Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 12

For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I'll start with something that Black says on pages 423-424.  The topic is where President Dwight Eisenhower ranked among U.S. Presidents.

"A couple of years into his presidency, Kennedy confidant and respected historian Arthur Schlesinger circulated a form among selected historians inviting them to rate America's presidents.  The recipients chosen assured a selection that would be indulgent of the Democrats, and Franklin D. Roosevelt came in with Lincoln and Washington in the top group, where Wilson and Jefferson also resided, with Truman and Jackson and Polk and Cleveland (all Democrats) just behind, and with Theodore Roosevelt as their only accompanying Republican.  Eisenhower was outraged to find himself in twenty-second position, with generally ignored presidents like Benjamin Harrison, Franklin Pierce, and Rutherford B. Hayes.  This was a gross injustice to a good president.  Eisenhower considered Roosevelt an artful but shifty political trickster (true up to a point but hardly an overall judgment of FDR), and Truman an incompetent (a preposterous opinion), and set down his own administration's achievements."

Black then goes on to list the achievements that Eisenhower enumerated.  Black accepts much of what Eisenhower lists as achievements (i.e., the highway system, the end to the Korean war, containment of Communism, a tax cut, HEW, aid to Latin America, etc.), while thinking that Eisenhower stretches some things, as when Eisenhower claimed to have defeated Communism in Vietnam.  Black believes that Eisenhower could have handled some things better, such as the Suez Canal crisis and Hungary, and he notes embarrassing episodes during the Eisenhower Presidency, including Sputnik and the U-2 incident.  But, overall, Black maintains, there was peace and prosperity in the United States under Eisenhower's Presidency, and America was largely respected throughout the world.  This, even though Eisenhower was "one ultimately too much identified with golf, uncertain cardiology, and fiscal humbug", to quote Black's wit (page 424).

I don't know on what basis the historians evaluated Presidents as they did.  It is tempting to say that the historians Schlesinger asked were mostly Democrats and thus they preferred Democratic Presidents, which is what Black essentially argues, but such a characterization, in my opinion, leaves certain questions unresolved.  While Black is correct that Democratic Presidents did well in the ranking, there were Democrats who ranked pretty high who were arguably conservative, by today's standards.  Grover Cleveland, for example, did well in the ranking, but he has been characterized, by both the right and the left, as a government-keep-out sort of President.  Perhaps the historians were looking at how Presidents handled crises, such as wars, and also the question of what long-standing accomplishments they made.  Still, I'd say Eisenhower should get a fairly high rank on these grounds.  I wouldn't say that his civil rights accomplishments were particularly spectacular, for the civil rights bill that he signed had been watered down, but he did break some ground in the area, and perhaps he set the stage for later progress.  But he did make some lasting accomplishments, such as the highway system and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare, and he also brought the Korean War to an end.

There are some who question the conventional manner of ranking U.S. Presidents.  I'd someday like to read Ivan Eland's book, Recarving Rushmore: Ranking the Presidents on Peace, Prosperity, and Liberty.  The description of the book here says: "Who were the best and worst U.S. presidents? In the past when historians and scholars have rated the presidents, their evaluations often have been based on individual charisma, activism, and service during periods of crisis.  Taking a distinctly new approach in Recarving Rushmore, Dr. Ivan Eland profiles each U.S. president on the merits of his policies and whether those strategies contributed to peace, prosperity, and liberty."  You'd think that this book is a bunch of right-wing clap-trap, but not so fast!  Eland doesn't rank Presidents along party lines: "As for more modern U.S. chief executives, Republicans will be astounded to learn that Nixon was the last liberal president and that Reagan wasn’t all that conservative.  Democrats will be amazed to learn that Clinton was in some respects more conservative than George W. Bush. Readers will learn why the author goes against the grain and anoints Eisenhower and Carter as the two best modern presidents."  I wonder how Eland (who strikes me as a less-government type of thinker) would evaluate Eisenhower's accomplishments in domestic policy (i.e., HEW, the start of federal health care for the elderly, etc.), or why exactly he ranks Jimmy Carter so high!  I probably would not agree with Eland's ideology, but I think that he does well to bring to my mind a good question: Why should we rank wartime Presidents so highly?  Maybe the low-key Presidents who presided over peace and prosperity deserve higher ranks that they usually get!

I should note that, nowadays, Eisenhower has a pretty good reputation.  In the midst of the Tea Party, liberals, moderate Republicans, and even some conservatives like to point to Eisenhower as someone who was a reasonable Republican.  Progressives like to appeal to Eisenhower's highway system as an example of the government stimulating the economy, Eisenhower's high marginal tax rates for the rich, and other factors.  And there are conservatives who point to Eisenhower as a President who was fiscally responsible, one who wanted to get spending under control before cutting taxes.  Eisenhower's Administration was probably a time of relative peace and prosperity.  At the same time, I don't think that it was a totally rosy time.  People were still afraid of the bomb.  Communism triumphed in Cuba, ninety miles off of the U.S.'s shores.  Democratic Presidential candidate John F. Kennedy referred to the problem of hunger in America.  Racism was alive and well.  There was a recession during part of Eisenhower's Presidency.

