Jonathan Aitken's Nixon: A Life 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 18

In my post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I will talk about Richard Nixon's relationship with French President Charles de Gaulle.  Here are some passages, but I will not provide context for them, since I don't want to get into the weeds of de Gaulle's geopolitical views.

Page 389: "Eisenhower and his immediate successors did not...figure out how to deal with de Gaulle (but Nixon did)."

Page 589: After discussing the deteriorating relationship between France and the U.S. under President Lyndon Johnson, Black says that "Nixon was the sixth American president de Gaulle dealt with, and his relationship promised to be the most productive and amicable of all."

Page 604: "[Nixon] invited de Gaulle to come to the United States and added, 'In this age of mediocre leaders in most of the world, America's spirit needs your presence.'  It's doubtful that the rancorous students...would have found much balm in de Gaulle's grandiloquence or erudition, but what Nixon meant was that he would have valued it himself."

Nixon did not exactly have the best social skills in the world, but he still got along with Charles de Gaulle, at a level far beyond what other U.S. Presidents did.  This, according to Conrad Black, was no easy task.  Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson did not really know how they should deal with de Gaulle.  It wasn't always a matter of a lack of mutual cordiality, mind you.  Johnson apparently did not have a good relationship with de Gaulle, but Black states that de Gaulle "liked but disagreed with Kennedy", and that de Gaulle's "relations with Eisenhower...had been cordial but inconclusive" (page 588).  According to Black, de Gaulle had the same sort of relationship with Truman that he had with Eisenhower, and his relations with FDR "were just warming up...after a very difficult start, when Roosevelt died" (page 588).  But de Gaulle had a good relationship with Nixon.

And Nixon apparently had a genuine regard and admiration for de Gaulle.  As Black says on page 604, Nixon wanted de Gaulle to come to the United States because Nixon felt that he needed him, amidst all of the turmoil that the United States was experiencing at the time.

Sometimes, it's the case that a socially-awkward person can succeed in developing and maintaining a rapport with a particular individual, whereas those who are expert charmers either struggle to do so, or flat out fail.  Why is this?  There are probably a variety of reasons.  First of all, a particular individual may be able to smell BS a mile away, and he's not open to being manipulated by charmers.  He'd prefer the company of someone who is low-key and yet real, especially if that person has a genuinely high regard for him.  Second, perhaps de Gaulle and Nixon were drawn to each other on account of their similar personalities.  As Nixon says in Leaders, de Gaulle was quite reserved.  So was Nixon.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 5

I have two items for my post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.  We're in the time of the Truman Administration, and Richard Nixon is a United States Senator representing the state of California.  These two items, in my opinion, exemplify Conrad Black's treatment of Nixon and the events surrounding him.

1.  On pages 170-173, Black talks about General Douglas MacArthur's desired strategy for the Korean War, which would lead MacArthur into conflict with President Harry S Truman.  On page 170, Black summarizes MacArthur's stance: "He considered Korea an opportunity to suck into the peninsula and destroy the Chinese Communist army, to bomb China's industrial areas to rubble, and so to weaken the People's Republic that Chiang Kaishek's Nationalists, who had just been chased off the mainland to Taiwan, could return."  Black says that MacArthur has been accused of advocating that the U.S. threaten to use nuclear weapons, but Black believes that this is false (though Black notes on page 171 that President Dwight Eisenhower "would discretely threaten this, to his and America's profit").  Black's opinion is that MacArthur using Chiang's soldiers and providing them with air support "would certainly have broken the stalemate in Korea, with interesting results" (page 171).  Yet, Black doubts that Chiang would have been able to resurrect his own rule in mainland China, for Chiang was corrupt, inept, and unpopular with many in that country.

