Nixon visited and revisited - Richard M. Nixon

National Review, July 14, 1989 by Paul Gottfried

A lifelong politician who is more comfortable discussing history than campaigning, a connoisseur of power who could not hold onto power, Richard Nixon has achieved the position of senior statesman despite all the best efforts of his beloved media.

RONALD REAGAN may be our most popular postwar President, but Richard Nixon is undoubtedly our most interesting. Though deploring his anti-Communist activities in Congress and his choice of White House companions, left-leaning biographer Stephen Ambrose repeatedly comes back to Nixon's intelligence and complex character. His personality has also preoccupied two psychobiographers, Garry Wills and Bruce Mazlish. Wills's book Nixon Agonistes particularly aroused my curiosity because of its obsessively spiteful tone. Why should Wills feel so strongly about someone he seeks to portray as a conventionally devious pol? And can one reconcile Wills's picture of a shabby opportunist with Whittaker Chambers's celebration of the same figure as a heroic anti-Communist?

Unlike Wills and other intellectuals, I for one find nothing particularly crooked about Nixon's ascent to power. Though he charged some Democrats with being soft on Communism, the accusation was arguably just for Helen Gahagan Douglas, his opponent for a senatorial seat from California in 1950, and certainly no worse than what Democrats have said about Republicans. In 1948, for example, Harry Truman depicted Thomas Dewey and the Republican Party as being soft on fascism. This baseless and by 1948 anachronistic charge and Lyndon Johnson's even more outrageous assault on Barry Goldwater as a nuclear maniac are rarely mentioned by those who present Nixon as a sui generis defamer of political opponents. Indeed, in his controversial senatorial race, Nixon merely repeated charges against Mrs. Douglas already made by her fellow Democrats.

In Congress, Nixon was far from reckless in investigating alleged Communists. Although he tried to cooperate with Senator McCarthy for the sake of party unity, he was openly skeptical about the latter's methods. Nixon did get the House Committee on Un-American Activities to resume its investigation of Alger Hiss after the case had almost been dropped in 1949, and in 1950 Hiss was found guilty of perjury. Even Garry Wills grudgingly admits that Nixon "did his homework" in preparing the evidence.

So the question remains: Why do journalists and intellectuals continue to hate Nixon? He is, after all, even by his enemies' admission, a man of intelligence. As President he carried out policies-most notably detente with the Soviets and opening relations with Communist China-that the Left heartily endorsed. His involvement in the Watergate coverup was no more reprehensible than things Lyndon Johnson and other Democrats did against their political opponents. The relentless attack on Nixon during the Watergate affair, was, furthermore, only the finale of a rhetorical bombardment that had begun years before. Why had the bombardment continued for so long?

These questions coursed through my mind as I entered Richard Nixon's office for a visit in early January. He had invited me there after a brief correspondence, which began when I discovered from published comments that he thought highly of my book The Search for Historical Meaning. A work devoted to Hegel and historicism, it seemed a strange choice for a modern American career politician to read and relish. It was also the first subject he brought up during my visit.

The discussion gave cause for reflection. Here I was in the presence of someone my former academic colleagues had passionately hated; he was also a figure who had spent his life campaigning for office for himself and for others. Yet he seemed more comfortable expounding political theory than he had pursuing his public career.

He recalled affectionately his professor at Duke, Lon Fuller, who had introduced him to Hegelian philosophy. In addressing academic gatherings, he said, he would cite Hegel among other thinkers who had emphasized "the importance of history." Nixon agreed with a critical observation in my book about the shakiness of an American conservatism based more on abstract ideals than on historical example. Indeed, he insisted that those entering public life should immerse themselves in history and biography and in the works of historically minded philosophers. I could now understand Nixon's admiration for Churchill and de Gaulle, both statesmen who had appealed to History.

Throughout our two-hour conversation, my host seemed remarkably energetic for someone who had turned 76 the day before. "I'm trying to forget my birthday," he said, "and hope that others will do the same." Talking affably to me and to his staff when they entered the room, Nixon was both articulate and disarming at the same time. It was hard for me to square my impression of this sociable, verbally adept conversationalist with the stiff public figure entangled in his syntax I had encountered on television.