Book to Movie: All the President’s Men 1976

Book to Movie: All the President’s Men 1976
Screenplay by William Goldman
Directed by Alan J. Pakula

As I noted in my review of the book, All the President’s Men, it read very much like a suspense thriller. Apparently, Hollywood felt the same way because the screen treatment of the book which chronicled Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s methodical pursuit of Richard Nixon’s cadre of miscreants in his reelection campaign, into a full blow suspense thriller.

The movie does not closely follow events as they transpired in the book, but sticks very closely to its theme of investigative journalism on steroids. Dramatic license was taken with various editors’ meetings to which neither Woodward or Bernstein were privy where the editor’s debated who should actually be covering Watergate and how or even if it should be covered.

I also noted in my review of the book that it would be difficult for someone who was not at least somewhat familiar with the internal structure of a presidential campaign or a White House executive office of the president was staffed, to follow the movie. This must be doubly true for those watching the movie.

Names like Bob Haldeman, John Mitchell, Gordon Liddy, and Howard Hunt are thrown around by Woodward and Bernstein – portrayed respectively by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman – without any mention of or context as to what these men actually did for Richard Nixon and his political campaign. Mitchell is mentioned as attorney general and as campaign chairman. Yet, viewers are never told that he resigned as attorney general to become campaign chairman.

Other names that come into play as the movie climaxes toward the disclosures that there was White House involvement in the campaign’s dirty tricks shenanigans are Donald Segretti and Jeb Stuart Magruder. Again, viewers are provided no information to allow them to appreciate the roles these men played.

This is pertinent and important information. Woodward and Bernstein found it necessary to provide a list of names and their job titles at the beginning of the book to help keep the players straight. Perhaps moviegoers should have been provided a program with their admission.

Oddly missing from the movie in any context is the name John W. Dean. Dean was the man who ordered the break-in, who instigated the coverup, then threw everyone else under the bus when he could no longer hold it together. One of the most important misdeeds of Watergate, which was revealed during Woodward and Bernstein’s coverage, was that acting FBI director Patrick Gray, burned the contents of Howard Hunt’s White House safe on Dean’s orders.

Perhaps this omission is because John Dean was every liberal’s hero for being the main player in bringing down the Nixon administration. His book, Blind Ambition, had been published that year and Dean was viewed as the repentant hero.

Parts of the book which seemed melodramatic in writing came across as silly to those who know anything about history. The scenes with Deep Throat were overacted by both Redford and Hal Holbrook. The silliest scene was near the end of the movie when Bernstein was told that their lives were in danger. It read like melodrama and played out on the screen like a bad spy movie.

Those scenes seem even more foolish now. No president or administration has been as heavily scrutinized as that of Richard Nixon. Nowhere in any of the taped conversations, secret memoranda, or the revised history of the scandal’s participants is there even the slightest hint that anyone wanted the reporters dead. But it did make for a great scene.

What made the movie good was actually what was occurring in the background in a number of scenes. News coverage of the 1972 Republican convention played in the background as Woodward and Bernstein discussed Nixon’s misdeeds. An interview with Attorney General Richard Kleindienst played on a home television as he tried to explain the FBI’s narrow investigation of the case. These scenes and others, from old newscasts, helped put the events portrayed in the movie into a proper historical context.

All the President’s Men was nominated for an Oscar for best picture in 1976. I wonder if this had more to do with Hollywood’s political leanings than quality of the movie. It was an entertaining movie, but not the stuff of best pictures.

It is a movie that people should see. Behind the melodrama plays out what is perhaps the best piece of investigative journalism in history. If you can follow the players, your enjoyment of the movie will be dramatically increased. For history buffs and aspiring journalists, the movie is a must see. Others should regard it as a historical drama – not a documentary.

All the President’s Men By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

All the President’s Men
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Copyright 1974

This was the book that started it all. Since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein wrote their 1974 best seller about the Watergate scandal, nearly 100 books have been written since. Most of the major players in the scandal wrote books to defend their conduct and even a few of the minor players authored books to make a little money.

The Woodward and Bernstein investigation also put into motion the investigation that would ultimately result in the demise of the presidency of Richard Nixon.

All the President’s Men opens with Washington Post reporter Bob Woodward receiving a call early Saturday morning from an editor telling him to cover the break-in of the Democratic National Committee’s offices inside the Watergate complex. From covering the break-in and the arraignment of the five burglars, the story took off and erupted into one of the most important constitutional crises this nation has ever faced.

The book, authored by Woodward and Bernstein, starts out a bit awkward since they write about themselves in third person. Woodward tells us Woodward didn’t think much of Bernstein and Bernstein tells us he didn’t think much of Woodward. It’s all very stilted.

What’s not stilted is the meticulous nature Woodward and Bernstein applied to their research to take it from what Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler ridiculed as a “third rate burglary,” into a story with constitutional implications.

It didn’t take long for the burglars to be linked to the Campaign to Reelect the President and the White House itself. Among the items found on the burglars was a notebook containing the name Howard Hunt and a White House phone number. That established a link between the burglars and the White House itself. That was enough to convince Washington Post editors they were onto something big.

Interested in how the burglars were paid and their operation financed. Woodward and Bernstein were able to uncover a money laundering operation. The CRP’s Midwest finance chairman, Kenneth Dahlberg transferred unreported cash donations to Mexico where checks were issued and cashed at a bank in Miami. The cash then ended up in a safe inside the CRP. The cash in that safe was under the direct control of CRP finance chairman (and former treasury secretary) Maurice Stans. At one point, it appeared that Stans’s safe contained up to $700,000 in undeclared cash. The CRP argued that the cash was to be used for security and political intelligence. However, the reporters were able to demonstrate that most of it went to fund illegal campaign dirty tricks authorized by former campaign chairman John Mitchell and Deputy Campaign Chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder.

As they interviewed workers within the CRP and officials close to the investigation, the reporters discovered a whole host of political shenanigans designed to undermine the Democrats’ run for the presidency in 1972.

They found a man by the name of Donald Segretti whose job it was to pull foolish, but disturbing pranks on Democratic candidates such as ordering unsolicited pizzas for non-existent rallies, announcing rallies that were never scheduled, and announcing schedule changes for rallies to confuse supporters. Segretti undermined the campaign of Edmund Muskie by planting the details of Muskie’s wife’s off color jokes and erratic behavior. Muskie’s response to that crisis destroyed his campaign.

They found that E. Howard Hunt had once worked for White House aide, Charles Colson to investigate Ted Kennedy and the death of Mary Jo Kopechne at Chappaquiddick and to dig up dirt on other candidates. Hunt had also created a false telegram to make it appear that President Kennedy had directly ordered the assassination of South Vietnam President Ngo Dinh Diem.

The money trail led Woodward and Bernstein to conclude that CRP chairman Jeb Stuart Magruder and former CRP Chairman and former Attorney General John Mitchell also had oversight. Eventually, Woodward and Bernstein were able to indirectly tie control of the money to White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman.

What disturbed the reporters the most was the lack of investigation by the FBI. The FBI was determined not to investigate the matter beyond the burglary itself. The burglars and their direct supervisors, Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, were tried and convicted without talking about any other people involved. This frustrated judge John Sirica who presided over the trial.

When it came time for the Senate to confirm new FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray, senators grilled him on Watergate and the apparent lack of follow through on the investigation. Gray then made several bombshell disclosures. He told the senate panel that he’d burned the contents of Hunt’s White House safe at the orders of White House counsel, John Dean.

For most of Woodward and Bernstein’s investigation of Watergate, they were hounded and harassed by the White House. Gray’s disclosures led the White House to change its tone somewhat since misconduct linked to Watergate had been directly tied to the executive branch and to the highest levels of the Nixon Administration.

Later investigation revealed the existence of an internal White House organization known as the Plumbers. Their job was to recommend wire taps of reporters and government officials to find out who was leaking information to the press. The creation was apparently spurred by the disclosure of the notorious Pentagon Papers to the New York Times by Daniel Ellsburg. The reporters eventually uncovered a break-in into the office of Ellsburg’s psychologist, carried out by Hunt and members of the Plumbers unit.

Eventually, the scandal rose to the level that Democrats in the Senate felt compelled to convene a special committee to investigate. That committee, chaired by Sen. Sam Ervin, became a source of damning information about the Nixon White House as it conducted its investigation.

Through interviews with anonymous sources and a justice department officials, Woodward and Bernstein learned that the balance of the unreported campaign cash was funneled to the burglars' families by Nixon's personal attorney, Herbert Kalmbach. These sources believed that the White House was either trying to buy their silence or the president was being blackmailed. When Hunt's wife, Dorothy, was killed in a plane crash, among her belongings were thousands of dollars of cash, seemingly confirming these suspicions.

The book ends with President Nixon on television, announcing the resignations of H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman as well as the dismissal of John Dean. Those three, along with Chuck Colson, Kalmach, Mitchell, Magruder, Dean, Hunt, Liddy, and various other aides and campaign officals would eventually end up going to prison for their roles in the Watergate coverup.

All the President’s Men reads like a spy thriller. It is difficult to follow if the reader is not familiar with how campaigns are structured and how the executive office of the president is structured. But if you can follow the large cast of characters, the book is compelling reading.

The authors writing about themselves in the third person is awkward and sometimes foolish. They write about arguing, but one has to wonder from whose perspective it was written.

Of course, this was the book that made a legend of the secret source Deep Throat. Deep Throat, named after the porn movie popular at the time, was a highly placed official within the government who claimed he was appalled at what he witnessed within the White House and within the FBI. Woodward and Bernstein hype the drama of secret signals, losing tails, and midnight meetings in parking garage basements. It all sounds a little too melodramatic to be true, but it makes for interesting reading.

We now know that Deep Throat was not motivated by nobility. He as a disgruntled job seeker that thought he should have been named to head the FBI instead of L. Patrick Gray. W. Mark Felt identified himself as Deep Throat in 2005. Felt was Gray’s chief deputy and had spent 30 years in the agency. When he didn’t get the nod from Nixon, the lifelong Republican turned on his president.

As an avid student of the Watergate scandal, I should have known that Deep Throat was an FBI agent. The White House, the Justice Department, and the Ervin Committee all complained that much of what the Post wrote dame directly from FBI 302s which are the forms used by the FBI to compile notes on interviews and investigations.

Something that disgusted me as much as the conduct of the Nixon men was the attitude and conduct of Washington Post editor, Benjamin Bradlee. Bradlee was a strong Democratic partisan and relished “getting” Nixon. He approved an erroneous article that falsely accused Bob Haldeman of authorizing cash payments from the Stans safe and apparently had no compunction about doing it. As Nixon’s press secretary, Ron Zeigler put it, Ben Bradley was little more than a Kennedy coat holder.

The conduct of the Nixon campaign is disgusting on two levels. First and foremost was, of course, the illegal activities such as breaking and entering and the coverup that followed which was entirely unnecessary. Nixon was going to win in 1972. Had Nixon disclosed that Hunt once worked in the White House, the information revealed by Woodward and Bernstein would have hurt, but certainly not derailed the Nixon campaign and the president’s hands would have still been clean. The shenanigans were foolish and the coverup even more foolish.

The other disturbing component is just how amateurish and clownish the agents of the CRP behaved. Fake wigs and mustaches, illicit pizza orders. stupid pranks carried out by clowns. It is remarkable since Richard Nixon was a statesman of stature in 1972, having been on a national ticket five times. His campaign manager, John Mitchell, was a wise and skilled lawyer, a sage of politics, and a man not given to childish behavior. How it all came to pass is still a mystery that baffled Nixon to the day he died. He eventually came to understand the coverup and even acknowledged his role in it. But he never understood why the Watergate break-in ever occurred. We may never know for sure.

All the President’s Men is a great first draft of the history of Watergate and documents the events that led to the coverup. Much has been written about Watergate, but most of it focuses on post break-in activities. This is the authoritative book on what led to the tragic events that followed and eventually toppled the Nixon presidency.

The Final Days By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein

The Final Days
By Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein
Copyright 1976

Woodward and Bernstein chronicle the last year of the Nixon administration as it crumbles slowly under the weight of disclosures of cover up and deception on the part of the president.


Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman are out as Nixon’s top advisers. Stepping into the role of chief of staff is Gen. Al Haig. Stepping in as chief political adviser on all matters Watergate is Ron Ziegler, the president’s press secretary who will soon be elevated to communications chief.

The book opens with the president’s two lawyers, Len Garment and Fred Buzhardt traveling to Florida to tell Nixon he ought to resign. This takes place in late 1973, before the existence of the Oval Office taping system or the existence of tapes is revealed.

As Woodward and Bernstein described it, these two men said Nixon, in defending himself, had “laid time bombs,” with a series of lies. These lies would eventually be revealed as the Ervin Committee went about investigating and hearing testimony from former aides.

