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A vivid look back,
marred by contempt
Nixonland
The Rise of a President
and the Fracturing of America By Rick Perlstein Scribner. 881 pp. $37.50
Reviewed by Al Weisel
Richard Nixon is arguably the most fascinating politician of the late 20th century. He was a man who lived out the American dream, rising from humble origins to the heights of political power. Then when his career seemed over, he tenaciously clawed his way back to power - until he destroyed himself and came crashing back to Earth, plunging faster and farther than any politician in American history. To some he was a tragic hero, undone by the very flaws that made him successful; to others, a twisted villain who embodied all the dark recesses of the American soul. Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America takes up where his 2001 book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, left off. In that book, Perlstein demonstrated how Goldwater's failed 1964 campaign for president was the genesis of a conservative revolution that has defined this country's politics for the last 40 years. Critics were impressed that a liberal historian born in 1969 could examine the conservative movement with such insight, empathy and evenhandedness. Who better than Perlstein to unravel the enigma of Nixon? But while Perlstein seemed to have grudging admiration for Goldwater, the author has nothing but contempt for his subject here. The book's title comes from a dark warning sounded by Adlai Stevenson in a speech written by John Kenneth Galbraith: "Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies the land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. America is something different." According to Perlstein we have been living in Nixonland ever since. Perlstein is an exuberant guide on this journey into the heart of American darkness, exploring Nixonland with the excitement and stamina of a 19th-century explorer hacking through the jungle. The book unfolds like a Russian novel, with a cast of thousands and one epic set piece after another - inner-city riots and raucous political conventions alternating with farcical romps like the Chicago 8 trial and bumbling break-ins by Nixon's Plumbers. Perlstein is at his best in conveying the feeling, shared by those on the right and left, that America was hurtling into the abyss and only one side (your own) could stop it. The fact that Perlstein is able to so vividly reconstruct the era, however, makes his portrayal of the man at the center of his narrative all the more disappointing. Perlstein's Nixon often seems more like someone wearing a Halloween Nixon mask than a real person. Everything Nixon says and does is reflected in the poorest possible light. There is no accomplishment that isn't the result of cold political calculation, no action that doesn't spring from the swamp of Nixon's resentments. Nixon was undoubtedly a ruthless and opportunistic - not to mention brilliant - politician, and he harbored plenty of resentments. He certainly deserves contempt for the way he shredded the Constitution in going after political enemies, for prolonging a war in Vietnam he knew was unwinnable and for exploiting racial resentments through his campaign's so-called Southern Strategy. But Perlstein cannot bring himself to offer Nixon even a modicum of credit for his greatest policy achievements, such as the opening to China, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties with the Soviet Union or the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, all depicted as cynical gambits to keep his political opponents off-balance. Perlstein tries to make the case that we are still living in Nixonland, which he sees as a stark political divide between liberals and conservatives. But the Stevenson quote that gives this book its title reveals not so much a distaste for Nixon's ideology as for his tactics. It betrays a disdain for realpolitik that is shared by many liberals - which accounts for their propensity to nominate losing candidates and their scorn for politicians, like LBJ or Bill Clinton, not above arm-twisting, triangulating, spinning and compromising. In the course of blaming gays and women for floor fights at the 1972 Democratic convention that helped seal George McGovern's unelectability, Perlstein edges closer to the truth. "The New Politics reformers had fantasized a pure politics, a politics of unyielding principle - an antipolitics," Perlstein writes. "But in the real world politics without equivocation or compromise is impossible." Despite this epiphany, Perlstein, like many liberal pundits, still harbors the dream that someday Americans will come around to accepting this notion of "pure politics." It is a dream he shares with the conservative idealists he came to admire while researching his book on Goldwater. In the wake of a president more unpopular even than Nixon, both Barack Obama and John McCain are depicted by media as the embodiments of this dream, politicians who may just deliver us from Nixonland, though some of their most strident supporters appear not to have gotten the message yet. It remains to be seen if they will live up to the hopes invested in them.
A version of this review appeared in Newsday.