As Senator, Richard Nixon introduced a bill that would reverse President Truman's recall of General MacArthur.  Nixon in his book, Leaders, says that his speech to the Senate at the time actually distributed the blame between Truman and MacArthur.  Nixon on pages 98-99 of that book quotes himself as saying in that speech: "Let me say that I am not among those who believe that General MacArthur is infallible...I am not among those who think that he has not made decisions which are subject to criticism.  But I do say that in this particular instance he offers an alternative policy which the American people can and will support.  He offers a change from the policies which have led us almost to the brink of disaster in Asia----and that means in the world."  Black not only considers Nixon's proposal in the Senate to be "an unconstitutional usurpation of the prerogatives of the commander in chief", but he also dismisses what Nixon would say in Leaders as "a reinterpretive reading of his remarks" (page 172).  Black goes on to say that MacArthur was insubordinate, but Black is also critical of how Truman handled the situation.  According to Black, Truman could have warned MacArthur privately, or Truman could have left MacArthur as governor of Japan, where MacArthur's contribution was widely acclaimed.  Black states that this "would have blunted the impact of MacArthur's removal", and that the "general was seventy-one and retirement, if decorously executed, would not have been premature" (page 173).

Overall, I found Black's discussion of Truman and MacArthur to be fair and balanced, in that Black talked about what he considered to be the positives and negatives of both men.  On how Black covered Nixon in terms of this situation, I wish that Black had gone into more detail about how Nixon's treatment of his Senate speech in Leaders was "a reinterpetive reading of his remarks", for Nixon in Leaders actually quoted from his own Senate speech.  How exactly would Black interpret Nixon's remarks, if he doesn't buy into how Nixon is interpreting them?  They sound pretty straightforward to me: Nixon did not see MacArthur as infallible!   At the same time, perhaps one could argue that, even if Senator Nixon tried to convey that he was being balanced and fair-minded, the big picture was that Nixon was backing MacArthur.

Incidentally, I read an Amazon review that critiqued Black's treatment of the Korean War.  It's by History Addict, who says:

"The Nixon biography is not quite as good as the FDR study. There are, for example, a few glaring geopolitical mistakes. On several occasions Black writes that the United States should have brought Chiang Kai-shek's Nationalist army from Taiwan into the wars against Chinese proxies--North Korea and then North Vietnam--and, given that Chinese troops were advising those proxies, let them fight Chinese soldiers themselves. That would in fact have been an enormous error, for Chiang's primary goal in the 1950s and 1960s was to provoke a war between the United States and China both to prevent a Sino-American rapprochement and to increase the odds that the PRC would collapse and he could return in glory to the mainland. Given that goal--and Chiang's cynical and manipulative history--it would have been disastrous to make the United States dependent on his behavior and that of his military."

I'm not sure on what History Addict bases his claims, but my hunch is that they're based on something, since History Addict has read history.  What I'm getting from History Addict's remarks is that Chiang could have decided to sit back and let the U.S. and the Red Chinese duke it out, without involving his own soldiers.  That way, the Communists in China would be weakened and Chiang could return to power, without losing his own men.  History Addict's point is that Chiang would not have wanted for his own soldiers to be involved in the Korean War, so he'd be reluctant to participate in MacArthur's plan.

2.  On page 178, Black addresses the charge that Nixon in one case sought to craft policy to benefit contributors:

"Some critics and historians have made something of the fact that [Nixon] sent in a bill to enable two contributors to his fund to drill for oil on federal land in California.  Nixon did not push hard for the bill, which died.  Nixon didn't lift a finger for the people who had given him a few thousand dollars, which were uncontroversially spent."

I've seen this sort of thing more than once in Black's book: Black attempts to defend Nixon from charges that Nixon was unethical or corrupt.  I don't believe that Black reflexively defends Nixon, mind you, for there are plenty of times when Black is quite critical of Nixon.  Whereas Irwin Gellman in The Contender, for example, disputes that Nixon at the 1952 Republican National Convention was trying to undermine support for Earl Warren and was playing different sides (Robert Taft and Dwight Eisenhower), Black essentially says that Nixon was doing precisely that: that Nixon was claiming to be for Taft to undermine support for Warren, while also supporting Eisenhower (pages 189-190).  On one of the big accusations against Nixon, Black maintains that Nixon was rather shady.  And yet, here and there, Black dismisses some of the other charges that historians have made against Nixon.

