Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek
[From a review of the book in the Chicago Tribune by Jeremi Suri.]
Power is often ugly up close. Behind the impressive imagery and eloquent rhetoric of national leadership, the keen observer finds all-too-human men and women. They are petty, selfish and judgmental -- like the rest of us. They are sensitive to criticism and insult -- even from those with far less influence. Most disconcerting, leaders frequently exhibit hatred and meanness toward others. Personal vendettas are common; magnanimity is rare.
No one understands these troubling qualities in powerful figures better than historian Robert Dallek. Over a long and distinguished career he has chronicled the presidencies of Franklin Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, Ronald Reagan and now Richard Nixon. His books have unmasked the men in the White House, probing the personal qualities that shaped policy, especially in international affairs.
Dallek's second volume on Johnson,"Flawed Giant," captured the profound contradictions between high hopes and personal shortcomings that brought American leaders to pursue war -- with mixed results -- in Western Europe, Japan, Korea, Vietnam, Lebanon and now Iraq. In each of these cases, foreign policy reflected the personality of leaders.
This is the fundamental argument of Dallek's new book,"Nixon and Kissinger." This is not a biography of Nixon nor of his national security adviser and secretary of state, Henry Kissinger, since the author focuses little more than a chapter on each figure before he enters the White House. Instead, Dallek chronicles in extraordinary depth how the personality traits of both men determined policy:"Their ambitions, hunger for power and control, suspicions, and personal rivalries both advanced and retarded their efforts to end the war in Vietnam and alter Soviet-American relations, dealings with China, conditions in the Middle East, and developments in Latin America."...