Unintended Fingerprints
GRAFF, HENRY F.
Unintended Fingerprints In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat and Renewal By Richard Nixon Simon and Schuster. 384pp. $21.95. Reviewed by Henry F. Graff Professor of history,...
...editor, "The Presidents: A Reference History" This is a sad book, not only because its tone is too often cheerless but also because it says nothing new—repetitiously...
...Assuming they are people who read books, they may not mind or notice that their ancient icon is now crabbedly and small-mindedly rehashing old subjects with an immense lack of originality or verve...
...Reviewed by Henry F. Graff Professor of history, Columbia...
...The verdict on his career will be delivered by historians—and by poets and playwrights...
...The Index contains 28 references to Winston Churchill and 27 to Charles de Gaulle...
...Smith, slightly tipsy, responded sympathetically and confessed with tears in his eyes, "I was only Ike's prat boy...
...Nixon was a victim of his time as well as of himself...
...Few students of American politics will agree with that assessment, despite the favorable reception of the Checkers speech...
...How could the family—itself riven by chronic illness—have failed to find it significant that the annual March of Dimes campaign to eradicate polio always coincided with FDR's birthday...
...Nixon is understandably pleased that he has lived long enough to make what he thinks is a comeback—whatever that may be in the case of a President who resigned to avoid impeachment and accepted a pardon from his successor...
...The bons mots of those immortal Europeans tiringly dot Nixon's prose, telling us who Nixon's political heroes are...
...His hand gestures frequently seemed disturbingly out of sync with his words, and his words usually lacked color or conviction...
...Over and over he refers as well to his relationship with Churchill (which, being a modest one, mostly consisted of inconsequential chitchat, including Churchill's announcement that he had recently acquired a Dictaphone but much preferred dictating his work to a pretty secretary...
...Having inserted the knife, Nixon resumes talking more detachedly about the role of subordinates in the White House...
...When he speaks of a reporter "giving you the shaft," of political people "schmoozing with their PACS and fat cats," of his resentment at having to schedule "a potential stroking session with a state party chairman or [an] interview with a local anchorman, there comes alive the gamy, cynical Nixon who lives forever on those White House tapes...
...Nixon apparently believes that Watergate and the opening to China are still lively matters of discussion, deserving reiteration and elaboration, for in his frequently rambling pages both come up repeatedly...
...A quotation from Theodore Roosevelt, recited by Nixon in his 1974 farewell speech to the nation, is the epigram that opens the book and supplies the title...
...Nixon recounts ho w one night when he was Vice President he had a drink with Smith and the General listened to him complain about getting battered in the press because Eisenhower "was too popular to take on...
...The first was Nixon's conclusion that he was an excellent public speaker...
...I find more instructive the fact that our 37th President appears to have no outstanding American model of leadership, although Woodrow Wilson merits 12 mentions and Theodore Roosevelt nine...
...What troubled the CJR was the way the media were kiting Nixon's opinions on national and world affairs (present in abundance inthisbook,too),and ignoring the shameful events that had brought him low...
...And how could a man who to this day criticizes the Yalta agreement fail to recall that Roosevelt, upon returning from the Soviet Union, for the first time addressed Congress while seated and referred in his speech to the weight of the steel braces wrapped around his legs...
...It derived, rather, from the mannerly presentation of his case and the sense he conveyed of how his political base fell away under the grinding wheel of history and the hammerblo ws of successive revelations of misperformance...
...If this has any value, it may be to freshly reassure his remaining admirers that their loyalty is justified, since In the Arena seems largely directed to them...
...His constant caterwauling can make no difference...
...In horror—albeit not in contrition—they smashed the mirror...
...In the fashion of a name-dropper, he further reminds us that even after departing the Presidency he always had an audience with de Gaulle when in Paris...
...He takes to task the Columbia Journalism Review (CJR) for recommending in one of its columns that the press ignore him and cease reporting his comings and goings," except presumably my obituary...
...As evidence, we are given the testimony of General Walter Bedell Smith, Eisenhower's wartime Chief of Staff...
...Because the President is the shining mirror reflecting the nation's values, the people, in a moment of remembered virtue, suddenly and clearly saw their new selves in Nixon...
...I found two surprises in this sea of cliches and ordinariness...
...The mounting interviews with the fallen President struck the CJR writer as being the equivalent of chasing John Wilkes Booth as he fled Ford's Theater after shooting Lincoln in order to ask him his opinion of the play...
...Richard Nixon had the historical bad luck to be President when sleaze was becoming widespread in the United States...
...Nixon, of course, remains convinced that the media's portrayal of his role in the Alger Hiss case and the continuation of the Vietnam War became the root-cause of his troubles...
...Beneath that sunny, warm Eisenhower exterior," he now tells us, "was a cold and when necessary even ruthless executive who often used others to carry out unpleasant assignments...
...Most observers, including the faithful, considered his presentations as President uninspiring and wooden...
...Nixon used the language of a debater, not of a communicator—an advantage in the courtroom, and a handicap in the world of democratic politics...
...These discourses are interspersed with quotations from a few masters of politics he has either read or talked to...
...Consequently, he fails to discuss his post-Watergate relationship with once close aides like John D. Erlichman and H.R...
...Leadership," "Silence," "Thinking," "Struggle...
...If Nixon reads as widely as he says he does (see his section on "Reading"), in the old days he must have been reading exclusively about Republicans...
...The second surprise was Nixon's statement that only after Franklin D. Roosevelt's death did he realize FDR was unable to walk...
...Once again, too, hetakes the blame for the most devastating of all his crises and then gives himself absolution...
...The reader is forced to conclude that for him American history is chiefly defined by his involvements with the great men and women he has known—almost as if their reputations could somehow rub off on his own and help burnish it...
...Here, however, Nixon once again is describing his life as a series of high hurdles he has overcome by a mixture of moxie and spunk—a point he first made in Six Crises(1962...
...He mentions the charity that his family, though impecunious, practiced even at the depth of the Great Depression...
...Ike always had to have aprat boy...
...He does not discourse on the matter of loyalty down as well as loyalty up as a principle of staff management...
...Haldeman, which by all accounts has been mostly nonexistent...
...The effect is a mish-mashof didactic advice, invariably centering on how the former President himself skillfully practices what he preaches...
...As a President-watcher, I have respected the author's defense of himself and his Administration in his major autobiography, RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon published in 197 8. My respect, needless to say, was not owing to his general discharge of office, although facets of his labors deserve a salute and even applause...
...He adds, moreover, endless homilies in chapters on such varied topics as"Friends," "Enemies...
...In this vein it is interesting to note that 12 years ago in RN Nixon refrained from critical comment on his role as President Dwight D. Eisenhower's hatchet man and political gopher, but the increased distance from those days has liberated him...
...Whether by running red lights, bribing judges, shoplifting on a grand scale, cheating on income tax returns, or whatever, the public was dropping long-ingrained habits of self-discipline...
...The glorious apostrophes to freedom and public responsibility in the writings of the Founding Fathers, the stuff of American liberty, seem not to come easily to Nixon's mind or pen...
...The book is replete with the unintended fingerprints of the Richard Nixons antedating the "renewed" one profferedhere...
Vol. 73 • May 1990 • No. 8