The charge that Nixon favored special interests looms large in Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician.  I'd say that it's a major theme of the entire tome, for, even when talking about California prior to Richard Nixon's birth, Morris refers to the special interests that sought to consolidate their wealth and power in the state.  Jerry Voorhis would go against these special interests, Morris argues, whereas Nixon as a politician would favor them.  Black appears to have a different perspective, however.  While Black acknowledges that Nixon in his campaigns for the U.S. House and the U.S. Senate received a considerable amount of money (something that historians who are more favorable to Nixon tend to downplay, or even deny), Black also disputes that the contributors to Nixon's fund were millionaires (not that Morris says that they were, but Morris does regard them as well-off special interests).  He also seems to deny that their contributions got them any favors from Richard Nixon.  For example, regarding Nixon's political fund, which would be controversial in the 1952 Presidential election, Black notes that Nixon did not know who the donors are (something that Morris disputes).  The implication here may be: How can Nixon benefit contributors, when he does not even know their identity?  At the same time, like Morris, Black acknowledges that Nixon's political fund from the contributions of California businessmen was designed to make Nixon into a high-profiled spokesperson for conservatism (or Morris would say special interests).

These are my impressions so far, and I have not yet finished Black's tome.

In the Arena 2

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

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

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

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

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

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

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


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

In the Arena 1

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

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

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

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

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

Leaders 5

I finished Richard Nixon's Leaders.  In this blog post, I'd like to highlight something that Nixon says on page 331.  This occurs within the last chapter, in which Nixon discusses the characteristics of great leaders in the arena.

"He must also want the job, and he must be willing to pay the price.  There is a persistent myth that if only a person is well enough qualified, the office will----or should----somehow seek him.  It will not, and it should not.  The myth of the 'reluctant candidate' was, for much of the intellectual world, a part of Adlai Stevenson's attraction.  But show me a reluctant candidate and I will show you a losing candidate.  A reluctant candidate will not give a campaign the intensity of effort it requires, nor will he accept the sacrifices leadership itself requires: the ruthless invasion of privacy, the grueling schedule, the sting of unfair and often vicious criticism, the cruel caricatures.  Unless a person is prepared to accept this and still be ready to pursue the job with passion, he is not going to have the steel to stand it once he gets it."

Here are some thoughts:

1.  Nixon says "he," but one should not take that to mean that Nixon thinks that only men can be good leaders.  Nixon talks about women leaders in this book, namely, Golda Meier and Indira Gandhi.  And, on pages 340-341, Nixon speculates about whether more women will be in leadership roles in the future.  He lauds Clare Booth Luce's political abilities and says that "she would have turned in a stellar performance" had Dwight Eisenhower chosen her as his Vice-President rather than Nixon.  And Nixon forecasts that, before the end of the twentieth century, the United States "will probably elect a woman to the vice presidency and possibly to the presidency."  That didn't happen, but it still could happen in the twenty-first century.  Look at all the women governors in the United States!

2.  Nixon makes good points about the problems of the reluctant candidate, and I would say that his points can apply to the reluctant leader, as well: that one has to want an office seriously in order to throw oneself into its responsibilities and to take a lot of bull without giving up.  After reading this passage by Nixon, I can sympathize more with Toby Ziegler's angry reluctance to support Democratic candidate Matt Santos for President in the television series, The West Wing: Josh Lyman had to go to Texas and beg Santos to run, and Toby did not think that spoke well on Santos' part!

There is something attractive about the reluctant candidate, though: that reluctant candidates are humble and are not power-hungry, that they have small-time roots, that they have talents that they may not recognize but that others can see, etc.  In the Bible, there are a lot of reluctant candidates.  Gideon does not want to lead Israel against the Midianites, but that gives God a chance to show God's power.  Saul is reluctant to be king.  David has his share of political skills and is able to form important friendships, while fighting the enemies of Israel.  But the text goes out of its way to present David as someone who was not ambitious: the kingship just fell into his lap.  By contrast, it seems to me that those who crave power in the Bible are the ones you wouldn't want to exercise it: Abimelech agreed to be king, and he was likened to a thornbush (Judges 9).
On the other hand, perhaps some of the reluctant candidates in the Bible were not right for the job----in that their reluctance was a hindrance to them.  Saul was reluctant to be king, and he disobeyed God because he feared the people, and somehow his insignificance in his own eyes kept him from grasping the gravity of his office and performing what God considered to be Saul's duties (I Samuel 13; 15:17).

I agree with Nixon that one has to want an office in order to be a good leader.  At the same time, I don't think that everyone who craves power deserves it.  Moreover, I believe that even a reluctant candidate can surprise us, as long as the reluctant candidate becomes willing to be in the game for the long haul.

