The Nixon Memoirs: Some Points the Others Missed
Worsthorne, Peregrine
"The Nixon Memoirs: Some Points the Others Missed" A special book review essay of RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon...
...He came from a poor family, inheriting nothing except a family tradition of self-help and sturdy independence...
...Nixon's book, however, that he is constantly bringing us down to terra firma, rubbing our noses in the earthiness of statecraft...
...Much else is genuine, too—the old-fashioned patriotism, the identification with "middle America," even the chip-on-the-shoulder resentment of the Eastern Establishment...
...But that failing, although fatal in a man, is by no means fatal in an autobiographer, since it means that he keeps on blurting out things which a more self-critical man would prefer to suppress...
...As it was, however, I was only rather impressed by the cheek of the man...
...They were even religious, as Mr...
...But Pat and I consider the worship services to be the high point of our years in the White House....They set a national example of reverence...
...In many ways, then, he was far more suited to become an all-American hero than his lifelong rival John Kennedy, who was born in the purple, every inch the child of inherited privilege...
...There is an aspect of politics, and even more so of statecraft, which sends shudders up one's spine, and it is this aspect, which most statesmen prefer to ignore in public, that Mr...
...When it came to politics he clearly knew more than they did...
...Nixon's memoirs must stand condemned as another offense against the conventional decencies...
...Nixon, of course, does not make this point in so many words...
...Years later, when as President he in turn has to decide whether or not to resume the Vietnam bombing, he admits to having discussed the question with, of all people, Charles Colson, one of his junior aides who knew nothing at all about foreign affairs...
...Indeed, this particular author has a need to do the opposite, since only by exposing the depth can he pinpoint his own level, which is not nearly so low as people suppose...
...But I suppose that I should have realized then that a President who is prepared to lie so brazenly about small matters could not be trusted on the big issues either...
...Over and over again, he writes about episodes in his earlier life which set all sorts of bells ringing in the reader's mind...
...Being already disgraced, the author does not need to romanticize the past...
...Because he knows that there is no point in posing as a noble statesman, the emphasis has to be on demonstrating that he was no worse than others...
...Dame Rebecca West, in her review of the book in the Sunday Telegraph, describes it as showing, almost in diagram form, how "the cancer cells of tragedy develop...
...I said that whatever was decided about using the bomb, I did not think it necessary to mention it to our allies before we got them to agree on united action...
...His Presidency, it seems, started like this: On our first Sunday in the White House we held the first worship service in the East Room...
...At one point Mr...
...But did not those same readers feel safer, vis-a-vis the Russians, when dirty Dick was in the White House than they do now with the saintly Jimmy Carter...
...In other words, having recognized that no amount of whitewash could possibly cover up his sins, Mr...
...Obviously not...
...He cannot come clean, because the stain has spread into his own soul...
...I remember Lippmann' s reply very well, since it landed me in a lot of journalistic trouble...
...He wants to show that he was not the first President to use profane language, to bug and harass his opponents, and so on...
...He tells us, for example, of a 1953 conversation he once had with Churchill, who told him that he was writing his memoirs...
...Nixon emerges from these pages as a notably sympathetic character, very much in the American tradition...
...Eisenhower asked me what I thought of this idea...
...The episode is recounted deadpan, without comment...
...That man," Lippmann pronounced, "has no future in American politics...
...He deserves no less...
...Ervin, he says, was a publicity seeker, using Watergate to further his own career...
...Quite so...
...So when I read the almost universally dismissive and contemptuous American reviews of RN, written by the successors of Walter Lippmann, I vowed to take their criticisms with a pinch—even a bucketful—of salty skepticism...
...Nixon even quotes from his diary, without any apparent awareness of the ghastliness of the phrase, that "the only chance of moving the Vietnam negotiations off dead center [my italics] is to renew the bombing...
...Here we see President Eisenhower and his Vice-President calmly considering the possibility of using atom bombs to relieve the beleaguered French army at Dien Bien Phu...
...As the photographs show, the Nixons really were an all-American family in a way the Kennedys never were...
...But the next day, it was officially reported in the American newspapers that the President had failed to be on hand to greet the returning astronauts because, as the White House statement put it, "he preferred to observe so solemn an occasion in the privacy of his private apartments...
