Who did he think he was?  Coming over here, to one of the strongest, richest, oldest, proudest cultures in the world and stripping them of their identity?...That's bad,' he said, shaking his head.  'Nobody should let that happen: not us, and not the Chinese."

This passage reminded me of two things.  First of all, it called to my mind Nixon's aversion to colonialism.  I can't make a blanket statement about this, for Nixon in a speech in Great Britain (which he included in his book, Six Crises----see here) praised colonialism, and Nixon was quite critical of President Dwight Eisenhower's anti-colonialist policy of refusing to assist Britain, France, and Israel in going after Egypt after Egyptian President Nasser nationalized the oil in the Suez.  But, in reading Nixon's memoirs and other books, Nixon does strike me as someone who sincerely tried to understand the perspectives of other countries, including their aversion to colonialism.  Nixon was also critical of solely treating the Third World as a battleground for the Cold War.  People can argue about whether Nixon was sufficiently anti-colonial or empathetic towards other countries----or if he even was those things at all.  (He certainly had a record of supporting U.S. intervention in other countries.)  All I'm saying is that I'm not surprised that he would be horrified by the view that America should Americanize the world, or by an American manager who gave Chinese workers American names.

Second, I thought of Nixon's overall love for China.  Nixon's respect for the Chinese people shines through in his memoirs and also his 1980 book, The Real War.  Moreover, on page 539 of Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, Stephen Ambrose says the following about Nixon during the 1980's: "He hosted dinners----stag, intimate, off-the-record affairs for the opinion makers...The dinner was invariably Chinese.  (Nixon's love affair with China was ongoing.  His home was decorated in a Chinese motif; his house servants were a Chinese couple; his bookcases carried works on Chinese history. Chinese art, Chinese politics.)"

Nixon in Winter 5

For my blog post today about Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter, I'll quote something that Monica says on page 149:

"During the first week in February, Nixon and I did a final edit of Beyond Peace, the two main themes of which were brought to the fore by the end of the cold war: the need to support Russia and the need for the United States to define a new mission for itself.  On February 9, he read the entire manuscript 'cover to cover, and I'm delighted.  It's really something.  It pulls no punches.  I can't believe I'm saying this after almost tossing it out the window, but I think it's good.  I really do.  But I won't read it again.  I never do after turning it in.  You think, 'Why didn't I do this differently?'  I'm not into second-guessing.'"

This reminded me of an interaction I had a while back with a student who had been at West Point.  We had to write a paper for a class, and he was giving me tips on how to write a paper.  At the time, I didn't think that I really needed advice on how to write a paper, for I wrote papers as an undergraduate and also at the previous graduate institution where I had studied.  But I actually found this student's advice to be helpful.  It had been months since I had written a paper, so getting back into the game was slightly intimidating, and this student's advice was a sort of compass for me.  And it was good advice: get out what you want to say, regardless of how it sounds.  Later, read what you wrote----and you'll probably see that what you wrote was not half bad, even though you might want to phrase things differently, in areas.  I'd probably add that there are cases in which what one wrote may need more dramatic restructuring than that!  But that doesn't mean that the first draft was a waste of time, for what one wrote there can be useful for subsequent drafts.

Nixon in Winter 4

For my blog post today about Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter, I'll highlight something on page 110.  Richard Nixon, Monica Crowley, and Joseph Crowley (Nixon's private security escort) are in Moscow in the 1990's, walking around the grounds of the guesthouse.  Nixon tells Monica that, if she wants to talk in Russia, she has to do so outside, due to bugging.  Monica asks, "Even in a newly democratic Russia?", and Nixon laughingly responds, "I know about bugging.  Democracies are the worst!"  Monica then narrates:

"Since [Nixon] had wanted to think about the next day's meeting with Yeltsin, we walked the rest of the way in silence.  Crowley and I tossed some snowballs at each other, narrowly missing the former president, who bent down, made a snowball of his own and lobbed it at us."  Nixon then said, "Enough fun and games", and proceeded to talk with Monica about her tasks in Russia.

