Nixon Still Has Enemies

8 Responses to “Nixon Still Has Enemies”

1. David Emig on December 4th, 2008 11:56 am

   As serious historians, our goal shouldn’t be to rehabilate. Our goal must be the “true telling of history”. If the facts rehabilate or condemn; let it be so.

2. Jonathan C. Movroydis on December 4th, 2008 12:39 pm

   DE,

   One can have an opinion about history without the facts going anywhere. I’m skeptical of this wholly scientific view of history, one that is boring, absent of human personality, and one which hinders our ability to draw moral conclusions. Beyond the vast data that comes from the National Archives, remember, Nixon was a flesh and blood human being.

   –JM

3. David R. Stokes on December 4th, 2008 1:33 pm

   Good writing on history (and I speak here as a student, not a scholar – as an amateur, not a “professional”) should be faithful to the facts, but not limited to mere recitation of names, dates, and places. There is a place for color and interpretation – but, again with great pains being made to remain loyal to the facts, etc.

   I enjoy reading Manchester on Churchill more than Martin Gilbert’s stuff. The latter seems to flow like a research paper. The late William Manchester had a flare for language and color.

   I like narrative history. I don’t mind filling in the gaps with reasonable color, as long as nothing is made up out of whole cloth.

   But when flawed people write about flawed people (as we all are – and do) there are bound to be inaccuracies. And that is why the writing of history is never really fully done. — DRS

4. Maarja Krusten on December 4th, 2008 7:24 pm

   Of the people posting here, as an historian I tend to agree with David Emig that the writing of history is not about rehabilitating (or trying to ferret out the believed abuses of) a President. The goal should be the “true telling of history,” as DE says.

   I wonder why JM and DRS equate this type of writing with being boring or lacking in color. To me, color in a narrative comes from the writer’s ability to establish a time and place, to transport a reader back and give some sense of what the world was like during the time he is describing. Some authors do this better than others. We’ve all read history books that plod along and others which are true page-turners. But using color doesn’t depend on injecting the writer’s own biases into the narrative. It comes from descriptive ability, a certain sensibility about how what is described played out, and from the choice of what to describe.

   As to the personality of the biography’s subject, that can come through in the judicious selection of his or her writings, anecdotal evidence, and so forth. The writer has to pace the story right and balance the narrative, weaving in interesting data that brings the person to life along with the details of what he or she did, how it was done, and, if known, why. That’s what makes history a compelling read, not the interjection of the author’s views. But you have to be careful with the why. You can’t just make stuff up or veer too far into speculation.

   Good historians go where the research material takes them. Consider one of the scholars with whom I worked when I was employed at NARA–Steve Ambrose. He put his own opinions where they belonged: in the Acknowledgements of his last volume of the 3-volume Nixon biography. He wrote there that “Ever since the Hiss case, I had been a Nixon critic. . . . [but] in volume one I developed a grudging admiration for the man (he had been right on the Hiss case, while I had been wrong; he was outstanding in his support of the Marshall Plan and for civil rights; he served Ike well and faithfully as Vice President); in volume two I came to have a quite genuine and deep admiration for many of his policies (détente aned China most of all, but others as well), and in volume three I found, to my astonishment, that I had developed a liking for him.”

   Ambrose’s own views do not come through explicitly in the books, yet if someone reads them–someone who started out as a Nixon critic but had an open mind about him–he or she might come to similar conclusions due to the evidence Ambrose presents.

   Oddly enough, I’m not convinced everyone in the world of politics gets how this process of presenting an official as a human being really works, fundamentally. (To my eye and ear, a surprising amount of writing in the modern political world seems characterized by whining and victimology, the very stuff that *doesn’t* make people bond with their co-workers. I guess it works for some.) Some people in the political sphere fail to understand how it is that many voters actually form their views of people on the public scene. You can’t bludgeon some voters. You don’t make someone admirable by constantly having surrogates tell people he or she is admirable. Positive opinions are formed slowly through observation over a period of time. They derive from judgments about the principal’s actions, how he or she reacts when challenged, in the ethos and character that he or she displays in dealing with others, in the through-line of the many stories others tell about him or her–in countless subtle way. By the same token, you can’t demonize someone effectively if the individual keeps demonstrating traits in public (or through the reporting of credible behind the scenes reports) which undercut or disprove what opponents say about him or her. The same is true in writing about someone.