3.  Nixon in his last chapter seems to argue that a good leader is one who is impressive to people.  He has a point, for a leader needs to impress people to get them to follow him.  At the same time, Nixon does describe a wide variety of leaders.  Some are reserved, but others are outgoing.  Some work long hours, while others sleep in or take naps.  Some are powerful and charismatic speakers, while others are more cerebral (without getting overly theoretical that it stands in the way of practicality) or are good at forming coalitions.  There are arguably a variety of ways to impress people.  Charisma is one way, but showing people that one has what it takes to do the job (even if one doesn't have the flashiest personality in the world) is another way.

Leaders 4

In my post today about Richard Nixon's Leaders , I will discuss things that Richard Nixon says about Chiang Kaishek.  Chiang was the leader of mainland China before it became a Communist country under Mao Tse-Tung.  Chiang would then go on to lead the country of Formosa, or Taiwan.

What I often heard in junior high school and high school history classes was that Chiang Kaishek was a crook.  We were told that Chiang took the aid that the U.S. gave him to fight the Communists and lined his own pockets and the pockets of his generals.  My junior high school social studies teacher said that, when the Japanese were coming after China, Chiang did not lift a finger to fight them, whereas Mao did.  This teacher also said that the popular designation of Taiwan as "Free China" was not entirely accurate, for there are many rights that people do not have in Taiwan.  In the right-wing literature that I read, I encountered at least two perspectives.  The first essentially acknowledged that Chiang was far from perfect, but it said that he was better than the bloodthirsty Communists (for both the Chinese and also for the rest of the world), and so the U.S. should have supported him more.  The second portrayed Chiang as a great guy.  Robert Welch of the John Birch Society, in his book Again, May God Forgive Us!, depicted Chiang as a devout Christian.

In my reading of Leaders, I didn't see anything about Chiang Kaishek's alleged corruption, but Nixon did have his share of criticisms of Chiang, or he mentioned criticisms that other people had.  First, Nixon says on page 245 that Chiang was very "by the book" and rigid, and that this hindered him from coming up with innovative strategies.  Nixon states that "history is made by those whose innovations exploited the opportunities of the moment", and that "It was Chiang's misfortune that Mao was among the latter."  Nixon strikes me as someone who likes boldness in a leader.  I wonder if he was a fan of Captain James T. Kirk!

Second, Nixon on pages 115-116 speculates that Chiang might have hindered the Communists from taking over mainland China had he pursued a policy of land reform.  Chiang did precisely that as leader of Taiwan, as he "paid the landlords for their land and distributed it to their peasantry", and the "former landlords invested much of their money in industry while the government encouraged foreign investment" (pages 244-245).  According to Nixon, that led to an economic boom in Taiwan.  Had Chiang done that sort of thing as leader of mainland China, Nixon speculates, "Mao might not have been able to exploit the rural discontent that contributed to the success of the Chinese Communist revolution" (page 116).

And third, Nixon on pages 125-126 refers to the thoughts of Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida about Chiang.  Yoshida had his doubts that Chiang could still play a role in mainland China, for "Yoshida argued that although Chiang was himself a Confucian scholar, he had irreparably alienated the intellectuals, and...this was politically fatal."  While this was a negative on Chiang's part, it interested me to learn that he was a Confucian scholar.  He wasn't some unsophisticated despot.

I'd like to turn now to three issues that pertain to Chiang Kaishek: his revolutionary beliefs, his authoritarianism, and his Christian devotion.

Let's start with his revolutionary beliefs.  Nixon says on page 241 that "Chiang revolted against the domestic corruption and international weakness of the Manchu dynasty..."  Chiang was also against widespread opium addiction and foot-binding.  In the 1920's, Chiang was with "Sun-Yatsen's revolutionary Kuomintang party", and he even fought alongside Communists.  This was the case in World War II, as both factions united against the Japanese.  But Chiang turned on the Communists in 1927, as he feared their increasing strength.  Another consideration that Nixon raises is that Chiang and Mao had two approaches: that "Mao sought to erase the past while Chiang sought to build upon it" (page 241).  According to Nixon on page 242, the Communists hated Chiang, yet they still "respected and even admired him"; Chiang, however, did not respect the Communists.