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 11

In Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, Conrad Black narrates that William Knowland, a conservative Republican U.S. Senator from California, chose to run for Governor of California in 1958 rather than to pursue re-election to the U.S. Senate.  According to this article, Knowland at the time was the Senate Minority Leader.  Black says that Knowland was hoping to use the Governorship of California as "a stepping stone to the presidency" (page 366).  Black calls this decision on Knowland's part "the final attack of insanity of his public career", for Knowland had "a reasonable chance of reelection" to the U.S. Senate (page 366).  Knowland ended up taking the Republican nomination from Goodwin Knight, the Lieutenant Governor who replaced Earl Warren as Governor of California when Warren went on to serve as Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court.  But Knowland then lost badly to Democrat Edmund G. "Pat" Brown in the general election, and the wikipedia article attributes Knowland's loss to his support for an unpopular right-to-work initiative.  According to Black, "Knowland's life and career trailed off, and he eventually took to drink and gambling, left his wife, lost his money, and committed suicide in 1974" (page 374).

The wikipedia article narrates that Knowland was doing things between his loss in the Governor's race and his suicide.  It states that "Knowland was the titular head of the California Republican Party from 1959 to 1967, when he passed the party leadership to the new governor, Ronald Reagan."  Knowland "became President, Editor, and Publisher of the Oakland Tribune in 1966..."  But his first and second marriage would fail, and he accumulated a lot of debts.  In 1974, he shot himself.

I found out about a biography of Knowland, which is entitled One Step from the White House: The Rise and Fall of Senator William F. Knowland.  It is by Gayle Montgomery, James Johnson, and Paul Manolis.  I find the summary on Amazon to be quite poignant:

"During the Cold War years of the 1950s, William F. Knowland was one of the most important figures in American politics. As the Republican leader of the U.S. Senate, the wealthy California newspaper heir was recognized and respected by millions. His influence with President Eisenhower led to Earl Warren's appointment as chief justice, and Knowland set in motion a U.S.-China policy that remains part of our international direction today. Yet he committed suicide in 1974, following a personal decline that included political humiliation, a ruined marriage, and the loss of his family fortune.  This is the first full-scale biography of Bill Knowland, written by two journalists who came to know him after he left Washington in 1958. Gayle B. Montgomery was a political editor at the Oakland Tribune, the newspaper owned by Knowland's father, the power-wielding Joseph R. Knowland. James W. Johnson was a Tribune editorial writer. Both men worked with Knowland when he returned to the newspaper after giving up his Senate seat in a failed bid to become governor of California. Knowland lost the governorship race to Edmund G. (Pat) Brown; had he won, many observers felt Knowland would have had a clear shot at the White House.  This is a book not only about Mr. Republican, but also one that illuminates the strengths and deficiencies of Republican party politics during the years when the party was at its zenith. In portraying the life of Bill Knowland, the authors cast a glaring light both on the machinations of political power and on the Republican establishment's aspirations in the Warren-Eisenhower era."

One of the reviews is by someone who worked for Knowland at the Oakland Tribune, and this reviewer states: "I knew Senator Knowland well, having worked for twenty years for the Oakland Tribune, and having had the unenviable assignment of writing his obituary for the newspaper following his death. Gayle Montgomery and Jim Johnson have done a magnificent job of capturing the driving demons of a man whose brusque and hearty demeanor disguised a complex and, in the end, tortured personality. This is a compelling book for every reader, not just those interested in the social an[d] political history of the time."

Why did I choose to write about this today?  I try to write something each day about whatever Nixon book I am reading, and I chose this topic, for there was something about it that grabbed me.  Not only is it tragic that someone who once had so much power, influence, and fame killed himself (though it would also be tragic if someone without those things committed suicide), but it also seems as if Knowland's entire political career ended simply because he made one bad decision, an error in judgment: he could have arguably gone on being an influential Senator, but he left that to run for Governor, and he lost badly.  But did things have to turn out as they did?  Could Knowland have run again for office after losing the Governorship, as Richard Nixon did?  I don't know.  Knowland's father sold a radio station that he owned to help pay off Knowland's campaign debts.  I'm not sure how feasible a renaissance in Knowland's political career would have been.  Maybe Knowland was just burned out.  

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 9

For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, I will use as my starting-point something that Black says on pages 311-312.  The topic is Vice-President Richard Nixon's impressions of foreign countries and leaders.

