Kennedy & Nixon 6

On pages 206-207 of Kennedy & Nixon, Chris Matthews tells an anecdote about President John F. Kennedy’s reaction to Richard Nixon’s book, Six Crises:

“Yet [Nixon's] bitterness was thinly disguised. ‘My little daughter, Tricia, says she doesn’t blame the people who voted for Kennedy,’ he said.  ‘She blames the ones who counted the votes in Chicago.’  When his memoirs, which he entitled Six Crises, were published in the spring of 1962, he quoted his younger daughter Julie on the 1960 election count.  ‘Can’t we still win?  Why can’t we have a recount in Chicago?’ he recalls her asking him every day from the election until Kennedy’s inauguration.  Kennedy got the message.  When Ben Bradlee asked Kennedy if he had read the book, he got a testy answer.  ‘Just the 1960 campaign stuff, and that’s all I’m going to read.  I can’t stand the way he puts everything in Tricia’s mouth.  It makes me sick…’”

Lol.  I probably shouldn’t laugh at that, but I do find it funny.  Nixon was trying to appear above the fray: as one who wouldn’t demand a recount but would put his own misgivings aside for the good of the country.  Yet, Nixon was rather bitter, thinking that Kennedy unfairly stole the 1960 election.  Kennedy thought that Nixon put his own resentment into Tricia’s mouth in Six Crises.  I doubt that Nixon did that, for Tricia may have very well had those sentiments.  But I do think that Nixon mentioning these sentiments was transparent and passive-aggressive, on his part.

The Ends of Power 11

On page 367 of The Ends of Power, H.R. Haldeman (with Joseph DiMona) refers to President Richard Nixon’s exhortation to Haldeman to read Nixon’s book, Six Crises, especially the part of the book’s introduction in which Nixon talks about the agony of trying to make a decision, and the peace that comes after the decision is made.

Do I feel fine after I have made a decision?  Overall, I’d say yes.  We’re often presented with imperfect options in life, and we find that we have to choose one of them.  When I resolve to pick one of them, notwithstanding the problems in my choice, I feel all right.

One area in which this is a challenge, however, is religious faith.  I don’t feel good waffling among belief in God, agnosticism, and atheism, but I also don’t feel good within any of those options.  Within atheism, I feel hopeless.  Within theism, I feel as if I’m turning off my mind for the sake of naivety and embracing a God who doesn’t fully accept me because I fall short of his standards.  Within agnosticism, I feel rudderless and without a solid foundation.  There are times when I feel good just ignoring religious issues altogether.  “Why fret?” I wonder.  “Just enjoy life right now.”  But there are times when I think that I need a solid foundation, or a divine friend to lean on.  I’m just not sure if I can find answers in evangelical Christianity, or even the mainline versions of Christianity.

NOTE: I'm not saying that everyone who believes in God is naive, shuts off his or her mind, or embraces a God who conditions his acceptance on people's obedience to his commandments.  I'm talking more about where I am right now, and how I read the Bible, than I am about other people's faith.  

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 4

In my latest reading of Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life, Aitken's narration of Richard Nixon's controversial 1950 Senate campaign was, well, interesting.  I have read things that try to defend Nixon's activity during that time, or at least to portray Nixon as not-so-horrible.  Irwin Gellman's The Contender is one example.  So is Richard Nixon's narration of the event in his memoirs.  And Julie Nixon Eisenhower states that both Nixon and his Democratic opponent, Helen Douglas, were harsh to one another, probably against the narrative that focuses largely on her father's attacks on Douglas.

But Aitken took this sort of pro-Nixon or Nixon sympathizing narrative to a whole new level.  He says that Douglas was worse than Nixon in terms of attacks.  Aitken also seems to imply that the infamous Pink Sheet----in which Nixon compared Douglas' voting record with that of far left Congressman Vito Marcantonio----came after Douglas' Yellow Sheet attacking Nixon and comparing his voting record with that of Marcantonio.  Aitken also departs from the typical narrative that Nixon's controversial take-no-prisoners campaign aide, Murray Chotiner, was encouraging Nixon to run a brutal Red-baiting campaign against Douglas.  According to Aitken, Chotiner was encouraging Nixon to focus on domestic issues, rather than his role in the Alger Hiss case.  But Nixon did not take Chotiner's advice, Aitken narrates.  And, against the charge that Nixon exploited anti-Semitism in his campaign (since Douglas' husband was Jewish), Aitken points out that Nixon repudiated anti-Semitism in a manner that drew praise from the Anti-Defamation League, and also that Murray Chotiner himself was Jewish.  Aitken is not completely defensive of Nixon, however, for he argues (like many biographers) that the Pink Sheet was rather misleading.

I think that Aitken raised some valid points in his discussion of the 1950 campaign, or at least points that are worthy of discussion.  Most narrations that I have read about the event appear to presume that Nixon brought up Marcantonio first, and that Douglas only compared Nixon with Marcantonio after Nixon's Pink Sheet.  But many of the narrations that I have read----even those that depict Nixon as the bad guy and Douglas as a victim----point out examples of Douglas' name-calling and attacks on her political opponents.  I doubt that she was above reproach.  Aitken does well to highlight that, and he does so in more detail than anything else I have read up to this point.  I do believe that Aitken's narrative was incomplete, however, or failed to take into account certain considerations.  Aitken, for example, notes examples of Nixon criticizing and repudiating Joseph McCarthy, but some of the other books I have read suggest that Nixon praised McCarthy in pro-McCarthy areas of California, while criticizing him in the more moderate areas of the state.