Alexander Butterfield, who worked in Nixon’s appointments office before being appointed head of the FAA disclosed the existence of the White House taping system. Immediately, the Senate Watergate Committee, the House Judiciary Committee, and special prosecutor Leon Jaworski began demanding tapes.

Nixon and his lawyers fought hard against releasing the tapes. First they released redacted and altered transcripts, which reflected badly on the president who appeared to conspire with John Dean on March 21, 1973, to pay Howard Hunt’s hush money demands. Hoping to appease all parties, the president and his lawyers began releasing tapes a few at a time. But the release of some tapes just created demands for more.

Nixon and his lawyers encountered greater problems when a gap of 18 minutes and 15 seconds was found on one of the tapes. The gap seemed to be the result of two separate erasures. The first lasted approximately four minutes. The second lasted 14 minutes.

Ultimately, Nixon’s personal secretary, stood up to take the blame for the “accidental” erasure. Rosemary Woods claimed that she’d accidently hit the erase/record button when she paused to take a phone call and kept her foot on the dictabelt pedal. When someone demonstrated how the 56 year old Woods would have had to contorted herself, skepticism of Nixon’s veracity increased. The contortion became known as “The Rosemary Stretch.”

Much of the book details the negotiations of the lawyers with the special prosecutor and judge John Sirica over the tapes and testimony. Nixon’s lawyers were in constant legal jeopardy themselves because they would make claims before the grand jury and before judge Sirica based on lies told to them by Nixon.

To Woodward and Bernstein’s credit, they did not hype up or overplay the “drama” of the firing of special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. They described how the lawyers advised Nixon that he had the constitutional power to discharge any member of the executive branch. Nixon deliberated a great deal over this decision before he pulled the trigger. This is much contrary to the drama the media created by dubbing it the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and showing on live television the FBI agents sealing his office.

Nixon and his lawyers did not expect the strong public and congressional rebuke that came after Cox’s firing. That is because they are lawyers, unschooled in the ways of politics. Nixon should have known better. Haig, being a man of military with a clear chain of command, did not anticipate it either. Nixon was ill served by having Haig’s tin ear as his chief advisor.

It’s not stated by the authors, but it’s painfully clear that the Nixon White House chose to fight its primary battle on the legal battlefield. This was a horrible miscalculation because the tapes clearly demonstrated that Nixon had conspired with his aides. Some aides and friends suggested that Nixon make a full disclosure and apologize to the American people (the strategy that worked for Ronald Reagan in Iran/Contra and Bill Clinton in the Monica Lewinksy case). Instead, the lawyers fought Nixon’s battle in Judge Sirica’s court.

Sirica is portrayed as an even handed, impartial dispenser of justice in The Final Days. In fact, Sirica routinely overstepped his bounds as a judge. He sentenced the Watergate burglars to many years in prison for a simple breaking and entering, despite the fact that the men had no prior criminal records and years of public service. His goal was to force their testimony against those who had given the orders. That is the prosecutor’s role, not the judge. Sirica was a glory hound, pure and simple.

Al Haig is also held up as a paragon of leadership in difficult final days of the Nixon administration. That is probably because he was the primary source for Woodward and Bernstein’s book. Haig was a leader. That much is true. But he was politically tone deaf. He failed to recognize pitfalls political veterans would have recognized. Watergate was a political matter. While criminal acts were committed, Nixon’s ultimate fate was determined by the politics of the situation.

Woodward and Bernstein routinely portray Nixon as drunk, distracted, and out of touch with reality. This flies in the face of all other published accounts of Nixon’s last days in the White House. Was he distracted? Sure. Watergate consumed Nixon’s time and caused him great distress. But, White House insiders and historian Stephen Ambrose have claimed that Nixon never lost control. He was always the man in charge. Ambrose asserts that Nixon’s drinking did increase during the Watergate battle, but was far from the disconnected drunk depicted by Woodward and Bernstein.

One can look to Al Haig for creating this perception. Haig’s character as a control freak and glory seeker would be publicly displayed many years later in the Reagan White House. Haig probably wanted to show how it was he who stepped up and led the nation while the president wallowed in self pity.

The authors also go out of their way to disparage the Nixon marriage. They claim the couple were distant and detached from each other. They also claim that Pat Nixon was going to divorce Nixon after the failed 1962 campaign for governor of California.

The Nixon marriage has fascinated historians and has been closely examined by scholars, primarily because Nixon gave the appearance of detachment. He did not hold hands with Pat in public. He rarely acknowledged her. Pat exacerbated this problem by appearing aloof from politics. She hated politics and hated being in the spotlight. Many historians have noted how distant the couple appeared, but none went as far as Woodward and Bernstein in saying the couple were completely emotionally detached and on the verge of divorce.

Nixon undid some of this damage in his memoir, In the Arena when he wrote about Pat, her courage, her love of her family, and how much she meant to him in those and other troubled times.

The final portion of the book deals with Nixon’s last struggles to stay in power. After each disclosure of tapes came more and more calls for his resignation, so he emphatically refused to turn over any more of the tapes. Leon Jaworski appealed directly to the Supreme Court to try to force the release of the tapes.

Meanwhile, the White House – actually Nixon himself – discovered a damning piece of evidence in one of the subpoenaed tapes. On June 23, 1972, He and Bob Haldeman sat in the Oval Office and discussed the Watergate break-in. Haldeman told Nixon that acting FBI Director, L. Patrick Gray wanted to work with the White House in containing the investigation, but his agents were finding evidence that was indicating others were involved. Haldeman then proposed a plan, recommended by John Mitchell and approved by John Dean. Nixon would tell CIA Director, Richard Helms, to call Gray and tell him that the break in was a CIA operation and the FBI should back off, lest they expose the operation.

It was a plausible plan. Several of the Watergate burglars were former CIA men with Cuban ties and ties to the aborted Operation Mongoose of the Eisenhower years. The burglary’s mastermind, E. Howard Hunt was an old CIA hand who trained operatives for Mongoose. The problem for both men was, they knew that the burglary was not a CIA operation.

It is very clear from the language on the tape that Nixon and Haldeman had no national security concerns on their mind as they discussed the plan. They wanted to halt the FBI investigation – thus, obstruct justice. Nixon asked Haldeman if John Mitchell knew of the plan. Haldeman told Nixon that Mitchell didn’t know the details, but he knew of the plan.

So on that day, less than a week after the burglary, Nixon sealed his fate. He had worked with Haldeman, Mitchell, and Dean to obstruct justice. The tape also refuted his claim that he had no knowledge of administration involvement in Watergate prior to John Dean’s disclosure of March 21, 1973.

Nixon at first thought the tape was fatal. Then he thought perhaps it could be managed. Others in the administration listened to the tape. The lawyers thought it was fatal. Haig thought it also fatal. Only Nixon’ most ardent supporters within the administration – Ron Ziegler, Pat Buchanan, and Tricia Nixon-Cox, thought that the situation could be managed.

The White House tried a damage control operation. They began alerting the president’s supporters in Congress that a new, damaging disclosure was on its way. They hoped that these men would find a way to salvage the Nixon presidency in the inevitable Senate trial. But nobody saw any hope. As they heard the information revealed, Nixon’s supporters in the House and Senate fell away, one by one.

Vice President Gerald Ford’s people had been secretly meeting with White House officials for more than a month to plan a transition. This was the most delicate political operation in U.S. history with stark constitutional ramifications. Ford had not been elected vice president, having been nominated by Nixon to take over from Spiro Agnew who resigned in his own scandal. Any inference that Ford was planning to take power might taint Ford. Ford feared (justly) that it would look like a coup by an unelected vice president.

Yet, wise men knew that Ford could not just jump in and start leading the nation without some groundwork being laid. Finally, in August, when it became clear that Nixon would have to resign or face impeachment, Jerry Ford began meeting with these men who had been planning the transition. Gerald Ford was finally accepting the reality that he, a congressman from Michigan, was soon going to be president of the United States.

Nixon lost badly in the Supreme Court with the court voting 8-0 (with Nixon appointee Renquist abstaining) demanding that Nixon turn over the tapes. For just a few moments, the White House considered defying the court. But the constitutional ramifications were just too dire. The president was not above the law and would comply. The tapes were turned over.

The June 23rd tape – or Smoking Gun Tape – had just the effect the White House feared. What support Nixon had collapsed. Friends that had supported him found out they’d been duped. His detractors had the sword with which to slay him. It was now not a question as to if the president would resign, but when.

Nixon struggled with the decision, but ultimately decided he could not survive a senate trial. He informed his family that he would resign. The moment of disclosure to his family was captured on film by the White House photographer at Nixon’s request. Nixon then informed Haig who informed the cabinet. Nixon would resign on August 9th. He would make a televised announcement on August 8.

Bob Haldeman, facing multiple felonies in relation to Watergate made an eleventh hour plea for a pardon. Haldeman suggested that Nixon pardon all involved in Watergate and offset the political fallout with a pardon of Vietnam draft dodgers. Perhaps with a sense of morality, or a mind’s eye on his place in history, Nixon refused all pardons – including of himself.

Woodward and Bernstein do a wonderful job of describing those tense moments in the Oval Office as Nixon prepared to announce his resignation. Just minutes before he was scheduled to go on air, he began to tear up. He composed himself and distracted himself by making small talk with the network photographers in the room. Just seconds before air, he put on his game face. When the light went on, he began speaking. “. . .therefore, I shall resign the presidency effective at noon tomorrow. Vice President Ford will be sworn in in this office at that time.”

A one sentence letter of resignation, addressed to secretary of state Kissinger was typed and Nixon signed it.

The next day, the Nixon family left the residence and came to the East Room where they bade farewell to the White House staff. There, Nixon spoke extemporaneously in a rambling, but heartfelt speech. He warned his friends and supporters to not hate those who hated them – that that hate would ultimately be their downfall. Apparently Nixon finally got the hard lessons of his own downfall.

The Nixon family was escorted to the Marine One helicopter by President Ford and his wife. Nixon shook Jerry Ford’s hand and said, “Good luck Mr. President.” Betty Ford simply said, “Have a nice trip, Dick.” With that, Nixon turned and gave his trademark V for Victory salute and boarded the plane. The somber new president and first lady walked slowly back to the White House.

The Final Days is an interesting chronicle of the inside workings of the White House during the last battles of Watergate. One wonders how much is entirely accurate because the men who gave their accounts knew they were framing their own places in history. Nixon would tell his story several years later.

That Bob Woodward hates Richard Nixon is undisputed. As the 40th anniversary of the break in approached, the Washington Post ran a story headlined, “Nixon was worse than we thought!” over Bob Woodward’s byline. The story then goes on to quote the Nixon tapes darkest moments.

Nixon was foolish to tape himself. That is certain. But how many of us would want to be defined by our darkest thoughts uttered? Bob Woodward works hard to assure that Nixon is defined in just that way.

Historian Stephen Ambrose sees Nixon much differently. Ambrose was not a Nixon supporter, having never voted for him. Like most of the country, he was outraged at Ford’s pardon of the former president. But Ambrose, like most Americans, has come to weigh Nixon’s achievements against Watergate and finds that there was much to be liked about Richard Nixon. His war on cancer, his efforts on behalf of workers and the environment, and his great international achievements. None of those things mean as much to Bob Woodward as his own aggrandizement. Ambrose was a scholar. Woodward is a reporter. I’ll go with the scholar.

Blind Ambition: The White House Years by John Dean

Blind Ambition: The White House Years
By John Dean
Copyright 1976

John Dean, principal architect of the Watergate cover up; traitor to some, patriot to others, chronicles his years inside the Nixon White House. He describes the events that led up to the Watergate break in and his efforts to keep criminal and congressional investigators from finding the links between the bungled burglary and the White House.

John Dean’s service in government started in the Justice Department under the tutelage of Attorney General John Mitchell. He rose through the ranks to become deputy attorney general and developed a close relationship with Mitchell. When he received the offer from Nixon’s chief of staff, Bob Haldeman to join the White House staff, in 1970, as counsel to the president, Mitchell tried to discourage him, telling him horror stories about working in the White House and making a boogie man out of the president’s chief counsel for domestic affairs, John Ehrlichman, telling Dean, “I doubt Ehrlichman will ever take his foot off your shoulder.”

But the 30 year old lawyer was not to be dissuaded and went to work at the White House. He found that counsel to the president wasn’t nearly as glorious as it sounded. He had very little contact with Richard Nixon. His official duties were to serve as the president’s lawyer which amounted to witnessing the president sign an updated will and analyzing potential official acts to reconcile them with the law.

His unofficial duties were to keep tabs on anti-war demonstrations and organized groups opposed to the president and his policies. Political intelligence and combating Richard Nixon’s enemies were valued skills at the White House of the early 1970s. The law and the civil rights of others were no impediment to the White House intelligence gathering operation.

