(2 of 2)
The author chides his subject for the "Poor Richard" pose he so often adopted toward his struggles. In fact, his meteoric rise was as much a product of good luck as of hard work. Nixon entered the House during a brief, aberrant period of Republican control, when choice committee assignments were being handed out to eager freshmen. His Red-scare tactics benefited immensely from the awful example of Senator Joseph McCarthy: "McCarthy's charges were so extreme, his inability to back them up so obvious, that he made Nixon look like a scholar and statesman in comparison." The outbreak of the Korean War in 1950 practically guaranteed his victory in the Senate race against Douglas, who, Ambrose points out, inaugurated the mudslinging in that notoriously dirty campaign by charging that Nixon was soft on Communism.
He was better at holding office than seeking it; Ambrose concludes that Nixon "became the most visible Vice President of the 20th century, and the most successful." Indeed, Nixon took principled stands during the late '40s and into the '50s that demanded true courage: he supported the Marshall Plan when his constituents complained about throwing away more money in Europe, and he was a staunch enemy of segregation and a champion of civil rights. But life as Eisenhower's Vice President cramped Nixon as much as it exalted him. Ambrose, who has also written a two-volume biography of Ike, catches the tensions in this relationship perfectly: "After ordering Nixon to take the low road while he stayed on the high road, Eisenhower would admonish Nixon that he had gone too far -- and then once again order Nixon to go after the Democrats."
Small wonder that Nixon, after a hairbreadth defeat to John F. Kennedy for the presidency in 1960, left Washington an unhappy man. A losing race in 1962 for a job he did not want, Governor of California, did nothing to improve his mood. Ambrose's first volume sets the stage for a comeback; the second should tell it as it happened, with a vengeance.