I’ve been reading a new book about Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger; it’s called (appropriately enough) Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power by Robert Dallek.
There seem to be a bunch of new Nixon books out lately. In addition to Nixon and Kissinger, there’s Nixon and Mao: The Week That Changed the World, by Margaret MacMillan, and Very Strange Bedfellows: The Short and Unhappy Marriage of Richard Nixon & Spiro Agnew, by Jules Witcover. And in a week and a half, a brand new full-length Nixon biography comes out, puzzlingly titled The Invincible Quest: The Life of Richard Milhous Nixon (how can a quest be invincible?) by Conrad Black, the financier and former newspaper magnate who is currently on trial for criminal fraud. I’m really looking forward to that last one, because Black, despite the criminal charges, is apparently a terrific author – his biography of FDR is highly praised. But his Nixon bio isn’t being published in the U.S. until the fall. I might have to order it from Canada.
I have a fascination with Richard Nixon and I’m not totally sure why. Part of it is Watergate – it just seems like a great story, filled with suspense, as things get worse and worse for Nixon, finally snowballing and ending in his resignation under threat of impeachment. There’s also the dramatic arc of his life story – rise (Congress, Senate and the vice presidency), fall (two electoral defeats in a row – for president in 1960, and for California governor in 1962), rise (twice elected president), fall (Watergate), and then his attempted vindication as an elder statesman until his death.
And Nixon himself is such an engrossing, flawed character – the paranoia; the paradox of a man raised as a Quaker who, in private, curses like a sailor and gets sloshed, and who rose to the presidency even though he was temperamentally unsuited to being a politician – shy and awkward in public.
I don’t know exactly what it is about him. But he fascinates me.
I agree! RN fascinates me too, and for the same reasons you expressed.
From Richard Nixon’s first election in 1946 for Congress, through his final years as an elder statesman, politics and foreign policy dominated his life. Few American politicians have spanned so many decades on the world stage. From hard knuckled political maneuvering at home, to diplomatic finesse in foreign capitals, Nixon was one of the more capable elected officials in the second half of the 20th century. Watergate was a sad and chilling chapter for America, and would have personally defeated most men. Nixon however, had one more amazing chapter to his life. He proved that a man called to the arena of national politics and international affairs must strive onwards.
For me too is the question I have never been able to answer, which is why such a man with so many quirks would be drawn to the most public of jobs?
I have over 40 books about Nixon on my bookshelves and James smiles at me as I pull one off to read it. Over the years he listens to my stories and thoughts on RN and has come to agree that RN was perhaps the most interesting person to reside in the Oval Office.
Lincoln however was my favorite.