On Chiang's authoritarianism, Nixon says on page 244 that Chiang "was not a democrat, even though he did introduce constitutional government."  Chiang thought that the Chinese had too much freedom and needed discipline.  Nixon may have agreed with my junior high school teacher that Taiwan was not exactly "Free China."  At the same time, I question whether Nixon would have seen that as necessarily a bad thing, for Nixon in more than one place says that democracy is not the best system for everyone.  Nixon does laud Taiwan's free-market policies, though.

On Chiang's Christian devotion, Nixon tells the story of how this came to be on page 243.  Chiang wanted to marry a woman named Mei-ling, whose father manufactured and distributed Bibles.  But Mei-ling's family was hesitant to let this marriage happen, since Chiang was not a Christian.  Chiang offered to become a Christian, but he also decided to do a serious study of the Bible, for he did not take his religion lightly.  During Chiang's marriage to Mei-ling, the two of them would "often pray together for an hour in the morning."

I wonder how Chiang could have been the crook that my teachers and history books say he was, when he appeared to have so much substance.  He opposed injustice in China.  He cared about his country.  He was a scholar.  On many mornings, he and his wife would pray to God.  Was he a mixture of good and bad?  Did selfishness get in the way of his ideals?

Leaders 3

A theme that came up more than once in my latest reading of Richard Nixon's Leaders was alcohol.  Here are some stories that Nixon tells:

----Page 143: "[German leader Konrad Adenauer] had other weapons besides the cold steel of logic, however.  When a cabinet meeting grew difficult, he would sometimes suspend debate for a while and pass around a bottle of wine.  After a few glassfuls and some friendly small talk, he would resume the meeting.  The opposition would then be substantially less resolute."

----Page 155: "[Soviet leader Nikita] Khrushchev was then relatively new to power and unfamiliar with the leaders he would be confronting in the free world.  He was clearly intent upon testing Adenauer's mettle.  During one banquet he proposed a seemingly endless series of toasts to see whether the seventy-nine-year-old Adenauer, so intractable at the negotiating table, could be worn down by liquor.  Though he preferred wine to vodka, Adenauer had a stomach as well as a will of iron.  After fifteen toasts he was still both upright and alert----alert enough, in fact, to notice that Khrushchev had been drinking water.  The next morning Adenauer confronted Khrushchev with the tongue-in-cheek suggestion that any man who would do such a thing could not be trusted.  Surprised to find that he had been caught in the act, Khrushchev could only laugh."

Page 188: "The table was laden with every manner of Russian delicacy and soft and hard drinks.  Despite his well-deserved reputation for drinking heavily, Khrushchev only sampled the array of vodka and wine.  He appreciated good food and drink.  But just as his famed temper was always his servant and not his master, his drinking on this occasion was strictly for pleasure and was never permitted to interfere with business.  He was cold sober throughout our long afternoon of talks."

Alcohol can indeed be conducive to camaraderie and socializing in a relaxed manner.  I one time heard a person with Asperger's Syndrome talk about how he did not really fit in with his Irish extended family----until they started to get drunk together.  Then, they could have fun and bond with each other.

But alcohol can also hinder some people from doing the business that they need to do.  Khrushchev did not want to get drunk when negotiating because he wanted for his mind to be alert and sharp during that time.  And, speaking of the negative effects that drinking lots of alcohol can bring, that one person with Asperger's whom I discussed in my above paragraph eventually decided to quit drinking, for he thought that he was degenerating into a sour alcoholic.

I used to drink for a variety of reasons.  I drank socially because I hoped that it would loosen me up in social settings.  Social settings make me nervous.  I tend to clam up within them, which is not particularly attractive to people and which can even draw mockery.  Drinking helped me to loosen up, to relax, and to talk more.  Did that make me more attractive to people?  To some people it did, and to some people it didn't.  One person told me I was fun when I was drinking, which was probably true because I loosened up when I was drunk, whereas when I was not drinking I was more stiff, reserved, formal, and guarded.  But not everyone likes to be around someone who's drunk and who's saying a lot of silly things with bombast.  Come to think of it, I myself don't, particularly.

