THE NIXON YEARS
There is one thing solid and fundamental in politics . . . the law of change. What's up today is down tomorrow.
—Richard M. Nixon
Few men could make that statement with more authority than the 37th President of the United States. Richard Nixon's career in American politics was a drama marked by breathtaking climbs to what he often called the "mountain-top," followed by precipitous plunges to the depths. Not many of his fellow citizens loved nun. Many respected and admired him. Perhaps just as many hated him. He labored under the handicap of being mysterious without being fascinating. His supporters saw him as shrewd enough to win elections and capable enough to run an efficient centrist-conservative Administration that would save the country from radical or liberal excess. To his enemies, he was devious and dangerous, a man without principle, a hungry Cassius who sought power at any cost. However one felt about him, he became a seemingly permanent fixture in American politics, yet always somehow an outsider.
Though Nixon did not register to vote until he was 25, he was a Congressman at 33, a Senator at 37, Vice President at 39—and an apparent has-been at 47. In a spectacular comeback, he fought his way to the presidency eight years later. He won re-election with the greatest number of popular votes in the nation's history. Then, barely a year later began an inexorable process that devastated his presidency. At the age of 61 he came down from the mountaintop for the last time.
Nixon moved into the White House at an extraordinary moment in American history, toward the end of a decade when the nation had been more troubled and divided than at any time perhaps since the Civil War, certainly since the Great Depression. The Viet Nam War had severely shaken the country's sense of being a morally superior power as well as its belief in its invincibility. The '60s brought deeply troubling questions about the meaning of a good life centering on economic growth and prosperity, about traditional morals, rules and values.
A Fighting World
At such a time many hoped that the new President would bring reconciliation and unity, that he would radiate a kind of healing quality. Nixon saw the opportunity — "Bring Us Together" be came his slogan. But he was never capable of the vision and magnanimity to make good on it.
Others hoped that he would simply put the troublemakers, the radicals, the hippies, the blacks, in their places. But even the haters realized, however dimly, that this would not be enough.
So the best hope for Richard Nixon as President was that he might heal through competence; that a pragmatic, efficient leader with access to the best brains—so one imagined at the time—would give the U.S. a new start.
In many respects, Nixon came close. Indeed, he achieved some things that will outlast his disaster. But ultimately he destroyed himself through the tragic flaws in his personality—most notably, perhaps, a frequent inability to face or tell the truth.
Nixon's public life began 28 years ago, and since then, legions of political commentators, barroom sages, Freudian analysts and psychohistorians have attempted to fathom his inner workings.
He was ill at ease with most people, even politicians; his closest