As the campaign for re-election started ramping up, John Mitchell resigned as Attorney General and took over the Campaign to Re-Elect the President. Nixon’s detractors nicknamed it “CREEP.” In official circles it was known as the CRP. The CRP was obsessed with two things early on: intelligence on potential Democratic nominees and security at the 1972 Republican National Convention to be held in Miami.

A former FBI agent and federal prosecutor, G. Gordon Liddy, was hired by the CRP to handle security and intelligence for the campaign. Dean got an early taste of just how intense Liddy could be when Liddy showed up in his White House office one day with a bandage on his hand. Dean inquired as to Liddy’s injury. Liddy said he held a lighter to his hand to demonstrate to his underlings how committed he was to the cause of re-electing Richard Nixon. Later, after the arrest of the burglars, Liddy told Dean he was willing to be gunned down on a street corner if it would serve the plan.

One afternoon at Mitchell’s Justice Department office (just before he resigned as Attorney General), Liddy presented his plan to Mitchell, Dean, and Deputy Campaign Director Jeb Stuart Magruder. It was an intricate, expansive, and absurd plan that called for the hiring of call girls, wiretaps, and miscellaneous dirty tricks to be played on the president’s opponents during the convention. According to Dean, it was him that stood up and said, “This is not something that should be discussed in the office of the attorney general.” No one else in the room can recall Dean making such a moral stand.

Morality aside, the plan was rejected by all in the room. Politely, they told Liddy that it was too expensive and complicated. They sent him back to the drawing board. All agreed that the man hired to supervise the security and intelligence for the campaign was just a bit off kilter.

Conventional views of history find the roots of the Watergate break in in this meeting. Later, Liddy would tell Dean that Magruder was pressuring him for intelligence. Nixon’s current obsession was screwing Democratic National Chairman, Larry O’Brien over a retainer paid to him by Howard Hughes. Nixon’s own brother had been pilloried in the press over taking money from Hughes and Nixon wanted to visit a little revenge on the Democrats.

Just who ordered the break in has never been positively determined.

Dean says he first learned of the Watergate break in upon his return from the Philippines in June 1972. It wasn’t long before CRP staffers and eventually White House officials started showing up in Dean’s office to clear their conscience and seek his advice.

At first, Dean reveled in his new status. Haldeman was checking in with him on a regular basis. He was emerging as point man on the biggest crisis the campaign faced heading into the 1972 election. It was Dean who learned that the architect of the burglary, E. Howard Hunt, had an office in the White House. He had done work for Nixon’s special counsel and “hatchet man” Charles “Chuck” Colson. Many of these operations, undertaken in tandem with Liddy, were black bag ops – including breaking into the office of a California psychologist who was treating Pentagon Papers leaker, Daniel Ellsburg.

Dean took custody of Hunt’s papers retrieved from his safe. Some he destroyed. Others were turned over to acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray. Dean asked Gray to provide him with the FBI’s “302’s” which are raw notes from investigators as they related to Watergate. Gray complied and Dean was able to monitor the FBI’s investigation.

Most problematic for everyone in the White House and at the CRP were the demands by Hunt, Liddy, and the five burglars arrested inside the Watergate for money for lawyers and to support their families. When demanding money, they made veiled threats of talking to prosecutors about White House ties to the Watergate break-in.

Dean emerged as the go between on the burglars’ demands for money. At first, funds were funneled through the CRP. After that, the task was passed to Nixon’s personal attorney and CRP counsel Herb Kalmbach to raised funds to cover their expenses. Dean, Kalmbach, Mitchell, and Fred LaRue who was a general gopher in the White House. That all changed on December 8, 1972 when United Airlines flight 553 crashed near Chicago, claiming the life of Howard Hunt’s wife. Among Mrs. Hunt’s possessions was found $10,000 cash. The media and investigators began speculating on where Mrs. Hunt, with her husband unemployed and in the DC jail, received the cash.

Dean went to his superiors, Haldeman and Ehrlichman with the pressing need to raise cash for the burglars and specifically Hunt, to keep them quiet. Both believed that the entire mess was John Mitchell’s problem and told Dean to go back to Mitchell to get him to raise the funds. Finally, with Dean in a panic, Haldeman authorized a cash payment from an illegal $350,000 White House slush fund maintained in his office. Eventually, all of that money would end up in the hands of the Watergate defendents.

After the 1972 election, Watergate became a point of interest in the media. Nixon denied that there was any White House involvement in Watergate and told the media that he had asked his Chief Counsel, John Dean, to investigate the matter. If any White House employees had been involved, Nixon said, They would be fired and subject to vigorous prosecution.

After that, Dean was constantly pressured by Haldeman to draft a “Dean Report” that would clear the White House. But Dean knew that the White House had been involved because he’d been involved, Haldeman had approved payments, and he’d learned that Ehrlichman had signed off on Hunt and Liddy’s excursion into the office of Daniel Ellsburg’s psychologist.

Dean started to realize that the coverup could not be maintained. That eventually, the money would dry up and there would be no more money to keep the defendants silent. He decided it was time he met directly with the president and lay out all the facts so the president could exercise his judgment to find a way out.

That March 21st meeting was a turning point in the Watergate scandal. Dean met with the president and told him he was in danger. He told Nixon there was a cancer growing close to the president and that cancer was spreading as more and more of his aides involved themselves in the cover up. He told Nixon of the money demands. Nixon asked how much Dean thought it would cost to keep the men quiet. Dean told the president it would probably cost at least a million dollars. Nixon said he knew where they could get the money and asked Dean if he had any ideas on who should deliver it.

Dean was dismayed that the president wanted to continue the cover up rather than find some way to bring it to an end. Eventually, Haldeman was summoned and briefed. The conversation became more rational when Haldeman and Nixon agreed that the cash payments would not contain Watergate and in the end, they would all look like “dopes,” anyway. The meeting ended with another suggestion that Dean prepare a report.

From that point, Watergate ceased to be a nettlesome problem and became a crisis in the White House. The Senate was convening a special committee to look into the matter. Mitchell and Kalmbach continued to raise hush money, but it was getting harder to find and harder to deliver. Talks began between Dean, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman about finding someone who would step forward and take responsibility for Watergate. Everybody’s favorite scapegoat was John Mitchell, now in private law practice in New York. But “old stoneface” wasn’t willing to step up.

On March 23, Judge John Sirica imposed harsh penalties on all the Watergate defendants, hoping that one of them would break and offer up bigger fish. Dean was sent to Camp David to draft the Dean Report for the president to use as his defense against charges that he’d known about the break in and that there was a White House directed coverup. Dean had already been publicly implicated in the coverup when Patrick Gray told the senate committee that he’d shared details of the FBI investigation with Dean at Dean’s request.

Dean went to Camp David and began analyzing the situation. He didn’t see a way out for himself. Any report he’d write would either be a lie, or would implicate the highest ranking officials in the White House –including himself. He also felt as if he was possibly being made the scapegoat for the entire affair. With a Dean Report in hand, the president could tell the American people he’d relied on his chief counsel to get to the bottom of the case and was lied to. Dean resolved to hire a lawyer and start talking to prosecutors.

According to Dean, he felt as if he were acting out of loyalty to the president by bringing the cover up to a halt before the president was involved. (Dean didn’t know that Nixon had fatally involved himself on June 23, 1972 when he ordered a CIA to block the FBI investigation). He left Camp David and hired an attorney.

At first, Dean was determined to remain loyal while telling prosecutors about the early stages of the cover up and the payment of hush money. He was cast out of Nixon’s inner circle by Haldeman and Ehrlichman who now regarded him as traitorous. Dean implicated Mitchell, Magruder, Kalmbach, LaRue, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman in his conversations with prosecutors, but kept he president out of the conversation.

Shortly after he began talking to prosecutors, Nixon summoned Dean to his hideaway office in the Old Executive Office Building to talk. There, Dean laid out what he’d told prosecutors. He told the president that Haldeman and Ehrlichman were both guilty of obstruction of justice, as was he. He recommended that the three of them resign together. Dean got the impression from the conversation that Nixon was not talking to him, but to some mysterious third party, like a tape recorder. Rather than trying to get facts from Dean, he seemed to be posturing as if he’d known nothing about the cover up.

The next day, Dean was summoned to the Oval Office. As he was walking toward the office, he saw Haldeman and Ehrlichman leaving, laughing and joking. As soon as they saw Dean, their countenance changed to one of somber bordering on hostility. Dean entered the Oval Office and found that a resignation letter had been prepared for him. Nixon claimed that similar letters had been prepared for Haldeman and Ehrlichman. Dean refused to sign his, saying he’d resign as long as Haldeman and Ehrlichman went with him.

Dean, now feeling no loyalty to the president, continued to talk to prosecutors. He also agreed to testify before the Senate Ervin Committee that was investigating. He became its star witness by providing eight hours of earthy testimony about the cover up. Nixon would go on national television to announce the resignations of Haldeman and Ehrlichman and the firing of Dean.

Nixon denied Dean’s allegations, saying that there was no evidence to back them up other than notes indicating that Dean met with the president at the dates and times specified. Suspecting he’d been taped, Dean instructed prosecutors to inquire about a White House taping system. Those tapes would bear out most of Dean’s testimony.

Dean ended up pleading guilty to one felony count of obstruction of justice. Judge Sirica was especially hard on Dean and sentenced him to four years – much to his attorney’s outrage. He was given a few weeks to put his affairs in order before he was taken into custody.

Dean was incarcerated at Fort Holabird – a special facility for criminals who need protection such as mafia turncoats and witnesses whose lives are in danger. There, he ran into Chuck Colson, Jeb Stuart Magruder, and Herb Kalmbach. At first, Dean was not allowed to talk to his fellow Watergate conspirators because he was the key witness in the trial against Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and others.

Once his testimony was complete, Colson and Dean got together and compared notes. Neither could figure out who ordered the Watergate break in. However, Dean describes one scene when a forlorn and broken Jeb Magruder came close to admitting he did before shuffling off without another word.

Dean survived his time in prison and his attorney was able to get Judge Sirica to reduce the sentence to time served which was about four months. Dean was disbarred, but went on to have a career in investment banking and is a darling of the political left because he is a frequent critic of Republican presidents and politicians.

A lot of what Dean writes in Blind Ambition is self serving bullshit. Dean was the first to tell his story, so it was against his story that everybody else’s story was compared and if their version of events didn’t match Dean’s they were considered to be lies. Dean was also the first Watergate defendant to write a book and provide the public with a firsthand narrative of the scandal that gripped the nation for two years.

The book is still controversial today. Authors Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, in their book Silent Coup: The Removal of a President, developed a compelling case to demonstrate that it was John Dean himself who ordered the Watergate break in. Dean hired a lawyer and sued. The case was settled confidentially. However, the case laid out by Colodny and Gettlin is compelling and I plan to review their work here soon.

There is also something to be said about honor and loyalty. Some will look at the life of John Dean and say he was a man who did some bad things, but stepped forward and accepted responsibility. There are others who would say he was the person who put the hole in the boat, was the first to know the ship was sinking, and got into the only lifeboat alone. I tend to favor the latter.

John Dean could not have stopped the downfall of Richard Nixon, nor was he the cause of it. Nixon sealed his own fate less than a week after the break in in his June 23, 1972 conversation with Bob Haldeman. But Dean started the cover up. He initiated it and maintained it. His bosses had bigger issues on their mind. Watergate was all consuming to Dean. It was his full time job once it started.

Had Dean done nothing, The investigation would have probably never made its way to the president because Dean was the first link to the White House. He involved the White House and left a trail that led to the White House. Had he done nothing, the prosecutors would have got Hunt, Liddy, Mitchell and Magruder. Dean started the cover up, and then made sure that all of his superior and coworkers were coconspirators.

I sympathize with Dean in that it did appear that Nixon and Haldeman had no problem in making him a scapegoat when both had been compromised. He could not have been reasonably expected to let the President of the United States lead the world to believe that he alone was responsible. But a more honorable man would have gone down with his team – not throw them overboard.

Dean’s book is a valuable resource as it serves as a thorough and authoritative chronology of the cover-up. When paired with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein’s The Final Days, one can get a complete story of events from the break in to the resignation.

Shadow: Five Presidencies and the Legacy of Watergate

Shadow: Five Presidencies and the Legacy of Watergate
By Bob Woodward
Copyright 1999

Introduction
Bob Woodward played a formative role in the downfall of President Nixon, therefore is fully qualified to examine the legacy of Nixon’s deception of the country (as well as that of Lyndon Johnson) and how those lies and deceit changed the nature of the relationship of the presidency, the men who held the office, and the media.

The presidents who followed Nixon withstood greater scrutiny than their predecessors. They withstood it to varying degrees. Woodward examines the scandals that befell the Ford, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton presidencies and how each president dealt with them.

He also examines the “Ethics in Government Act” and how that law that created the office of special prosecutor dramatically changed the relationship between the president, his attorney general, Congress, and the American people.

