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Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon

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"The true crime of Richard Nixon was simple: he destroyed the myth that binds America together, and for that he was driven from office." - Theodore White

In 1975, the year BREACH OF FAITH was published, there was nobody better equipped to explain the fall of Richard Nixon than journalist Theodore White. With the ink barely dry on President Ford's pardon, and with Nixon $400,000 in debt (pesky unpaid taxes) and months away from a rescuing book deal, America kept a nervous, quasi-suicide watch eye on the hermit of San Clemente. In a time hungry for explanations there was no shortages of books. Woodward and Bernstein gave us an exciting detective story, John Dean gave us contrition, G. Gordon Liddy gave hand-in-the-flame defiance, Charles Colson and Jeb Magruder gave themselves back to God, and wrote about it. Most valuably of all, White's BREACH OF FAITH gave us context.

That context takes shape as White delves deeply into the personal and political character of Richard Nixon. White's journalistic career began in China, from where he covered the Revolution for Time magazine in the late thirties. Later he would return to America and report on its presidential campaigns for a number of years, writing a series of `Making of the President' books from 1960 to 1972. Nixon ran for president in 1960, 1968 and 1972. He was a Banquo's ghost-like presence in 1964 when Lyndon Johnson overwhelmingly defeated Barry Goldwater. Nixon's career in national politics and White's career as a domestic reporter ran along parallel tracks. In a sense Watergate almost had to be reported on by White - it marked the end of something he'd spent a generation observing. White begs off explaining `the essential duality of his (Nixon's) nature... the good mind and the evil spirit.' Not, I suspect, because of a lack of insight into Nixon's character. In fact, given the anti-Nixon time it was written in and White's deep affection for the Kennedys, BREACH OF FAITH presents a generously sympathetic picture of Nixon. The book divides roughly into two equal halves. The first is devoted to the plodding rise of Richard Nixon. The second looks at how the `systems' - the press, the congress, and the courts, converged to witness his precipitous fall. That story, White writes, `has elements of an American tragedy.' White's Nixon is the product of a rather cutthroat California political system, a system that rewards those willing to use innuendo and dirty tricks to win. Hardened, and embittered, by two consecutive losses - the presidency in 1960, the governorship of California in 1962 - by 1968 Nixon is conditioned to kick back hard at his enemies - real, imagined, and potential.

Sympathy for a subject doesn't mean an author absolves them of responsibility. The high crimes and misdemeanors, the obstructions of justice and abuses of power, are Nixon's alone. The only mitigating circumstance may be the `evil synergy' created when Nixon found himself alone with Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman and the ever-present running tape. In fact, Haldeman comes in for some of the harshest criticism in this relatively gentle book - `Haldeman's loyalty lay only to Richard Nixon; and no man served him worse.' Even if White places Nixon front and center on the docket, a sense of fairness prevails. For instance, Nixon's firing of Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox on October 20, 1973, the Saturday Night Massacre, is usually treated as the low point of the President's handling of the Watergate affair. More than any single event it propelled congress towards impeachment and incited the press and public to call for Nixon's resignation. White doesn't lighten the offense, but he reminds the reader - the only writer I've read to so remind us, incidentally - that October 20, 1973 was also the height of the Yom Kippur War. Nixon was in the process of making the momentous decision to begin a massive airlift of supplies to Israel. Nixon's attention was diverted, and White admires what he feels was a brave and decisive decision to send $1 billion worth of supplies to Israel. White, the self-proclaimed Nixon hater, is enough the journalist to appreciate the lonely isolation of, as Nixon would put it, `the man in the arena.'

Other conflicts unique to the time were the riots in the streets, the growth of a radical, and at times violent, underground, and an opposition to the war that coalesced into scandal when Daniel Ellsberg stole The Pentagon Papers and the New York Times printed them. As a response, a Nixon irregular henchman, Tom Huston, developed a plan that would bring the intelligence agencies together and greatly expand the use of domestic spying, to be overseen by the White House. Richard Nixon strongly supported it, FBI director J. Edgar Hoover as strongly opposed it. It is the nexus of these events that gives the book its title: `The United States, with it polyglot constituent stocks, is a nation only by faiths - that all are bound together in the pursuits of happiness by common belief in their personal liberties and equality before the law. What had happened in 1970, under the provocation of street violence, was that Richard Nixon had breached the faith. Although he revoked the Huston Plan and did not act on it, he had been guilty, in religious terms, of an Act of Heresy, or truly dangerous thought.'