I liked this part, for it shows Nixon playing!  Is this believable?  Well, on the one hand, Stephen Ambrose depicts Nixon as somewhat of a stuffed shirt.  Nixon often wore a tie, even when he was at home.  Nixon said that his friend Bebe Rebozo addressed him as "Mr. President."  Nixon was not that big on watching TV.  Some of the things that Monica says about Nixon are consistent with this picture (though she doesn't call Nixon a stuffed shirt, and neither, for that matter, does Ambrose, even though he portrays Nixon as the serious type).  On the other hand, Nixon did enjoy the company of his grandchildren.  And Nixon was also competitive and loved sports.  That being the case, I can easily picture Nixon lobbing a snowball after being nearly hit!  And maybe, just maybe, Nixon loosened up and played more in his older years, at least sometimes!

Nixon in Winter 3

What stood out to me in my latest reading of Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter was something that Nixon said on pages 71-72, about a speech that he gave concerning the Soviet Union when he was campaigning for U.S. Senate candidate Christine Todd Whitman in New Jersey:

"'A speech is a conversation----remember that.  It's important that you connect with the audience even if they have no idea what you are talking about.  It's hard to talk about, say, Soviet reform with people who are not clued in to it as well as you are.  It's hard to bring your arguments down to a level they can understand.  It's not that they're not smart; it's just that foreign policy isn't their bag.  And it's hard to simplify it when it's your bag.  But you've got to do it, or you're going to lose them."

What Nixon tried to highlight to the American people and their leaders during the 1990's was the importance of aiding Yeltsin and the development of a free market economy in Russia.  Otherwise, ultra-conservatives could take over in Russia, launching a new Cold War, which would effect Americans because of the money that it would take to wage it.

Foreign policy is not exactly my bag.  Nixon thought that foreign policy was more interesting than domestic policy, and I can understand why one would feel that way.  There's arguably more to know when it comes to foreign policy----there are more countries, more cultures, more histories, more economies.  When one studies domestic policy, however, he or she is looking at only one country: the United States.  And yet, then again, come to think of it, there's a lot to learn when it comes to domestic policy, too: the policies of the various 50 states, how a proposal would impact different people, a proposal's positives and negatives, and the question of whether or not the U.S. can successfully apply ideas that other countries have tried (i.e., national health insurance).

For some reason, I'm more interested in domestic policy than I am in foreign policy.  I'm not sure why.  Perhaps it's because it affects me.  And yet, even when I was a child and was not entirely clear about how public policies affected me personally, I was still more interested in domestic policy than foreign policy.
At the same time, I do enjoy reading what Nixon has to say about foreign policy, for he's a lucid thinker and an engaging writer.

What Nixon said about trying to break things down caught my eye, too, since that is a challenge for me.  Often, when I make a point, it can easily come across as a bunch of verbiage.  What I need to work on is breaking things down for my audience, which is smart (in fact, smarter than me on a lot of things), but which wants to hear things in an accessible manner.

Nixon in Winter 2

On page 49 of Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter, Richard Nixon tells Monica Crowley about a recent interaction that he had with George McGovern, who was his opponent in the 1972 Presidential election:

"'Well, I'm sure you know about the McGovern thing,' [Nixon] said...'On the shuttle home, I was reading before we took off and I heard somebody say to Jerry [Rosalia, his security escort for that day], 'I know that guy!'  Well, it turned out to be [George] McGovern.  So after we took off, I had Jerry see if he had an empty seat next to him, and we had a nice talk.  He was thinking about running in '92, damn fool!  But he was always a very decent guy.  He at least had the guts to stand up for what he believed in, not like the current bunch of clowns.'"

I loved this passage for a couple of reasons.  First of all, Nixon was not very positive about McGovern in his memoirs, even though Nixon could speak highly of some of his political opponents.  Nixon considered McGovern to be sanctimonious and lacking in leadership qualities, and he resented McGovern's attacks on him during the 1972 campaign.  I'm pleased to see that Nixon came to have a more positive view about McGovern.  And, according to this wikipedia article, which appeals to an article about McGovern by William Greider, McGovern came to have a positive view about Nixon: "George McGovern, Nixon's onetime opponent, commented in 1983, 'President Nixon probably had a more practical approach to the two superpowers, China and the Soviet Union, than any other president since World War II ... With the exception of his inexcusable continuation of the war in Vietnam, Nixon really will get high marks in history.'"