Gerald Ford
Woodward opens with a narrative account of a meeting between President Nixon and his chief of staff, Alexander Haig on August 1, 1974. Nixon has spent the evening prior listening to tapes of conversations he held with his then chief of staff, Bob Haldeman in June 1974. Nixon, who still believes he’s innocent of any wrongdoing, is a smart enough lawyer to comprehend the damning nature of the Smoking Gun tape. He knows it will end his presidency. He’s preparing to resign he tells Haig.

Al Haig immediately contacts Vice President Gerald Ford’s staff and informs them that they need to be prepared for a transition. He asks for permission to meet with Ford to prepare him for that transition. That meeting is set for the next day.

Inexplicably, Haig shows up at that meeting, not with notes on how an unprecedented transfer of power will take place, but with a list of pardon options for the man who will soon be president of the United States. He starts to list for Ford his options and the precedents of presidential pardons. Ford listens for awhile before telling Haig he will consider pardons later.

That meeting would cause Gerald Ford and his staff great trepidation in the months ahead.

Ford would assume the presidency on August 9, 1974 upon the resignation of Richard Nixon. Approximately one month later, Ford would grant Richard Nixon a full and unconditional pardon for all crimes that were committed in Watergate.

Woodward examines the behind the scenes battles among Ford’s staff over Nixon’s pardon. Most of Ford’s staff – especially his younger staffers – were against the pardon. They saw it as political suicide. Ford argued that constant questions about Watergate and Congress’ ongoing obsession with the scandal were hindering his ability to address the country’s problems which were vast and deep at the time. He wanted to put Watergate behind him and behind the country.

There was also a personal aspect to the Nixon pardon. Gerald Ford genuinely liked and cared about Richard Nixon. They had been colleagues in Congress for years and Ford had worked closely with Nixon’s White House. The reports he was receiving from San Clemente (Nixon’s home in political exile) were alarming. Nixon was physically frail, emotionally exhausted, and seemingly had lost the will to live. Ford was not going to allow the scandal to physically kill Richard Nixon the man as it had Richard Nixon the president.

The political backlash against President Ford upon his pardon of Nixon shocked him and even his most cynical staffers. Immediately, rumors of a secret deal between Ford and Nixon whereby Nixon would relinquish the presidency in exchange for the pardon developed. Congress was demanding a full scale investigation of this alleged deal.

To meet the challenge, Ford resolved to take the unprecedented step of going to Capitol Hill and testifying before a House subcommittee investigating the matter. Ford disclosed his meeting with Haig on August 2, but did not reveal its true substance. As Woodward put it, Ford hid the truth in plain site.

The pardon and the rumors of a secret deal haunted Jerry Ford throughout his presidency and for many years after. Time and the forgiving nature of the American people erased that ire, but there is little doubt that the pardon of Richard Nixon was the largest factor that cost Gerald Ford the presidency in 1976.

Jimmy Carter
Through the primaries of the 1976 election, Jimmy Carter’s stock line had been, “Hi. I’m Jimmy Carter and I’m running for president.” After the primaries, when everybody knew he was running for president, he came up with, “I’ll never lie to you.”

After Watergate and the uncertainty around President Ford and the pardon of Richard Nixon, it had a nice ring to it. It was simple and from the heart. But Carter’s campaign people – and even Carter’s own mother – tried to discourage him from using it. It was not a standard any president could meet.

Carter came to DC a decided outsider. He spurned the Washington establishment and brought in his own people from Georgia. Among those he brought with him was a banker named Bert Lance who was to serve as Carter’s budget director. Lance was Carter’s close friend and the two prayed together to start every morning.

It wasn’t long before Carter’s sterling reputation for honesty and squeaky clean deportment would take a serious hit. Bert Lance came to him one day in late 1977 and told him he was in deep financial trouble. He was heavily leveraged, heavily mortgaged, and Congress would soon be asking questions. Before the situation could taint Carter and his administration, Lance wanted to resign.

Carter thought it was nonsense. He refused to allow Lance to resign despite Lance’s reservations. It wasn’t long before Congress schooled Jimmy Carter in the ways of Washington.

The scandal broke into the mainstream when former Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote a column in the New York Times about mismanagement at Calhoun First National Bank in Atlanta. Safire revealed assets double and triple leveraged, schemes to fool bank inspectors, and sweetheart loans for friends. The column won Safire the Pulitzer Prize.

Carter piously held onto Lance, despite the overwhelming appearance of impropriety. (Lance was later found not guilty of all charges related to Calhoun First National). Republicans were eager to take shots at Carter who, before the scandal, enjoyed high popularity. Democrats in Congress, whom Jimmy Carter immediately alienated upon his arrival in Washington, were not willing to expend any political capital on his behalf. Lance was doomed and eventually resigned – but not before putting a hit on Carter’s sterling reputation. Carter’s poll numbers went up and down for another year before starting their final plunge, but the American people never looked at Carter the same way again.

The combined congressional classes of 1974 and 1976 were eager to prevent future Watergates and future Saturday Night Massacres (referring to when Nixon fired special Watergate prosecutor Archibald Cox on Saturday, October 20, 1973). They authored the Ethics in Government Act which required a three judge panel to appoint an independent prosecutor to investigate wrong doing by administration officials. The threshold for triggering the act was exceptionally low (painfully low as Democrats would find out decades later). It didn’t take long for the law to find its first test case.

Hamilton Jordan was a young, brash good ole boy from Georgia who worked in the Carter administration, eventually becoming Carter’s Chief of Staff. But in 1978, his world came crashing down around him when the owners of New York’s notorious Studio 54 night club claimed that Jordan had used cocaine and tried to purchase cocaine at the club.

Forget that the charges were leveled by two men facing multiple felony drug and conspiracy counts. There was an appearance of wrong doing and an independent prosecutor was named. Jordan endured six months of hell as a lawyer armed with a staff of lawyers investigated the claims. Only two witnesses claimed to have seen Jordan use cocaine. Neither could provide specific dates, locations within the club, or other witnesses to corroborate their story. Eventually, the prosecutor cleared Jordan. But not before his reputation was smeared.

With weakness and political ineptitude being the hallmarks of the Carter presidency, Carter might have looked to hang his hat on the political peg of honesty. Despite the fact that no one had ever proven any of the charges against Carter’s men, his well known penchant for honesty in government was a joke by the 1980 election.

Ronald Reagan
Ronald Reagan’s ordeal with the independent prosecutor’s office would last much longer, be much more painful and result in real convictions – and deservedly so, because Reagan’s national security staff subverted Congress and the law to trade arms for hostages and to divert profits from illegal weapons sales to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.

However, before Iran-Contra, was the quixotic investigation of EPA counsel Ted Olson. Olson’s case demonstrated how the Ethics in Government Act could be deployed for political purposes.

Democrats in Congress alleged that, in testifying before a congressional committee, Olson had deliberately withheld information about EPA policy. Of course he did. Testifying before a hostile Congress, the opposing party doles out as little information as possible. In 1986, three years after his testimony before the committee, some Democratic congressmen alleged that Olson had withheld documents and provided false and misleading testimony. The accusation had been made, creating an appearance of impropriety. A special prosecutor had to be appointed, even though Olson had been out of government for nearly three years.

Olson had the temerity to challenge the constitutionality of the Ethics in Government law. He claimed the law essentially established a fourth branch of government and usurped the congressional authority to oversee and check the executive branch. He lost in the Supreme Court with only Justice Scalia agreeing with his arguments.

The special prosecutor dissected Olson’s life. Olson had made casual remarks to some friends at a basketball game. They were summoned to testify. Olson himself withstood hours of grilling by the prosecutor and his staff. Millions of dollars were spent. The conclusion: Olson had been artful and evasive, but had not perjured himself or deliberately mislead Congress.

Another special prosecutor was needed to investigate Iran Contra in 1986. I have dissected and examined Iran-Contra in my review of Lou Cannon’s President Reagan: The Role of a Lifetime. Clearly, there was wrongdoing within Reagan’s National Security Council and Judge Lawrence Walsh was appointed as special prosecutor to oversee the investigation.

Walsh’s investigation would set the gold standard for slow, inefficient, sometimes mindless examination of facts and witnesses and would cost the taxpayers millions while yielding few convictions. Many of the convictions Walsh did obtain were overturned on appeal because of prosecutorial misconduct.

While Walsh managed to convict Admiral Richard Secord (overturned), Lt. Col. Oliver North (overturned), and Admiral John Poindexter (overturned), for trading arms to Iran in exchange for hostages held in Lebanon, and then taking cash earned in these transactions and diverting it to Contra rebels, he was never able to nail Reagan with the charges.

Reagan was in deep political trouble in 1986 at the height of Walsh’s inquiry and a competing congressional inquiry. There was talk of impeachment. Reagan’s standing with the public had taken a severe nosedive. However, Reagan did something that no president had ever done. He went on television and told the American people that what he’d told them earlier was not true; that people within his administration had misled him and the American people.

That solved Reagan’s political problem and got him through his presidency. It was not until 1991 that Walsh got around to cross examining Reagan. By then, it was too late. The Alzheimer’s that would eventually take his life was already at work on the former president. Not only could he not remember details, he could not remember the names of his closest aides. He did not provide any information the prosecutors could use. Walsh concluded that Reagan set the tone, allowed the crimes to be committed, but had not instigated any criminal activity nor been a participant in it.

But Walsh wasn’t done yet. A new president was soon to take office and Walsh set his sights on George Bush.

George Bush
If the Lawrence Walsh couldn’t nail a president in his years and millions of taxpayer dollars investigating Iran-Contra, perhaps he could nail the vice president. After it was clear to Walsh that Reagan’s declining mental faculties had put him out of reach, he set his sights on George Bush.

Ronald Reagan often complimented George Bush as the most effective and most engaged vice presidents in history. That was a true statement at the time. pessimists would argue that VP Dick Cheney was the power behind the George W. Bush presidency and one could make a strong case for the effectiveness of Joe Biden. George H.W. Bush was certainly the most engaged vice president since Richard Nixon served Dwight Eisenhower.

Yet, when suspicion began swirling around the vice president just as he was launching his own pursuit of the presidency, he fell back on the traditional role of the vice president as not being a figure in policy making. Bush argued he was “out of the loop” in Iran-Contra decision making.

History seems to have borne out the fact that Bush (despite his intelligence background) was not involved in the planning or execution of Iran Contra, his own journal entries as well as the testimony of Reagan advisors put him in the loop and in the know.

Walsh was desperate to show something for all the time and effort he’d put into his investigation. He decided to indict former defense secretary Casper Weinburger on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice for providing misleading testimony regarding Bush and Reagan. Walsh hoped to get Weinberger to divulge what Bush knew and when he knew it.

Walsh announced the Weinberger indictment on October 30, 1992, on the eve of the presidential election. Furthermore, Walsh’s statement directly implicated Bush in the plot, despite any tangible evidence other than Bush mentioning the episode in a couple passing diary entries.

Bush had run behind Clinton throughout the entire campaign, but had been closing the gap. The Walsh announcement took the wind out of the sails of the Bush campaign. George Bush, bitter and angry upon losing the campaign, took the wind out of Walsh’s sails, pardoning Cap Weinberger on Christmas Eve of 1992.

The Walsh investigation was a travesty that should have demonstrated to Congress just what a poor mechanism for oversight the special prosecutor was. Walsh didn’t release his final report until 1993 – seven years after he was appointed to investigate.

Walsh should have come away with more convictions than he did because there is no doubt that those within the Reagan intelligence community had thwarted the will of Congress. But because of his ineptitude, nobody got punished.

Bill Clinton
President Bill Clinton was destined to be a special prosecutor’s delight. An affable man who was exceptionally intelligent and as politically shrewd as any in Washington, he often had trouble telling the truth – even in the simplest of matters. Clinton’s series of half truths and outright lies soon landed him in the sights of the most onerous and prolonged investigations in American government history.

The Clintons – both Bill and Hillary – came under investigation after the New York Times reported the accusations of a Little Rock Banker, David Hale, that, while he was governor of Arkansas, Clinton had pressured him into providing loans to Jim and Susan McDougal.

The McDougals were partners in a land investment along the Whitewater River in Arkansas. The deal soured and the Clintons lost money. A federal investigation had implicated the McDougles in illegal doings, but found no evidence that either Clinton had done anything wrong. Nonetheless, there was an appearance of wrongdoing and that was enough to trigger the appointment of a special prosecutor. Robert Fiske

Fiske investigated the land deal. He was also handed the investigation of the death of Clinton aide and long time family friend, Vince Foster, who had apparently committed suicide in a Washington, D.C. park. Some speculated that Vince Foster may have been murdered and that records from when he and Hillary Clinton had worked together at the Rose Law Firm.

