Customer Reviews

Blind Ambition

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

I read this book 20 years ago whilst on vacation. Its contents have remained clearly with me until today - the excitement of getting plucked from 'nowhere' and given the job of White House counsel to the president - the concern as the Watergate break-in takes on a life of its own and eventually goes out of control - bringing down the American Government - John Dean's book remains, for me at least, a classic study of creeping disillusionment with high office. Not to be bettered.

I have just re-read my original paperback copy of Blind Ambition. It remains as enthralling today as it was when I originally read it several years ago. If you have any interest in the Nixon-Watergate history, this is a must read.

Let's not forget who John Dean was, and what he did.

John Dean was, depending on your point of view, either a scorpion whose sole purpose was the covering of his own behind, or a young man, as Nixon put it later, in way over his head, struggling to contain a situation he didn't understand.

In either case, Blind Ambition is my personal favourite and least self-serving of all the Watergate biographies. Dean, while making every attempt to present his actions in a favourable light, doesn't leave any of them out, and freely acknowledges his complicity in unethical and criminal behaviour.

This book is readable and intelligent. And, after struggling to contain the nausea I felt after reading Haldeman's simpering, transparent gibberish (The Ends of Power), refreshing. So far as I can tell, Dean has written the most honest and frank book of all the Watergate participants. It correlates to all the Watergate indexes and chronologies I've seen.

You may still think he was a snake, but you will, I believe, come away with a better understanding of the Nixon White House. Very much worth a read.

As is probably pretty obvious, the "admitted as bogus" critique below is a purposefully slanted, terribly misleading review. Taylor Branch *did* in fact ghostwrite Blind Ambition, but so what? It doesn't change the fact that it is an extraordinary account of the goings on in the innermost circle of power during our nation's (soon to be second) darkest political hour. It's a great book.

Is it "bogus"? It's true that Dean, while being deposed in a lawsuit against his publishing company in 1995, accused Taylor Branch of making things up and admitted that he never properly reviewed the final draft. But he never specified *what* was made up and to what degree. Branch, on the other hand, has since stated that everything in the book is absolutely in accord with what Dean recounted to him. This fact, coupled with the decades of subsequent corroboration by other key players, makes it pretty obvious that Dean was simply giving himself legal wiggle room while under oath. In other words, Branch gave us the truth.

That said, even if it were complete hokum, it'd still be a gripping read.

``Blind Ambition'' is White House counsel John Dean's riveting account of the Watergate scandal that crushed the Nixon presidency. I was captivated by the exactness of the dialog. Dean must have a good memory.
For those few still not aware, the book shows there is one law for the president of the United States and one or more for the rest of us. According to Dean, President Nixon didn't know of the break-in before it occurred but learned of it shortly after. Nixon was in on the cover-up practically from day one although most of the details were left to aides.
Dean is kind toward his co-conspirators. His empathy for John Mitchell, the ill-fated attorney general who was a mentor to Dean during their Justice Department days, is particularly touching. Dean's attitude can be traced to his moral reawakening coupled with the religious conversion of Charles Colson. At the White House, Dean and Colson were toadies vying with each other for Nixon's attention and praise. But, at Holabird prison, the two become fast friends, quietly spurring each other on to a better way.
``Blind Ambition'' shows us the banality of power-seeking. Here's a conversation from page 386 of the hardcover edition --
Watergate staff lawyer Larry Iason: ``So you rode in on the crime issue?''
Dean: ``Right. In those days, only one thing was important. Getting ahead.''
Iason: ``Why?''
Dean: ``I don't know.''
Dean's reasons for breaking ranks are complex. In addition to his personal anguish, Dean's rationale is a combination of a helpless feeling that the cover-up could only be kept going by perjury after perjury and his concern that a ``cancer'' was eating away at the presidency.
The author doesn't have harsh words with the president or about him even though Nixon is shown to be a habitual liar who tried to make Dean the fall guy. Dean says at one point Nixon could have salvaged his presidency if only he could have truthfully admitted errors and wrongdoing. Nixon's longtime distrust of the ``liberal'' media and Washington establishment made that impossible.
``Blind Ambition'' is ultimately a hopeful book with a happy ending. Its final pages have the author starting a new life on a higher moral plane. Looking back on Watergate, in a spirit of letting go, Dean cites Somerset Maugham's ``The Summing Up,'' a book he was reading at the time. ``...We are shocked when we discover that great men were weak and petty, dishonest or selfish, sexually vicious, vain or intemperate; and people think it disgraceful to disclose to the public its heroes' failings. There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hopscotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same.''

Good luck trying to find this book in print since Dean's 1995 revelation that he didn't write the book at all. This book was ghost written by Taylor Branch (see his website which verifies this fact). During his deposition in a defamation lawsuit that Dean brought against the publisher of _Silent Coup_, Dean admitted that he didn't write the book and hadn't even reviewed it at any great length. He further stated that entire passages of the book were completely fabricated by Branch.

If you want the true record of what went on in Watergate you're going to have to look a lot further than this self-serving and completely fabricated piece of fiction.

john dean writes this book because he feels like he has to let the public know what has happened in his work experience at the White House. He thinks he has to write it for his own survival.