...It was our idea to have these short inspirational services, each conducted by a distinguished preacher of a different faith and with choirs from different parts of the country...
...So at least two cheers for the sensationally rich gaminess of Richard Nixon...
...Even Eisenhower will refuse to swallow so much half-baked corn...
...Then again two hundred or so pages later we read: "This would be my last inaugural address, and I had decided to use it in order to impart a sense of the inspirational tone that I wanted to give my second term...
...Nixon has had to rely for his defense on a brutal exposure of public life in the raw...
...Because the consequences could be so horrendous, we like to suppose that such decisions are taken by supermen talking in some different kind of language than that used by ordinary mortals...
...But compared to the chocolate-box sentimentality of most political memoirs, it has all the authentic vitality of a genuine masterpiece...
...Thankful to have the word from on high, I duly filed my dispatch informing British readers that it seemed almost certain that Richard Nixon would be dropped as vice-presidential candidate...
...To my mind the account given here makes it quite clear that Nixon did not know about the break-in in advance, but that he did take an active part in the cover-up...
...Nor is the great artist concerned only with the beautiful, since the truth very often is horribly ugly...
...that the Americans had given him one of the best machines but he preferred a pretty girl to talk to rather than a machine...
...The resulting picture is not pretty...
...Churchill pointed out that he had started them in 1946 and that he did it all by dictation...
...Also very convincing, and even movingly so, is Mr...
...Even the simplest-minded reader cannot fail to make this connection...
...The first time I became fully aware of the existence of Richard M. Nixon was during the 1952 presidential election campaign, which I was covering for the London Times...
...10 / OCTOBER 1978 Peregrine Worsthorne The Nixon Memoirs: Some Points the Others Missed A special book review essay of RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (Grosset & Dunlap, $19.95...
...And loath as one may be to admit it, the indictment is made to stick...
...Finally, and most important of all, there is a dimension of true drama and real tragedy which raises it to the realm of literature...
...It could quite properly be argued that these veils and inhibitions are in the public interest, since no good will come from people knowing too much about what goes on in the corridors of power...
...Nixon bothers to pepper his pages with so many anecdotes about other Presidents, in which they are all revealed—Truman and Eisenhower as much as Kennedy and Johnson—as grossly flawed...
...Nixon has the edge over his rival...
...Nixon's account of himself as father and husband...
...From that day forward I have always looked on the man with some respect, and on his critics with some suspicion, on the principle of once caught, twice shy...
...Kennedy only pretended to admire Casals, Mr...
...Nixon has a vested interest in exposing his predecessors, since to quoque is his only means of defense...
...How informal can you get...
...For it succeeds in giving a picture of political life that has the ring of reality...
...Nixon could actually play the piano...
...The American Spectator October 1978 7...
...I was assured by every son of a bitch I checked with...that the plan would succeed,' he said...
...It was, if you like, a small white lie, which amused me at the time...
...Did he think that it would get Nixon off the hook, etc...
...Nixon's first administration, long before Watergate, he gave me an interview in the White House...
...This is not, alas, to say that such familiar blemishes are entirely absent...
...There is the occasion in 1966, for example, when he was consulted about Vietnam by President Johnson, who received him in bed...
...THE AMERICAN SPECTATOR VOL...
...Is he telling the truth...
...Nixon makes no attempt to disguise the gladiatorial nature of these exchanges...
...Is it really possible, at the very moment that he was trying to cover up Watergate, that he thought his second term could have "an inspirational tone" ? And when he wrote these passages, after his resignation, did it not occur to him how odd they would sound, in light of what we all now know about the real tone of both his administrations...
...Towards its end, aides kept coming in to say that the President was due to talk to the astronauts who had just splashed down on earth...
...And how right I was to do so, since the memoirs turn out to be deeply impressive...
...But not, it seems, in the author's...
...As apologias go, this book could hardly go further...
...But that is precisely the point...
...the extent to which diplomacy is a game of poker...
...In the first place, they are surprisingly well written in a spare, lean prose which gallops along at a spanking pace, relatively unhandicapped by cliche or platitude...
...11, NO...
