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President Nixon: Alone in the White House

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"President Nixon: Alone in the White House" is one of those rare biographies that manages to capture the very essence of its subject. Mr. Reeves, who had access not only to President Nixon himself but to most of Nixon's key advisors and confidantes, has written a book that reveals Richard Nixon's motivations and thus goes a long way toward explaining some of the strange things Nixon did as President. What we see in the book is a man who assumes that all men approach life the way he does--and his approach is quintessentially Machiavellian. Nixon truly believes that all men cheat, lie and are out to get him. All is fair in politics. By assuming the worst in others, Nixon guarantees the worst in himself.

And yet one catches glimpses of Nixon the man where one feels a certain amount of compassion. Nixon was a melancholy and lonely individual, distrustful of those around him. He was a politician who had an aversion to people. He feels awkward in any social situation, to the point where his interactions are meticulously scripted beforehand on one of his handy yellow legal pads. In one hilarious sequence, Nixon is up all night writing and memorizing a script for an "off the cuff" speech he is planning to give the next day. What is amazing is that he does not see how ridiculous it is to be scripting an unscripted speech. Nixon also spends hours writing memos to himself about how he wants to be perceived. Each one of the memos drips with irony, for he sees in himself all the things that he is not. One cannot help but feel compassion for a man so out of touch with who he is.

Reeves argues that Nixon is at his best when looking at the bigger picture, in "connecting the dots" of major policy decisions and their historical precedents as well as the possible outcomes. This is the Nixon who takes the bold steps to open up Communist China and to bring a much-needed thaw to the festering Cold War with Russia. Reeves also shows a Nixon who realizes the disaster of Vietnam but doesn't know how to remove the U.S. and preserve the honor and dignity of the nation. One must admire Nixon for his foreign policy successes and for his broad thinking in this area. The book also paints an interesting portrait of Henry Kissinger, showing him to be brilliant but incredibly vain and condescending. Kissinger spends a great deal of time making sure Secretary of State Rogers is out of the loop on every major foreign policy decision.

Domestically, however, we see in this book a Nixon who is all politician and zero statesman. He waffles on integration, does little to help Blacks because they vote 90% Democrat, and panders in the worst way to groups he believes he must win over in order to win reelection in 1972. Nixon tells his dynamic duo, Haldeman and Erlichman, not to bog him down with policy details, then buries himself in such details as replacement shower heads for the White House or the clownish design for the White House security force. We also see Nixon the bigot, saving his cruelest cuts for the Jews. In these glimpses we see just how shallow and ignorant Nixon could be, despite his moments of greatness. The last section of the book deals with Watergate and the events that brought Richard Nixon to disgrace. It is not a pretty sight, and just goes to show how thoroughly Nixon was involved in the cover-up and how much he enjoyed the dirty tricks attributed to his campaign. At one point, after George Wallace is shot, Nixon laments the fact that Nixon's men didn't think to go into the would-be assasin's apartment and plant McGovern literature to discredit his opponent.

Upon finishing this book, I immediately wondered if Reeves began working on a sequel, following Nixon from his resignation through his period of exile and disgrace to the era of his partial rehabilitation near the end of his life. I certainly hope Reeves follows up, for the story of Nixon the private citizen in the years after his fall from power would be fascinating and remains largely untold.

This is a good book, and I believe that both fans and detractors of our former President would enjoy it. Reeves has not written it to discredit the man, but to try to explain him. After finishing the book, I felt I knew the real Richard Nixon somewhat better, and that had Richard Nixon had a different take on the motivations of his fellow man, he may have gone down as one of our better Presidents.

I finished Richard Reeve's "President Nixon" this week. I have read several books about Nixon. I don't really know why he has always fascinated me. I suppose it is because he had the potential to do so much good, and he had so many successes in his first term to throw it all away in the end because of a pack of lies. Reeves' book is a long one, at around 600 pages, but Reeves is a pretty decent writer, and it makes going through the book a pleasant experience. Much to my amazement, late in the book, he correctly revealed the identity of Mark Felt as deep throat- and since the book came out in 2001- that was years before the Felt made the revelation himself. Nixon was certainly focused on foreign matters, and cared little about domestic issues, leaving it to his henchmen- principally Ehrlichman. Kissinger is portrayed as a dangerous, vain egotist, out for glory, often sulking when upstaged by Secretary of State Rogers. Having read several books about Nixon, this one reaffirms a theme that appears over and over- something went wrong with Nixon's mental state around 1971 or 1972.

