20 of 21 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Surprising New Nixon: a kinder, gentler portrait, October 20, 2000
This review is from: Nixon Off the Record : His Candid Commentary on People and Politics (Hardcover)
As Joe Eszterhas notes in "American Rhapsody", Bill Clinton was not the only President with his own personal Monica. Clearly some differences between the two politicians lay in the nature and quality of their relationships with their very junior employees.
Nixon's Monica was a promising young student of political science whose initial letters of admiration to the Old Man in California prompted a job offer, which had Monica functioning in what appears to be a variety of roles: research assistant, personal assistant, professional best friend, occassional therapist, and, apparently surreptitiously, scribe.
Watergate at least taught Nixon the dangers of indiscrimately taping conversations. Instead of speaking for the benefit of a series of bugs planted in the Oval Office, generating a real- time archive of his Presidency, he speaks now in quasi-retirement to his young assistant apparently hoping that she would indeed record (and possibly redact, for all the reader will know) his current thoughts on American politics for history. Certainly his former "expletives deleted" are nowhere in evidence, and his speech is lucid and well-argued. Monica apparently took written notes in the evenings, and the whole exercise came about without benefit of a recording device.
What is startling to observe is that Nixon's political instincts and instant readings of personalities apparently sharpened considerably in his post-White House years. The former President who rails to Monica alternately about Bill (and Hillary) Clinton and George Bush, while minutely observing the election of 1992, is as sharp as a tack. So are in his daily readings of campaign trail news and in his (perhaps paranoia-inspired) minute interpretations of discussions with the politicians who came calling for advice.
Nixon as political strategist had much to offer right to very end, and his exile as armchair quarterback in San Clemente must have been a sort of purgatory for such an experienced and decisive politician.
The Nixon whom Crowley describes is startlingly endearing in his insecurities: perhaps because their implications are neutralized by his enforced retirement. He pretends on occassion to disdain television, claiming to get his detailed information from "Mrs. Nixon". Upon Clinton's election, Nixon waits by the phone for calls for advice with the same petulant, obsessive nervousness of a teenager. When the calls finally begin, Nixon is clearly touched by the respectful tenor of Clinton's approaches. Just as it took Nixon to open China, perhaps it took Clinton, a centrist Democrat, to open Nixon.
Nixon is old-fashioned, gracious, entirely proper and even humble in his dealings with this young woman. Nixon apparently never explicitly asked her to provide him with this voice from beyond the grave. His kindness and eagerly professorial demeanour with Crowley, however, clearly aroused a real loyalty in her, and her treatment of her elderly employer and his frequent telephone calls is both fond and indulgeant.
The narrative comes to its natural end with Nixon's death. His observations regarding the Clinton presidency and, what he believes to be its weak foreign policy, are eerily precient. One closes the book with a sense of great wistfulness, perhaps like that which Kissinger is said to have long-ago expressed. A man with so much skill and talent and even conviction, be it popular or not, not only destroyed his presidency, but many of the opportunities to use his gifts in the service of the international community for the rest of his life.
For those with any compassion for Nixon, the book is suitably touching. For die-hard Nixon-haters, this narrative may provide the final catharsis.
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12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fun book, perfect beach reading for political junkies, August 15, 1999
By A Customer
A quick, easy read, Miss Crowley's book gives us a portrait of a fading, but occasionally wise, ex-president. Nixon is exposed, his warts and his decencies. The petty, self-important Nixon is here, an old man given to bitternesses, especially towards George Bush. Bush was Nixon's protege and semi-creation (if not for Nixon's sponsorship, Bush would have ended his career as a failed Texas pol or minor cabinet secretary) yet Bush rarely asked Nixon for the elder's advise- and Nixon pouted over the affront. Nixon arrogantly considered himself one of America's greatest presidents, a minority view amongst conservatives as well as liberals. Nixon enjoyed the flattery Bill Clinton sent his way. Nixon's strong points come out in this book, too. He remained intellectual sharp until the end and intellectually curious. He was a quick study of personalities and situations. He understood what the icy Hillary Rodham Clinton was all about after one short meeting. He knew Ronald Reagan was having mental problems two years before Reagan's public announcement of his Alzheimer's affliction. My only problem with Monica Crowley's book is that she uses quote marks for most conversations though she admits that she didn't use a tape recorder. She claims she wrote notes after conversations- but who can have that perfect a memory even if her notes were scribbled five minutes after a given conversation took place. Still, Miss Crowley's book is fun and valuable.
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8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Perhaps the most accurate view of Nixon as a personality, February 7, 2004
Monica Crowley focuses on the three qualities Nixon has said each political personality absolutely requires for survival and thriving: head; heart; and guts. Crowley's readable work exemplifies the political mind that Nixon used to gain election as a U.S. Senator, the political savvy that kept him on the Republican ticket in 1952, and the mastery that saw his elections change for the better from 1960 to 1968. Crowley doesn't shape anything that Nixon says, other than to put it into proper context, because she knows Nixon's words and ideas speak for themselves. He doesn't need a mouthpiece and not every thing he says is controversial or outlandish and deserving of reprisal from political foes, as any careful reader of Nixon's own books will come to understand. This work further exonerates Nixon from the political graveyard much more so that his own books following his resignation. Crowley's articulate, readable format is sure to rekindle reader's interest in Nixon as a person and as a personality.
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