"[Nixon] said he was impressed by presidents Batista in Cuba, Cortines in Mexico, and Castillo Armas in Guatemala (who had recently replaced President Jacobo Arbenz Guzm[a]n, thanks to U.S. intervention disguised as a local uprising).  His description of Batista as an honest and socially progressive leader and a 'voracious' reader is not one that most Cubans would recognize.  His concern that the palace of the president of Mexico was more opulent than the White House, although people less than a tenth of a mile away from it 'lived in caves' was perceptive.  His belief that the United Fruit Company would see to the rising prosperity of Honduras was inexplicably foolish for such a well-qualified observer (that company had led the opposition to the former regime in Guatemala).  But his reservations about Rafael Trujillo in the Dominican Republic, and about the desperate poverty of Haiti, were sensible, if not startling feats of observation.  He did advocate the gradual incentivization of more democracy in the region, and successfully advocate assistance for the Inter-American highway."

Richard Nixon's approach to foreign countries and leaders has come up often in my blog posts for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  There are times when Nixon appears to be quite progressive, empathetic with countries (particularly their problems with colonialism), and compassionate towards those impoverished by systemic injustice.  But there are also times when he is skeptical about democracy being the right system for every country right away, when he arguably treats the Third World as a battlefield for the Cold War while neglecting the problems of people in Third World countries, and when he has a belief (that some would call naive) that multinational corporations can save the day.  Like Black, I have the impression that Nixon's views on foreign countries and leaders were a mixture of idealism and realism.

There's also the issue of Nixon's admiration of leaders whom many would consider to be corrupt or repressive.  Black mentions Nixon's impression of Batista, the leader of Cuba who would be overthrown by Fidel Castro.  I think that the Shah of Iran is another example.  Nixon speaks highly of the Shah in his books.  He saw the Shah as someone who sincerely cared for Iran, highlighted the land reforms that the Shah helped to enact, denied that the Shah was particularly repressive, and affirmed that the Shah was an important bulwark against Soviet aggression in the Middle East.  When I watched the 2012 movie Argo and saw the brief documentary at the beginning about the Shah's repression, I wondered: "Man, is this the same guy Nixon was talking about, the humble gentleman Nixon was praising?"

It puzzles me how a leader can come across as an intellectual, as humble, as a visionary, as a reformer, and as one who cared about his nation, and yet be repressive and corrupt in his leadership.  And this does not just apply to right-wing leaders or dictators, for I have read about the same sort of thing when an American meets with a left-wing dictator with a reputation for brutality: the dictator actually is quite impressive, not the sort of person one would expect to be a horrible despot.  One could say that such leaders are merely putting on an act when they are meeting with American representatives, that they have the social skills to deceive and manipulate the big, strong Americans.  I'm sure that there's a lot of acting going on in these meetings, but I also think that, on some level, the controversial leaders are bringing who they are into their interactions with American representatives.  How, then, would I explain these leaders' insensitivity, harsh repression, and (in many cases) corruption, in light of their sensitive, intellectual side?  I don't know.  We are all mixtures of good and bad, of idealism and blind-spots.  Maybe that's what's going on.

David Frost

I learned that David Frost has passed on.  David Frost interviewed Richard Nixon in 1977, and those interviews were the subject of an excellent play and movie.  I watched the interviews on C-Span when I was a teen, and now you can watch some of them on YouTube.  Overall, I think that Frost did an excellent job, but that Nixon gave as good as he got.

I've mentioned Frost in some of my past posts.  Here is a sample:

Nixon the Underdog

Ambrose’s Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 17

Nixon’s Shadow 7

Leaders 2

President Nixon’s Psychiatric Profile 1

Grant Our Leaders Wisdom...

At church this morning, the pastor emeritus prayed that God might grant our leaders wisdom as they made their decision about Syria.  Unfortunately, what will probably happen is that the U.S. will bomb Syria, and civilians will die in the process.  See Ezra Klein's article, Could Bombing Syria Kill More Civilians Than It Saves?  And God most likely won't step in and stop this, for God hasn't stopped numerous other civilian casualties in the past.  If I were to ask God to grant our leaders wisdom, it would be so that they would know how to negotiate, so that the disputes could be resolved without bloodshed.  That would require a lot of wisdom----an ability to think outside the box!  But I don't think that we'll be seeing that. 

Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full 8

For my blog post today about Conrad Black's Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full, my focus will be on Dwight Eisenhower's response to Senator Joseph McCarthy's attacks on General George C. Marshall.