BREACH OF FAITH is a wonderful, contemporary look at the implosion of the Nixon Presidency, written by one of the best journalists around at the time. For anyway who wants to understand Watergate, it's essential reading.

This may not be Theodore White's best book, but it is an excellent account of Watergate. It was published the year after Nixon resigned and draws on interviews with many of the central characters of the story. White puts the Nixon White House and the scandal in the context of post-war American politics, which he had covered in depth as a journalist and the author of classic accounts of the campaigns that preceded Nixon's demise. He also puts the events in the context of the decisions that Nixon had to make. I had not realized that the Saturday Night Massacre came at about the same time as the Yom Kippur War in the Middle East.

White seems to speed through the events of the last year--one might want more about the House Judiciary Committee--but the book summons up much of the feeling of the time. His portraits of Nixon, his minions, and his opponents are fascinating and insightful.

In my opinion, this is one of White's better books: he hits the pavement to meet participants like a reporter should do, and has a valuable longer-term perspective to add that respects what was good about Nixon, puts what he did wrong in context, and offers an assessment of why his actions precipitated his downfall. While White has been rightly faulted for indulging in a facile nostalgia for some of his later reporting, in particular on his "friend" Ronald Reagan, there is none of that here.

First, White looks at Nixon's career and character. To be sure, he finds many faults, but he respects Nixon's boldness and drive and his exceptional intelligence. The man got where he did because he worked and had talent and some luck, not because of any privilege. He also had a self-destructive streak. Second, White acknowledges that the Watergate break was a crime, as were other actions Nixon employed against enemies (perceived and real); he abused his power, growing ever bolder and paranoid. However, White adds that none of this is anything particular new for men of power, that there are many similar examples that are perhaps not as egregious, but certainly occurred. Third, While makes the argument that what really sunk Nixon was that he was caught lying to cover it up, which violated a fundamental (and naive) idea that Americans had of themselves and their system. In other words, by his arrogance and missteps, Nixon shattered a dearly held myth that Americans has about themselves. It was less what Nixon did than how he handled it. This was a controversial opinion at the time, but it is difficult to deny it is at least part of the truth.

Recommended as a classic journalistic treatment that is under-rated.

Breach of Faith:
The Fall of Richard Nixon
By Theodore H. White
12-1.5 hour cassettes
Read by John MacDonald

The Nixon crisis of 1973-1974 threatened the nation in ways we did not immediately understand.
Stripped of drama and confusion, however, the problem was that our President had placed himself above the law.
The nation had to decide whether that could be allowed.

Theodore H. White starts this STORY WITH THE LAST DAYS OF RICHARD NIXON IN THE WHITE HOUSE- as those closest recognized that he had deceived them and that they must force him out.

He follows the thread of manipulation back to its origin 20 years earlier and shows how the Nixon team came to see politics as war in which no quarter was given, in which the White House was a command post where ordinary rules did not apply, where power could be used without restraint.
[from the back cover of cassettes case]

Theodore H. White (1915-1986) narrates the Watergate scandal and the fall of President Richard Nixon in this book written as several trials from that scandal were still playing out in federal courtrooms in 1975. Readers learn much about the widespread scandal, which ran to the top. We see Nixon as clearly capable, but also a suspicious, devious liar (and tax cheat). Nixon saw politics as a hard-knuckled, take-no-prisoners affair, dating back to his smear campaigns for Congress (1946) and the Senate (1950), in which he came close to labeling his opponents as communist traitors. Such a view made it easy for him as President to approve of political espionage, and then to obstruct justice to cover the wrongdoings. The author also interviews and/or examines many of Nixon's devious lieutenants, including Haldeman, Colson, Liddy, etc. This book isn't White's best effort, but it's well-written and worth reading, as are the narratives from the Bob Woodward/Carl Bernstein pair that first uncovered the scandal (ALL THE PRESIDENTS MEN and THE FINAL DAYS).

White was a liberal journalist who'd drifted toward the center, and he seems to have written this book with a sense that he'd been betrayed by Nixon. Actually, the betrayal was more from the author's inability to see Tricky Dick's flaws, as well as over-rating Nixon's accomplishments in MAKING OF THE PRESIDENT 1972.