   Dallek wrote an op ed about George W. Bush (“Ouster by the People”) that was published in the Washington Post on August 5, 2007. (Google it and you should be able to bring it up.) Dallek wrote of GWB that “his presidency is a troubling lesson in the malaise that can settle over the country during the lame-duck period of a stubborn chief executive. The nation should be able to remove by an orderly constitutional process any president with an unyielding commitment to failed policies and an inability to renew the country’s hope.” Yet this is an historian who appeared as a witness in 2007 to testify about the Presidential Records Act and to explain why historians need access to records.

   Based on the juxtaposition of those two things, I don’t think Dallek looks at issues tactically or strategically. In his 2007 testimony, Dallek described the valuable insights he gained by being able to see John F. Kennedy’s medical records. Useful to him, yes. But that is just the sort of thing that would make most listeners gulp and say about their own records, no way, these historian-types just want to get their hands on *everything.*

   No wonder there are reporters out there who are reporting on President-elect Obama’s possible use of email (or not) with a breathless vibe of “OMG he’ll lose privacy if he uses email ’cause all his stuff must be made available for public inspection.” Of course, the Presidential Records Act only covers a President’s constitutional, ceremonial and executive activities. The application of records management principles takes care of segregating purely personal from governmental and protecting it from becoming part of a wholesale data dump. I know, that’s precisely the sort of painstaking segregation I did with the Nixon tapes and documents during 14 years of employment at NARA.

   Had I been a witness in 2007, instead of Dallek, I would have pointed to examples of released records that humanized Presidents as they handled their official duties. I would have pointed to LBJ’s agonized ruminations about the Vietnam War. Or illustrated why well-researched and written history shows that Presidents (Democratic and Republican alike) are neither cartoon-like heroes on white horses or skulking villains. I believe that in the hands of skillful and thoughtful writers, released Presidential records can be used to educate the public about the burdens of the Presidency.

   If you look at the files of people employed in the Nixon White House, and listen to the tapes, you can see that the White House fundamentally is a workplace. It has many of the dynamics ordinary people face in their own workplaces (to whom can you give bad news? whom must you handle with kid gloves? with whom can you form strategic alliances? when is it best to confront something head one? when must you zig zag around something?) but on a different scale. Unfortunately, not only did Dallek not do that in his testimony, he followed up with an op ed in which he ruminated about remove of Presidents from office. Sigh. Not all historians are like that.

5. Fred Laan on December 4th, 2008 11:30 pm

   The accusations against RN in the media and the internet are quite a nuisance and I understand that David Stokes tries to defend RN by
   comparing him with other presidents. But that is not necessary for RN did not make many mistakes. Long before Watergate became an issue Bebe Rebozo once told a reporter in an interview: “About RN a lot is told, but most of it is not true.”
   Journalists also distort the truth by omiiting essential facts. For instance they mention Nixon’s opinion about Jewish people while at the same time omitting the fact that after Israel and Egypt concluded peace in 1973 RN made Golda Meir a compliment about her statemenship. She replied: “Without you Mr. president, we would not have survived.”
   They also avoid to mention RN was a president during a war who had to defend the safety of American soldiers.
   They also avoid to mention that RN’s coverup of Watergate just lasted three weeks after which he ordered the FBI a full investigation.

   An plausible explanation that fits into the picture is that at first the burglary was suggested by some incapable aide of CREEP and then used by ulra right agents Hunt and McCoy to sabotage the re-election. Not everybody was enthousiastic about the recent detente
   with China and the USSR. After the election the Watergate issue was raked up again by the Post and then continued by partisan Democratic oliticians.
   So Watergate was a strange burglary, completely misunderstood by all investigators and even RN. He worried about the effect on the re-election and also about possible involvement of Mitchell.

6. Maarja Krusten on December 5th, 2008 7:58 am

   Question for Mr. Stokes:

   Your headline uses the term “enemies.” The obvious reference is to the so-called “enemies list” of the Nixon era. Do you think what you describe in the essay all involves enemies? Aren’t some of the people critics or opponents rather than enemies?

