(2 of 2)
As theory, Wills' perception of the injustices and frustrations caused by the free-market mystique is useful. And he offers a rather vague vision of an alternative society, pleading for "a period of intense experimentation" with different forms of community. He tends to slight the evolution that the nation —and with it, Richard Nixon—has undergone. He sees the New Deal, for example, as a mere readjustment to include more players in the competitive game. But the shift in money and poitical power of the '30s was profound. The competitive game was qualitatively changed. Workingmen could and did begin earning the money to buy houses —and eventually hard, political hats.
The reportage of Nixon Agonistes is often more interesting than its ideology. Much of the territory has been trod before, but with his stylistic gift—a broad sense of satire wedded to an acute political intelligence—Wills makes even his recapitulations entertaining. Wills goes spelunking into Nixon's Whittier prehistory and there finds Frank Nixon, his father, "gloomy and argumentative, black Irishman moving in cloud, with frequent lightnings out of it." His late mother, Wills reports, displayed a "colored photo-portrait of Richard, which was, when one threw the switch, lit electrically from behind like a hamburger king's." There is some truth but also a certain theatrical silliness in Wills' conclusion: "Nixon is at the mercy of his past, without quite possessing it."
All along, there seems to be revolution hatching in Wills' prose. It is odd, then, after 600 pages, to find him in a mood of mild conciliation. "There are signs that history, having made ours a great nation, may now be in the process of unmaking us—unless we can tap some energies for our own renewal." Having damned the Horatio Alger society from the pulpit, Wills ends by taking up a collection for self-improvement.
Lance Morrow