Fiske quickly disposed of the Foster investigation, concluding that there was no evidence of any foul play and that Vince Foster had indeed committed suicide. His ambiguous suicide letter, where he declared that Washington was a place where people were ruined for fun and sport, was the source of much speculation long after Fiske wrapped up his investigation.

On the same day Fiske released his report on the Foster death, Clinton signed a new law that changed the title of special prosecutor to independent counsel. With the change of title came a new investigator -- Ken Starr.

Starr soon found his operation the repository for a number of accusations of wrong doing by the Clintons. Starr was called upon to investigate the firings of employees of the White House Travel Office – allegedly ordered by Hilary Clinton. When some of Vince Foster’s files mysteriously appeared in the White House residence, seemingly out of thin air, Filegate as it came to be called, landed in Starr’s lap.

Ultimately, Starr would get convictions of Jim and Susan McDougle was well as Arkansas Governor, Jim Guy Tucker, for their roles in the botched Whitewater land investment. That alone gave Starr a better track record than Walsh.

Meanwhile, in Little Rock, an Arkansas government employee by the name of Paula Corbin Jones was suing Bill Clinton for having sexually harassed her in a Little Rock hotel room, groping her and inviting her to perform oral sex. A federal judge ruled that the lawsuit could go forward, ruling that the president of the United States was not immune from civil litigation. A criminal investigation was also proceeding.

Clinton was forced to provide grand jury testimony in the case. He testified that he’d not behaved in the manner in which Jones described. Prosecutors were trying to establish that Clinton had a pattern of behavior with women that lent credence to the Jones allegations. They had a list of women they suspected Clinton of having affairs with. One name on that list was a former White House intern named Monica Lewinsky. Clinton denied ever having a sexual relationship with Lewinsky. The die was cast for one of the most dramatic showdowns in U.S. government history.

Lewinsky’s name got on the list because a woman by the name of Linda Tripp had informed prosecutors that Lewinsky, a friend and coworker with her at the Pentagon public affairs office, had confided in her that she’d had a physical, sexual relationship with the president. Furthermore, she had tapes of phone conversations with Lewinsky discussing the relationship and how Lewinsky acted to make sure that evidence such as gifts exchanged could be returned to cover up the relationship.

Lewinsky had signed a false affidavit in the Jones case, saying she did not have a physical relationship with the president. Starr knew he had this young girl cornered before she even knew that the independent counsel was looking at her.

Starr forced Lewinsky to recant her affidavit, offering her immunity from prosecution. Lewinsky would go on to testify, in graphic detail, each sexual encounter she had with the president.

Bill Clinton was once again forced to testify in a grand jury. This time, they were looking into the possibility the president had committed perjury and obstructed justice. The testimony, later released to the public, was not one of Clinton’s finer moments as he parsed the meaning of the word, “is” and gave evasive answers.

When the case went public, Clinton’s people opened up a new front in the battle. Through Whitewater, Vince Foster, Travelgate, and Filegate, the fights had all been handled by lawyers and courts. Now, the Clinton people started an all out war on Starr politically, trashing his reputation and making him appear to be an overzealous partisan on a witch hunt.

That was not true of Ken Starr early on. Woodward’s sources demonstrate a Ken Starr who respected the president and the presidency and pursued his investigation doggedly, but within the confines of his mandate and without an accompanying political campaign. The turning point, which one can conclude, turned the investigation into a truly sordid episode in American history came when Ken Starr attempted to resign to take a job as Dean of Law at Pepperdine University.

Clinton’s political attack dog, James Carville, took to the talk shows, calling Starr a coward and demanded that he stay and finish the job he started. Had Carville let Starr go, another prosecutor may have been more measured in his behavior than Starr was after the political attack. Instead, an angry, bitter, Ken Starr agreed to stay on. But he was angry at having his reputation besmirched by the likes of Carville. Starr’s tactics changed. Instead of an impartial lawyer, he became a political warrior.

From that point on, Starr’s release of information was timed to bring maximum embarrassment to Clinton. Finally, Clinton was backed into a political corner when it was revealed that semen on a dress owned by Lewinsky contained his DNA.

Clinton took to television and, in an angry, bitter address, admitted that he had had an improper relationship with Lewinsky. He denied he’d done anything illegal and from that point on, the matter was one between himself, his family, and his God.

Starr wasn’t going to let Clinton or his friends off that easy. He prepared a report to the House Judiciary Committee detailing what he believed to be incidents of perjury and obstruction of justice. The law stated that he needed to advise the committee of any impeachable offenses he found. But Starr went one step further in his report, actually advocating impeachment. He then released his salacious report which was 50 percent legalese and 50 percent cheap romantic novel. It was a bombshell.

The rest was history of the highest drama. The House Judiciary Committee voted out four articles of impeachment. While they deliberated, someone released information that Rep. Henry Hyde (R-IL) who chaired the judiciary committee had carried on affair thirty years prior. Allegations of an affair came out against Clinton’s chief antagonist in the House, Rep. Dan Burton (R-IN). Eventually, allegations of an affair took down House Speaker Robert Livingston who had just taken over the job from the disgraced Newt Gingrich who had a litany of moral and legal issues that drove him from office. Livingston promptly resigned from the speakership and the House, inviting Clinton to do the same.

The House voted on and passed two articles of impeachment, mostly along party lines. In a moment of historical high drama, Speaker Dennis Hastert (R-IL) and his delegation met Senate Majority Leader, Trent Lott (R-MS) in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol and formally delivered the articles to the Senate.

A trial was held in the Senate. All through the trial, public opinion showed that the American people thought that Clinton was a scumbag, but had made a good faith effort to conduct his office in a legal manner. His approval rating was in the 60s. Democrats in the Senate knew they had the political cover to vote for acquittal no matter what kind of case prosecutors put forward.

Wary Republicans and Democrats not too pleased with their president tried to find a means through which the drama of a president on trial could be avoided, yet see that Clinton was properly rebuked for his behavior. The idea of presidential censure was bandied about.

One of the most outspoken opponents of censure was my boss at the time, Sen. Mike DeWine (R-OH). DeWine, a trial lawyer and a man well acquainted with the Constitution, said that the Constitution laid out the remedy for a president who had broken the law and that censure was not a constitutional remedy. DeWine and his colleagues won the day. The trial went forward.

The senate voted not to remove Bill Clinton from office. But the Clinton presidency and his place in history are forever tainted. Soon after the vote, Starr wrapped up his investigation.

What emerges from the Clinton episode is that Bill Clinton was the cause of all of his own problems. He admitted that his administration, early on, were amateurs who bungled the travel office firings, the handling of the Vince Foster files, and the Rose Law Firm files. Clinton, like Nixon, sometimes parted ways from the truth and got away with it. Like Nixon, Clinton made enemies that would gladly use a sword thrust into their hands by the target of their ire. The political shenanigans of the Clinton White House in its early years coupled by Bill Clinton’s behavior with Monica Lewinsky and the lies he told to try to get out of it were the stuff of such swords. While his enemies did not slay him with that sword, they certainly did permanent damage.

Starr’s conduct later in the scandal was also beyond the pale. The notorious Starr report should never have been released in the manner in which it was written. Starr wanted to stab back at the Clinton people who had dragged his name through the mud. Much like Lawrence Walsh, he acted vindictively when he laid out the case for Clinton’s impeachment, far beyond his legislative mandate.

It was an episode that should have never happened. Clinton’s enemies were overzealous in taking advantage of the special prosecutor/independent counsel statute. They could produce just the flimsiest of evidence to trigger an investigation.

Clinton just could not bring himself to tell the truth when cornered. His entire career was checkered with lies and half truths. He also left a trail of women who alleged they’d had sexual relationships with him and at least two women came forward to say that Clinton forced himself upon them. Whether or not they were all true, some were. And Bill Clinton put himself in that position of not being believable. Then to be so reckless as to engage in a sexual relationship with an immature intern and put the country through nearly two years of political trauma was Clintons’ greatest misdeed. He and his behavior put this country through a needless constitutional crisis when it should have been enjoying some of the happiest and most tranquil times in its history.

I am fortunate to have actually lived day to day with this historic event. I worked in one of Sen. DeWine’s state offices, answering the phones and discussing events with hundreds of people as they unfolded. I was but a minor staffer and speechwriter, but I consider it a rare privilege to have been on the front lines of such historic events, however unpleasant and tawdry they might have been.

Conclusion
Woodward states that none of his successors truly learned the lessons of Watergate – that every deed committed in good faith or bad, was subject to the scrutiny of this ambiguous fourth branch of government. Woodward concludes that Watergate diminished the presidency inviting unprecedented scrutiny of presidential behavior – official and unofficial. I disagree.

To be president is to make huge decisions with huge ramifications. Sometimes, especially in crisis, those decisions can take a president outside the boundaries of the law. Ford may have not been truthful in talking about pardon discussions with Al Haig, but history has borne out Ford’s decision to pardon Nixon as the correct one.

I make no secret that I find Jimmy Carter to be a poor president and loathsome person. However, he made the correct call in standing by Bert Lance at least early on. A president willing to jettison aides at the first hint of scandal will not earn his staff’s loyalty. The Hamilton Jordan fiasco followed by the Ted Olson non-scandal should have served as evidence that the Ethics in Government Act was a horrible statute that was as effective in ruining the reputations of the innocent as anything perpetrated by the Red Baiters of the 1950s.

Iran-Contra certainly deserved scrutiny. But instead of employing a half-assed, vindictive jerk like Lawrence Walsh, Congress should have used the Watergate model of appointing a committee to investigate, take testimony, and forward it to the justice department for action. Yes, there was an Iran Contra committee, but Daniel Inouye’s committee did not come close to achieving the results of Sam Ervin’s Watergate committee. Walsh’s political indictment of Cap Weinberger will always taint him as a bitter man willing to influence elections and ruin reputations to justify his own incompetence. The fact that so many who were guilty escaped punishment while Walsh pursued what he regarded as big fish put the exclamation point on that tarnish.

The book ends shortly before the end of the Clinton presidency. Like Nixon, Clinton turned to foreign affairs where he had unmitigated influence. But Bill Clinton – the leader of domestic tranquility was diminished badly. No major legislation passed after the scandal. Domestic policy seemed to have shut down. Meanwhile, bubbling within the dark chambers of Wall Street, was the dotcom fiasco. Clinton’s people never made a move to defuse the crisis that would destroy the retirement plans of so many Baby Boomers.

Thankfully, the independent counsel law is dead. We still have the Constitution that clearly provides Congress with the legal means to investigate the actions of the executive branch.

In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal By Richard Nixon

In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat, and Renewal
By Richard Nixon
Copyright 1990

More than a traditional memoir, this book is a collection of essays composed by the former president where he ruminates, reminisces, and waxes philosophic on topics both political and social.

Peaks and Valleys
Nixon kicks off his memoir by recalling the moments of his greatest triumph and gravest failure. The book opens as he describes, much like it was transcribed from a journal, that first meeting with Chou En-lai, China’s premier. It was Nixon’s greatest triumph, establishing relations with a nation with whom we’d had no communication in 26 years.

He recounts the toasts, the tours, and talks, and the prevailing feeling of significance both sides felt. He is perhaps a bit overdramatic in the telling, but one can forgive him for dramatizing what must have been a great feeling of triumph in a career full of them.

We flash forward to August 9, 1974 – Nixon’s final day in office. He is tense, tired, and worn out from the two year battle over Watergate. He’d spent the night prior working on his speech to his staff he would deliver before departing the White House grounds for the final time as President of the United States.

This is one of the most analyzed of all of Nixon’s speeches. Critics panned it because, in recalling his greatest moments, in dispensing thanks, and in naming his source of hope and inspiration, he did not once invoke his immediate family. As was his wont, Nixon showed no appreciation or affection for his family in public.

Nixon says this was to spare them any additional hurt and humiliation. Instead, he departed with sagely advice he now doubt acquired during his two year struggle and his own foibles that led to it. He admonished them, “Always give your best. Never get discouraged, never be petty. Always remember, others may hate you, but those that hate you don’t win unless you hate them, and then you destroy yourself.”

Words to live by from a man who learned them the hardest way possible.

He goes on to discuss the immediate months following his resignation. He was despondent. He was emotionally and physically exhausted. His health started to fail and he developed phlebitis. He was hospitalized and surgery was performed. He would spend the next several days in a state of semi-consciousness. Feeling that he could not go on living, it was Pat who, at his bedside, inspired him to fight back to improve his health and meet the challenges that were coming.

He also discusses his anguish over the pardon. He knew it would be a devastating blow to President Ford and the party. He also lived with the idea he’d done nothing illegal. However, for his own mental and physical health, as well as the political health of the nation, he excepted the full and unconditional pardon with a statement of contrition, saying he should have acted sooner in the Watergate matter to spare the country the constitutional ordeal it had just been through.

