An American Life
Cox, Suzanne C.
"An American Life" own," he tells Hagman, who obviously should be in mental hospital. The movie closes on Harry living by the beach in Santa Monica with lots of very good-looking old people. (In fact, the only clear...
...Harrison Salisbury of the New York Times, definitely not a hardline anti-Communist, asserts that "the growing repression of the Kremlin against the dissidents . . . [has] appeared to inThe Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 23...
...I increasingly realized," he says, "that I had grown up without any firm set of beliefs, except for the business ethic, the success ethic...
...We used to call it the "Nixon Hop...
...Suzanne C. Cox Confessions of a Charlatan JEB MAGRUDER has been a good salesman all his life, but he isn't going to have an easy time selling us his book...
...No, I believe we can learn much better from those who always understood politics in its best sense...
...That same machinery can be used to produce tanks, armored personnel carriers, rocket launchers, and other war materiel...
...Kenneth Rush, when undersecretary of state, contended that, ". . . greater trade and closer economic relations with the Soviets will be a far more effective liberalizing influence than continued isolation and lack of contact...
...Years later, the words of an old neighbor and friend would come back to haunt them: "Gail, whatever you do, keep Jeb out of politics...
...The movie does not know whether is a supercilious comment on popular culture, as it sometimes seems to be, or a serious comment on growing old...
...He went along$0 Retbe4ii An American Life: One Man's Road to Watergate by Jeb Stuart Magruder Atheneum $10 with exactly what everybody else did, even when he knew it was wrong...
...That's nothing unusual for Jeb Magruder, for he's been rushing things all his life...
...Jeb says he hopes that other young people going into politics will learn from his "cautionary tale...
...But there was little she could do to stop him now...
...There is a lesson to be learned, but unfortunately he lapses into thoughtless platitudes like "play the game hard but clean," or "bring to public life the same high standards [you] would apply in private life...
...He denies that deathless myth, perpetrated since the Wilson Administration...
...Based on available statistics, Sutton estimates that "possibly 95 percent of Soviet military vehicles are produced in very large plants originally designed by American engineers in the 1930s...
...Magruder came from a middle-class background, and even though his family led a comfortable existence, Magruder says his mother always pushed him to achieve the wealth and social status his parents never had...
...But the problem was that there were not enough men like Buchanan in the White House...
...Gail, his wife, had no desire to move to Washington...
...Indeed, all that Magruder can tell us about his political ideals is that as a college student, majoring in politi: cal science, he tended more toward the conservative ethic...
...One is struck by the contempt Magruder shows for the others he worked with, especially those he viewed as a threat to his own position...
...Further, American companies are currently supplying the machinery for the Kama River complex which will produce more heavy-duty trucks than all American truck manufacturers combined...
...Harry and Tonto does not know whether it is supposed to be a touchingly realistic drama about growing old or a fantasy story about growing old...
...Jeb Magruder destroyed the President and the cause he served to save his own power and prestige...
...He adopted the accepted code wherever he went—school, the army, the business world, the White House...
...American companies have built and/or equipped complete Soviet facilities to produce military aircraft, radio communications, explosives, submarines, and motor fuel...
...Society will never change...
...Jeb desperately wanted to become a part of that glamorous world...
...Jeb's courtly old mentor on the Watergate Committee is one of those Americans...
...He chose Williams College for its status, but during his freshman year he was shocked to find that he was just another "High School Harry" compared with all the "preppies" who dressed in Ivy League clothes and went out with girls from the "best" schools and the richest families...
...But he repeats these phrases so often that they begin to sound like words he memorized out of a campaign fact book...
...He volunteered his role in Watergate out of "ambition, loyalty, and self-protection...
...He made grades by buttering up the teachers, and sought peer-group recognition by running for class president and dating the school's prettiest, most popular cheerleader...
...In the wake of Watergate, about all one can say is—Amen...
...Poor mothers, they always take the rap...
...But it also has its fantasy—Harry hitchhiking with his cat, Harry making it with a beautiful hooker outside Las Vegas, Harry finding another cat that looks just like Tonto after Tonto dies...
...So Magruder's tale is not new...
...Last year, for example, the Soviet regime signed a contract with two American firms to construct a $100 million petrochemical complex...
