Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image

Greenberg's book on Nixon and the media has the appearance of a thoughtful investigation of both phenomena, Nixon and the media. However, as one gets into it, this appearance is, like Nixon, more image than reality. For example, Greenberg pretty much takes for granted that Nixon was in some way(s) unique, just as do those who disliked Nixon and those who liked him or thought him to be a "statesman." But he was far from unique and the way he and the media interacted was from unique. Like almost all our politicians, Nixon said what he needed to say to get elected and the media pretty much accepted it, while often writing glowing reports of Nixon's virtues, especially early in his career. [This phenomenon reoccurred at the end of Nixon's career as well, when he was dubbed to have "redeemed" himself and proven himself a "statesman," an image that was ratified by his funeral in the presence of every living ex-president.] Hence, when Nixon campaigned in 1968 saying that he had a "secret plan" to end the Vietnam War with "honor," the media accepted this assertion without challenging Nixon, something Greenberg and the media find hard to explain.And this points to another shortcoming of Greenberg's book: His failure to take into account that both Nixon and the media are or were embedded in a "system" and that those who control it seek to perpetuate it. In politics, this means maintaining the status quo, which both Nixon and the media, as sharing control of this "system," wanted to maintain. Hence. as the prevailing political class was under severe pressure in 1967 and 1968, was threatened with being "overthrown," it was incumbent on them to look to someone who would be able to maintain the status quo, someone able to protect the prevailing political order. LBJ was no longer able to do that, so he declined to seek re-election, hoping that Nixon would be elected insofar as he, Nixon, was not the "wimp" LBJ deemed Humphrey to be. Further, Nixon ran as "the peace candidate" even though he had no plan, secret or otherwise, to get peace. But by running as "the peace candidate," Nixon, following Johnson's example, co-opted "the peace movement" which embraced a kind of politics both Nixon and LBJ thought inane and dangerous, both to the nation and to them and their political class. The media went along with talk about "the new Nixon" and his "secret plan" to end the war because it served the interests of the prevailing political order, in which they were invested along with the prevailing political class.Like another, more recent book,, "Nixonland," Greenberg's book is based on and helps to fortify the view that Richard Nixon possessed some special qualities, that is, qualities not possessed by other, more ordinary politicians. This makes for drama, even for what might be called "tragedy," as in "the tragedy of Richard Nixon, a great man with a tragic flaw." But, in fact, Richard Nixon was little more than an ambitious, manipulating human being whose viciousness and vacuousness was hidden with the help of the media and others. There is no tragedy here, just another illustration of how our politics is, for the most part, smoke and mirrors.

This is a insightful, fascinating book about the many ways that Nixon can be understood and analyzed, compelling told. He was indeed tricky to encompass.

Intriguing premise, particularly suited for 2016.

I read this as one of my books for the Fall 2014 US Presidents course at UC Irvine and even though Nixon has become synonymous with Watergate but also the opening to China, the book as a whole provides extensive details about how liberals criticized Nixon as "Tricky Dick" for his dirty political tricks, and how Nixon came to view himself and his supporters as victims of a plot by Democrats in the midst of Watergate, although the Democrats blamed Nixon for Watergate. By detailing Nixon's political maneuvers and his self-perpetuated image as a Democratic victim during Watergate, the book introduced me to the complexities of Nixon's evolving image throughout his entire political career, and allowed me to treat the lessons from dirty political tricks by Nixon as relevant to the 2016 presidential election.