Other interesting items in my latest reading include stories about Nixon's kindnesses to others (such as his secretaries and constituents who visited him in Washington, D.C.); the account of Nixon's long-time secretary, Rose Mary Woods, that Nixon in interviewing her did not probe into her religious or political affiliations, and Woods' narration of her Catholic family's victimization at the hands of the Ku Klux Klan when she was growing up (the Klan burned crosses on her lawn); and Nixon's reliance on his religious faith in getting through the 1952 Fund controversy.  These are things that I have not found in other books by and about Nixon.  Nixon himself probably recognized the need to appear modest, so he does not harp on his kind deeds in his writings.  Nixon also expressed aversion towards wearing religion on one's sleeve, and that may explain why he does not talk much about his faith in Six Crises and his memoirs.   Regarding Rose Mary Woods' accounts, Aitken's discussion of that shows how his book is a reservoir of interviews with key people whom many did not get to interview.

Also noteworthy is Aitken's narration of Nixon's work for Dwight Eisenhower at the 1952 Republican Convention.  Like many biographers, except for Gellman, Aitken depicts Nixon as supporting Eisenhower at the convention and seeking to undermine Earl Warren's hold on the California delegates, and Aitken does so with more clarity than other narrations I have read.  In his clarity, however, Aitken does leave some things out, such as Roger Morris' claim that Nixon at the convention was pretending to support arch-conservative candidate Robert Taft to the Taftites.

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 3

For my post today about Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life, I'd like to comment on Aitken's treatment of Richard Nixon's 1946 congressional campaign and the Alger Hiss case.

1.  Aitken's biography is largely considered to be pro-Nixon, and I'd say that is mostly true in his narration of Nixon's 1946 race for Congress.  Aitken disputes that Nixon's campaign was heavily funded by wealthy special interests, for the Committee of 100 had a number of small businessmen; any oil or utility company donations to Nixon's campaign (if there were any) did not surpass $500; about a third of Nixon's $37,500 campaign budget was from the Republican National Commitee; and Nixon's budget amounted to "less than twenty cents per voter" in "an electorate of 205,000" (pages 130-131).  Aitken notes that Nixon's campaign did not "spend money on radio advertising" (page 130), and he states that, "Compared to the personally wealthy and politically well-connected Voorhis, Nixon only had shoestring campaign finances which grew to adequate but far from lavish levels" (page 131).  Against the possible charge that Nixon traded favors for contributions, Aitken states that "Indeed, there are old men living around Whittier and Alhambra who still complain about Nixon's lack of generosity to his supporters in the form of government contracts, appointments and political favours" (page 131).

While Aitken acknowledges that some right-wing rogues may have behaved irresponsibly in 1946, calling voters and telling them that  Nixon's Democratic opponent, Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, was a Communist, Aitken does not believe that Nixon was responsible for this, and Aitken states that "The evidence of these calls is of doubtful provenance, for they were never raised by an actual recipient, and only emerged as an issue some months after polling day" (page 132).  Aitken seems to imply that Nixon's charge that Voorhis was being endorsed by a Communist-infiltrated union was not particularly fair, for the hard-core leftists in the CIO opposed Voorhis due to his anti-Communism, and its sister-organization, the NC-PAC, which did endorse Voorhis, was "a milder coalition of non-union progressives with noticeably less Communist influence" (page 123).  But Aitken does not appear to buy into the prominent narrative that Nixon was exploiting fear of Communism for his political gain, for he states that Communism in 1946 was not particularly feared.  Aitken states that at the time "there was little anti-Russian hostility in the United States" and "Communism did not gain its connotations of treachery and espionage until the Hiss case of 1948 and the McCarthy era of the 1950s" (page 131).

As I compare Aitken's arguments with the narratives of Nixon critics such as Roger Morris and Anthony Summers, it is interesting to me that Aitken and Morris don't really disagree on how much Nixon spent on his campaign.  Morris states on page 337 of Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician that "Nixon backers would finally admit that the actual tallied contributions had been between $24,000 and $32,000"; Summers, however, thinks it may have been more than that, for Summers refers to a person he interviewed who claimed to have donated $10,000 to Nixon in 1946.  Contrary to Aitken's portrayal of Nixon as the financial underdog in the race, Morris notes that files in Sacramento indicate that Voorhis spent $1,928.  On the anonymous phone calls calling Voorhis a Communist, Morris refers to recipients of such calls who mentioned receiving them.  On whether Nixon traded favors for contributions, Morris highlights more than once that Nixon's political ideology and the policies that he supported were consistent with the agenda of the wealthy special interests, whether or not he gave specific favors (and those kinds of accusations----of special favors----would dog Nixon throughout his political career).

On whether or not Communism was feared in 1946, I can somewhat see Aitken's point, for America had just fought World War II alongside its ally, the Soviet Union, plus some of the events that would increase Americans' apprehension of Communism were yet to occur.  But I ultimately have a hard time accepting Aitken's argument, for it seems to me----from what I have read about the the 1946 campaign, from even Aitken's acknowledgement that there were businessmen who disliked unions because they saw them as Communist-infiltrated, from the existence of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, and simply from the very fact that Nixon was making Communism an issue in 1946----that Communism was indeed opposed and feared as early as 1946.

2.  Aitken's discussion of the Alger Hiss case is so-so.  I was disappointed that Aitken did not (as far as I could see) address the argument that the typewriter that was said to belong to Hiss was manufactured after Hiss' wife had supposedly typed those documents that Chambers was to relay to the Soviets.  Roger Morris made that argument, and Morris is in Aitken's bibliography, so Aitken should have addressed it, rather than just assuming that the typewriter was a slam-dunk that revealed Hiss' guilt.

Where Aitken's contribution to the discussion about the Hiss case is salient is on the role of Father John Cronin.  Did Father Cronin feed Nixon information about Hiss before Hiss and Chambers appeared before HUAC, or is the opposite the case, as Nixon would claim in Six Crises?  I guess why this question is important is that, if Nixon were receiving information from Cronin, he had reason to be confident about Hiss' guilt from the beginning, and his story that he executed sound judgment when others were not and placed his political career on the line is not particularly credible.  In other books, I have read that Cronin for years claimed that he fed Nixon information prior to the initial appearance of Hiss and Chambers, yet Cronin would retract that claim in the 1990's.  My impression is that Cronin allegedly retracted his long-standing claim to Aitken.  (Anthony Summers wonders how Cronin even could have retracted it, for Cronin in January 1991 “was in a home for the aged, deaf, and…unable to hold a cogent conversation”; see here).