Second, this passage reminded me of a passage in volume 3 of Stephen Ambrose's trilogy on Nixon, a passage that I loved but did not write about.  Ambrose said that Nixon respected the anti-war protesters because at least they were in the arena, unlike a number of rich people.  Nixon spoke against the anti-war protesters when he was President, but he still respected that they were standing up for what they believed.

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: Ruin and Recovery 1

I started Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990.  This is the third volume of Ambrose's trilogy on Richard Nixon.

This volume will talk a lot about the Watergate scandal.  For my blog post today, I'll use as my starting-point something that Ambrose says on page 10:

"This is a play that does not edify or enlighten or uplift.  There is no moral lesson to be learned from a play in which many of the characters, much of the time, are rotters.  Yet there is a hero...That hero is the American system of justice, as embodied in the Constitution."

To be honest with you, the Watergate scandal does not particularly interest me.  I'm doing a Year (or More) of Nixon, in which I read and blog through books about Richard Nixon.  But I don't have a great desire to read about Watergate.  I have John Dean's book, Blind Ambition, but I don't particularly want to read it (at least not anytime soon).  I also have G. Gordon Liddy's autobiography Will, which probably won't be on my Year (or More) of Nixon reading list.  I could order books by the key players in the Nixon Administration for a fairly cheap price----by H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, and the list goes on.  I could also order Judge Sirica's book about Watergate.  But I'm just not interested in the details of Watergate.

I do plan to read a couple of books about Watergate, though.  I was debating about reading Silent Coup, but I've decided to read it at some point in my Year (or More) of Nixon.  From what I've heard about it, the book's thesis is quite edgy, but it was praised by Roger Morris (who wrote a renowned book about Nixon), and John Mitchell (Nixon's friend and one of his Attorneys General) apparently thought that the book was on to something.  And, looking at Monica Crowley's Nixon in Winter, Nixon himself seemed to have taken Silent Coup seriously, on some level.  So I might as well read it!  It must be more than tabloid-type speculation!  I'm also planning to read The Final Days, by Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  One reason is that I tried to read this book as a kid, and (while I enjoyed the book) I did not finish it.  I like to read books that I tried to read as a kid but did not get through.  That's what I did with Richard Nixon's Six Crises!  Second, Woodward and Bernstein have excellent prose.  I just have to read The Final Days!

In reading Nixon's memoirs, I did not like reading and blogging about Watergate.  Nixon had interesting insights in his discussion of the scandal: his struggle to find a coherent narrative of what actually happened, and how we may not recognize the significance of what we are doing while we are in a particular situation, as opposed to looking at it in a big-picture or retrospective sense.  But, overall, his discussion of the Watergate scandal bored me.

Why?  I think it's because there were no heroes in it, which is the point that Ambrose makes.  Even in Nixon's own account, he did not come off smelling like a rose.  And, although I didn't care for Nixon's complaining about the hypocrisy of those who were going after him, that sort of talk did convince me of one thing: I didn't consider Nixon's persecutors to be heroes, either!  Do I consider the American system of justice to be the hero?  Well, I've been inspired when I've heard that point on documentaries: that the American system was stable and went on, even though the President resigned.  There is something inspiring whenever the American system is based on law rather than the whims of the powerful.  But I don't need to read that point over and over again.

Watergate was a tragedy.  It was an unhappy ordeal.  It's depressing to read about.  I'd like to think highly of Nixon, since I identify with his introversion and think that he did some pretty remarkable things.  But he really dropped the ball with Watergate.

But there may be a silver lining in this third volume of Ambrose's book: that Nixon (on some level) recovered from the Watergate scandal.  I like what Ambrose says on page 10:

"Incredibly, unbelievably, he does come back.  Were this really a play, instead of real life, the story would end with his resignation.  But Nixon is Nixon.  There is no one else like him for refusing to quit, for plotting and executing comebacks, for winning redemption, for self-resurrection.  Within a decade and a half of his resignation, he had not only become America's elder statesman but was threatening to become America's beloved elder statesman."

Ambrose concludes his Forward with "I have loved writing this book."  That's one reason for me to read it, even if I'm not particularly interested in Watergate: Ambrose loves his subject matter, and that really shows in his writing.