   The reason I ask you about your use of the term enemies is that you write that your goal is not to rehabilitate Nixon or to downplay what he did. It seems to me that the content of your essay does not actually match the title.

   People can clash and taking opposing positions as advocates, but not be enemies. John Taylor has a trail over the last decade or so of public statements regarding RN and his archival records. As a former Nixon tapes archivist, I have a trail of published letters to the editor in which I defend the work of my archival colleagues. John and I even exchanged contending letters in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 1996. I never regarded him as an enemy. If I had, I wouldn’t have shown up here. My instincts told me that he might make me welcome here on TNN. I was right.

   Ten years ago John Taylor and I were advocates for very differing viewpoints, people who sometimes clashed as we defended different viewpoints. That didn’t make us enemies, then or now. It is the fact that I never viewed him as an enemy which has enabled me to gain greater insights into what he and RN’s other advocates were and are all about. People who dismiss others as enemies sometimes close the door to insight.

   The casting of too many people as enemies also can lead to dismissal of the weaknesses of the person being described. What went wrong is ascribed not to character flaws or poor decision making, but instead to actions by external forces (the media, political opponents). A lot of that comes across as blame shifting. It’s a little like the overly indulgent parent who describes *everything* bad that happens to a child as being the fault of teachers, “society,” bad friends, whatever.

   Such framing is over-used in the political world, where fundamental values often differ from those in the home or workplace. (We don’t go in to our annual performance reviews with our bosses and deflect anything negative said about our performance by pointing to our enemies in the office. We man up and consider how our work performance appears to others and how we might improve to better serve our employing organization.) Politicians talk about personal responsibility and accountability but do not always model it. Referring to critics or opponents as enemies seems to be a way of deflecting criticism and making what is described the “fault” of some “other.”

   Curiously, political bloggers (this is not a political website but I suspect most of you read some so you’ll see what I mean) can add to these perceptions. Rarely do they push those on their side. For them, as for political operatives, it often seems more fun to fume about enemies. I would have been very surprised this summer to see a left-wing blogger asking why no Stanley Kutler-type professors spoke up to ask that the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge be handled according to archival principles. (It seems from the reports I’ve heard from archivists that they actually were handled that way, although the University of Illinois did poorly in communicating with outsiders.) Or a right-wing blogger asking why a Stanley Kurtz-type professor – someone who has written on NRO’s Corner about libraries serving to open records — never opined in a blog essay about the difficult challenges of opening Nixon’s records. It just doesn’t work that way in the political blogosphere. Too often, political bloggers rely on cherry picking and situational ethics. But the most effective bloggers and pundits are the ones who at least try to understand the other side.

   Of course, some people – including people in the political world — do have some real enemies, in the sense that there are people who are committed to bringing them down or ousting them from their positions, usually by ensuring that they lose election. And some ideologies and forms of governing actually depend on casting others as enemies. In totalitarian countries, you often see the “othering” of people who do not march in lockstep with the authorities. There’s frequent use of the term “enemies.” This approach would be jarring in a democracy such as ours, where acceptance of political dissent and free speech are part of what makes us strong.

   Moreover, once in power, the people who draw the lines too broadly, and come to see too many people as enemies, often end up hurting themselves. They lose perspective and weaken themselves more than the perceived enemies. The recently released Nixon-era note from June 23, 1971, with its musings on how to use the IRS to audit Clark Clifford’s taxes, is a good example. Had I been Nixon, I would have considered Clifford an opponent but not an enemy.

   Bottom line: Presidents do best when they understand how to be good stewards of the government and of the political parties they represent. That requires proper balancing of sometimes competing objectives. Casting too many others as enemies can get in the way.

7. Gerald W. Stokes on December 9th, 2008 6:09 pm

   Some interesting comments to your fine article David. It seems there are a lot of Historians who read your writings, this is a compliment. However, their comments reveal their approach to the writing of history. Their Histoiography appears basic; that history is whatever the Historian says it is!

   For Mr Dallek and others to pursue historical evidence to support their already biased conclusions not only defies legitimate historical inquiry but also borders on the ludicrous. It results in a form of Eisegetical existentialism. Something repugnant to real truth seekers.

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