On page 155, Aitken quotes Cronin as saying to him in 1990: "The stacked deck remark was unfair.  Nixon might have read something about Hiss in my reports, I don't know whether he did or not, but we didn't discuss the case until after Hiss had made his public denial.  From then on I worked with Nixon a lot and gave him everything I had on Hiss.  He needed that help.  He was very unsure of himself at the beginning."

Aitken has other grounds for believing that Cronin and Nixon had not discussed the case prior to Hiss' first public denial.  If Nixon had information about Hiss during Hiss' initial appearance before HUAC, why didn't Nixon challenge Hiss on that occasion, especially when so many people----even people on HUAC----were believing Hiss?  On this, perhaps one could say that Nixon was playing it cool: that Nixon didn't want to reveal his cards all at once, but preferred to wait a while, to let others buy into Hiss' act so that he (Nixon) could later step forward and be the heroic exception.

On page 158, Aitken quotes Bill Rogers, who would later serve as Dwight Eisenhower's Attorney General and as Nixon's Secretary of State.  Rogers was on the scene during the Hiss case, and he said that Nixon was initially doubtful about the case against Hiss.  So there you have the eyewitness testimony of someone who does not think that Nixon was sure from the beginning.  One question that I have, however, is whether Cronin even had intelligence information that would have made Nixon absolutely certain about Hiss' guilt.  Cronin was working with Nixon after Hiss' initial appearance, according to what Cronin said in 1990, yet my impression (and I'm open to correction on this) is that Nixon even in that time was not completely certain about Hiss' guilt.  (Hiss first testified on August 5, 1948, and Rogers met Nixon five days later, which was supposedly the time when Nixon was unsure about the case.  I guess the question is when Cronin started to work with Nixon----was it in the five days in between?)

Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 1

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 8

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

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

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

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

Fawn Brodie's Richard Nixon: The Shaping of His Character 4

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

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

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

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

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

Reinventing Richard Nixon 1

I started Daniel Frick's Reinventing Richard Nixon: A Cultural History of an American Obsession.

My latest reading was about how Richard Nixon's story about himself reflected rags-to-riches stories in American culture.  There was Benjamin Franklin's autobiography, in which Benjamin Franklin goes to a city and is all alone, with only a few loaves of bread to eat, and yet Franklin manages to make a success of himself.  There were Horatio Alger novels, which portrayed street urchins who rose to a position of middle-class respectability.  And there were Dale Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People and Norman Vincent Peale's The Power of Positive Thinking, which essentially communicated that people could attain success by having the right attitude and by practicing certain strategies.

Nixon depicted himself as one who got ahead through hard work.  There was a rugged individualistic tone to Six Crises; for example, Nixon portrayed himself as the main protagonist in the Alger Hiss case, as he chose not to reveal that Father Cronin fed him information about Alger Hiss before Hiss even appeared before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC).  (Cronin would deny in 1990 that this was the case, after years of saying otherwise, but Frick notes that Cronin even in that particular interview says that he helped Nixon out.  I should also note that Anthony Summers, on page 490 of The Arrogance of Power, asks how Cronin was even able to retract his long-standing claim in 1990, for Cronin in January 1991 "was in a home for the aged, deaf, and...unable to hold a cogent conversation.")  Even later, Nixon would portray himself as a lone sage.  A 1972 campaign poster showed an apparently solitary Nixon staring outside of a White House window; the thing is, that picture originally had Henry Kissinger standing close to Nixon and speaking to him, but Kissinger got cropped out of that picture in the campaign poster.

Frick acknowledges that there was more nuance in the rags-to-riches motif from which Nixon may have been drawing.  Benjamin Franklin and a protagonist in one of the Horatio Alger novels, for instance, needed outside support, for some prominent people helped Franklin out of debt, and the Horatio Alger protagonist advanced after he saved a prominent man's son from drowning.  They didn't get ahead all by themselves.  I would add that Dale Carnegie's book presumes that people need others, which is why one might want to win friends and influence people.  (Carnegie himself, however, says that he's presenting a way of life of giving to people, not merely a strategy to get ahead.)  Frick likens the Nixon narrative to Westerns, in which a lone hero comes forward and saves the day.

The narrative that Nixon rose through hard work came into play at Nixon's funeral, as Bob Dole said that Nixon got ahead by working longer and harder than anyone else.  According to Frick, Dole was depicting America as a land of opportunity, in which anyone could get ahead, and he was tying Nixon with Americanism.  But Frick says that some might have deemed even Dole's comments to be divisive.  Nixon arguably started his political career by portraying his opponent as insufficiently patriotic.  Was Dole doing something similar, by implying that being a patriotic American coincided with appreciating Richard Nixon as one who epitomized American values?  Frick notes later in the book that Richard Nixon's Six Crises came out at around the same time as Michael Harrington's book on poverty, entitled The Other America, and also Betty Friedan's The Feminine Mystique.  Is Frick implying that there was a growing acknowledgment that things were not as rosy in America as Nixon was indicating in Six Crises: that America was not a place where everyone could get ahead through hard work?  (That's not to suggest that Harrington and Friedan were responding to Six Crises.)

