Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full

Conrad Black's biography of President Richard Nixon is an incredible book. We tend to look at people, things, and events retroactively basing the past on the affairs and knowledge of the present. This is especially true with President Richard Nixon, the only president in U.S. History to have resigned his office and leave in absolute disgrace. Even presidents who are overwhelmingly voted out of office do not leave so tainted. Yet, Nixon was not incompetent; in fact, he was extremely intelligent and capable person. In many ways Nixon was very good president, he was extremely effective despite having an opposition Congress; his foreign policy achievements were amazing and has one of the best environmental records of any president. Then there is Watergate, the 'cancer' that doomed a presidency. After Watergate people's view on Nixon not only changed for the present but the past. The 'Checkers Speech' in 1952, went from Nixon successfully defending himself from a smear to one he 'got away' with. In the Nixon/Douglas 1950 Senate election, people remember Nixon's 'hateful' attacks on Helen Gahagan Douglas, but Douglas's attacks on Nixon are forgotten, including the fact that Douglas was the first one in that campaign to go dirty. Alger Hiss must have been innocent. If Nixon was revealed to have cheated on third-grade assignment, it might be said that particular cheating incident was sign of things to come. Black, however, chooses to show Nixon as someone who started out as an honest public servant and transformed into a man who would obstruct justice for political ends.Black begins with Nixon's ancestry, which is typical with biographies, then going through his childhood growing up in California where he was heavily involved in his local Quaker community. He grew up in a strong Republican household, although he was a personal admirer of President Woodrow Wilson. Nixon would serve his country in the United States Navy in World War II, and he would also get married and start a family.Nixon goes up like a rocket in his political career. He begins by defeating a popular incumbent named Jerry Voorhis to earn a seat in the United States House of Representatives. He would serve for two terms earning a reputation as a strong Anti-Communist, but not a crazy like Senator McCarthy. In 1950 he ran against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas for the California Senate seat, in what was one of the most attack filled campaigns in history, and won.Nixon would be crucial to securing the California delegation of the 1952 Republican Convention to Eisenhower. This would earn him a spot on the ticket. Nixon would redefine the vice presidency, making it a major office that would represent the United States on important assignments and fill in for the president when needed."Nixon's inestimable services in bringing the Republican Party out of isolationism and reaction and ending the McCarthy era, and the undoubted value of some of his foreign travel, have been recounted and have no precedent in the prior history of the vice presidency. He conducted most of the administration's reelection campaign of 1956, and he performed impeccably when Eisenhower's indispositions required him to be more or less an acting president. Nixon effectively succeeded Walter Bedell Smith as 'Ike's prat boy,' the designated assistant in charge of the dirty work. Nixon performed these odious and thankless tasks admirably, even when Eisenhower sawed off the limbs he had sent him out on, especially the more spirited attacks on Democrats. Eisenhower rewarded Nixon's loyalty, discretion, efficiency, and suppression of his own dissent with an uneven pattern of appreciation and aloofness." p.426Black goes over the colossal errors in judgment that Nixon made over the election of 1960. Although, Black's analysis is good, I have to take issue with his claim that Nixon was at a disadvantage because of Kennedy's Catholicism. Kennedy was clearly at the disadvantage and Black's own critique of Nixon campaign even supports this more than undermines it. The years in which Nixon plotted his comeback are well covered by Black in the following chapters.In the chaotic year of 1968, Richard Nixon would emerge as the Republican Nominee for the second time in his life. This time Nixon was facing Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who had also lost against Kennedy in 1960 in the Democratic primaries. It was the first time since 1800 that a sitting vice president ran for president against one of his predecessors*. Nixon would be the more aggressive and victorious candidate; he was able to position himself as the sensible alternative to both Hubert Humphrey and George Wallace, the Dixiecrat candidate. He was not going to turn the clock back to segregation but he was against some of the more unpopular ideas such as busing. Nixon would win the White House and take office on January 20, 1969, the same day he would left if all had went as planned in 1960.Nixon would go on to have an incredible first term as president. Desegregation would increase dramatically in the South, the economy was in good shape, and there would be incredible achievements in foreign policy. Nixon would re-establish a diplomatic relationship with China and introduce triangle diplomacy in dealing with the great Communist powers. Although, there were sour points during the first term, such as the increase in the Vietnam War with its expansion into Cambodia**. I also have some issue with the way Black