Superceding Theodore White, I think the book is probably a decent enough starting place for understanding Nixon, and with the bibliography at the end, you can go from there.

To those of us old enough to remember the Nixon administration, it is not surprising that a chronicle of his presidency is a series of ancecdotes that leaves us shaking our head and completely baffled. This history deftly describes the "Nixon years" in a series of events painted for us as a series of tableaux. That it does quite admirably. We see him as a moody, paranoid, and impulsive man literally with his finger on the button. As public opinion of him, never very strong, wanes and his accomplishments pale under public approbation, we see him becoming more relentlessly isolated and desperate. One might then read this as the diary of a man descending into the very deepest despair.

As a chronicle, then, this book succeeds. However, the most compelling aspect of the Nixon presidency is missing; its central question. How is is possible that this man who mistrusted so deeply the workings of a free society, who resented so many of its people, become its leader, and its spokesman to the world? We see here a Nixon that resents intellectuals, the media, racial groups, religious minorities, his predecessors, his successors, all Democrates, and on and on. This is a president who had his reelection wrapped up who still felt the need to bug his electoral opponents and undermine their campaign. Here is a man who can't run a shower and forever bans soup at state dinners because he mussed his shirt. Here is a man who regards any criticism whatsoever as forever condemning its author. We want to know how this all came to pass. The fascinating part is the understanding of what forces shaped him and led this adminstration to it ignominious end. Why did he want to be president at all? Why did we elect him? Why did he self-destruct? Certainly it is more than an acciddent of the times - filling the void left by the equally tragic Johnson's abdication. No, there must be a deeper story here that is not manifest in the day-to-day business. By depriving us of any image of Nixon's childhood, his dance with the Kennedy's and his ultimate election (admittedly not the focus of this book), and dropping us into his life on day one of the administration, we miss who Nixon was and get no perspective on the actions that are so meticulously described.

Maybe it was all just an accident. Maybe it was an unresolved oedipal thing, as the movie Nixon suggests. I really think nthat neither are true. It is my belief that Nixon the man is a reflection of our society, that it is somehow born of the American independant spirit. We inherit our paranoia as a side-effect of our individualism. If Nixon is alone, we all are alone. There is something in what happened to Richard Nixon that calls to us all. His tragedy should pluck at some string in our soul. The inevitable, and relentless question, "Why?" is missing herein. President Nixon: Alone in the White House is a fascinating chronicle, but the Lear in this story, the workings of the tragedy that propelled him to an inevitable end, is sadly missing.

Richard Reeves writes a thoughtful piece. He is a liberal and I expected a slight to heavy bias in the biography as many writers that hearken from that period become vitriolic in their assessment of Nixon but go light on Johnson and Kennedy. You have to weigh Nixon on the whole. Here is a personally flawed man filled with insecurities, jealousies, pettiness, and unwavering ambition while at the same time exhibiting some exceedingly thoughtful traits in international statesmanship and foreign policy initiatives that have served the country well. Having read much on Kennedy and Nixon, they both are very similar in many ways yet far different in their style and communication techniques. The book looks at the internal demons that Nixon wrestled with and gives us a picture of a man almost destroyed from within, a paranoid man perceiving enemies at every turn. Nixon's effectiveness came in his ability to see practical initiatives and sewing the seeds of discussion and dialogue with past enemies, turning many of those relationships around. Nixon is a compelling subject with far more value than historians are yet able to accord him. Reeves writes a good book that is well written. It is well worth the buy and a must for presidential biography readers. The book really does a great service to showing how isolated a president can feel and if those personalities flaws are brought to the job, how they can fester and destroy a presidency so quickly with actions that were never necessary. Will Reeves go after Johnson or Eisenhower next?