On the topic of getting ahead through hard work, I see some value in that narrative.  I agree with the Puritan Frick quotes who asked how one could go to sleep at night without having done a hard days work.  I'm all for working hard and persevering because that increases the chance of me arriving at success.  What I don't like is people appealing to that narrative to imply that everyone who is poor is somehow at fault, for there are plenty of people who are poor yet work long and hard.  I one time read a conservative friend of mine appeal to his father's folksy wisdom about being a hard-working employee in arguing that the minimum wage should not be increased.  I agree with that friend's father that an employee should show his or her worth to an employer by working hard.  But that should have nothing to do with the debate over whether or not to raise the minimum wage.  When an economy does not pay people enough to support themselves or their families, then that is problematic, and no amount of folksy wisdom will change that.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 10

For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I'll use as my starting-point something that Black says on pages 344-345.  The context is Hungary's 1956 revolt against the Soviet Union, and the Soviet Union's brutal suppression of that revolt.  There are right-wingers who have criticized President Dwight Eisenhower for not doing anything to save Hungary from Communist repression, even though Hungarians were desperately pleading for help.  What I have wondered is what exactly Eisenhower could have done.  Send in tanks?  Would that have provoked a war between the United States and the Soviet Union?  On pages 344-345, Black offers his ideas about what Eisenhower should have done:

"As for Hungary, the desire of the United States to avoid war with the U.S.S.R. is commendable, but there was an opportunity for a useful initiative.  At the least, Eisenhower could have proposed a neutral status for Hungary, like that of Austria, or what came to be called 'Finlandization,' and offered in exchange to the U.S.S.R. some corresponding NATO withdrawal, even if only some force reductions, or the removal of some secondary bases, such as from Greece or Spain.  More interesting would have been to supplement this offer with the air landing, by invitation from Nagy [who was leading Hungary after it declared its independence], of some airborn forces in western Hungary.  In exchange for extracting the Anglo-French from their self-authored debacle at Suez, the United States could have got some of their forces to join them in Hungary, not with a view to war or occupation, but to destabilize the Russian empire and turn up the pressure for compromise.  Nagy did eventually ask for the help of the 'international community.'  Sending forces might have been a bold move, but might have been justifiable, if only to redeem the Churchill-Stalin accord of October 1944, which promised the Western Allies a 25 percent sphere of influence in Hungary, to the U.S.S.R.'s 75 percent."

I have to respect Black for taking a retrospective stab at this problem.  This is one reason that I am enjoying Black's book: his analysis of politics and policy.  Black's book is lengthy, but it does not spend a whole lot of pages on certain events in Richard Nixon's life, such as the time that President Eisenhower had a heart attack and Nixon needed to handle the Presidency.  Black only spent a page on that event, if even that.  But I'm actually happy that Black doesn't spend lots of pages on certain events.  When I came to Black's discussion of Vice-President Nixon's visit to Caracas, I thought, "Oh man, this again.  I've already read about this who knows how many times."  But Black's narration of that was not long, and it was rather painless for me as a reader.  Black just says what happened, offers some analysis, and moves on.  Some of you may not be looking for that in a book.  And, to be honest, if I started my Year (or More) of Nixon with Black's book, I myself would probably be dissatisfied.  But, after reading Ambrose, Six Crises, Nixon's memoirs, and the list goes on, I'm not necessarily interested in reading another extensive regurgitation of certain events in Nixon's life.  I'm more interested in reading some analysis, or an author's take on certain characters in the drama.  I'm finding that in Conrad Black's book.

As far as the substance of what Black says about Hungary is concerned, I'm probably inadequate in terms of evaluating it, but I will say that I can see some logic in what Black is proposing.  The Soviets may have been holding on to Hungary, in part, because they felt that maintaining control of Eastern Europe was a way to protect the U.S.S.R. from the West: Eastern Europe is like a buffer.  If that is the case, then the U.S. offering to withdraw some NATO forces or bases in exchange for Hungarian independence makes a degree of sense, in that it could make the U.S.S.R. feel more secure.  The thing is, was the U.S.S.R. just interested in holding on to Eastern Europe for the sake of self-protection, or did it have imperial or aggressive aims as well?  If that is the case, then the U.S. arguably would not have been wise to reduce NATO forces.

Black may be saying that the U.S. would have had to pressure the U.S.S.R. to compromise, since the U.S.S.R. would be very reluctant to do so.  Giving up Hungary would arguably be a big deal!  If the U.S.S.R. gave up Hungary, would that encourage other Eastern European countries to revolt?  Even if Hungary were officially neutral, could the U.S.S.R. be assured that it was actually neutral?  That could be why Black says that the U.S. should have brought in the British and the French for extra leverage.

What Black says about the 1944 Churchill-Stalin accord is interesting to me, in light of what Black has said in his book about Yalta.  Against right-wingers who allege that the Yalta conference sold out Eastern Europe to the Soviets, Black argues that Yalta actually supported Eastern Europe's freedom, but that the U.S. and others failed to act on that.  Whether that helps me to understand the Churchill-Stalin accord, I do not know.  It seems that the Churchill-Stalin accord still gave the Soviets most of the influence in Hungary.  Maybe it would have been better had the Western allies had 25 percent of the influence in Hungary rather than none at all, as the Churchill-Stalin accord stipulated, but Black's statement that sending American, British, and French forces to redeem the accord between Churchill and Stalin makes me ask questions.  For example, Black says that the U.S. should have pushed for Hungary to be neutral.  But would it have been truly neutral, had the Soviets had 75 percent of the influence there, as the Churchill-Stalin accord stipulated?

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 7

For my post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I'll use as my starting-point something that Black says on page 246.  The context is the controversy about Richard Nixon's fund during the 1952 Presidential election.  Nixon was the Republican candidate for Vice-President at the time, and a fund that he had from the donations of businessmen was controversial, to the point that there were many who were urging Republican Presidential candidate Dwight Eisenhower to drop Nixon from the ticket.  For some time in 1952, neither Dwight Eisenhower nor Thomas Dewey----an eastern Republican who helped advance Nixon's political career----would vigorously step forward to defend Richard Nixon, whereas more conservative Republicans such as Robert Taft and Joseph McCarthy did.  What follows is something that Black says about how Nixon would narrate an interaction that he had with Dewey about the fund controversy:

"In his mid-career memoir, Six Crises, Nixon wrote that he discerned that Dewey 'did not have his heart in what he told me.'  In his memoirs fifteen years later, written after Dewey had died, he omitted any reduction of implicit criticism of Dewey's role."