discusses the situation in Chile. Although he is right to point out that Salvadore Allenee was hardly hero of democracy, he does tend to sweep Pinochet's atrocities under a rug.Nixon would go on to be triumphantly reelected in 1972 over Senator George McGovern. Senator McGovern would be humiliated in the election as Barry Goldwater was eight years prior, securing Nixon for a second term."Richard Nixon was now only the tenth person to win two consecutive contested elections to the presidency of the United States. He was a widely admired and even popular figure, and he had the satisfaction of knowing that he had, by any measurement, been a very effective president. He was a personally sensitive, and often generous man, and he understood the loyalty of the White House staff. But his somber and morose nature took possession of him, especially when it would have seemed that he had a right and a reason to celebrate. He cheered up in crises, was let down by victory, and the few things that excited him caused him childlike pleasure. His best friend was a man with whom he exchanged few words, and his love of solitude was extreme, especially for one of the most energetic and durable politicians in the country's history. All these factors made his achievements as a public man the more remarkable. Very strange things were about to happen, but Richard Nixon was already a very considerable president and statesman." p.845Then his presidency came tumbling down, the Watergate conspiracy would change forever the way the nation viewed its government. The fact that Nixon was dumb enough to record everything helped assure his downfall. Black chronicles the tragedy that would be taught in every civics class for generations to come. The only drawback is the author of this work is currently in prison and he has a strong present bias against the judicial system and prosecutors in general. He constantly lets the reader know his personnel feelings about modern grand juries, prosecution practices, and deal-making for testimony."Of course the Democrats and some of the media were guilty of hypocrisy. Arthur Schlesinger and Henry Steele Commager, distinguished but partisan historians, revered the strong presidencies of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry S Truman, and John F. Kennedy, but found Nixon, facing a hostile Congress, 'imperial.' As Nixon pointed out in a memo to Halderman, Kennedy had impounded more funds, installed more wiretaps, and engaged in more illegal surveillance than he had; and Truman had pushed the theory of executive privilege beyond anything he had done. Bobby Kennedy had bugged the Kennedy's own vice president, Lyndon Johnson, who duplicated that liberty with his vice president, Hubert Humphrey. But they had not meddled in criminal prosecutions as Nixon was doing, especially not prosecutions involving their own staff and campaign workers." p.874Nixon infamously resigns his office and leaves the capital. Black covers the drama of the early Ford Administration that dealt with the pardon that President Ford gave Nixon. The rest of the book deals with Nixon's post-presidency, that would involve some more comebacks and a new legacy.I highly recommend this book. It is a great and detailed look into the life of one of our most complicated presidents, Richard M. Nixon. Despite his personnel flaws, Conrad Black, is an extremely talented historian with a brilliant narrative.*In 1800, Vice President Thomas Jefferson challenged his own president, John Adams. President Adams had served as vice president under George Washington.** The expansion would be stopped, not by the President, but a resurgent Congress.

This book changed a great many misperceptions I had been nurturing, mainly through neglect, and brought me nearly full circle on an important American president. I supported him in 1968 as a college freshman -- low level leafleting for the local campaign headquarters -- and abandoned him too quickly over Cambodia -- callow judgment on my part -- and then permanently over Watergate, so I thought, until this book provoked me to take a broader perspective. Black illuminates so many significant personal, political, and especially, statescraft accomplishments that he easily persuades me of Nixon's overall placement high in the second-rank of presidents and not higher due to, as Black puts it, his ethical and legal lapses. It is impressive to review the forward thinking of this man on so many topics still relevant in 2014. But one is taken well beyond that in contemplating the lifelong accomplishments of someone from such humble circumstances in the elite world of statescraft. By dint of effort, he earned the respect of the very highest echelon of world leaders in his time. Ultimately, that matters.Where Black failed to persuade me is his evaluation -- argument, really -- regarding the significance of the "smoking gun" tape of the Nixon-Haldeman conversation in June 1973. In that conversation, Haldeman outlines a plan to have the CIA ask the FBI to drop its Watergate investigation, based on a false representation that the break-in concerned national security matters somehow tied to Cubans and the Bay of Pigs. Haldeman asks for Nixon's approval. Nixon gives his approval, enthusiastically. He even suggests what should be said to the CIA and to the FBI. While acknowledging that the release of the contents of this tape, first internally and then externally, immediately drained Nixon's support within and outside the administration, Black offers a two-pronged defense. First, he contends that