...In my second term I was prepared to adopt whichever of these three methods—or whichever combination of them—was necessary...
...For although his memoirs are truly tragic, there is still a resilience about their author, a refusal to bow his head in shame, which borders on the heroic...
...As a man or a President, Nixon may deserve all the condemnation that he has received...
...The reader cannot possibly miss the irony...
...On this question I must confess a degree of bafflement...
...for it does explain Watergate and much else besides...
...Unlike most statesmen in retirement, who choose to put the gloss of high seriousness on their actions, Mr...
...Like the following description of his reactions to the collapse of American morale as a result of the Vietnam agony: "My reading of history taught me that when all the leadership institutions of a nation become paralyzed by self-doubt and second thoughts, that nation cannot long survive unless those institutions are either reformed, replaced or circumvented...
...Nixon, and knew him to be"real mean," they never dared to take risks at America's expense...
...But it does not seem to occur to the author, who is totally unable to see himself as others see him...
...I had not been in the room long when the door opened and Mrs...
...Who else but Nixon, for example, would coolly write as follows: The next morning [April 30, 1954] I met with Eisenhower and General Robert Cutler, his Special Assistant for National Security Affairs...
...For whereas Mr...
...But his unashamed recounting of how successfully he played the Realpolitik game cannot fail to have been intended as an implicit indictment of the pious Jimmy Carter's total inability—not to say unwillingness—to do the same...
...That it does, and what more can the reader ask...
...Nowhere is this more apparent than in the various negotiations with the Soviet Union which receive much attention in these pages...
...Nixon is compelled to be content to show that he was not the Devil Incarnate...
...I agree with Dick," says Eisenhower...
...Nixon describes all this will seem odiously cold-blooded and Machiavellian...
...Johnson walked in, wearing a dressing gown...
...Cutler reported that the NSC planning board had been discussing the possibility of telling our allies that if we went into Indochina, we might use the atom bomb...
...Thus one gets a degree of honesty unique in books of this kind...
...This is a judgment on the book, not on the man or the President...
...Being a disgraced President, Mr...
...Yet Mr...
...The tone is conversational, as if the subject being discussed were whether or not to do something fairly routine...
...Nixon does not pause in his narrative to comment on this passage, which is just part of a general account of his vice-presidential activities...
...For in some respects Mr...
...Mr...
...Nixon is not ashamed to write about these matters indecorously...
...But as I said earlier, these remarks of mine have to do with the quality of the book: No one condemns Goya for painting war as it actually is, rather than as ignorant and sentimental people wish it to be...
...Traditionalists said they were too watered down to be meaningful...
...We see him sinking deeper and deeper into the mud, and the spectacle arouses more pity than disgust...
...For how much better it would have been for Mr...
...For example, he tells us how at one tense moment of his career he "went over to the grand piano in one corner of the suite and began playing Brahms' Rhapsody in G." At least his corn was genuine, unlike Kennedy's phony sophistication...
...Iron nerves, ruthless determination, brinksmanship , guile—these are shown to be the secret of success...
...Nixon seems wholly unaware of the reader's inevitable reaction...
...My guess is that posterity will come to acclaim this work as a political classic...
...Nixon was in his element when dealing with the Russians, and even with the Chinese, and that this was not because of his virtues but because of his vices...
...But what does this make the young Richard Nixon, whose own career was also enormously advanced in an identical way...
...Nixon had been accused of receiving improper campaign funds and ended his defense with the tearful admission that he did receive one gift after the nomination—"a cocker spaniel dog, Checkers, and whatever they say we are going to keep her...
...He, too, is lost in a maze of prevarication from which there can never be any escape into the light, either for him or for anyone else...
...Because the Russians were frightened of Mr...
...Time and time again, we read of the bombers being ordered out over North Vietnam as a "sign" to Hanoi that the United States genuinely meant business...
...Which brings me finally to what most readers will turn to first: the Watergate business...
...Because The American Spectator October 1978 5 Churchill, who was then British PM, had already made clear that he would have no part in lending the French even conventional support, it had to be assumed that he would be even more hostile to the use of nuclear weapons...
...Eisenhower turned to Cutler and said, "First, I certainly do not think that the atom bomb can be used by the United States unilaterally, and second, I agree with Dick that we do not have to mention it to anybody before we get some agreement on united action...