According to Black, in Six Crises, which Nixon wrote while Dewey was still alive, Nixon was toning down any criticism that he had of Dewey's advice about what Nixon should do in light of the fund controversy (namely, for Nixon to offer his resignation to Eisenhower in the Fund speech that he was about to give).  Nixon said that he could tell that Dewey's heart was not in what he was saying.  But Nixon in his memoirs, which he wrote after Dewey had died, and even after the Nixon Presidency itself had ended, omitted that little part about Dewey's heart not being in what Dewey had told him.  As I look at the passages----on page 110 of Six Crises and pages 125-129 of volume 1 of Richard Nixon's memoirs----I can see Black's point.  In Six Crises, Nixon talks about his anger at what Dewey was telling him, but Nixon mitigates any implied criticism of Dewey by saying that he could tell that Dewey's heart wasn't in what Dewey was telling him.  In Nixon's memoirs, however, Nixon simply narrates that he was angry at what Dewey was telling him.

I'd like to make two points:

1.  In my post here, I talked about Stephen Ambrose's discussion of what type of President Nixon might have been had he won in 1960, and how that would have compared with the type of President that he was in 1969-1974.  Ambrose is not particularly dogmatic in this discussion, for he considers different scenarios.  But one scenario that he considers is that, had Nixon won in 1960, Nixon would have surrounded himself with Establishment types such as Dwight Eisenhower and Thomas Dewey, rather than "us vs. them" types like Haldeman, Colson, Agnew, etc.  Black says that the Fund controversy in 1952 alienated Nixon from the Eastern Establishment Republican types, since Thomas Dewey did not go to bat for him, whereas right-wing Republicans did.  Would a President Nixon who had won in 1960 have drawn from the wisdom of Eisenhower and Dewey, if Nixon was arguably bitter about their failure to vigorously support him during the fund crisis?

I can see it going both ways, but what I think would have likely happened is that Nixon would have continued to draw from the insights of Dewey and Eisenhower.  Whatever his disappointments with them may have been, Nixon owed them for his political advancement, and he probably would have still needed them on account of their influence within the Republican Party.  After all, Nixon still felt compelled in Six Crises to mitigate any criticism of Dewey.  Moreover, Nixon himself speculated that, had he won in 1960, the "establishment types" would have remained in power and Nixon wouldn't have been able to do what was necessary for the country.  Nixon knew himself better than anybody, and he could envision himself keeping the establishment types in power.  At the same time, I can envision a President Nixon who had won in 1960 feeling free to stray from advice that Eisenhower would give him.  Nixon was for beefing up the U.S. military and cutting taxes, whereas Eisenhower was not for these things at the same level.  But my impression is that Nixon in 1960 ran on his own ideas rather than those of Eisenhower, and he probably would have been committed to his own ideas as President.

2.  Nixon probably felt that he could be more honest in his memoirs than in Six Crises.  When he wrote his memoirs, he was no longer pursuing political office, for he had just been President, and thus he didn't need to be as worried about appeasing the right people.  Plus, Nixon could be more honest about his thoughts regarding Dewey and Eisenhower, for both men had died.  That reminds me of how hard it is for one to be completely honest in writing, for people out there can take offense at what one wrote.  I am not completely honest in my own writing, to be candid with you.  Honest writing is better writing, but it's not always feasible----unless one wants to take risks and alienate people.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon 18

I have two items for my blog post today about Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.  The context is the 1952 race for the Republican nomination for President.  It has been alleged that Richard Nixon, even though as a Californian he was pledged to vote for Governor Earl Warren, was actually promoting Dwight Eisenhower, seeking to weaken Warren's hold on the California delegates.  According to this narrative, Nixon was angling to get the Vice-Presidential slot.  You can read about Nixon's response to this charge, as well as Irwin Gellman's defense of Nixon, in my post here.

1.  On page 685 of Morris' book, we read the following:

"Before the end of May, Senator Nixon had become not simply one more name for the Vice Presidency whispered about Washington or the hustings, the campaign's time-honored bait to attract disparate ambitions and support.  He was, from the Roosevelt and Mayflower, a part of secret and strategic deliberations at which his would-be rivals could only guess.  With unfailing instinct for improving his position still further, even for the intramural politics of the eventual regime that was taking shape in the Eisenhower candidacy, he boldly wrote John Foster Dulles in mid-May, enclosing highlights of his Waldorf-Astoria speech.  Dulles remained an influential force in the GOP eastern establishment, albeit not a member of the Dewey-Clay inner group.  They May letter made sure Dulles understood the Senator's rising stock with the other powers in the campaign.  It came, too, as part of a continuing Nixon correspondence that periodically and none too subtly reminded the shadow secretary of state of their mutual history in the Hiss case, and of the potential political embarrassment to Dulles in the early Carnegie Endowment ties to Hiss.  Nixon would vouch for Dulles with the right if the occasion arose, his letters suggested, and Dulles was well advised to support the senator's ambitions in turn."

This passage essentially presents Richard Nixon as ambitiously pursuing the Vice-Presidential slot, which contrasts with the aw-shucks attitude that Nixon implies that he had.  According to Morris, even Nixon's speech to the Waldorf-Astoria, which impressed Thomas Dewey, was Nixon's way of promoting himself for the VP slot.  Nixon was energetically proclaiming in that speech that the Republicans needed to conduct a fighting campaign that would be principled yet also draw Democrats and independents.  Incidentally, that was the kind of campaign that Nixon conducted in his 1950 Senate race.  At a Bible study group one time, we were reading Genesis, and we were at the part where Joseph was suggesting that the Pharaoh set a wise person over Egypt who would supervise the collection of grain in preparation for the coming famine (Genesis 41:33-36).  Someone in the group said that Joseph wasn't pointing to himself when he recommended that Pharaoh do that.  Well, Morris is implying that Nixon in his Waldorf-Astoria was implicitly pointing to himself as one who would be an effective VP candidate.  Nixon was angling for power, in short.