But I drank even more in solitude.  The reason was that it made me feel better.  I have Asperger's Syndrome, and what that means is that I don't do too well socially.  I have a history of not fitting in and of being rejected by people, and I become resentful when I think back about that.  I also have fear about the future: how will I make a living in the future if I have a hard time getting people to like me?  Drinking was a way for me to self-medicate.  And it got to the point where no amount was enough.  I would go through a six-pack on certain nights and still want more.  I could identify with something that Leo McGarry said on an episode of The West Wing: he kept on drinking because he wanted that feeling to go on!  But waking up with a hangover was no fun.  I think of what Scotty said on that episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation: never get drunk unless you're willing to pay for it the next morning!

I decided to stop drinking, and I have been sober for what I consider to be a respectable number of years----though, regardless of how many years that one is sober, it's always one-day-at-a-time.  What do I do now that I don't drink?  How do I do socially?  How do I cope with my resentments about the past and my fears about the future?  How do I self-medicate?

Socially-speaking, I'm not as nervous now as I used to be when talking with people.  But I still can be rather stiff, formal, and reserved.  I doubt that I would be the life of the party were I to go to a party.  By and large, my policy about a lot of social gatherings that I have to attend is "suit up and show up."  I show up, do my duty, and I leave.  Sometimes, I can end up having enjoyable, interesting conversations with people.  Sometimes, I just want to rush to the door!  I'm just speaking for myself, and there are plenty of people within recovery groups who would tell you that they became more fun----more happy, joyous, and free----when they quit drinking and did the spiritual work on themselves that would help them to stay sober.  That's fine (even though I get rather sick of people bragging about how happy and spiritual they are), but it's just not me.  Come to think of it, though, I do have a little more serenity now that I don't drink.  I'm not the life of the party, but I do have a quiet, flat sort of peace.  One thing I will add: I'm not sure if my social mettle has been truly tested over the past couple of years.  My Mom and her husband accept me, even though I am quiet.  I go to church, and there are plenty of people at the pot-lucks who themselves are quiet, so I don't feel out-of-place being quiet.  That doesn't mean that I feel compelled to throw myself into hyper-social situations, though.

How do I cope with my resentments about the past and my fears about the future?  This is still a struggle for me, to tell you the truth.  Many within recovery groups find that working with a mentor or a sponsor is helpful.  It can be.  I don't do that as much nowadays, since I'm not really in recovery groups, due to my struggle to fit in at them.  But I did find one time that talking with my pastor really helped me.  I was nervous about a social event that was coming up, which I had to attend, and my pastor gave me encouragement.  It's good when you can find someone who's rooting for you and can give you guidance to hang on to within a tough setting.  Another way that I cope is through prayer and Bible reading, and, the more I feel resentful on a given day, the more I pray and read the Bible.  That doesn't necessarily solve my problems, to tell you the truth, but it does help me to alleviate feelings of resentment or fear that I may have.

Leaders 2

I covered a lot of ground in my latest reading of Richard Nixon's Leaders.  I finished Nixon's chapter about French leader Charles de Gaulle, and I read a significant portion of his chapter about General Douglas MacArthur and Japanese Prime Minister Shigeru Yoshida, who worked together to rebuild Japan after World War II.  I won't be mentioning every single passage in my latest reading that I found noteworthy, since there were so many.  As I've said before on this blog, I do love reading Nixon, particularly on account of his conversational writing-style.  But I will offer some samples.

1.  On page 43, Nixon says about Charles de Gaulle:

"The de Gaulle I met in 1960 was very different from the arrogant, abusive character portrayed by reporters and foreign service personnel.  I found him to be a very kind man with a somewhat shy quality that is hard to describe.  He was not warm, but neither was he harsh.  I would say he was almost gentle.  But, as with most leaders, gentleness of manner was one thing; policy was another thing.

"Most leaders I have known had a gentle side to their natures, but it would be a mistake to call them gentle people.  Those who are in fact gentle are seldom good at wielding power.  A leader has to be brutally tough at times in order to do his job.  If he frets too much about the toughness of his task, if he lets himself be deterred to much by sentimentality, he will not do what he has to do right, or even do it at all."

In Nixon's depiction, de Gaulle was a formal and reserved man, on the one hand, and Nixon says that Winston Churchill complained that de Gaulle was too stubborn and intransigent!  But, on the other hand, according to Nixon, de Gaulle was also genuinely kind and considerate.  De Gaulle at dinners would invite other people into a conversation rather than monopolizing people's attention, and he complimented Pat on the flower arrangement.  De Gaulle could step out of his formality and reserve when he was entertaining his daughter, who had a mental disability.  And, in the political arena, de Gaulle could use flattery whenever it would suit him politically!