...They soon began thinking they had real power, and it took someone like Pat Buchanan to pin Magruder's ears back...
...At age seven—in the summer of '42—he was wangling invitations to visit expensive Cape Cod homes...
...He wanted it so badly that as he drove out of the gates and back to reality, he remembers that his hands were "trembling...
...He was restless...
...One suspects that Magruder's cause was 22 The Alternative: An American Spectator December 1974 really no greater than himself...
...On the contrary...
...An elated Communist official noted that the manufacturing process his country bought "is the best in the world...
...The equipment and technology which thegoo4 Rev,44v National Suicide: Military Aid to the Soviet Union by Antony Sutton Arlington House $8.95 West—primarily the United States—ships to Moscow is usually the most advanced...
...In high school, he was the classic goody-goody...
...They dressed alike, talked alike, and even walked alike...
...Western Europe has also made major contributions to the Soviet arsenal...
...The trade myth was first espoused even before the Communists consolidated their power in Russia...
...he contends, it is economic sanctions that would create peace, simply by disarming the Communists...
...The Clyde Griffithses and Jeb Magruders of this world will always be around...
...But while I suspect that the point of the movie was supposed to be that Harry is a lot more "together" than any of his children, the movie itself, upon close examination, simply falls apart...
...Rush is awfully incompetent if he doesn't realize there never has been any economic isolation of the Soviet Union...
...Harry is a complex person, as everybody is, but since everybody is a complex person, it is not a particularly profound comment to say that someone is complex and can be happy or sad, mean or kind...
...He was not some unwitting pawn at the mercy of higher-ups...
...Many of the aides were "new guys," insecure and anxious to prove themselves in the eyes of Haldeman and the President they hardly knew...
...Jokes about urinating in public places simply do not go well with soliloquies on cancer...
...That generosity continues to this day, as Sutton proves...
...Soviet dissidents, supposedly the beneficiaries of that trade as a liberalizing influence, deny this fantasy...
...So Jeb learned how to get ahead early in life...
...The Communists acknowledge what our own government has consistently denied, that the United States has constructed most of the enemy's military-industrial complex...
...Virtually all Soviet computer technology comes from American companies or their Western European subsidiaries...
...He climbed the corporate ladder for eleven years after college, changing jobs five different times...
...They were actually more concerned with making themselves look good than with making the President look good...
...At the end of the movie, I did not feel as if I really knew him...
...A research fellow at the Hoover Institution, Sutton persuasively argues that without continuous infusions of Western technology almost since the opening shot of the October Revolution, the Communists could not have waged ceaseless aggression against the free world for half a century...
...According to Senator Sam, there are two basic commandments for anyone entering politics: "The first is that he must be dedicated to the true purpose of government, which is to promote the good of the people...
...And the major reason he participated in the cover-up was not to protect Richard Nixon, but to protect Jeb Magruder...
...The movie has some elements of reality—Harry is extremely crotchety and hard to take, the street scenes in New York are all too grim and true to life...
...He describes that as "less big government" and "more emphasis on self-reliance...
...The major reason he went to work for the CRP was not to get Richard Nixon re-elected, but to get himself a better job after the campaign...
...So Jeb joined a fraternity and quickly took on the accepted code_ dress, behavior, and values...
...Wellington J. Griffith III The Moscow Mooch ANTONY SUTTON OEMONSTRATESwithiinpressiveiimomi;idaiion that East minus West equals Zero ifI may plagarize the title of another hook on trade with the Communist bloc...
...Andrei Sakharov, father of the H-bomb, argues: "The history of the USSR shows that the period of maximum friendship with the USA, the period of Roosevelt . . was at the same time the period when the dictatorship flourished and bloomed...
...It is ironic that Magruder once said he would have preferred to call his book An American Tragedy...
...According to State Department files, Edwin Gay, a member of America's 'War Trade Board and the Council on Foreign Relations, suggested in 1918 that "if the people in the Bolsheviksections of Russia were given the opportunity to enjoy improved economic conditions, they would themselves bring about the establishment of a moderate and stable social order...
...He calls her "the greatest influence on my life...
...Clyde Griffiths destroyed the woman he loved in order to marry a shallow society girl...
...A movie can be both, preferably at the same time, but the funny and sad moments here are so discordant that they cannot happily coexist with one another...
