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On Documents & Reassessment

July 7, 2009 by David Emig | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library, Nixon in the News, Presidential libraries, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam 

Whenever new documents (or in the case of RN – tapes and documents are released), it is an opportunity to reassess a subject.  Or at the very least, provide some nuance into the subject.  Probably the best opportunity we have for this continuing process of discovering something new is in the area of presidential history – as these new documents are released on specific timetables.  For many Nixon historians like myself, the release of these documents is much like Christmas morning.

When reading the sample documents, one cannot help to be struck by the conflict mentality of the Nixon White House.  It was leadership by political warfare; the art of beating the opposition party on the political battlefield of public opinion.  Many documents authored by Charles Colson, and especially a memorandum to the President by Daniel Patrick Moynihan (with RN marginalia) {See Memo from Moynihan to the President: November 13, 1971} ; suggest that the Nixon administration thought they weren’t only fighting a political war, but a cultural war against liberals.  This is several years before Bill O’Reilly made the ‘culture war’ into media rhetoric.

While RN was moderate politically, these documents underscore that perhaps that RN might have been more conservative privately.  RN might have been less of a ‘fellow traveler’ of the right, as Pat Buchanan has accused RN of being; and more of a ‘fellow traveler’ of the center.

More of the re-assessment of history might come in the area of RNs role in the Vietnam War.  It seems that RNs public rhetoric of confidence, didn’t match what was said in the private halls of the White House.  Like Lyndon Johnson; RN understood the war was a no-win situation.  RNs main objective was to preserve American prestige and respect around the world intact, while withdrawing from Vietnam.  This would be achieved by using different tactics; by bombing the enemy to the peace tables.

Much of this we already know.  But what the latest release of the tapes show, is the length in which RN and Kissinger would go to achieve their main objective.  Protecting American prestige, and getting out of the conflict.  More and more, it is coming out – that the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973 benefited the North Vietnamese most of all.  This is proven by the clear fact that North Vietnamese troops were still allowed in South Vietnam (as both forces froze where they were), after the ceasefire.  Prime Minister Thieu understood it – and became the main obstacle in signing the agreement in Paris.  This became the main subject of RN and Kissinger’s frustration.  It seems that all of this places “peace with honor” into question.

As more and more documents are released, the historical balance will produce a Richard Nixon who was – not the one who the critics or his fanatics want him to be.



Comments

2 Responses to “On Documents & Reassessment”

  1. MK on July 8th, 2009 6:24 am

    It’s always interesting for me to observe these Nixon tapes releases, as information that I have known for 20-30 years is revealed to the public in dribs and drabs. (At the National Archives, I first started listening to the tapes around 1978 or 1979 and continued to do so until 1987.)

    If you study tapes and documents released about RN’s predecessor, LBJ, you know that while his public statements reflected confidence and a sense of purpose, in private he agonized over the war. And what losing might do to U.S. prestige and standing in the world. Politically, from the time he took office, Nixon knew he had to end the war. His public statements have been available for study since the time he made them. The archival materials for his time in office show how he and his advisors reacted to that task in private. As you suggest, laying out the narrative, whether by historians or other observers, presents many challenges. One has to consider how the President handled his obligations as a leader and as a politician.

    I’m reading Nixonland right now so Agnew’s speeches, the range of rhetoric and thinking within the anti-war movement, Kent State, all are in the forefront of my mind at the moment. Now, as then, I shake my head over some of the more extreme rhetoric of the anti-war left but I certainly understand why the war convulsed campuses full of young people. (I myself was a member of the Silent Majority while I was an undergraduate between 1969 and 1973 but, of course, as a female, was not subject to the draft.)

    One of the most difficult issues for Nixon’s supporters to explain is why Agnew went ahead with his speech after Kent State, with what Perlstein calls “swipes at liberal elites.” What lay behind a political strategy that blamed the media and “elites” for unrest which primiarily was caused by a question which boiled down to, is Vietnam a cause for which members of the U.S. military, draftees and volunteers alike, should be asked to put themselves in harm’s way.

    Yes, it was a difficult situation but in my retrospective view, it was one which cried out for more grown-up voices. (Perhaps difficult and unfair to ask for from among the youth on campus but what about the adults on both sides of the debate?) But why is it that there were there so few, on either side of the debate? Including the side I then was on, which was with Nixon. Being President isn’t just about making decisions or reacting to events. You and your surrogates have to explain where you are taking the nation and why.

    I think one reason why some people are reacting to the tape revelations as they are — I’ve seen some glee although there is none in your thoughtful essay — goes back to Agnew’s blame-shifting rhetoric. If you cannot sell the product, if you cannot make a case for a war or for your efforts to end it on its merits, it only makes you appear weak if you blame it on the media or Harvard elites. Agnew’s speeches served a short term purpose in firing up the Silent Majority but may have done some long term harm, in many areas.

  2. David Frisk on July 12th, 2009 8:33 pm

    That Moynihan memo cited in your post — 1970, not 1971 — is a great analysis.

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