Reeves' book is a monumental work of presential history that depicts Nixon as a complicated, brilliant, but ultimately all-too-human president whose downfall comes as the result of several tragic flaws, such as Nixon's deep feelings of insecurity and paranoia, and his infatuation with secrecy and cloak-and-dagger operations. The author is to be commended for his amazingly adept use of a wide range of resources, including interviews, diaries, the all-important Nixon tapes, and, perhaps most intriguingly, Nixon's own handwritten memos to himself (the ubiquitous yellow notepads that Nixon kept at hand for jotting down his most private thoughts). The book's only flaw, and a minor one at that, is that after 500+ pages of detailed insight into the workings of the White House, Reeves skims over the President's last few months in the White House, after it was too late for Nixon to redeem himself and when it was merely a matter of time before he resigned. One gets the feeling that nothing much happened between the time Nixon dismissed the last of his "true-believer" lieutenants and his departure from the White House. I'm unsure that this was actually the case, and that perhaps one more chapter was in order. Regardless, I don't know of a better book about the Nixon presidency.

Other reviews (professional and contributed) have pretty much covered the contents and perspective of this book while missing its relatioship to its twin "President Kennedy: Portrait of Power." The Kennedy book was a remarkable success for its intimate detail and often unflinching willingness to admit deep flaws in the martyr-president. It was honest and thought-provoking. This book, on the other hand, tells us more about the author than its subject -- although here is much on Nixon
First some convergences. The Kennedy and Nixon of these books share many traits: both lied consistantly to the public; both were happy to manipulate other politicians and the public; both manufactured a bogus public image; both were willing to break the law for what they considered reason of state or political advantage; both relied on a small fanatically devoted inner circle and excluded much of the cabinet and the congress from their little worlds; both believed themselves to be "men of destiny"; both made maintaining American "credibility" in the world central to foreign policy. But they were very different. Kennedy never moved beyond 1950s cold war views (did he die too early or did he just lack Nixon's thinking outside the box?); Nixon did. Kennedy had fabulous wealth, an adoring press, and seductive personal charm; Nixon had not of these. Kennedy never had a doubt about his entitlement to membership in the ruling class; Nixon believed himself excluded even at the peak of his power.
Reeves great failures in this book are his unwillingness to face the convergences of K. and N. and to recognize the origins and implications of the divergences. We are told over and over that Nixon lied and cheated (often by sweeping authorial judgments about character); Kennedy's parallel acts are passed over as isolated incidents, his megomania and sense of entitlement as a charming part of his charisma; Nixon's insecuries are pathological. Nixon's brutal treatment by his (only sometimes) self-made enemies is ascribed to their integrity and critical stance; when they appear, Kennedy's critics are mindless loons. Even paranoids have real enemies. The question in the end, never answered by Reeves, is whether his enemies did not play the crucial role in creating the "bad" Nixon. Would there have been a Watergate if Nixon had had Kennedy's press? Maybe, maybe not. If Kennedy and Nixon were to read these two books, they would have come away convinced: Kennedy of his entitlement and Nixon of his persecution. Reeves gives to each what they got in life from their publics and the press.
For the sake of disclosure, by the way, I have never understood the pathology of the Nixon-haters, although I dislike him and view many of his policies as misguided. Conversely, I have never understood the Clinton-haters either, even if I too could not like the man. I voted for neither. Sad that Reeves, who is capable of such clear sightedness in writing about Kennedy could, not give us a similar disinterested view of Nixon.
Still, for the story alone, this is not a bad book.

This is a solid work of Presidential scholarship. I appreciated its "worm's eye" view because it allows for the presentation of a great many primary source materials and documents that are invaluable for summing up the bizarre man who was President Richard Nixon. Reeves reveals a fair amount of personal bias and dislike for his subject here, but, fortunately, the intrusions of his point-of-view are not ubiquitous. Reeves seems to unquestionably believe that busing was good for blacks and it appears that he has an affinity for most government programs; a stance that is totally unwarranted. That being said, the work remains well-organized, clear and valuable. Reeves is a biographer and journalist so, unlike some of the other reviewers, I was glad that he did not share with us his psychological observations of the President. In all likelihood, they would have been ungrounded. Alone in the White House is a good, but not great, book.