...Both discovered that the success they sought was not worth the price they paid...
...But let's face it...
...Many of them, like Magruder, had no deep personal loyalty to the President, nor any deep intellectual commitment to the cause they served...
...Access to the Oval Office was the name of the game, and the infighting among aides was intense...
...Theodore Dreiser not only had the title first, he had the character and the plot as well...
...After all, Jeb was deeply involved in Watergate...
...Most of them were nothing more than errand boys for Haldeman and Ehrlichman, but they enjoyed the trappings of power —the plush offices, the black limousines, and the dubious honor of eating at the White House mess...
...Even in the 1920s, a decade before Washington recognized the Communist regime, American businessmen, with State Department connivance and approval, were providing the Kremlin with American technology and machinery...
...The second is that he must possess the intellectual and moral integrity which is the priceless ingredient of good character...
...that Western trade is the economic path to peace with the Communists...
...He describes being struck by the "sheer perfection" of life at the Western White House—the immaculately groomed lawns, the white-coated Filipinos serving drinks, the limousines, helicopters, airplanes, and yes, the golf carts awaiting one's beck and call...
...Most of the jobs were good, well-paying jobs, but Jeb was never satisified...
...Watergate has about as much appeal to the American palate these days as a plate of cold leftovers, and aside from a few juicy tidbits, Magruder offers us little that is new...
...So the movie is not as "warm" and "human": as all that...
...The same argument is used by the present administration...
...He is simply different things at different times and they do not come together at any point where one can say, "This is what Harry is like...
...It does no good to ask ourselves, as Jeb Magruder does, if his failures do not reflect the failures of our society as a whole...
...United States firms have also provided blueprints and finished products which add to the Kremlin's arsenal...
...Jeb's personal ambition was too powerful a force for even his wife or his family to overcome...
...In fact, much of the book is just filler...
...In fact, the only clear message of the movie is that living in California beats living in New York...
...The same situation is reappearing today, in parallel with quantum jumps in the flow of American technology to the Soviet Union...
...It takes a big man toadmit he is wrong...
...Jeb needed the money so he hired a professional writer and rushed the book to market, sacrificing substance for expediency...
...According to Averell Harriman, an ambassador to Russia under Roosevelt, Stalin admitted "that about two-thirds of all the large industrial enterprises in the Soviet Union had been built with United States help or technical assistance...
...Finally, the movie does not seem to be sure of what statement it wants to make about Harry himself...
...But individuals can change themselves, and Magruder appears to be well on his way back from Watergate...
...Damn it," Buchanan shouted when Jeb presented him with an assignment...
...Liddy worked for him, and Jeb was the one who had gotten Mitchell to approve Liddy's surveillance schemes...
...So Magruder had as big a stake as anyone in keeping the whole affair quiet...
...It is better than "warm" and "human" in that it shows us pictures of life which are occasionally accurate...
...He could have resigned or objected to what was happening—that would have been the honorable thing to do...
...Whatever that means...
...He wanted something better...
...Magruder fails to comprehend his own unimportance if he thinks the reader will be interested in obscure White House memos he wrote or in how he organized the Inaugural...
...Jeb resembled many of the young men who came to the White House in those early days of the Nixon Administration...
...But it would have cost Jeb his job...
...Yet it would not have cost Richard Nixon his election or his Presidency...
...The Communists won't accept second-best...
...Jeb never really was his own person...
...Some $11 billion in Lend-Lease aid, including billions to rebuild Soviet factories after World War II, did nothing to ameliorate Stalin's murderous paranoia...
...Dreiser's Clyde Griffiths was much like Jeb Magruder, an essentially decent young man from modest beginnings who became corrupted by his lust for status and position...
...I'm sick of Halaeman thinking I'll write junk for him and I'm sick of you new guys coming in here and thinking you're in charge of everything...
...Harry lacks a personality, in short...
...Jeb thought he had seen a "glimpse of something better" when he drove through the gates of San Clemente in 1969 to interview with Bob Haldeman...
...The movie also does not know whether it is supposed to be funny or sad...
...Jeb's off-and-on flirtation with politics over the years had put considerable strain on their marriage and family life...
Vol. 8 • December 1974 • No. 3