Wilderness
In this chapter, Nixon discusses his post-Watergate life in San Clemente. He opens with brief histories of Winston Churchill’s dismissal from the Conservative government of Stanley Baldwin. At the age of 57, it seemed he was done. But less than 10 years later, he successfully led his nation through its darkest hour. He also discusses Charles de Gaulle, whom resigned from the French presidency after a poorly drafted constitution left him powerless. Just a few years later, he was re-asserting France’s independence of the old allies in keeping it out of NATO.

Nixon recalls his narrow and bitter defeat in 1960. What is remarkable here is that he still does not speak of what we now known to have been a stolen election. Say what you will about Richard Nixon, but his conduct in the wake of the 1960 election was one of the most selflessly patriotic political acts in history. He goes on to recount the even more bitter defeat in the 1962 California governor’s race which he lost decisively to Pat Brown. That was when he held his notorious “Last Press Conference,” and walked off the political stage, seemingly forever.

He talks about establishing a New York law practice and avoiding politics. He made it clear that he would not be a candidate in 1964, sensing a Democratic tide to come. Sensing a Republican wave in 1966, he re-entered politics and campaigned across the country for congressional candidates, building himself a national base with which to work.

He was coy about his candidacy in 1968. He announced that he would take a six month moratorium from politics, then decide. He let a strong “draft Nixon” movement build, then emerged as the party favorite. He would go on to narrowly defeat Hubert Humphrey.

Flash forward to 1974. Nixon has already endured time in the wilderness in the 1960s and it made him stronger. But the Nixon of 1974 had a different problem: he had nothing left to which to aspire. He had already held the highest office in the land. There was no place for him to go and he was bereft of aspirations.

He first concentrated on renewing his health, then his golf game. Golf provided much needed relaxation and therapy. He then set about restoring his financial health. Nixon was deep in debt to his lawyers. He signed a sizable deal to publish his memoirs and also received a sizable sum for a series of interviews with David Frost. All of that money went to pay off his lawyers.

Here is where Richard Nixon, ordinarily a solid writer, veers off course. Rather than devote an entire chapter to his defense of his conduct during Watergate, he lays it out here. While there is nothing wrong with Nixon’s writing, recounting those events, it should have been chronicled in a separate chapter.

Nixon first dismisses the notion that he ordered the Watergate break-in as silly. Having been in politics for 30 years, he knew there was no intelligence to be gathered at the Democratic National Committee. He points out that there has never been a shred of evidence produced that indicates he knew of the break-in. He is correct there.

He claims that the most politically damaging myth of Watergate is that he ordered or approved the payment of hush money to the Watergate defendants. In the notorious March 21, 1973 meeting with John Dean and Bob Haldeman, Nixon does consider the idea. He tells Dean he knows where the money could be obtained. However, he and Haldeman kick the idea around a little and decide that it would be foolish and told Dean not to do it.

Many Nixon detractors will point to this taped conversation as evidence of Nixon’s deep involvement in the cover up. But Nixon is right. One must read the entire transcript to get to the end where Haldeman tells Nixon that if they pay these guys off, they’ll “look like dopes.” Nixon clearly said no to payoffs, but history seems to ignore this.

Nixon addresses the “Smoking Gun” tape of June 23, 1972 – the one that forced him to resign. On that tape, Nixon can be heard ordering Haldeman to call the CIA and tell them to inform the FBI that the break in was a CIA operation and to call off the investigation. Clearly, this is obstruction of justice.

Nixon’s defense is that, despite his efforts to thwart the investigation, the CIA refused to play ball and the FBI investigation did go forward. Claiming that he did nothing wrong because the CIA refused to play ball is a specious defense at best and as a lawyer, Nixon ought to know better.

Nixon goes on to bemoan the fact that he was subject to repeated tax audits and the allegation he had an illegal deduction for the donation of his vice presidential papers because he back dated the receipt by three days to avoid a new tax law going into effect. He lays out a plausible defense that the papers had been delivered weeks prior, but the paperwork was not completed until the new law took effect.

He addresses the issue of wiretaps, saying they were justified to prevent leaks of sensitive and secret military and diplomatic information. I agree with him that he did have the right and the duty to tap the phones of federal employees subverting the government, but never does the government have the right to spy on journalists.

After the Watergate interlude, Nixon resumes his story of his wilderness years. He decided that he would tour the world, not as a president or even as an emissary of the American government, but as private citizen Nixon. Respected around the world for his knowledge of geopolitics, he had no trouble gaining audiences with the world’s powerful men and women. After this tour, he found renewal in writing books.

Renewal
Nixon ends his last chapter by stating that he determined to end his time in the wilderness by traveling and writing. This chapter recounts the many meetings he had through those years, several of the interviews he gave, and speeches he made.

He also analyzes the geopolitical situation as it existed in 1989-1990.

He talks about the protests in Tiananmen Square and strongly approves of how the Bush administration handled the affair. Bush condemned the act, but refused to allow the imposition of economic sanctions on China after the crackdown. Nixon says that it was an open China that led these young Chinese students to protest on behalf of reform. An isolated China would have the opposite effect. While it was clear that Nixon expected further protests and demands for reform to come from the Chinese people, he was correct (as was Bush) that economic sanctions would have been disastrous for the Chinese and for our economy. China has made great strides toward capitalism, but its totalitarian government remains unchallenged.

He sounded a warning about Mikhail Gorbachev and Russia’s Perestroika and Glastnost. While the world hailed Gorbachev as a reformer of a kinder, gentler, more open Soviet Union, Nixon cautioned that Gorbachev, whatever his actions, had only one goal in mind: to strengthen the Soviet Union and the Communist Party. Within a year, the Berlin Wall would fall. Soon, bloodless revolutions would be underway in Poland, Czechoslovakia, and Hungary and the Soviet Union would eventually collapse. Nixon was not so prescient as to predict these events, but his analysis of Gorbachev was spot on.

Nixon describes this time in his life as relaxing and liberating. He released his Secret Service detail and hired his own security. This gave him greater freedom of movement around the world, which he enjoyed a great deal. He enjoyed the encounters with journalists whom he once regarded as his most hated enemy. His detractors accused him of trying to make another comeback. But, with nothing to come back to, he was enjoying life and trying to stay relevant in a world that could still use his knowledge and expertise.

Family
In this chapter, Nixon discusses his upbringing as the son of a Quaker mother and extended family and a Methodist minister. While Pat has her own chapter, it’s curious that Nixon did not discuss Tricia or Julie in this chapter.

Nixon, in his farewell to his cabinet, said that his mother was a saint. His critics scoffed at this, figuring that anybody who raised Dick Nixon must be a demon from Hell. However, saint was a word that was often used to describe Hannah Nixon by her contemporaries. Nixon recounts how she cared for tuberculosis patients around the clock as her own son died of the disease. It was from her he got his indomitable will to fight. For all of Hannah’s saintly deeds, it was she who as the firm hand in the family and held it together when they weathered bad times.

Nixon recalls his father as a exceptionally generous man who extended credit to his out of work neighbors from the small grocery he owned and operated. It was from father Frank that Nixon got his fire in the belly and his sharp temper. Frank Nixon’s temper was legend in their hometown.

Nixon recalls his childhood as a happy one even though we know that he suffered greatly upon the deaths of his brothers and looked on with anguish has his parents buried their two children. The Nixons were a middle-class California family who occasionally knew hard times. They lived in a Sears and Roebuck house Frank Nixon built with his own hands.

Religion
Nixon was raised primarily as a Quaker although, as an adult, he did not have a declared denomination. Nixon seldom employed piety in politics and seldom attended church. He says that his appearance at any church would have disrupted the service for the church members who would have to put up with the security and for him who would have to put up with protesters.

Nixon’s spiritual adviser was Rev. Billy Graham. Graham counseled Nixon and prayed with Nixon in the White House. When Pat died, it was Graham who escorted the prostrate Nixon to her funeral. When he died, it was Graham who eulogized him.

Teachers
Nixon ruminates on the importance his teachers (and his parents as teachers) played in his life. He recalls the lessons he learned, not only from traditional teachers, but from his college football coach and fellow students.

He goes on to analyze teachers today and finds the entire educational system wanting. I share his lament. It’s not the people who teach whose quality has declined, but the means they employ today. Nixon admonishes teacher education schools who spend a great deal of time instructing future teachers to concentrate not on the subject at hand and imparting knowledge, but on being a “friend” to students and enhancing their self esteem. As someone who earned a college degree when “multicultural” education was the latest fad, I can attest to the truth of Nixon’s analysis.

Some of his observations are a bit old fashioned, but his analysis is spot on.

Struggle
Nixon waxes philosophic on the importance of struggle in one’s life to meld character and integrity. He recounts the importance of his college football coach, Chief Newman, in molding him into a man and Nixon’s struggles to be an athlete, despite the fact that he was a poor athlete.

He also discusses his college years which were quite struggle for Nixon. As stated earlier, the Nixon’s were a middle class family. But with no student loans or grants available at the time, the Nixons struggled to put young Dick through college. Nixon himself struggled, not with the academic side, but with living arrangements in college. He lived in a storage shed with four other guys while attending Duke Law School. It had no heat and no running water – standards today that would be unfathomable by college students. But it was the best he could afford.

Wealth
Of all of the modern (post Roosevelt) presidents, only Harry Truman can match the financial modesty of Nixon’s post presidential years. As was noted earlier, Nixon received handsome sums for his memoirs and for the candid interview he granted David Frost. But he kept none of it. It all went to his lawyers.

Nixon reminds us again and again that he forewent honoraria for speeches, eliminating for himself a lucrative income. In his post presidential years, Nixon relied on his congressional pension, his vice presidential pension, and his presidential pension along with book royalties as his income. Nixon was well-off by American standards, but never got rich the way that Gerald Ford, Bill Clinton, and Ronald Reagan did.

It’s clear from Nixon’s own observations and any study of the man’s life that wealth meant little to Nixon. He made enough money from his political career and legal career to keep his family comfortable, but there is no Nixon fortune.

Nixon used his middle class standard politically. In the famous Checkers Speech, he noted that his wife wore not a fur coat, but a “Republican cloth coat.” They drove an older car and owed a balance on their mortgage on their home. Nixon’s critics have always regarded Nixon’s pleas of poverty to be more whining from Tricky Dick. However, the formula worked for Nixon. While he could not spin tales of childhood poverty the way Ronald Reagan did to win over the masses, Nixon did connect with the American people in this way. His financial status was similar to most Americans even though he made more money than most. In a financial sense, Nixon was very much one of us, just as Harry Truman who left the presidency and resumed the life of a middle class American.

Purpose
Nixon tells prospective politicians to find the right motive and purpose for entering politics. He tries to dispel some of the glamor of the job by telling them that, as freshmen, nobody will care what they have to say, they will be allotted substandard offices, and their lives will be quite boring.

He also cautions them to avoid going into politics for the money. He says even an average lawyer earns much more with half the effort.

His bottom line is to have a purpose or a goal that you want to achieve in elected office. Keep your eyes on that goal and work to achieve it through all of the distractions that come with elected office.

Time
Nixon discusses how to allocate time while working in politics. He cautions against making the mistake of being long-winded in speeches and points to how the great progressive Republican, Robert LaFollete blew his candidacy for the presidency by making long, redundant speeches. Not only were the speeches ineffective, but they left him physically and mentally drained toward the end of the campaign.

Nixon points out one of his greatest misuses of time leading up to the debate with John Kennedy in 1960. He had been off the campaign trail for two important weeks, recuperating from a knee operation. Desperate to make up for lost time, he campaigned through the day of the debate. By the time he got to the debate, his appearance was haggard. He had bags under his eyes and five o’clock shadow. He forewent makeup and, while he was up to the task of debating Kennedy on an intellectual level, he did not look good on television. Nixon should have rested and prepared for the debate that day instead of campaigning.

What Nixon did not mention was the greatest waste of time in the history of presidential campaigns and that was his promise in 1960 to campaign in all 50 states. This was foolish. While Kennedy plugged away at states with large electoral college delegations, Nixon spent time in inconsequential states to meet that promise. More time in Illinois or Texas might have made the difference in the campaign.

Temperance
As the Watergate scandal raged in early 1974, there was a great deal of speculation that President Nixon was drinking heavily and a few congressmen expressed concern about his ability to govern if he were in the tank at a critical moment. These rumors persisted despite the fact that no credible witnesses had provided accounts of having seen Nixon drunk, nor was there any physical evidence of excessive drinking.

Nixon discusses his drinking habits through the course of his life, but does not address this long standing accusation. Nixon makes no secret of having over-indulged in college on occasion, but maintains he has always lead a temperate life.

He explains that alcohol can indeed be the lubricant of verbal discourse and recounts how a couple drinks between world leaders often lead to greater candor and more open minds. This we know to be true. However, he goes on to rail against drugs in a near hysterical manner. Keep in mind that this book was written as the crack wars were raging in urban America. Drug paranoia raged anew in America. Nixon, the most ardent general in the war on drugs, preaches from the pulpit in a sermon that seems old fashioned and quaint today.

