Chapter One
Nixon
A man’s philosophy is his autobiography. You may read
it in the story of his conflict with life.
-Walter Lippmann, The New Republic, July 17, 1915
In the nearly twenty years following his resignation
from the presidency in 1974, Richard Nixon struggled to
reestablish himself as a well-regarded public figure.
He tried to counter negative views of himself by writing
seven books, mostly about international relations, which
could sustain and increase his reputation as a world
statesman. Yet as late as 1992, he complained to Monica
Crowley, a young postpresidential aide: “‘We have taken
… shit ever since-insulted by the media as the
disgraced former president.'”
Above all, he craved public attention from his
successors in the White House. The reluctance of Gerald
Ford, Ronald Reagan, and George H. W. Bush to invite him
back to the Oval Office for advice, particularly on
foreign policy, incensed him. When Bush sent him
national security form letters, he erupted in fury. “‘I
will not give them [the Bush advisers] any advice unless
they are willing to thank me publicly,'” he told
Crowley. “‘I’m tired of being taken for granted….
No more going in the back door of the White House-middle
of the night-under the cloak- of- darkness crap. Either
they want me or they don’t.'”
At the 1992 Republican Convention, after Bush publicly
praised Nixon’s contribution to America’s Cold War
victory, Nixon exclaimed, “‘It took guts for him to say
that…. It’s the first time that anyone has referred
to me at a convention. Reagan never did. It was gutsy.'”
After Bill Clinton invited him to the White House to
discuss Russia, Nixon declared it the best meeting “‘I
have had since I was president.'” He was gratified that
Clinton addressed him as “‘Mr. President.'” But when
he saw his advice to Clinton being “diluted,” it
“inspired rage, disappointment and frustration.”
Nixon’s postpresidential resentments were of a piece
with longstanding sensitivity to personal slights. His
biography is in significant part the story of an
introspective man whose inner demons both lifted him up
and brought him down. It is the history of an
exceptional man whose unhappy childhood and lifelong
personal tensions propelled him toward success and
failure.
It may be that Winston Churchill was right when he said
that behind every extraordinary man is an unhappy
childhood. But because there are so many unhappy
children and so few exceptional men, it invites
speculation on what else went into Nixon’s rise to fame
as a congressman, senator, vice president, and
president. Surely, not the least of Nixon’s motives in
his drive for public visibility was an insatiable
appetite for distinction-a need, perhaps, to make up for
psychic wounds that produced an unrelenting
determination to elevate himself to the front rank of
America’s competitors for status, wealth, and influence.
Like Lincoln, in the words of law partner William
Herndon, Nixon’s ambition was a little engine that knew
no rest.
Like most political memoirists who romanticize the
realities of their upbringing, Nixon painted a portrait
of an “idyllic” childhood in Yorba Linda, California, a
rural town of two hundred about thirty miles northeast
of Los Angeles, and Whittier, a small city of about five
thousand east of Long Beach. He remembered “the rich
scent of orange blossoms in the spring … glimpses of
the Pacific Ocean to the west [and] the San Bernardino
Mountains to the north,” and the allure of “far- off
places” stimulated by train whistles in the night that
made him want to become a railroad engineer. “Life in
Yorba Linda was hard but happy.” His father worked at
odd jobs, but a vegetable garden, fruit trees, and a cow
provided the family with plenty to eat.
When Richard was nine, the family moved to Whittier,
where his mother’s Milhous family lived. He described
growing up there in three words: “family, church and
school.” There was an extended family with scores of
people, including his grandmother, Almira Burdg Milhous,
who inspired him on his thirteenth birthday in 1926 with
a gift of a framed Lincoln portrait and a Longfellow
poem, “Psalm of Life”: “Lives of great men oft remind
us/We can make our lives sublime/And departing, leave
behind us/Footprints on the sands of time.” Nixon
cherished the picture and inscription, which he kept
hung over his bed while in high school and college.
Richard remembered his parents as models of honest
decency who endowed him with attributes every youngster
might wish to have. “My father,” Nixon wrote, “was a
scrappy, belligerent fighter with a quick, wide- ranging
raw intellect. He left me a respect for learning and
hard work, and the will to keep fighting no matter what
the odds. My mother loved me completely and selflessly,
and her special legacy was a quiet, inner peace, and the
determination never to despair.”
But in fact, Nixon’s childhood was much more tumultuous
and troubling than he let on. Frank Nixon, his father,
was a boisterous, unpleasant man who needed to dominate
everyone-“a ‘punishing and often brutal’ father.” Edward
Nixon, the youngest of the Nixon children described his
“mother as the judge and my father as the executioner.”
Frank’s social skills left a lot to be desired; he
offended most people with displays of temper and
argumentativeness. As a trolley car conductor, farmer,
gas station owner, and small grocer, he never made a
particularly good living. Nixon biographers have painted
unsympathetic portraits of Frank as a difficult,
abrasive character with few redeeming qualities. Though
Nixon would never openly acknowledge it, he saw his
father as a harsh, unlikable man whose weaknesses
eclipsed his strengths.
Frank was a standing example of what Richard hoped not
to be-a largely inconsequential figure in a universe
that valued material success and social standing.
Richard was driven to do better than his father, but he
also struggled with painful inner doubts about his
worthiness. Despite his striving, Richard initially
doubted that he had the wherewithal to surpass his
father. Frank was not someone who either by example or
direct messages to his sons communicated much faith in
their worth. At the same time, however, Richard was his
father’s son: his later readiness to run roughshod over
opponents and his mean-spiritedness in political combat
said as much about Frank as it did about Richard….
(Continues…)
Excerpted from Nixon and Kissinger
by Robert Dallek
Copyright © 2007 by Robert Dallek.
Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
HarperCollins
Copyright © 2007
Robert Dallek
All right reserved.
ISBN: 978-0-06-072230-2
