Frank Gannon: Finally getting to know Nixon
[Mr. Gannon was a special assistant to President Nixon and the chief editorial assistant for "RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon" (1978).]
On Aug. 8, 1974, the night Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Henry Kissinger assured him that history would judge him to be one of America's great presidents. "That depends, Henry," Nixon replied, "on who writes the history."
Rick Perlstein, the author of the recent "Nixonland" -- an 896-page argument that Nixon's malign influence on postwar American politics reflected the malignity of his own soul -- has now edited "Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents." It is the latest in the James Madison Library in American Politics, of which Sean Wilentz, the eminent Princeton professor, is the general editor.
The idea of collecting the 37th president's miscellaneous prose is excellent and overdue. Some of Nixon's most important writings -- for instance, 1967's "Asia After Viet Nam," where he first advanced the idea of bringing Red China in from the cold -- have been unavailable for a long time or hard to find. In a general editor's introduction, Mr. Wilentz states that this collection will be "the autobiography [Nixon] did not write" -- which is awkward because Mr. Perlstein's first selection is from "RN" (1978), the 1,038-page autobiography Mr. Nixon did write.
In Mr. Perlstein's own long introduction -- 56 pages (out of 272) that might have been devoted to reprinting more Nixon material -- he gets one of the "Six Crises" wrong (the 1950 Senate race didn't make Nixon's list). He misplaces the site of the Watergate break-in, putting it in the hotel instead of the office building. And he misses the date of Nixon's farewell speech ("My mother was a saint") by a day.
More important, Mr. Perlstein presents a familiar bogey: a Nixon whose badness was bred in the bone; the family Nixon grew up in "was a churning stewpot of shame and stubborn pride, haunted by a sense of unearned persecutions." The footnotes for such an interpretation cite the writings of partisans and polemicists including Fawn Brodie, William Costello, Christopher Hitchens and Maureen Dowd. It will be interesting to see how soon Mr. Wilentz bestows the Madison Library's imprimatur on a JFK volume whose scholarship is based on Seymour Hersh's "The Dark Side of Camelot" or Nigel Hamilton's "JFK: Reckless Youth."
Mr. Perlstein's thesis is that Nixon's life was driven by serial resentments of the elites who scorned him. An early manifestation of this pathology is supposed to have occurred when Nixon, a freshman at Whittier College, founded the Orthogonians ("Square Shooters"). In Mr. Perlstein's view, the new club was intended to be a refuge for those who had been snubbed by the fancy Franklin Society. He makes much of the fact that Franklins donned tuxedos for their yearbook photos while Orthogonians sported open-necked shirts. "Franklins were well-rounded, graceful; they moved smoothly, talked slickly," he writes. "Nixon's new club, the Orthogonians, was for the strivers, the commuter students, those not to the manor born."
But Whittier College in 1930 was a culturally homogeneous Quaker-based community that reflected the middle-class towns from which the majority of its students were drawn. Whittier was a commuter campus. In any case, Nixon was from one of Whittier's "better" families; he owned a tuxedo. The Orthogonians were in fact jocks or would-be jocks (like Nixon), hardly bitter outcasts with their noses pressed resentfully against the glass. Nixon was elected president of every freshman and senior class from eighth grade through law school. If he later resented political and academic "elites," it was because they kept screwing him over, not because he wanted to be one of them.
A much more shrewd and realistic portrayal of Nixon can be found in Conrad Black's "Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full." As in his 2003 biography of FDR, Lord Black combines a mastery of his material with elegant (if occasionally overreaching) prose; and he brings a worldly outlook and sophisticated analysis to his subject. He admires Nixon's accomplishments, but his book is hardly hagiography....
Read entire article at WSJ
On Aug. 8, 1974, the night Richard Nixon resigned the presidency, Henry Kissinger assured him that history would judge him to be one of America's great presidents. "That depends, Henry," Nixon replied, "on who writes the history."
Rick Perlstein, the author of the recent "Nixonland" -- an 896-page argument that Nixon's malign influence on postwar American politics reflected the malignity of his own soul -- has now edited "Richard Nixon: Speeches, Writings, Documents." It is the latest in the James Madison Library in American Politics, of which Sean Wilentz, the eminent Princeton professor, is the general editor.
The idea of collecting the 37th president's miscellaneous prose is excellent and overdue. Some of Nixon's most important writings -- for instance, 1967's "Asia After Viet Nam," where he first advanced the idea of bringing Red China in from the cold -- have been unavailable for a long time or hard to find. In a general editor's introduction, Mr. Wilentz states that this collection will be "the autobiography [Nixon] did not write" -- which is awkward because Mr. Perlstein's first selection is from "RN" (1978), the 1,038-page autobiography Mr. Nixon did write.
In Mr. Perlstein's own long introduction -- 56 pages (out of 272) that might have been devoted to reprinting more Nixon material -- he gets one of the "Six Crises" wrong (the 1950 Senate race didn't make Nixon's list). He misplaces the site of the Watergate break-in, putting it in the hotel instead of the office building. And he misses the date of Nixon's farewell speech ("My mother was a saint") by a day.
More important, Mr. Perlstein presents a familiar bogey: a Nixon whose badness was bred in the bone; the family Nixon grew up in "was a churning stewpot of shame and stubborn pride, haunted by a sense of unearned persecutions." The footnotes for such an interpretation cite the writings of partisans and polemicists including Fawn Brodie, William Costello, Christopher Hitchens and Maureen Dowd. It will be interesting to see how soon Mr. Wilentz bestows the Madison Library's imprimatur on a JFK volume whose scholarship is based on Seymour Hersh's "The Dark Side of Camelot" or Nigel Hamilton's "JFK: Reckless Youth."
Mr. Perlstein's thesis is that Nixon's life was driven by serial resentments of the elites who scorned him. An early manifestation of this pathology is supposed to have occurred when Nixon, a freshman at Whittier College, founded the Orthogonians ("Square Shooters"). In Mr. Perlstein's view, the new club was intended to be a refuge for those who had been snubbed by the fancy Franklin Society. He makes much of the fact that Franklins donned tuxedos for their yearbook photos while Orthogonians sported open-necked shirts. "Franklins were well-rounded, graceful; they moved smoothly, talked slickly," he writes. "Nixon's new club, the Orthogonians, was for the strivers, the commuter students, those not to the manor born."
But Whittier College in 1930 was a culturally homogeneous Quaker-based community that reflected the middle-class towns from which the majority of its students were drawn. Whittier was a commuter campus. In any case, Nixon was from one of Whittier's "better" families; he owned a tuxedo. The Orthogonians were in fact jocks or would-be jocks (like Nixon), hardly bitter outcasts with their noses pressed resentfully against the glass. Nixon was elected president of every freshman and senior class from eighth grade through law school. If he later resented political and academic "elites," it was because they kept screwing him over, not because he wanted to be one of them.
A much more shrewd and realistic portrayal of Nixon can be found in Conrad Black's "Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full." As in his 2003 biography of FDR, Lord Black combines a mastery of his material with elegant (if occasionally overreaching) prose; and he brings a worldly outlook and sophisticated analysis to his subject. He admires Nixon's accomplishments, but his book is hardly hagiography....