President in a Gray Flannel Suit

...President in a Gray Flannel Suit The Nixons-An American Family By Edwin P Hoyt Random House 307 pp $7 95 The Running of Richard Nixon By Leonard Lurie Coward, McCann, and Geoghegan 409 pp $10 00 The Nixon Theology By Charles P Henderson Jr Harper and Row 210 pp $6 95 Reviewed by Joseph Illick Author, "William Penn the Politician' The profile of Richard Nixon's life is well known Hannah Milhous Nixon, his stern Quaker mother, de voted much of her attention to his ailing brothers, while Frank Nixon, a moody man who alternately thumped his Bible and his boys, struggled to overcome his business failures by employing the whole family in running his store In this bleak situation, bordering on poverty, there was no time for play, though in school Richard threw himself into extracurricular activities with a vigor that gave him his first taste of sue cess, a much needed sense of importance and public affection Bright, shrewd and industrious, he was at the top of his class in law school, yet could not land a job with a New York firm and so returned to Southern California Following a stint in the Navy during World War II, he went to Congress in 1946 In Washington, Nixon quickly established his credentials as a consummate politician, at the same time earning the undying enmity of liberals for his Red-baitmg Four years in the House and two m the Senate led to the Vice Presidency, where Nixon was embarrassed and stifled by Eisenhower After patiently stand mg in line for the top post, he had to endure two humiliating electoral defeats before he finally reached the summit If durability were inherently exciting, Nixon would arouse our interest Instead, we see him as the Ed Sullivan of politics, his dreary life forcing itself upon us because of his unflagging desire for public office This is the point of Joe McGumess' The Selling of the President, where Nixon's image-maker Roger Ailes is quoted as saying "Let's face it, a lot of people think Nixon is dull Think he's a bore, a pain in the ass They look at him as the kind of kid who always carried a book bag Who was forty-two years old the day he was born They figure other kids got footballs for Christmas, Nixon got a briefcase and loved it He'd always have his homework done and he'd never let you copy " Similarly, novelist Mark Harris-whose insightful account of Nixon in the 1962 gubernatorial campaign is too often overlooked-recalls a time when the aspiring candidate was late for a press conference The assembled reporters "speculated that he was resting or that he was conferring with his staff Nobody spec ulated that he was drinking, and nobody speculated that he was detained in a linen room with a chambermaid, although of another candidate-a governor, a President, half the Senate, and three-quarters of the United States Congress-they might have indulged in all sorts of scandalous speculation " Nixon's life is that of a political drudge His pronouncements lack m terest except as rationalizations for his public behavior, or so it seems Six Crises, the Nixon-approved autobiography, is so transparently self-serving it is hardly even embarrassing The problem ot the Nixon biographer, therefore, is to find an approach to the man that is meaningful and interesting Although none of the three books under consideration here meets both these criteria, the nature of each failure merits attention In The Nixons-An American Family the perspective is genealogical This would be a useful gimmick it Nixon's ancestors were at all worthy of consideration, either for accomplishments of their own or contributions to their distinguished posterity But the former is demonstrably untrue and the latter remains unproved All we learn is that two Nixons served under Washington in New Jersey (they did not desert, nor did they reenhst) and a third was killed in the Battle of Gettysburg As for the Milhouses, they were sturdy, orthodox Quakers who did not join the antislavery movement, and whose family portraits bear testimony to the veracity of Grant Wood Though Hoyt is clearly sympathetic to Nixon, his point ot view on the meaning of the President's ancestry is not apparent One can only conclude that Nixon comes by his drudgery honestly Leonard Lune's unsympathetic The Running of Ricliatd Nixon, a chronicle of his political career, simply shows that distaste for the President's behavior does not by itself supply the vitality necessary to sustain a narrative Lune's story is reasonably accurate, despite its lapses into moralizing and its rather obvious refrain that Nixon has been inconsistent But political history is not much of an improvement on genealogy as an approach to the President Though Lurie does demonstrate the necessity of industry and shrewd intelligence for political advancement, he has nothing to say on Nixon's abilities as an adminstrator-which, given his personal qualities, may be his greatest asset Charles Henderson sets out to prove that Nixon's entire life may be viewed as an attempt to reconcile his religion with the contradictory tacts of his experience, to harmonize his moral convictions with the neces sities of his career " Or, put another way, the President feels his behavior should be "not only sound, but righteous' To depict Nixon as a man tortured by a rigid conscience-and because he is compelled to behave in a way that he disapproves of-strikes me as a novel view That the President speaks m moralistic terms, that he presents himself as a man of faith and ostentatiously associates with Billy Graham is evident enough, but how these facts should be interpreted is not The Reverend Graham informed Henderson that Nixon "has been extremely reticent to speak out on his personal faith for fear that people will think he is using it politically " Henderson accepts this, noting that Nixon "does not pioject deep emo tions and beliefs that are ruling factors in his life ' Most Nixon watchers however, believe that the President's religious pronouncements and behavior are transparently political, and that his lack of consistency demonstrates an absence of deep and strongly held principles Their view is ignored by Henderson, who after dealing with Nixon's anti Communist crusade brushes off the recent trips to Russia and China as examples ol "an amazing latitude to his pragmatism " Indeed, how can the personal emotions and beliefs of the President be plumbed' Henderson relies on Six Crises, a book that must be used with care and surely cannot be taken at face value (When Mark Harris questioned Alvin Moscow, who ghosted the book, Moscow was surprised Harris had read it and amazed that he took it seriously ) Rather than appraising Six Cuses from the viewpoint of Nixon's spiritual and behaviorial confhc's as Hen derson did, I read it in an entirely different light, unaware that there were basic guiding principles in Nixon's life I saw a man who felt persecuted for his beliefs, and who assigned himself an inordinate role in affairs where-it seemed-he was only tangentially involved These qualities I understood in terms of the denial of affection that sent him on his quest of public approval Clearly, the interpretation of Six Crises will depend on the perspective of the reader Perhaps the principles Henderson discerns exist, yet his concluding statement is that Nixon's spiritual depth is insufficient to the crises of our times This is either irrelevant to his contention that the President is a man struggling with his soul (since the struggle could go on whether Nixon's beliefs measured up or not), or a judgment that Nixon's theology is unworthy of the name In any case, though The Nixon Theology is often an intelligent and thoughtful book, Henderson has failed to prove his point If one had to guess why he has not presented a more consistent and satisfying study, the answer might be that his thesis about Nixon is fundamentally sympathetic to the man while he himself is not...