Report Card for Richard Nixon

Carlyle’s maxim offers the best point of beginning. “Biography,” he said, “is the only true history.” Any useful appraisal of Richard Nixon’s first few months in the White House has to rest primarily upon the nature of the man himself.

Plainly, he is unlike his immediate predecessors. The thought of Mr. Nixon’s lifting a beagle puppy by the ears is quite simply an unthinkable thought. The President is an in-dwelling man; we reporters shall see none of his operations, especially abdominal ones, at shirt-tail range. He lacks the tartness of Harry Truman. He has none of Jack Kennedy’s easy-going elegance. Dwight Eisenhower reflected a kind of lamp-in-the-window goodness. Nixon’s light is different.

JJ

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James Jackson Kilpatrick

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Carlyle’s maxim offers the best point of beginning. “Biography,” he said, “is the only true history.” Any useful appraisal of Richard Nixon’s first few months in the White House has to rest primarily upon the nature of the man himself.

Plainly, he is unlike his immediate predecessors. The thought of Mr. Nixon’s lifting a beagle puppy by the ears is quite simply an unthinkable thought. The President is an in-dwelling man; we reporters shall see none of his operations, especially abdominal ones, at shirt-tail range. He lacks the tartness of Harry Truman. He has none of Jack Kennedy’s easy-going elegance. Dwight Eisenhower reflected a kind of lamp-in-the-window goodness. Nixon’s light is different.