President Nixon: Alone in the White House (Paperback)

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.

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.