According to Black on pages 264-265, "On June 14, 1951, McCarthy had harangued the Senate for eight hours with a sixty-thousand-word speech in which he reviewed General Marshall's career and accused him of complete incompetence as chief of staff, envoy to China, and secretary of state and defense, and concluded that Marshall's treachery had produced every communist triumph."  Dwight Eisenhower, the Republican Presidential candidate in 1952, admired Marshall.  Black states that Marshall should have had "solid and bipartisan" support anyway, since Marshall was instrumental in organizing the victory in World War II and was a "brilliant cabinet secretary" (page 265).  But Eisenhower had good reason to have a particular affection for Marshall, for Marshall, after all, was the one who promoted Eisenhower "from lieutenant-colonel to theater commander and four-star general in less than three years" (page 265).

Candidate Eisenhower was planning to put a paragraph in his Milwaukee, Wisconsin speech, and the paragraph would praise Marshall.  The paragraph would say that Marshall had been "dedicated with singular selflessness and profoundest patriotism to the service of America," and that the accusations against Marshall were "a sobering lesson in the way freedom must not defend itself" (quotation of the paragraph).  But Eisenhower ended up leaving that paragraph out, and this was supposedly because "Midwest Republican leaders told him it would be too disruptive to party unity to attack McCarthy in this way" (page 265).  The thing is, the text of the speech, with the paragraph praising Marshall, had been given to the press by Eisenhower's staff, and so many people knew that Eisenhower decided to leave the paragraph out to appease McCarthy's supporters.  As a result, Eisenhower was widely criticized: by the press, such as Edward R. Murrow; by Democratic Presidential candidate Adlai Stevenson; and even by some conservative Republicans, such as Harold Stassen.  Eisenhower berated McCarthy in his only meeting with him, and Black says that Eisenhower felt bad about leaving out the paragraph defending Marshall.  On page 266, Black states that Eisenhower "tried to ignore it in his memoirs, and blamed his staff for misleading him about the implications of failing to defend Marshall."

So Eisenhower left out that paragraph defending Marshall because he was afraid of alienating McCarthy supporters, right?  Well, on pages 301-302, Black backtracks from this story-line, a bit.  Eisenhower and Nixon were having a slight disagreement about Nixon's rhetoric.  Nixon had blamed Dean Acheson, who had served as Harry Truman's Secretary of State, for the fall of China to the Communists, and Dwight Eisenhower, now the President, thought that such attacks were hindering his own ability to work with Democrats.  Nixon responded that he was attacking Acheson, not all Democrats, but Eisenhower was not buying that line of reasoning.  According to Black, Eisenhower then went on to blame Marshall for the fall of China to the Communists, for Marshall had pressured Chiang Kaishek (the nationalist leader of mainline China, before it fell to the Communists) to accept Communists into his government.  Black also notes that Marshall urged Chiang to have a cease-fire for two-weeks.  Black does not believe that these things were what led to the fall of China to the Communists, blaming it instead on the "corruption and incompetence of the Chiang Kai-shek Kuomintang government" (page 302).  But Black notes that Eisenhower, on some level, was blaming Marshall for China's fall, even going so far as to echo some of Joseph McCarthy's allegations.  Black states that such a consideration "may go some way to explaining Eisenhower's failure to defend Marshall against McCarthy" (page 301).  Eisenhower was not a McCarthyite, and he even played a role in bringing McCarthy down; but did Eisenhower fail to defend Marshall against McCarthy's allegations in 1952 because he agreed with those allegations, on some level?  I seriously doubt that Eisenhower thought Marshall was treasonous, but perhaps he thought that Marshall exercised poor judgment on China.

I'd like to make two more points.  First of all, a long time ago, I read Joseph McCarthy's book, America's Retreat from Victory: The Story of George Catlett Marshall.  McCarthy appealed to sources in making his arguments and asked good questions, but I think that it's good to read a variety of sources.  Sure, McCarthy is worth the read, but so are other works, such as Acheson's autobiography (not that I have read the latter, at least not yet).  I referred to some things in McCarthy's book in my posts here and here.

Second, I found it interesting that the guy who famously asked McCarthy if he had "no sense of decency", army counsel Joseph Welch, was that one who played the judge in the movie Anatomy of a Murder, starring James Stewart and George C. Scott.  That's what Black says on page 299.  As someone with one foot in and one foot out of the right wing, I'm not sure if I liked what Welch said to McCarthy.  Ann Coulter in Treason talks about how McCarthy was actually the one on the defensive in those hearings, that McCarthy was defending someone on his staff from attacks, and that Welch was essentially whining when he did not want to respond to McCarthy's points.  I don't know.  Again, it's probably a good idea to read a variety of books about this topic.  The thing is, whatever I feel about Welch's performance in the Army-McCarthy hearings, I actually liked the judge in Anatomy of a Murder: his little speech about the law, how he looked on with pride as Jimmy Stewart's character was pouring through law books to come up with a case, etc.