2.  On pages 708-709, we read the following:

"'Warren had very little if any chance of getting the nomination,' John Dinkelspiel remembered Nixon telling them.  'The California delegation would effectively insure [sic] Eisenhower's victory...[and] if they could be counted on by the Eisenhower people, would have a very strong effect on the convention.'  Otherwise, Nixon warned, California would be 'left at the post' as Eisenhower moved on to the nomination in any case.  He also spoke movingly, as listeners later recounted, about the 'Taft fraud in Texas and Georgia,' and told them they would have a chance to vote early on the fair-play amendment, 'moral issues regarding Texas and Georgia where Taft stole the votes.'  They must join the Eisenhower bandwagon with no more delay.  When some delegates asked about breaking their oath to Warren, Hillings reportedly told them 'that that would be all right because the law provided no penalty for that.'  In any case, Dinkelspiel and others remembered Nixon urging 'that it should be made publicly known that the delegation would throw its strength to Eisenhower as soon as it could.'  As Dinkelspiel recalled, he argued 'either that the delegation should note vote for Warren on the first ballot, if Warren were willing, or if he insisted that the delegation keep its pledge, that it be made known in advance that the delegation at least on the second ballot would vote for Eisenhower rather than Taft, not just sit back and not state its position.'  And while the senator himself did not immodestly mention the subject of those meetings, his men soon spread word of California's expected reward for the defection.  'If they acted quickly and did not waste their votes,' one writer reported, 'the delegation could suggest Nixon as Vice President.'"

Morris goes on to say that Earl Warren would write years later that "During the night, the Nixon delegates----but not the senator as far as I know----held caucuses and urged other delegates to vote for General Eisenhower on the first ballot."  But Morris refers to Dinkelspiel and "others" who claimed that Nixon himself was directly involved in urging the California delegates to vote for Eisenhower.
What I wonder is why the California delegates were required to vote for Warren in the first place.

In the Arena 7

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.)"

Norman Thomas on Eisenhower, Guatemala, and Kennedy

I have three items for my write-up today on W.A. Swanberg's biography of Norman Thomas, the six-time Socialist candidate for President of the United States.  The biography is entitled Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist.

1.  Norman Thomas was concerned about Socialists being discharged from the foreign service.  President Dwight Eisenhower's Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, who was long an acquaintance of Thomas because they knew some of the same people and both had a connection to Princeton, suggested that Thomas meet with Eisenhower himself before making his concern into a public issue.  Thomas at first was not an admirer of Eisenhower, for Thomas did not like the idea of a general being President.  Thomas was even more distrustful of Eisenhower's Vice-President, Richard Nixon, and in 1952 Thomas criticized Nixon for having received money from rich men without public accounting (though Nixon says in his book, Six Crises, that the money was used only for political purposes and was regularly audited).

When Thomas met with Eisenhower, however, Thomas was actually quite impressed.  He found Eisenhower to be a decent man, who understood what Socialism was better than Thomas had anticipated.  Eisenhower said that he accepted the Tennessee Valley Authority but believed that socialization would be unstoppable once it started with certain services and industries (which Eisenhower seems to have considered a bad thing).  Eisenhower also affirmed that he did not doubt the loyalty of the Socialists who were discharged, and that Socialists should not be excluded from the Civil Service.  Thomas felt better, then he went over to the Attorney General's office to protest some of the Justice Department's policies!

This story interested me for at least three reasons.  First of all, although Thomas had been a marginal Presidential candidate, he still appeared to have relatively free access to people in power.  Some of this was probably due to his long-time contacts within the elite (such as Dulles), the fact that he pestered public officials continually through his letters, his fame as a past Socialist candidate who had a following, and his regular column.  Second, while there were times when the Red Scare lumped Communists together with Socialists, the two were not the same.  Granted, there were times in the past when the two worked together, but Thomas and a number of Socialists were quite anti-Communist.  When the Soviet Union crushed a Hungarian revolt in the 1950's, there were Socialists who became refugees, showing that they were not on the side of the Soviets.  And, three, I had to admire Eisenhower for being smarter than he looked, as well as fair and broad-minded.

2.  During the Eisenhower Administration, the Central Intelligence Agency engineered a coup that overthrew a leftist government in Guatemala, replacing it with a "United States-oriented" regime (page 375).  I remembered this coup from Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Education of a Politician, for Ambrose narrated that Nixon during the 1960 Presidential election implied that something similar could be done to Castro!  According to Swanberg, Norman Thomas "took in his column a curiously mild view" of the coup (page 375).  Thomas said that it was good that there was no longer "a Communist beachhead in Guatemala" (Thomas, as quoted on page 375), yet he said that the coup had moral and perhaps material support from Washington and that liberal elements in Guatemala resented such imperialism on the part of the U.S.  Thomas then went on to say that "'our American responsibility will be very great' for good government in Guatemala" (Swanberg quoting Thomas).

Thomas' mild response to the coup surprised me, for, while Thomas was very anti-Communist, he did not support a hawkish approach to the Cold War.  He was against the U.S. supporting anti-Communist dictators because he thought that contradicted its alleged support for freedom against authoritarianism.  Thomas also opposed whatever smacked of American imperialism, and he was critical of the U.S. trying to defend a couple of islands from Communist China.  This inspires me to ask how exactly Thomas proposed that Communism be fought.  Perhaps Thomas hoped that it could be fought through education and persuasion rather than force.
   
3.  Thomas was anti-Zionist because he felt that Zionism combined religion with government, a stance that alienated Thomas from a number of other Socialists.  Thomas was also critical of Israel's invasion of the Suez.  On pages 397-398, there is a story about Foreign Minister Salah el-Bitar of Syria.  Bitar studied in Paris and flirted with Communism while he was there, and later he helped to establish the Socialist Baath Party in Syria.  The U.S. regarded Bitar as an enemy because Syria quarreled with Israel and made an arms deal with Russia, and the CIA, along with English and Iraqi conspirators, sought to overthrow "the purportedly pro-Communist government in Damascus" (Swanberg on page 397).  Bitar wanted to meet with American politicians, but they did not want to meet with him because they feared that doing so would cost them Jewish votes.