I didn't know a whole lot about de Gaulle before reading Nixon's discussion about him, but I have in the past appreciated some of the things that Nixon said about de Gaulle.  I remember watching David Frost's interviews of Nixon on C-SPAN, and the topic was Nixon's reserve.  Nixon noted that Charles de Gaulle was a good leader, and yet de Gaulle was not exactly a back-slapping politician.  This resonated with me, as someone who has been judged as cold, stiff, and reserved, for it told me that one could be reserved and still accomplish things.  But Nixon's stories in Leaders about de Gaulle's kindness especially appealed to me, for they told me that one could be quiet and reserved and yet kind.  I know people who are rather quiet, but they are pleasant people to be around because they listen and they express concern and understanding.  That's the sort of quiet person I should aim to be.

Incidentally, the motif of formal and reserved, yet kind, people comes up elsewhere in Nixon's works.  Nixon in volume 1 of his memoirs, for example, depicts conservative Republican (and Presidential candidate) Robert Taft as such a person: one who was formal and reserved, yet was also loving to his wife, who was in a wheelchair; Nixon says that Taft took his wife to many of his political events.  Why does this theme come up more than once in Nixon's work?  Perhaps it's because it reflects how Nixon saw himself, or what Nixon himself wanted to be.

2.  On page 88, Nixon says the following about General Douglas MacArthur:

"MacArthur always felt compelled to be different from those around him, and this led to certain glaring but harmless eccentricities.  In the military, uniform dress is intended in part to reinforce the command hierarchy.  But MacArthur wanted to stand out, not fit in.  To another officer who asked about his unusual garb, he said, 'It's the orders you disobey that make you famous.'"

In my opinion, this coincides with something that Nixon said earlier in the book when discussing Churchill: that leaders of the past were far more colorful, whereas many leaders of today, in the age of television, are more boring and homogeneous.  Nixon notes that he knew a lot of interesting personalities when he was in Congress in the 1940's.

I wondered to myself if there were any colorful personalities in government today.  There are----I think of the Tea Party politicians, who are not exactly mainstream.  But they strike me as rather paranoid and extreme, so I don't think that they are eccentric in a good way.  But I do admire certain politicians who take bold, outside-of-the-mainstream stands: I think of the Socialist Senator Bernie Sanders, or Senator Rand Paul from Kentucky.  There are times when I would like to hear something other than the usual banal political script.

Nixon portrays MacArthur as, well, different.  He says that MacArthur probably enjoyed the company of people in Asia more than that of Americans.  This stood out to me because it was consistent with how Nixon depicts MacArthur's governance of Japan after World War II: that MacArthur governed with sensitivity towards the Japanese, and also with social justice, as MacArthur brought about land reform that ensured a broader distribution of the land.  But it also stood out to me because I myself have enjoyed the company of many Asians: foreign-exchange students from Asian countries, or English-as-a-Second language students I have tutored.  I found them to be nicer than a lot of Americans!  That's just my impression, and I realize that I should not stereotype.

I should note that Nixon's portrayal of leaders in this book is not always positive.  While Nixon says a lot of positive things about MacArthur, he also expresses disapproval.  For example, when Dwight Eisenhower as President had a heart attack, MacArthur said that he was in Vice-President Nixon's corner and wanted Eisenhower to get out of the way (which, in my opinion, may have meant resigning, not dying).  Nixon said that he found MacArthur's comments to be "highly inappropriate under the circumstances" (page 92).  But MacArthur's comments probably reflected the long-standing tension that he (MacArthur) had with Eisenhower, which Nixon talks about.

3.  On page 114, Nixon tells the following anecdote about MacArthur and Japanese Prime Minister Yoshida:
"Another time Yoshida brought MacArthur an ingenious toy horse that he had brought for [MacArthur's son] Arthur during one of his anonymous walks through the streets of Tokyo.  When Yoshida visited MacArthur's office again a few days later, he saw the toy still sitting on the general's desk, next to a stand containing his famous corncob pipes.  Yoshida asked MacArthur why he had not yet given it to his son.  The Supreme Commander answered somewhat sheepishly that he had been having too much fun playing with it himself.  Later he reluctantly passed the toy on to Arthur."