Reeves's approach was the same he used in President Kennedy: Profile of Power, which worked well for JFK but not as seamlessly for RN. The author's approach in this book is to demonstrate Richard Nixon's isolation from fellow humanity and, we are to assume, the isolation's disastrous results. While portraying an insane Henry Kissinger (the book's most interesting element), the author illustrates the many physical and psychological barriers separating President Nixon from reality.

Because this is a biography and not a book on Nixon's domestic policies, Nixon's personality and the events shaping his psychological orientation merit consideration. The author's myopic approach examines Nixon as President without insight into why Nixon's personality/psychology was composed/formed and its impact in Nixon as President. A biography of Richard Nixon cannot exclude his upbringing. Comprehending President Nixon requires at least a cursory sketch of Nixon growing up, Nixon at Duke, Nixon the Candidate, Nixon & communism, etc..

Although wonderfully articulated, Reeves's book ultimately fails to accomplish his objective of portraying Nixon alone. Until the book's conclusion, Reeve's approach was successful and captivating. However, this reader is mystified why Reeves chose to end the book before Watergate manifested itself completely. If Reeves really wanted to demonstrate Nixon alone in the White House, he needed to illustrate Nixon during the apex of the Watergate's investigation, the Supreme Court battle, after Erlickman and Haldeman were fired and during Nixon's Siberia/leper period following the decade after his resignation. Consider this book as one would Stephen Ambrose's wartime biography of Eisenhower, The Supreme Commander, without mentioning D-Day: it would still be interesting, but not complete.

Although this book does cover the major policy issues of the Nixon era, this book really focuses on the idiosyncrasies of the man and his general mistrust of the people around him.

This book largely just focuses on the presidential side of Nixon (which sounds like that would please Nixon greatly since it somewhat implies he didn't do anything else) and as a result you only see his interactions with his inner circle, although inevitably there's more to it. Clearly, however as the title of the book indicates, interaction outside that circle is disproprtionately smaller.

Reeves recounts many conversations that take place in the various places Nixon spent time which makes the book a difficult one to put down and it clearly paints Nixon as a paranoid loner who had trouble fitting into the position he'd spend his life trying to lend into.

Surprisingly, the watergate era is covered very little, presumably because diary entries and tapes of conversations were not available, but that works out well as this isn't a book about Watergate.

This book does nt give an in depth analysis of the Nixon years and the reader isn't likely to come out with a great understanding of what happened. However, given familiarity with the era, the book lays out the complex personalities beyond the events that's likely to be very useful in understanding why events transpired as well they did.

Open up a number of major newspapers and every once in awhile you'll find a column penned by Richard Reeves. Given the limited space available in a newspaper op/ed section, Reeves is rarely given a chance to provide a detailed analysis on any topic. Instead, he writes intersting opinion pieces on national affairs that are usually worth reading even if you don't agree with him.

In his new book regarding President Nixon, Reeves employs a similar style in recounting Nixon's five plus years in the White House. In many ways, this book is a compilation of anecdotes and brief historical passages that gives readers a glimpse of the Nixon White House and of Nixon himself.

The key thing to remember is that it will be little more than a glimpse. If you are looking for a detailed study of the Nixon presidency, you might want to look elsewhere.

The positive thing about this subject is that there are so many books regarding the Nixon years. If you lived through the era and have read many of the other books such as Haldeman's diary, Nxion's own autobiograhpies or even Anthony Summers hatchet job, you'll enjoy this book too.

My only complaint about the book is actually a central part of its premise. The book centers solely on Nixon without examining his relationship with others. For example, I would be surprised if there are more than 10 mentions in the entire book about Pat Nixon. There is also very little about his relationship with political supporters other than brief mentions about Watergate-related scandal. Part of Reeve's thesis, is that Nixon was very isolated in the White House and had little human interaction. The recent theatrical movie also portrayed a very narcisistic human being too. However, Nixon wasn't a hermit. He did have friendships with Bebe Rebozo and others and had a enough people skills to set the record for being on the cover of Time Magazine more than any other person. I wish this book would have delved into that greater.

In short, this is not the definitive book on the Nixon Administration. Yet, it is an enjoyable read that will certainly bring this era in history back to life. Regardless of your political leanings, Nixon' presidency is worth learning more about and understanding.