...For many readers, the way Mr...
...She greeted me warmly, got into bed beside her husband, and joined us for the remainder of our conversation...
...Over and over he cursed everyone who had advised him: the CIA, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, members of his White House staff...
...Nixon if he, too, had used a pretty girl, instead of a tape-recording machine, which proved his downfall...
...only that they are much less frequent than in the copy of many distinguished American journalists, and the editors of the Washington Post and the New York Times would be well-advised to instruct their staffs to take a leaf out of this splendidly readable book...
...Does he really intend us to take these protestations seriously...
...Judged by this criterion, Mr...
...It was the night of his famous, or notorious, Checkers speech, which I listened to on one of the campaign trains, in the company of a number of American journalists, including Walter Lippmann, who at that time was the reigning pundit with unrivalled dominion over the American conscience...
...But as an author he deserves much more praise than has yet come his way...
...What strikes the reader about this exchange is its extraordinary insouciance...
...In the halcyon years of Mr...
...Most statesmen are anxious to show themselves as angels...
...There is a disarming frankness about this book that is very rare in the memoirs of a public man...
...Being young and inexperienced I naturally wanted to know what the great pundit had thought of the performance...
...Its momentum came from a lack of moral purpose...
...It is the measure of Mr...
...6 The American Spectator October 1978 Can the old rascal be pulling our leg...
...Nixon exposes with an artist's eye for detail...
...That impression still remains, even now...
...Nixon is at pains unblushingly to remind us...
...Or again, he waxes very indignant about the Star Chamber methods of the Ervin Committee, inquiring into Watergate, which he rightly condemns as a travesty of justice, wholly regardless of the fact that earlier in the book he has taken great credit for the way he had exposed Alger Hiss by exactly the same methods...
...Now this is not how most of us imagine statesmen talking about matters of nuclear peace and war...
...If need be, that is to say, he was prepared "to circumvent" the very institutions which his oath of office had committed him to uphold...
...Or again, there is the little vignette about President Kennedy, who had summoned Nixon, then a private citizen, for a talk about the Bay of Pigs fiasco...
...If he had been less ruthless, less coarse-grained, more inhibited about the use of force, more straightforward, his statesmanship would not have been so effective...
...The speech was a resounding success, and my London editors could not understand how I had come to make such a foolish error of judgment...
...Although this may not make for very edifying reading, it does help to tear away the veils of reticence and hypocrisy which surround the memoirs of more "respectable" statesmen...
...Of course, one is aware of why Mr...
...But was this very lack of moral purpose, so useful and even necessary in foreign affairs, his undoing at home, leading directly into the quagmire of Watergate...
...So Nixon, in effect, was proposing to con London by a gross deception...
...But in Peregrine Worsthorne is Associate Editor of the London Sunday Telegraph...
...That he should have rejected the New Deal philosophy, in favor of the Republican Party, suggests an impressive adherence to principle rather than self-advantage...
...This he brusquely refused to do, preferring to carry on talking to a visitor from London...
...Explain, but not explain away, since there is no attempt to deny guilt for the cover-up...
...For one does get the impression from this book that Mr...
...I asked him if he used a machine and he said no...
...After reading this book, one is forced to conclude that the poor man does not really know the truth...
...Although this was temporarily embarrassing, the experience taught me a useful lesson: never again to be talked into underestimating Richard M. Nixon by the East Coast establishment...
...Each time we would invite between two and three hundred people—from Congressional leaders to White House policemen and telephone operators....There was a flurry of criticism about the worship services...
...His anger and frustration poured out in a profane barrage...
...the second place, they are also remarkably persuasive...
...Even in the area of culture, Mr...
...This is what is so extraordinary about these memoirs...
...His account of his childhood and family background is almost a textbook example of everything which Americans are meant to admire...
...Not all art has to be uplifting...
...Brought up in the worst years of the slump, he had more reason than most to look sympathetically to the Democratic Party since his family was in desperate need of state largesse...
...Here we have him condemned out of his own mouth...
...Needless to say, my prediction proved disastrously wrong...
Vol. 11 • October 1978 • No. 10