this does not actually constitute a crime, because, in the event, when Haldeman asked the CIA director, Richard Helms, to make this request of the FBI, Helms, appropriately, refused. Thus, Black contends, no actual obstruction of justice took place. Second, he wonders whether, even if viewed as a crime, it rises to the level necessary for impeachment -- "high crimes and misdemeanors." I think he is wrong on both counts.First, for the the CIA to use its influence to shut down a proper criminal investigation by advancing a lie about national security solely to serve the political and personal interests of the White House is, without doubt, an obstruction of justice. By giving his approval, and adding specific instructions or advice as to what should be said, Nixon readily joined and directed a conspiracy to obstruct justice. The fact that more responsible decision-makers rejected the request does not negate the commission of a crime, any more than would be the case for someone who fails in a plan to murder someone because his pistol misfires. Nixon plainly intended for the plan to work, and that provides, for me, the necessary mens rea that Nixon claimed was missing. Following the formation of the conspiracy came a serious, coordinated attempt at obstruction of justice, using the power of the president's office. Attempts at crimes are punishable as crimes.Second, I do not see in Black's book a serious argument for his suggestion that the conspiracy and attempted obstruction of justice did not rise to the level of "high crimes" deserving of impeachment. Black advances only a conclusory statement that this is so, along with speculation that a properly oriented Senate and public would agree. Perhaps he intends to say that an attempted crime should be seen as a lesser offense then a completed one and, therefore, is deserving of a lesser punishment -- specifically one that allows continuation in office. Black points here to the great value Nixon brings to the office in matters both foreign and domestic. If that is what he means, I don't find it at all persuasive. While one can easily imagine circumstances under which someone is given probation and allowed otherwise to continue pursuit of employment, it cannot reasonably be applied to a situation in which the crime at issue was committed while carrying out the duties and powers of that employment, in this case the highest federal office requiring the occupant to take an oath to faithfully execute the laws of the United States. One would not, for example, allow a finance officer to continue handling his employer's accounts while on probation for attempted embezzlement of those same accounts, as the necessary indicia of trust and probity have been destroyed. That was the situation facing Nixon following release of that tape. It demonstrated that he had failed to execute a core duty of his office. Continuation in that office became impossible.In any event, it was at least a misdemeanor, and thus within the impeachment standard, although I see it as far more than a misdemeanor offense. As as Black concedes, it demeaned the office. To call it a horrendous mistake, as Nixon did, does not convert it into something less than a crime, or every criminal might ask to go free by acknowledging that it was a mistake to commit the acts that resulted in the crime. I still believe that this conduct required impeachment or, as Nixon characterized it in a noteworthy acknowledgement, self-impeachment.The real defense that Nixon and Black raise is that Nixon was not alone or, perhaps, even unusual, among contemporary occupants of the office, and there is an abundance of evidence to support this assertion. Nixon claims to be a victim of discrimination against the "outsider." This may be so, but it is not a defense. It is a separate charge against a partisan -- increasing so if that is possible -- media. Given the media's record with respect to JFK, Reagan, George W. Bush (e.g., Dan Rather's career-ending farce), and it's recent behavior of covering for Obama at every turn, I am doubtful of a persuasive rejoinder to the charge. But that doesn't excuse what Nixon did and, when viewed in the context of the many admirable aspects of his public life -- civil rights leadership, personal kindnesses -- one would have expected a great deal more of him.That said, he paid a heavy and, on balance, fair price in resigning his office (I exclude here the gratuitous acts of vengeance by congress and the media) and had more courage and determination in the aftermath than one would have thought possible. It is time to put it all in context - hence the title, "A Life in Full." He was one of our most successful and effective vice presidents, presidents, and ex-president in terms of service to the country. And when you combine the three positions, he compares favorably with the other such holders, Adams and Jefferson in particular. Putting Watergate in that context, I can now make peace with him.

1200 pages (!) good luck ! And not even ONE word about the Venona files !!!! Very annoying when you want to write about communists, spys infiltration, joe McCarthy and so on…You can learn though that he « admired « Eleonor ROOSEVELT for « her courage », probably of being one of the worst fellow traveler of international communisme !Quelle pitié !

the cover of this book does not reveal that it is actually an older book (which I had already read) calledThe Invincible Quest....they are the same book...so if you have previous one...don't order this one..a form of fraud from publisher I guess