I loved this humorous anecdote, especially since my impression of MacArthur in reading Nixon's book is that MacArthur was rather formal and took himself very seriously.  Even MacArthur liked to play, once in a while!  I enjoy Nixon's book because of these sorts of anecdotes that reveal the human side of leaders.  And yet, Nixon also gets into policy.  Nixon praised Yoshida's stance against rigid anti-monopoly laws, for example, which was consistent with Nixon's own criticism of anti-trust laws in volume 2 of his memoirs: Nixon thought that large companies could produce more.  Something else that I found interesting was Nixon's statement that MacArthur advised President Lyndon Johnson not to send more troops to Vietnam.  I was surprised by this, for MacArthur was a hawk when it came to the Korean War and his beliefs about the need to combat Communism in Asia.  There may be more nuance to that, however, since one could be a hawk, while also being against sending more American troops.  One could support reliance on air power rather than ground-forces, or one could believe in using more Asian troops to fight Communism in Asia rather than American troops (I think of Vietnamization, and also MacArthur's support for using some of Chiang Kaishek's men during the Korean War).

Leaders 1

I started Richard Nixon's 1982 book Leaders, which profiles various world leaders, many of whom Nixon knew.  In this post, I'll use as my starting-point something that Nixon says on pages 25-26.  Nixon is talking about Winston Churchill, and how Churchill in 1922 was really depressed because he could not serve in the House of Commons at that time, due to an "emergency appendectomy [that] prevented him from campaigning for reelection."

"Talleyrand once said, 'In war one dies only once, in politics one dies only to rise again.'  Churchill's career certainly bears out the truth of this observation.  But an adage is precious little comfort for a man who has just lost an election.  Having lost a couple of them, I know how it feels.  Friends tell you, 'Won't it be great to have no responsibility and to be able to travel, go fishing, and play golf anytime you want?'  My answer is 'Yes----for about one week.'  Then you have a totally empty feeling that only one who has been through it can understand.

"The immediate aftermath is not so bad because you are still numbed by the exhaustion of the campaign, and you are still operating with a high level of adrenaline.  Weeks or months later the realization hits you that you have lost and that there is nothing you can take back or do differently to change the outcome.  Unless you are wealthy, there is also the necessity of beginning another career in order to pay the bills that keep coming in every week regardless of how you feel."

Politics was in Churchill's and Nixon's blood, so of course they would come back to it!  Would I have?  I don't know.  I can easily picture myself relaxing and chillin', and thinking to myself, "Man, I hope this lasts forever!"  I'd be happy to be out of the public eye, away from people's nitpicking and attacks, away from having to socialize with all those people.  But would that relaxation get boring after a while?  Would there be something within me that would drive me back into the arena?  And then there's another factor that Nixon mentions: how real life comes crashing through!  The bills keep coming, even to those who are burnt out.  Unless one is wealthy, one has to make money!

I think of Garner Ted Armstrong.  He was the head of one of the churches that I attended when I was growing up.  He served in his father's church as a preacher and as one of the personalities on the church's radio and TV show, The World Tomorrow.  But he was excommunicated from his father's church, and he was confronted with the question of what he would do then.  He says that he was offered jobs as a TV news anchor, since he had experience and some success on a TV show.  But he concluded that those jobs were not for him.  He would have to tell people the news, without bringing the Bible into his discussion.  Instead of taking a news anchor job, he would go on to start his own religious organization, and he would have his own radio and TV programs, where he could discuss the news in light of his own understanding of the Bible.

In my case, there have been times when I have had to turn off my computer during the day due to thunderstorms, and I've enjoyed the time away.  I could read.  I didn't have to worry about what people were saying (or, actually, not saying) about me on the Internet.  I even thought for a second that I could walk away from my blogs, and perhaps never come back!  But could I truly?  I don't think so.  Granted, there may be seasons in which I'd rather not participate too heavily in the world of blogging and social media.  But there is something within me that makes me want to write, to reflect on a movie, a TV show, a book, an idea, life, scholarship on religious studies, or a political personality by sharing my thoughts via writing.  I doubt that I could walk away from that.  I think it's in my blood, like politics was for Nixon and Churchill, and like religion was for Garner Ted Armstrong.