The Lives of Others

The most moving and beautifully written passages in the book describe the expresident’s departure from Washington, and his illness, isolation, and near-death in the fall of 1974 and spring of 1975. It should have been the end; it proved instead only the latest of Nixon’s new beginnings—one of those new beginnings being a new friendship with Black. Nixon wrote books and gave speeches (never accepting a fee, as Black emphasizes). He published articles, advised world leaders, gave interviews. Nixon’s opinions, Black wryly observes, were often wrong: Nixon insisted to the end of the Cold War that the Soviet system would endure. But they consistently hit the perfect sweet spot for bigfoot international commentary, just slightly askew from perfect conventionality, and delighted the media by striking an unmistakable note of criticism of the Reagan administration. For, yes, by the end Nixon had even reached a new entente with the press. Black quotes a bitter private remark by Kissinger: “He is like a prisoner who has fallen in love with his guard.”

Has Black sketched a road map to his own future? Many readers will be tempted to think so. Not me. Nixon was a dark, cynical, and in many ways sinister man. “You’ve got to be a little evil to understand those people out there.” He was talking about foreign leaders, but it’s hard not to hear the philosophy of a lifetime. The overwhelming impression one takes away of the narrator, by contrast, is that of a man without guile. Black’s two favorite adjectives are “distinguished” and “considerable.” He is a straightforward admirer of the institutions of American government and the great men of his youth: not only Roosevelt and Nixon, but also Eisenhower and, preeminently, de Gaulle. In all the mass of this book, you will find not a whiff of that touch of evil on which Nixon prided himself.

About the Author

Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

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Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Cold War

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The most moving and beautifully written passages in the book describe the expresident’s departure from Washington, and his illness, isolation, and near-death in the fall of 1974 and spring of 1975. It should have been the end; it proved instead only the latest of Nixon’s new beginnings—one of those new beginnings being a new friendship with Black. Nixon wrote books and gave speeches (never accepting a fee, as Black emphasizes). He published articles, advised world leaders, gave interviews. Nixon’s opinions, Black wryly observes, were often wrong: Nixon insisted to the end of the Cold War that the Soviet system would endure. But they consistently hit the perfect sweet spot for bigfoot international commentary, just slightly askew from perfect conventionality, and delighted the media by striking an unmistakable note of criticism of the Reagan administration. For, yes, by the end Nixon had even reached a new entente with the press. Black quotes a bitter private remark by Kissinger: “He is like a prisoner who has fallen in love with his guard.”

Has Black sketched a road map to his own future? Many readers will be tempted to think so. Not me. Nixon was a dark, cynical, and in many ways sinister man. “You’ve got to be a little evil to understand those people out there.” He was talking about foreign leaders, but it’s hard not to hear the philosophy of a lifetime. The overwhelming impression one takes away of the narrator, by contrast, is that of a man without guile. Black’s two favorite adjectives are “distinguished” and “considerable.” He is a straightforward admirer of the institutions of American government and the great men of his youth: not only Roosevelt and Nixon, but also Eisenhower and, preeminently, de Gaulle. In all the mass of this book, you will find not a whiff of that touch of evil on which Nixon prided himself.