Reading
Most presidents are avid readers. Nixon was perhaps the most avaricious. Nixon was well read in the law, philosophy, American history, European history, Russian and Soviet history, and current events. He also consumed a great deal of classical literature and a few contemporary books as well.

Nixon’s views on reading match my own. Daily reading serves two purposes. Through reading non –fiction, one not only gains knowledge, but exercises the intellect. While Nixon claims that he enjoys fiction much less than history and philosophy, he recommends the reading of fiction as a diversion from the stresses of life. I know reading is certainly my favorite, and most effective, diversion from stress.

From a wisened view of reading, Nixon starts a rant against television. He claims that he has occasionally enjoyed television, but generally found it useless as an entertainment medium and only marginally useful as an information tool. He brags about having all of the television sets removed from the presidential offices and bathroom where the television obsessed Lyndon Johnson had them installed. Just as his paranoid views on drugs, his opinion of television is old fashioned and delivered in the manner of a grumpy old man lecturing.

Conversation
In this chapter, Nixon discusses the art of conversation between politicians and statesmen rather than between two people. It reads as a how-to for aspiring politicians.

Memory
Again, Nixon describes how a strong memory – especially for names – are a strong asset for the elected official and describes how the memory, just as the intellect, must be exercised to remain intact.

Thinking
This chapter is a foolish bit of doggerel about when to think, when not to think, and how to think. It leads him into another of his bitter old man critiques of modern technology, a bitter rant about how television destroyed thinking in a generation and how computers are on their way to destroying thinking in another generation (and this before the Internet was mainstream). Nixon has a lot of knowledge and wisdom to impart. But his cultural criticisms are just the bitterness of a technologically obsolete man. A Luddite to the end was Mr. Nixon.

What is interesting in this chapter is his recollections of President Eisenhower’s heart attack and stroke. Nixon was the paragon of vice presidents in those days when he took over responsibility for running the day to day affairs of the country while Ike convalesced. Nixon set a precedent for how a vice president should conduct himself in times of presidential incapacitation -- a model George Bush emulated as Ronald Reagan convalesced from a bullet wound and from cancer surgery.

Recreation
This chapter consists mostly of Nixon’s bragging about his golf game. However, he does recall having talked Jimmy Carter out of decommissioning Camp David, saying that it was a retreat from the pressures of the White House and that he should utilize it before deciding. Carter ended up carrying out the only meaningful accomplishment of his administration at Camp David.

Illness
Nixon recounts how various illnesses suffered by world leaders changed history and how illness affected his own life.

One little interesting tidbit that emerges is that Napoleon was suffering from hemorrhoids at Waterloo. Perhaps he lost because he was itching to get out of the saddle. On a more serious note, he points out that had Franklin Roosevelt been able to employ his dynamic personality and keen intellect at Yalta, the postwar world may have been much different. Instead, a weak and tired Roosevelt was unable to meet the bombastic Stalin head on and defeat his successful efforts to bring eastern Europe under Soviet domination.

He talks of how illness impacted his political career. He missed three weeks on the campaign trail in 1960 recovering from an infected knee that kept him hospitalized. It is in this chapter that he acknowledges his promise to campaign in all 50 states in 1960 was a big mistake. He says that he spent the final days of the campaign, he worked too hard to meet that promise instead of campaigning in key campaign states. In an election settled by 119,000 votes, it may have made a difference.

In 1973, he was recuperating from viral pneumonia when the existence of the White House taping system was revealed. He states that perhaps if he’d had all of his mental faculties employed, he might have made the decision to destroy the tapes.

Tension
Nixon talks about how to channel tension to your advantage and how it served him through his career.

First he recounts his trip to Venezuela when he was vice president. He and Pat were nearly killed there in 1957 when pro-communist protesters set up roadblocks for his motorcade and protesters attacked his limousine. As Nixon tells it, his translator, Vernon Walters, was convinced they were going to die and drew his pistol, prepared to take a few protesters with them. As their car rocked and was pelted with rocks, it was Nixon who remained calm and waited for his driver to make a move to get them out of danger.

Nixon also reminisces about how tense he was leading up to the Checkers Speech. Just before he was to go on, he received a call from a supporter telling him that the Republican National Committee had passed a resolution asking Nixon to announce his departure from the 1952 presidential ticket. Nixon was pissed and when his friend asked him his plans, Nixon angrily told him he didn’t know what he was going to do.

This was one of the very first televised political speeches and Nixon was understandably amped up with anticipation. Just before the cameras went on, he resolved to ask viewers to send their thoughts on him being on the ticket to the Republican National Committee. He admits to being very tense and nervous right up until the words started flowing, then he was calm.

History would have been served had he also revealed his thoughts and his mood leading up to his resignation speech. Although it was short and to the point, it was one of the most important speeches in American history. What was going through the man’s mind as he prepared to resign the most powerful office in the world would be fascinating to know.

Risks
It is in this chapter that we get a glimpse – just a glimpse – of Nixon as he’s never portrayed himself in his writing. In recalling how he entered his first campaign for Congress without owning a home or car, his writing takes on a voice of an elderly gentleman recalling fond memories. Nixon’s writing is deeply philosophical and he’s never given to flights of rhetorical whimsy. It is interesting for him to recall his early years in politics and the time he and Pat spent together so fondly.

The chapter itself is about risk taking in politics. Nixon talks of risking what little he and Pat had in a race to defeat a Democrat most thought unbeatable. He talks of his votes for Truman’s Greek-Turkish aid bill and for the Marshall Plan, both of which were not popular with his constituents. He instructs us that a representative of his people owes it to them to exercise his judgment based on the facts known to him rather than bowing to the prevailing opinion of his constituents. A leader leads the people to his way of thinking. Sage advice from the great sage of 20th century politics.

Nixon also fondly recalls time spent with Jack Kennedy, recounting a trip they took across the country, debating the Taft Hartley Act. They shared a sleeping birth aboard the train and spent many hours discussing politics and current events. It’s also apparent that Kennedy bested him in the debate for Nixon brags that he one the draw of straws for the lower birth by saying, “I won that one.”

That Nixon and Kennedy were friends and occasionally political allies is common knowledge. To my knowledge, no scholarly work has ever been conducted that explores this relationship. It would be worth exploring. The conspiracy theorist in me sees the links between the Kennedy assassination and Watergate as too many coincidences. All of the parties involved had CIA connections and Kennedy and Nixon were two presidents who frequently challenged the leadership of the CIA.

Politics
This was Nixon’s life, yet he gives politics just five scant pages. Here, Nixon makes several recommendations and engages in some (inaccurate) prognostication.

He complains of the power of incumbency and how little turnover there is in Congress. This was true in the time Nixon wrote this book. He points out that, despite having won landslides in three consecutive presidential elections, the Republican party lost 17 congressional seats in those same elections. He predicts that the presidency would remain in the hands of the Republicans and the Congress in the hands of the Democrats for the remainder of the 20th century. Unfortunately for him, he died just months before the Gingrich Revolution of 1994.

Power
Nixon provides an elementary lesson on the limitations of power placed on the presidency embodied in the Constitution. But he says the real curb on the power of the presidency was the federal bureaucracy. Nixon recalls his fight to get the vintage World War I temporary buildings removed from The Mall in Washington so that it might be restored to the pristine condition in which the designer of the city had intended. Nixon won that fight, but not without a struggle with the Pentagon bureaucracy. A fight that Nixon lost was to have the White House tennis courts removed. He thought they destroyed the beauty of the south lawn of the White House. Despite his orders and demands that it be removed and the earth resodded, it never happened. I think it was that sneaky Bob Haldeman, an avid tennis player, who blocked that directive. The tennis courts are still there today.

Speaking
When Richard Nixon writes an essay on speaking and speech writing, I pay close attention for this man has authored and delivered speeches that have moved American public opinion and changed our world. Few presidents or world leaders can make that claim.

When it comes to speaking, Nixon and I take the same approach. We outline first. He makes three or four outlines. I generally make just one and develop it. If the speech won’t develop from that outline, I scrap it and start again. Nixon then memorizes the topical sentences of his outline and uses that to speak. When I speak publicly (and it has been a couple years since I’ve done so), I speak with a piece of paper in front of me with just a few sentences to remind me of the points I want to make.

I have written hundreds of speeches, and the office holders for whom I wrote these speeches preferred to have them written out verbatim. Sometimes they read them verbatim, sometimes they supplemented them with their own thoughts. Sometimes, they eschewed my text all together. A speech writer must check his ego at the door when it comes time to deliver that speech.

Nixon and I disagree on the advantages of providing the media with advanced copies of the text of a speech. The two years I served as our mayor’s executive officer, I provided advanced copies of our State of the City speech to the media. I embargoed direct quotes from the speech, but told the media they could reference its points for their pre-speech coverage. I thought it enhanced our coverage.

Nixon was a gifted orator. However, as a speaker, he was physically awkward. Non-verbal communication during a speech is almost as important as the words delivered. Nixon’s gestures and movements reflected a physical awkwardness that was an often mocked characteristic of his.

I am avid fan of museums and have enjoyed spending an entire day inside the Nixon Library and Museum. On display there is a page of Nixon's famous "Silent Majority" speech, in Nixon's own hand; his edits on display. For a political geek like me, that is nearly a sacred document and count seeing it as one of the high points of the week I spent in Los Angeles.

Television
Having already railed against television as the root of all societal decay, Nixon’s ire is somewhat reserved in the chapter he set aside for the small screen. Instead, he talks of its importance and influence in politics.

He does state that he should be a bigger fan of television, having used it to his advantage in his career. But he laments the need for a candidate to look good on television. He also laments that television news reduces important, complex stories to sound bites.

His biggest lament is that we will elect second rate intellects that rise to high office because they look good on television. History has not born out this prediction. Television was not George H.W. Bush’s friend. He was not exceptionally articulate. His voice is thin and reedy. He was not exceptionally attractive. Television was not friendly to his son either who suffers from the same inability to articulate well in the visual medium. Both managed to get elected.

Frankly, Nixon’s own election is proof that television is not the determining factor in any campaign. Nixon the president used conveyed the power of the presidency strongly when he was in the White House. However, he’s not an attractive man. His voice is deep, but not resonant. He did not talk in sound bites. But he made it work for him.

Nixon made one television appearance that was totally out of character for him. In 1968, when many were pressuring him to run for president, he appeared on Rowan and Martin’s Laugh In, delivering that famous line uttered by many, “Sock it to me!” Except, Nixon delivered it, “Sock it to ME?” It was awkward and horrible. It didn’t impact his candidacy at all.

Nixon is entirely too cynical about television. One can only imagine what he’d think of the Internet.

Privacy
Nixon discusses the boundaries of a public person’s private life and his public life. He recalls that the media did not touch Kennedy’s personal transgressions, but reported on Gary Hart’s. As one might expect, Nixon also laments the passing of the old unspoken agreement that the media did not report on a public man’s private life unless that man put it on display – inadvertently or on purpose.

One might wonder what Nixon would have thought of the impeachment of Bill Clinton. Somehow, I could have seen him providing at least a little sympathy for Clinton for Nixon also was embattled by a zealous partisan in the form of a special prosecutor.

Pat
Throughout his political career, Nixon was chided by commentators, enemies, and a few friends for never showing Pat any public affection or appreciation. Stephen Ambrose, in his three volume biography, takes Nixon to task for mentioning his mother and his father in his emotional farewell to his cabinet, but not mentioning Pat or his daughters.

In reading this chapter, we come to find that perhaps this was more Pat’s design than Dick’s. Nixon describes Pat as exceptionally private. In hindsight, this would seem to be true. She made hundreds of campaign appearances and appeared at dozens of fundraisers. However, she did few one on one interviews. She did not discuss her family or her marriage. When the Nixon’s left public life, she granted no interviews.

Nixon describes her as a an exceptionally intelligent person with keen political instincts. He said the few times he did not take her advice, he ended up wishing he had. She was quicker to spot an enemy than he was and was adept at developing political strategy.

Her mother died when she was just 13 and her father when she was 18. She worked her way through college with no family support at all. We can discern that Pat was strong and independent. She would have to be to co-exist with her husband who was noted for strength and independence of his own.

He doesn’t get into their emotional relationship. To Nixon, and really his entire generation, this subject was not discussed in public. He danced with her at Tricia’s White House wedding, but other than that, they did not display affection when they were together – not even holding hands as the Fords, Carters, Reagans, and all couples that followed did.

We know that she stayed with Richard Nixon through her entire adult life in good times and bad. We know that she raised two lovely daughters her adored both their parents. We know that she delighted in spending time with her grandchildren. One can surmise that she was a warm and caring woman – far from “Plastic Pat” as her detractors called her.

