Another Nixon

So many books have been written about Richard Nixon that they tend to duplicate each other’s internal chronologies: first the authors relate their long-running, often intense hatred for Nixon; then they delve into a bit of psychobabble intertwined with an analysis of Nixon’s physique—his nose being the favorite set-piece—and then they announce that their research has led them to a startling reappraisal that will compel us, the reader, to ponder once again this new Nixon. ¹ Joan Hoff’s Nixon Reconsidered follows this trajectory with her “startling” discovery being that Nixon was a secret liberal and that we need to look beyond the miasma of Watergate to truly understand Nixon’s place in history. She details in 475 pages how rational, even pathbreaking, Richard Nixon was in initiating a series of policies. Thus his domestic policies “exceed[ed] the accomplishments of the New Deal and the Great Society . . .” and his bombing campaign of Vietnam was “carefully designed to impress China and the USSR with America’s resolve . . .” (49, 180).

There are problems with this form of analysis, not the least being its claim of originality: many conservatives have always thought of Nixon as Hoff portrays him. Unlike Barry Goldwater or Ronald Reagan, whom conservatives always considered the “real thing,” Nixon struck those just a bit left of the John Birchers as hopelessly internationalist, always willing to compromise with the communists—his bark was considered far worse than his bite—and never quick enough to use real force against “the others,” be they hippies, feminists, Black Panthers, or any other enemies of Americanism. One thinks here of William Buckley Jr. and other prominent conservatives ushering “A DECLARATION” on this issue where it was “resolved to suspend our support of the Administration” because of Nixon’s latest outrage to their cause—his announcement that he was going to Communist China in 1972. ² And during the opening ceremonies in the Great Hall of the People, when Nixon toasted Chou en Lai, Buckley lamented that Nixon “would toast Alger Hiss tonight, if he could find him.” ³ Then there is the problem of Nixon taking the United States off the gold standard in 1971 and imposing wage and price controls on Americans. Together, these “radical” policies subverted the market, a heresy to the legion of right-wing faithful.

The other problem with constructing Nixon as this enlightened, if secret, liberal is that it simply slights a great deal of human tragedy. Liberalism surely has its problems, but adding Nixon to them seems just a bit unfair. Regarding foreign policy, Hoff often and effectively dismantles the pretensions of Henry Kissinger and, in places, is withering on Nixon’s Vietnam policy. Yet the overall tone of this section is muted: the secret bombing of Cambodia, helping to topple Allende in Chile, and cozying up to Ceausescu in Romania become secondary concerns to Hoff. The question of Vietnam though remains appalling: U.S. forces dropped one ton of bombs on Vietnam every single minute during Nixon’s first presidential term (1969–1973). ⁴ Perhaps if one views the entire cold war structure and its rationales as having a decidedly liberal quality, Hoff’s argument works. Yet to argue from this perspective is to discount the importance that politicians like Eugene McCarthy and Robert Kennedy had on American politics; their calls for immediate American withdrawal from Vietnam were either denounced or feared by conservatives. ⁵

Domestically, this construction of Nixon as a liberal requires one to contend with the whole oeuvre of Nixon’s continual scheming against his real and perceived enemies. Thus there was the Huston Plan, which even J. Edgar Hoover refused to carry through, and the Plumbers unit, which rifled through Daniel Ellsberg’s file in his psychiatrist’s office even before they broke into the Watergate complex. Hoff discusses these and other crimes with conviction. The efforts to neutralize George Wallace’s 1972 Presidential campaign become an important way to understand this component of the Nixon White House—and here Hoff is surprisingly mild [End...