Did you know that Richard Nixon was a controversial figure? And that there are a large range of opinions about them? And that these views often reflect the biases of the people who hold them? You didn't? Well then "Nixon's Shadow," is just the book for you. Historian David Greenberg, writer for such journals as Slate and The Washington Monthly looks at Nixon's image starting with his own conservative populist image. Then he looks at the images presented by his liberal critics, New Left Radicals, Washington journalists, his supporters, psychoanalysts, the foreign policy establishment and those historians who present him as the last liberal president. The result is somewhat repetitive: each of the images has something useful to say but it also has its flaws and doesn't show the whole picture. The New Left Radicals and the Nixon loyalists probably come off the least well, while Greenberg is, somewhat surprisingly, unconvinced about the glories of Nixon's foreign policy. On the whole Greenberg's work shows the qualities that make neo-liberal journals the success they are today. There are interesting anecdotes and the occasional intelligent point, but there is also a willingness to agree with a conservative consensus and a refusal to show too much enthusiasm or indignation about anything.So it is interesting to read that yes, most liberals supported Nixon on the Alger Hiss case and no, journalists were not out to get Nixon, (they even covered his mawkish, self-pitying resignation speech with undeserved respect). It is amusing to find that Karl Rove started his career as a college student opposing impeachment, or to have Theodore White's relationship with Nixon compared to the Taylor-Burton marriage or to hear the Nixon Presidential Library falsely claim that Woodward and Bernstein bribed sources. But considering how strange, not to mention bizarre, Nixon's life was this is a surprisingly bland book. Consider Nixon and the psychiatrists. On the one hand Greenberg is, reasonably enough, sceptical about psychoanalysts who tried to explicate his personality without actually having met him. On the other hand there is the clear evidence, as expressed by Nixon's lawyer, his son-in-law and his Secretary of State, that Nixon was unstable in the last days of his presidency. But on the other other hand isn't much of this discussion irresponsible speculation? And so Greenberg runs all this together without making it clear what the state of Nixon's mental health actually was. And this inconclusiveness runs through the book.Then there are Greenberg's own neo-liberal prejudices. He criticizes both New Leftists and Nixon Loyalists for "conspiracy theories." But Watergate was a criminal conspiracy, so criticizing other versions of it as conspiracy mongering rather dramatically misses the point. Moreover Greenberg's own labelling serves as a substitute for definitive refutation. At one point Greenberg criticizes a psychiatrist who criticized Nixon's commutation of William Calley, the lieutenant responsible for the My Lai massacre. Rather blandly Greenberg comments that it was not unreasonable for Nixon to see Calley as a scapegoat, since Calley's superiors evaded judgement. But if Nixon was interested in seeing justice done he could very easily, as Commander in Chief of the army, make sure that the responsible parties were punished. But of course he had no such interest and indeed showed more outrage at the journalists who discovered the truth. Greenberg also gives some credit to the idea of Nixon as liberal. Yet he does not point out that after his presidency Nixon did nothing to support his "liberal legacy" on healthcare, race, the arts and the environment. Naturally, as a neo-liberal, Greenberg must criticize his liberal predecessors. He criticizes them for elitism, as if their distaste for Nixon was just concealed snobbery. To do this he must conflate the Democratic Party, the minority of liberal journalists and the many ex-Marxist intellectuals. Only the last group could be described, not entirely fairly, as elitist. A more perceptive author would point out that one reason why "populism" seemed to migrate to the right after the Second World War was because anti-communist liberal intellectuals so despised the Popular Front they reacted against any populist tone. A more perceptive author would point out that anti-communist demagoguery sought to discredit any populism except its own, and a more perceptive author would note that William Buckley, Russell Kirk and Leo Strauss had more than their share of elitism as well.Much of the book is dominated by received opinion. It is striking that Greenberg dismisses Seymour Hersh as a journalist, doesn't even mention William Shawcross, but is most convinced that Nixon's foreign policy was flawed because in 1998 foreign policy mandarin William Bundy wrote a book saying so. It is striking he includes only one cartoon each from Feiffer, Herblock and Conrad (and no Oliphant). On the one hand the book is muted, with details about Nixon's bigotry, his sophomoric understand of culture, his drunkenness and his vanity generally played down. On the other hand the variety of images encourages a false complexity around him. So it is important to remember the vital truth. Nixon was a crook. He did not have friends, only cronies and sycophants. He confused nobility with pomposity and courage with bullying. He was a vain, envious, self-pitying, intellectually lazy man who lusted for power without any pressing desire to do anything with it. What he did in and about Vietnam, Cambodia, Bangladesh, Greece, Chile and much of the rest of the world was not only cruel, not only contemptible, but actually evil. Greenberg's book is an interesting tour of a house of mirrors, but there is no reason why we should let ourselves get lost in it because Greenberg has confused that with intellectual nuance.