The Rise of a President
and the Fracturing of America By Rick Perlstein Scribner. 881 pp. $37.50
Reviewed by Al Weisel
Richard Nixon is arguably the most fascinating politician of the late 20th century. He was a man who lived out the American dream, rising from humble origins to the heights of political power. Then when his career seemed over, he tenaciously clawed his way back to power - until he destroyed himself and came crashing back to Earth, plunging faster and farther than any politician in American history. To some he was a tragic hero, undone by the very flaws that made him successful; to others, a twisted villain who embodied all the dark recesses of the American soul. Rick Perlstein's Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America takes up where his 2001 book, Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, left off. In that book, Perlstein demonstrated how Goldwater's failed 1964 campaign for president was the genesis of a conservative revolution that has defined this country's politics for the last 40 years. Critics were impressed that a liberal historian born in 1969 could examine the conservative movement with such insight, empathy and evenhandedness. Who better than Perlstein to unravel the enigma of Nixon? But while Perlstein seemed to have grudging admiration for Goldwater, the author has nothing but contempt for his subject here. The book's title comes from a dark warning sounded by Adlai Stevenson in a speech written by John Kenneth Galbraith: "Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies the land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. America is something different." According to Perlstein we have been living in Nixonland ever since. Perlstein is an exuberant guide on this journey into the heart of American darkness, exploring Nixonland with the excitement and stamina of a 19th-century explorer hacking through the jungle. The book unfolds like a Russian novel, with a cast of thousands and one epic set piece after another - inner-city riots and raucous political conventions alternating with farcical romps like the Chicago 8 trial and bumbling break-ins by Nixon's Plumbers. Perlstein is at his best in conveying the feeling, shared by those on the right and left, that America was hurtling into the abyss and only one side (your own) could stop it. The fact that Perlstein is able to so vividly reconstruct the era, however, makes his portrayal of the man at the center of his narrative all the more disappointing. Perlstein's Nixon often seems more like someone wearing a Halloween Nixon mask than a real person. Everything Nixon says and does is reflected in the poorest possible light. There is no accomplishment that isn't the result of cold political calculation, no action that doesn't spring from the swamp of Nixon's resentments. Nixon was undoubtedly a ruthless and opportunistic - not to mention brilliant - politician, and he harbored plenty of resentments. He certainly deserves contempt for the way he shredded the Constitution in going after political enemies, for prolonging a war in Vietnam he knew was unwinnable and for exploiting racial resentments through his campaign's so-called Southern Strategy. But Perlstein cannot bring himself to offer Nixon even a modicum of credit for his greatest policy achievements, such as the opening to China, the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaties with the Soviet Union or the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, all depicted as cynical gambits to keep his political opponents off-balance. Perlstein tries to make the case that we are still living in Nixonland, which he sees as a stark political divide between liberals and conservatives. But the Stevenson quote that gives this book its title reveals not so much a distaste for Nixon's ideology as for his tactics. It betrays a disdain for realpolitik that is shared by many liberals - which accounts for their propensity to nominate losing candidates and their scorn for politicians, like LBJ or Bill Clinton, not above arm-twisting, triangulating, spinning and compromising. In the course of blaming gays and women for floor fights at the 1972 Democratic convention that helped seal George McGovern's unelectability, Perlstein edges closer to the truth. "The New Politics reformers had fantasized a pure politics, a politics of unyielding principle - an antipolitics," Perlstein writes. "But in the real world politics without equivocation or compromise is impossible." Despite this epiphany, Perlstein, like many liberal pundits, still harbors the dream that someday Americans will come around to accepting this notion of "pure politics." It is a dream he shares with the conservative idealists he came to admire while researching his book on Goldwater. In the wake of a president more unpopular even than Nixon, both Barack Obama and John McCain are depicted by media as the embodiments of this dream, politicians who may just deliver us from Nixonland, though some of their most strident supporters appear not to have gotten the message yet. It remains to be seen if they will live up to the hopes invested in them.
A version of this review appeared in Newsday.