Bitar met with Norman Thomas, and Thomas was impressed by Bitar's claims that Bitar was a Socialist and not a Communist, and that Syria only accepted aid from Russia because Syria needed it, with all of the problems that confronted Syria!  Senator John F. Kennedy met secretly with Bitar, with Jacqueline Kennedy translating the French that Bitar was speaking.  According to Swanberg, the meeting was secret because Kennedy did not want to lose political support from Jews.  That prompted Thomas to remark, "All profile and no courage", since Kennedy in his book Profiles in Courage "celebrated politicians whose backbone forbade this kind of concealment" (Swanberg on page 398).

I don't know enough to judge whether Kennedy was right or wrong to meet with Bitar.  But was he cowardly to do so secretly?  It's easy to celebrate politicians who display courage.  Perhaps Kennedy even hoped to emulate that courage at certain times in his political career.  But Kennedy also wanted for his political career to continue to exist, so he didn't want to alienate a constituency!

Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 3

For my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: Ruin and Recovery, 1973-1990, I'll quote something that Ambrose says on page 97.  We're in 1973, during the Watergate scandal, and Nixon was telling his aides to read the chapter in his (Nixon's) book Six Crises about the Alger Hiss case.  I've written more than once about the Hiss case on this blog for My Year (or More) of Nixon, but I refer you to this post if you want a rough summary of it.

Nixon's order to his aides really distressed them, according to Ambrose.  Ambrose says:

"Nixon seemed not to recognize that in the Hiss case he had been the prosecutor/investigator, while in the Watergate matter he was the one on the defense, nor that the plain lesson of the Hiss case was that when the opposition controls the Congress, even the President cannot cover up.  It gave the aides a sinking feeling in the pit of their stomachs to realize that Nixon would have loved to have been on the prosecuting/investigating side of Watergate.  They knew that someone with his skills, armed with the power of subpoena, would have destroyed their woefully disorganized and badly managed defense without difficulty.  They also knew that there were Democrats on the Ervin Committee who were almost as ruthless, skilled, and eager to attack as Nixon had been back in 1948."


Why did Nixon refer to the Hiss case during the Watergate scandal?  What lessons did Nixon think the Hiss case could teach him and his aides during Watergate?  For one, in my reading of Ambrose so far, it appears that Nixon was comparing Watergate to the Hiss case to highlight that the Democrats did their share of cover-ups, and that the Truman Administration's cover-up (or lack of cooperation with the House Committee on Un-American Activities) during the Hiss case was worse than Watergate.  Nixon says a couple of times that Watergate was not as bad as what the Truman Administration did during the Alger Hiss case, for the Truman Administration was protecting a traitor.

Second, in volume 2 of his memoirs, Nixon says that a lesson from the Hiss case is that cover-ups are futile.  Nixon argues that, during Watergate, Nixon cooperated with Congress and provided it with information.  The thing is, though, there was a limit to his cooperation.

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.

The Small Farmer and Socialism (With Some Interesting Stuff on Pacifism)

On page 216 of his biography on six-time Socialist U.S. Presidential candidate Norman Thomas, entitled Norman Thomas: The Last Idealist, W.A. Swanberg quotes a New York Times article that said the following:

"Norman Thomas has proved an eye-opener to European Socialists.  Wherever he has stopped...he has been eagerly questioned on the differences between the American and European brands of Socialism.  Europeans have been astonished by his view that the hope of American Socialism lies in the farmers, and perhaps more astonished by his belief that in some farming areas it has already taken root.  To most of his questioners, Socialism has been a growth in the industrial areas; and his admission that American factory hands usually vote for the old parties rather than the Socialist Party has aroused a good deal of respect for his frankness."

From what I can see, at least in what I have read in Swanberg's book so far, Swanberg does not address why Norman Thomas believed that the hope of American Socialism rested in the farmers rather than the industrial workers.  But, based upon what I read in this article, my guess is that a number of small farmers in the United States did not like having to take out loans to pay hefty sums of money for farming equipment, only to lose their farms when they could not pay off their debts; it cost a lot of money for small farmers to produce and then to distribute their products, and they were dependent on the capitalist system for this, a system that charged them high prices.  It's not surprising, therefore, that at least some small farmers would be drawn to systemic change.  Many industrial workers in the U.S., on the other hand, were satisfied with the Democratic Party, especially during and after the Presidency of Franklin Roosevelt, because it championed labor unions, which helped provide them with a decent standard of living.  Why would they want to vote Socialist, when they were doing well under the Democrats?

One question that I have had concerns the extent to which Socialists believe in private property.  Do they support abolishing it altogether, or are they for allowing private ownership in some (maybe even many) areas?  In his 1962 book Six Crises, Richard Nixon discusses Polish resistance to Communism: "The Polish farmer loves his land and his horses, as his father did before him[, so he] refuses to be moved into co-operative farms on the inflexible Communist design."  Does Socialism try to force farmers into collectivism?

From what I read in the Socialist Party USA's platform (and this may be the most recent one), it appears that the Socialist Party supports farming co-operatives and public ownership of corporate farms, as well as "socially owned enterprises in the areas of transportation, storage, and processing of agricultural goods, controlled by boards comprised of farmers, farm workers, and community members." (The idea is probably that this would eliminate small farmers' vulnerable state of dependence on capitalists for the transportation and processing of their products.)  Yet, it also supports the family farm.  It states that "We call for family farmers whose land was taken in foreclosures to be given their land and equipment back, or be given comparable land and equipment or monetary compensation." This implies private ownership by small farmers of their land.

