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Bush has signed an executive order which assigns to sitting presidents
the authority to hold back the publication of papers belonging to
antecedent presidents — even those papers that past presidents
would like to release. In matter-of-fact terms, this means, e.g.,
that if Bill Clinton wanted some of his papers published on his
Mideast diplomacy and George W. wanted them kept quiet, George W.
would prevail — all of this in the interest of "orderly
process." There are hoots and hollers from academic lobbyists,
while the laity mostly just look on; we are happy to get whatever
we can get, because curiosity about presidential goings and comings
is persistent, if voyeuristic. And that brings up the remarkable
new book by Richard Reeves, President
Nixon: Alone in the White House.
The book attracts curiosity, even if it doesn't satisfy it —
can't satisfy it, inasmuch as Mr. Nixon becomes progressively inscrutable.
But Mr. Reeves, with his gift for candor and piquancy, takes advantage
of the huge repository of material pertaining to Richard Nixon's
presidency. For someone who yearned for privacy and spent untold
hours communing with himself in a room in the Executive Office Building,
there is no precedent for the comprehensiveness of Richard Nixon's
self-ambush. 1) Nixon kept a journal, which survives. 2) The journal
of his principal aide, H. R. Haldeman, is there, with day-by-day
luridities. And 3), of course there are the legendary tapes, which
on August 9, 1974, escorted him out of office with everything but
an armed guard.
Dwell, for a moment, on Mr. Nixon the war leader, caught up in the
dilemma of late April 1970. If he didn't do something to try to
check the North Vietnamese coming into Cambodia, he foresaw a successful
drive by the enemy overwhelming Cambodia and Laos: How would he
answer his critics if that were to happen? On the other hand, American
intervention in the burgeoning North Vietnamese operation meant
triggering coast-to-coast caterwauling by the resistance class,
from students on up through and including the retired establishment
of the Johnson set who had got the U.S. ambivalently embarked in
Vietnam in the first place.
Here is the kind of thing intimate access to presidential papers
can do for a biographer:
We have the volatile Nixon. "The President was not smiling
after the meeting. He called Kissinger into the Oval Office and
shouted at him in almost uncontrolled rage."
Nixon the brooding general. "Nixon was spending a good deal
of time alone or talking with members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
He was playing [the role of General George] Patton, or so it occasionally
seemed to the few White House staffers who knew he [had been] watching
the movie again. 'Americans have never lost a war and will never
lose a war because the very thought of losing is hateful to Americans'
was a favorite Patton line. Now the president was pacing
back and forth in the office and outside in the Rose Garden with
his hands locked behind him, the same way actor George C. Scott
did playing the general."
Nixon off duty, exercising grandiosity fueled by booze. "The
President called again after watching Patton once more. His
words slurred together as he gave Kissinger orders — with [Kissinger
aide] Watts listening in on an extension. Finally Nixon said, 'Wait
a minute. [Nixon intimate Bebe Rebozo] Bebe has something to say
to you.'"
Bebe comes on the line. "'The President wants you to know if
this [Cambodian maneuver] doesn't work, Henry — it's your ass.'"
Nixon of grand manners. "Then [he] flew back to Washington
on Marine One for an evening cruise on the presidential yacht, the
Sequoia. Back at the White House by 8:30 that night, the
President watched Patton again."
Nixon the decision-maker. He is addressing the nation giving his
decision on Cambodia. "In this room, Woodrow Wilson made the
great decisions which led to victory. Franklin Roosevelt made the
decisions that led to our victory. Dwight D. Eisenhower made decisions
that could end the war. John F. Kennedy, in his finest hour, made
the great decision. It is customary to end a speech from the White
House by asking support for the President. What I ask is far more
important. I ask for your support for our brave men fighting tonight
halfway around the world."
Nixon drawing exhilarated breath. "[Rose Mary] Woods, who had
known Nixon for twenty years, thought she had never seen him so
exhausted — or so exuberant. After a couple of drinks, the
president said to [Marine aide John Brennan] in a deliberately gruff
voice; 'Do you approve of what I said last night?'
"'It was one of the proudest moments of my life,' he answered."
Nixon, acting out history: "When his yacht approached Mount
Vernon, where naval vessels [passing by] always salute George Washington's
tomb by playing the national anthem, the President ordered the captain:
'Really blast it out!' He stood at rigid attention there in the
bow of the yacht, then he turned to the crew with a wide smile and
shot his right thumb into the air.
"At five o'clock he helicoptered to Camp David and sat down
to watch Patton again."
Presidential portraits, warts and all.
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