All we need know of their relationship was put on public display the day of Pat Nixon’s funeral when, as he approached the crowd for the start of the ceremonies, Nixon physically and mentally collapsed. Supported by Billy Graham and his daughters, he was able to make it to his seat, but wept uncontrollably through the ceremony.

Friends
This chapter really reads like a laundry list of Nixon associates. He talks of learning who his real friends were in 1952, during the fund crisis that nearly got him booted from the Republican ticket and after Watergate.

Truth is, according to his contemporaries, he had few close friends. It seemed that only with Bebe Rebozo and Robert Apblanalp could he be himself. Otherwise, all of his “friends” were really political supporters.

Enemies
This subject is of interest to Nixon researchers because of Nixon’s notorious “Enemies List.” He claims to have never seen it. Nixon waxes philosophic on how one should avoid making enemies. However, Here is part of the transcript of Nixon talking to Chief Counsel John Dean about enemies:

Dean: I have begun to keep notes on a lot of people who are emerging as less than our friends because this will be over some day and we shouldn’t forget the way some of them have treated us.

Nixon: I want the most comprehensive notes on all those who tried to do us in. They didn’t have to do it. If we had had a very close election and they were playing the other side, I would understand this. No – they were doing this quite deliberately and they are asking for it and they are going to get it. We have not used the power in this firs four years as you know. We have never used it. WE have not used the Bureau (FBI) and we have not used the Justice Department, but things are going to change now. And they are going to do it right or go!

Dean: What an exciting prospect.

Media
Nixon’s battles with the media are the stuff of legend. There was the “Last Press Conference” when he told reporters, “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore!” to his belligerent exchanges with the White House press corps – particularly Dan Rather.

Nixon goes on to say that there were and are many reporters and columnists he admires even if they did not agree with him. He found most reporters to be of above average intelligence and finds print reporters to be smarter than electronic journalists. Again, one can only imagine the ire he would express over “citizen journalists” in the form of bloggers on the Internet.

Campaigning
In this chapter, we see more of Nixon the Grumpy Old Man come to the fore. He laments the rise of television as a major factor in campaigning. He recounts the last presidential campaign that did not rely on television as an instrument of communication: the 1948 contest between President Truman and Tom Dewey. He says that pollsters, media advisors, and image makers would have taken the rough edges off of Truman’s “in your face” approach to campaigning that made him effective. He’s probably right.

He laments that he is often labeled as the first president “made” by television. This perception exists with some because of Joe McGinnis’ book The Selling of a President which recounted the media portion of Nixon’s 1968 run for office. Nixon complains that McGinniss made himself sound as if he were inside the campaign chronicling it when in fact, all he had access to was the media operations side of it. McGinniss was clearly anti-Nixon in his book and refuses to acknowledge that Nixon’s “Man in the Arena” television commercials, while entirely scripted, had a clear look of authenticity and rank as some of the most effective campaign commercials in history.

He also discusses polling quite a bit and says that candidates should fire their pollsters because campaign polls usually skew toward the candidate for whom they work and are not accurate. In this he is quite correct. If one relies on polls – and every high level candidate does – he should watch the national polls which are usually more accurate and disseminated for free.

He states that real leaders to do not campaign by polls, but work to move the polls. This is a bit hypocritical of him since his White House was well known for having one of the most elaborate polling systems in presidential history. Nixon often did set out to move those polls and other than Ronald Reagan, no one has done that more effectively. However, Nixon’s domestic record as president reflects a man whose agenda was driven almost exclusively by polling. Almost every domestic initiative he undertook – wage and price controls, the notorious Family Assistance Plan that furnished every American household a minimum income, The creation of the EPA and the creation of OSHA were quite popular and except for the FAP, well received. They, however, clearly were not Nixon driven ideas since they were liberal for their day and Nixon was nobody’s idea of a liberal.

Staff
Of all the topics upon which Nixon ruminates, this is perhaps the most topical. He talks about the incredible expansion of the federal bureaucracy and congressional staffs since he was in Congress. As he points out, a freshman congressman has a much larger staff than he had as vice president. He prosecuted the Alger Hiss case with just six people working for him. He was correct in 1990 and he would be correct today in stating that the federal bureaucracy is bloated.

He recommends a 25 percent across the board cut in the staffs of all three branches of government. It has been 20 years since he made that suggestion, but I have to believe it would be well received today.

He talks about what makes a good staffer: head, heart, and guts. His own chief of staff, Bob Haldeman had these traits. Yes, Haldeman got caught up in Watergate, but his only real involvement in the coverup was the stupid decision to authorize cash payments to the Watergate defendants – a decision made while he was working 16 hour days in preparation for Nixon going to China. He also talks about Ike’s chief of staff, Sherman Adams or the “Abominable No-man.” He says that a good chief of staff is essential to any congressional or presidential office.

I’ve worked for two chiefs of staff. They were very different individuals, but they had one thing in common. They were abrupt and to the point. They waste little time in niceties or formalities. However, when not dealing with issues, they were both caring, considerate people who made me feel like a valued part of a team. I too know the value of a good chief of staff.

Governing
Nixon discusses the difficulties of governing as the chief executive. He decries the notion of an imperial presidency. He says the bureaucracy is the equal of the president in maintaining a government and the president wins only some of his battles against the bureaucracy.

He also discusses congressional relations. Nixon’s congressional relations were acceptable in his first term, with Jerry Ford paving the way for Nixon’s legislative initiatives. However, in his second term, even before Watergate caught fire, his relations were tepid at best. Nixon never made any effort to help Republican congressmen get re-elected and hoarded campaign cash despite the fact that it was clear he was going to beat McGovern in a landslide in 1972. Congressional Republicans never forgot that sleight.

Pragmatism
Every president and congressman must balance principle with pragmatism. Nixon was certainly the pragmatist president. He initiated many liberal programs to preempt even more liberal programs that were going to be enacted by Democrats over his veto.

He discusses congressional politics of the 1990s as devoid of pragmatism and the need for absolute victory as primal with both parties. Compared to today with the rise of the “professional left” and the Tea Party, the early 1990s were relatively tranquil.

Silence
Nixon talks about the use of silence in conducting negotiations or meetings. It’s a silly, wasted chapter.

Philosophy
In reading this chapter, one can tell that Nixon has studied his philosophy. He authors a superb essay on the philosophical roots of our Constitution and the republic invoking Locke as the primary philosophical inspiration.

Causes
The chapter may be entitled Causes – plural. But the only cause Nixon discusses is the campaign against communism. Here, Nixon sounds like a minister on the pulpit. Instead of the sinners, it’s the communists that are going to Hell.

He defends the conduct of past presidents and is especially complimentary of Harry Truman as he discusses the construction of weaponry never used and lives lost on foreign soil, all sacrificed in a war never declared. It’s a war he regards as the most important ever fought.

He describes Americans as peace loving isolationists who only want to be left alone in the pursuit of happiness. He describes communists as motivated by the expansion of power, influence and territory. He is exactly right. Nobody understood communists the way Nixon did.

Geopolitics
Nixon analyzes the geopolitical situation in what was, at that time, a dramatic warming in the Cold War. Nixon made it clear from the beginning of the book that he did not trust Gorbachev. He says that while most of the American media and public has caught “Gorby Fever,” he knows Gorbachev’s true motives, which was to strengthen communism by reforming it rather than scrapping it. While he may have been a kinder, gentler, communist, Gorbachev was still a communist.

Nixon’s sober analysis is spot on. Perestroika and Glastnost did not come about because Gorbachev was ideologically inclined to inject capitalism into his economy or a measure (small measure) of competition into the totalitarian election system. Gorbachev recognized that his country and the system that made him powerful would die with it. Dissidents were looking for political reform amidst a dire economic situation. Only by introducing a marginal profit motive could he hope to start the economy. Only by allowing competing parties could he calm the dissidents clamoring for political reform.

Most of the chapter is dated, for it was written about a year before the Iron Curtain would fall in eastern Europe and about three years before the fall of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union.

Nixon is prescient in predicting the circumstances that would lead to Gorbachev’s ouster. He states that Gorbachev did not rise to the top of the communist hierarchy by being a nice guy. He did it through ruthless politics. Nixon notes that he has consolidated his position with the party and government by removing his opponents from office. Nixon notes that as long as Gorbachev can keep his cronies comfortable in the high life of an upper echelon party member, he’ll be ok. But if those men see their rank and privilege jeopardized, Gorbachev would be in trouble.

Of course, that is precisely what happened. The fall of Gorbachev and the Soviet Union was not forced by external pressures of democracy nor the internal pressure of reform. It came from hard line communists who wanted to eliminate Gorbachev and re-establish the hierarchy that had made them comfortable.

Given his exceptionally high IQ and gift for understanding geopolitics, perhaps Nixon would have made an exceptional college professor. He could educated thousands while playing cutthroat faculty politics.

Decisions
Nixon governed in challenging times. Doing so, he made many important decisions that still impact our lives today. He discusses how he made many of those decisions, including the pursuit of Alger Hiss, bombing Hanoi, etc. Nixon sought the opinions of advisers, but, as the chief executive, stood alone to make the decision.

One pearl of wisdom comes from this chapter: When a decision ultimately proves successful, a leader shares credit. When it fails, he stands alone to take the blame.

War
I was going to remark in an earlier entry that Nixon seemed to avoid the second seminal event of his presidency which was the Vietnam War. He addresses it here. Nixon justly defends his conduct of an unpopular war he could have easily ended by surrendering and blaming Johnson and Kennedy for the mess.

Instead, he chose to fight and fight hard, calling our cause in southeast Asia just. He was right. To walk away for short term political gain would have made Nixon a traitor and he knew it. He made hard decisions to bomb the Ho Chi Minh Trail in Cambodia, to bomb Hanoi, to mine the Haiphong Harbor. Just like the governors of Wisconsin and Ohio today, Nixon was willing to fight the hard fight to win an objective. Alas, as Bob McNamara, the architect of American foreign policy in southeast Asia would finally admit, there was no way we could win.

Peace
Nixon's take on peace is identical to his views on war – so much so that the chapters could have been combined. Nixon’s philosophy: peace is desirable, but never possible. The best we can hope for and what we should always strive for is uneasy coexistence with our enemies. We must fight for peace and prepare for war.

Nixon was a strong adherent to the philosophy of MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction). He sought not to outrace the Soviets in the Cold War, but to bring about an equality of destructive power that would assure that neither nation would unleash its nuclear arsenal for fear of equal reprisal.

Reagan rendered this philosophy (which Nixon adhered to until his dying day) obsolete when he set out to WIN the Cold War by burying the Soviet economy, forcing them to devote more and more of their meager economic resources toward national defense to counteract ours.

This is not to perpetuate the simplistic myth that Reagan won the Cold War. That would ignore the contributions of every president since Harry Truman (with the exception of Jimmy Carter) who fought the communists in their own time and their own way.

Twilight
That Nixon was in his twilight years when this book was published can not be doubted. He was 77. Not ancient by any standard and relatively young for an ex-president by today’s standards. But he knew he was in his final years.

Instead of utilizing the evening of life to reflect and reminisce about what a glorious day it had been, Nixon encourages mental and physical rigor. He points out that the brain will atrophy just like a muscle if not put to work, especially in one’s twilight years.

Nixon’s twilight was short, for he was dead just four years after the publication of this book. But the quality of his twilight was grand compared to his contemporary former presidents. Truman and Ford all but resigned from public life. Ford’s mental acumen slipped badly in his final days. Lyndon Johnson’s twilight was that of an emotionally exhausted and bitter man who gave up caring about his physical appearance, his mental prowess, and his place in history. We all know of Reagan’s sad and slow demise.

Nixon certainly could have resigned from private life and lived out his days bitter and angry. Instead, he launched a final comeback to achieve respectability as an elder statesman. In this he was successful beyond what anybody thought possible. He maintained his mental prowess up until a stroke felled him in 1994. His last book, Beyond Peace, was published just before his death. As the heavenly shades of night fell upon Nixon, he was still at the top of his game.

My Final Thoughts on the Book
This was not Nixon’s autobiography. For a complete autobiographical account, one must read the voluminous RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon. However, much of the material contained in this book is anecdotal and adds to the body of what we know of one of the most analyzed political figures in American history.

He is much more thoughtful, reflective and analytical about the events he shaped, that shaped him, and shaped the world than he was in his autobiography which carries through it a tone of defensiveness. While the petty gripes and cultural backwardness that always were the demons that drove Nixon to do his worst are still present in 1989, it is apparent that, when he wrote In the Arena he was a much mellower and wiser man.

This book should be on the reading list of any person who aspires to public life. Much of it is a “how to” and “how to not” become a successful politicians. Even Nixon’s staunchest enemies had to admire how shrewd, calculating, and deft Richard Nixon was and how dangerous he could be when he was in the arena. Very few were or are in Nixon’s league when it came to politics and in this book, he passes along life lessons that he learned the hard way. That alone made this wonderful book worth reading.