Another question that I have had is whether Norman Thomas seriously believed that he could win when he ran for President, or if he was simply trying to make a statement.  The New York Times quote with which I opened this post indicates that Thomas looked to the American farmers for hope that Socialism would triumph in the U.S., and Thomas said that Socialism was taking root within some farming communities.  In 1939, however, Norman's wife Violet remarked to a reporter that her husband would never become President of the United States!  But, prior to that point, it seems to me that Thomas thought that it was plausible that Socialism could win in the United States.  He expected for people to become disenchanted with the New Deal and how corporate profits increased 36 percent in 1935 while employment only went up by 2 and 1/2 percent.  But divisions within the Socialist movement did not help it politically, as Socialists debated and parted company over such issues as whether Communists should be allowed into the movement (Thomas initially said yes and hoped that they might grow up, while the Old Guard Socialists said no), and whether Socialists should support U.S. entry into World War II (Thomas said no, whereas a number on the Left supported the U.S. entering it to defeat fascism abroad). 

(On the issue of war and pacifism, what's interesting is that Thomas supported assisting the defense of the Spanish Republic, which was under assault from Franco, who was backed by Hitler and Mussolini.  Thomas supported the Spanish Republic, even though he recognized that it was far from pure and itself had violent elements, for he thought that it was preferable to Franco.  Swanberg says that Thomas moved away from pacifism after he lost his faith in God.  Yet, Thomas still opposed U.S. intervention into World War II, one reason being that he feared it would result in Fascist policies in the U.S.  Thomas may have had in mind the repression of civil liberties in the United States during World War I.)

Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 2

I have three items for my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972.  The setting for the three items will be the year 1965.

1.  On page 63, we read about Pat Nixon's boredom:

"Her husband and younger daughter worried about her.  Julie recorded in her diary how she and her father 'took a long walk along Madison Avenue' and agreed 'that Mother needed something to do.'"

Pat Nixon loved living in New York City, with all of its activity and its stores.  Yet, she found herself bored.  As a very private person, she didn't really care for campaigning, with "all those smiles, all those empty phrases, all those strangers" (page 63).  She was like her daughter Tricia in that respect, whereas Richard Nixon made himself campaign even though he didn't enjoy it, and their daughter Julie actually did like campaigning.  But now that Pat wasn't involved in campaigning, she was bored, and her participation in charity work was not satisfying her.

This reminds me of Betty Friedan's Feminine Mystique, which was about how a number of women become bored with their responsibilities as mothers and housewives, since they need a channel for their creativity and intelligence.  I think that Pat enjoyed being a mother, for she loved her daughters very much, but Pat wanted more to do.

I also found it sweet that Richard Nixon and Julie were concerned about Pat----and Nixon highlighted to Julie the importance of people making a contribution in order to be happy.  I gather from my reading for my Year (or More) of Nixon that Nixon was not always a considerate husband to Pat: he could be dismissive to her, he treated her as an afterthought, and some (such as Don Folsom) have even argued that there were more serious issues than that (which I will discuss when I get into Folsom's book).  But, in this part of Ambrose's book, Nixon was considerate, caring, and empathetic.  As Ambrose highlights in his Foreword, Nixon could be both cold and considerate.  He was a paradox.

2.  On page 67, we read about Nixon's relationship with his writers:

"Steve Hess, who had been helping Nixon with his writing before 1965, explained some of the factors in Nixon's success in his relationship with writers.  The first was Nixon's high regard for the writing process.  Nixon had found writing Six Crises to be difficult; he told Hess 'it was one of the hardest and most satisfying things I've ever done.'  So he respected writers and their craft.  Second, Nixon worked closely with his speech writers, going over drafts word by word, questioning, judging, inserting, drawing a blue pencil through a line----the most intimate kind of work.  Third, Nixon was always generous with his praise.  After a major speech, he would call Safire, or Buchanan, or Hess, or whoever helped him write it, to say thanks.  Even better, he would refer to a specific line written by his aide, and point out how well it had gone over with the audience, and thank the writer again.  For a speech writer in politics, this is a most unusual, and wonderfully heady, experience.  Fourth, Nixon was personally fond of his writers, and showed it."

Surrounding this passage, there is more about Nixon's thoughts on his speech writers, William Safire and Pat Buchanan, as well as Nixon's generosity towards Hess.  Ambrose says that Safire was not the sort of person one would expect Nixon to like, for Safire "was a young Jewish intellectual with a quick wit and a way with words, with a sardonic approach to the hoopla of politics and an honest man's disapproval of the corruption of politics" (page 67).  Yet, Safire and Nixon liked each other.  Safire at times disagreed with Nixon's strategy, as when Nixon was attacking the Governor of Rhode Island for tolerating a Marxist professor at Rutgers University who said he would welcome a Vietcong victory.  Safire said Nixon was using "early-fifties-style anti-Communism" (Ambrose's words on page 74).  Nixon apparently did not get mad at Safire for saying this.  Nixon just replied: "Oh, I know you and the rest of the intellectuals won't like it...But somebody had to take 'em on.  Imagine a professor teaching that line to kids."  Regarding Pat Buchanan, Safire says that Nixon "liked Buchanan's eccentric mind, his passionate involvement, his wide-ranging knowledge of politics, and his speech-writing ability" (page 67).  And, on Nixon's generosity to Hess, Nixon paid Hess $5,000 of the $10,000 Nixon got from an article on Vietnam for the Saturday Evening Post.  As Hess said, back in those days one could go to Europe and remodel his house with $5,000, plus the article under Hess' name would have gotten Hess only $1,000!

This was all good stuff, but what I most liked was how Nixon came to respect writers after he himself had experienced the ardor of the writing process.  Nixon liked to call writing Six Crises his seventh crisis.  Of course, that was before Watergate!

3. Nixon was trying to rekindle a relationship with Nikita Khrushchev of the Soviet Union, even though Khrushchev was out of power.  But Khrushchev apparently didn't want to see Nixon!  On page 65, Ambrose comments on Nixon's debate with Khrushchev back when Nixon as Vice-President visited the Soviet Union: "The story that accompanied the photo contained ample reminders of the glorious moment when Nixon had been the man who stood up to Khrushchev, at a time when Khrushchev's name was enough to frighten half the world to death."

This sounds like Ambrose is praising Nixon, and perhaps he is.  But Ambrose also criticizes Nixon a lot in this book, sometimes quite sarcastically!

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."