Book Review - Nixon by Lord Longford

 Nixon: a Study in Extremes of Political Fortune by Lord Longford

London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1980                ISBN 0297777084

I picked this book up for nothing on a throw-out pile, and on balance it was worth the time it took to read. Of course much has been written and said about Nixon since this was published, not least from the man himself. The book under review is a short political life of Nixon, focusing mainly on his achievements in foreign affairs, and on the Watergate scandal that in the end finished his presidency.

Overall Longford sees Nixon's legacy much as we see it now - while his personal flaws brought him undone, his decisions and achievements in foreign affairs were for the most part prescient and correct. His incredibly unpopular decisions to do with the Vietnam War did bring the North Vietnamese to the table, and did allow Nixon to "end" the US war with some honour intact. As Longford points out, the eventual collapse of South Vietnam can be sheeted home to the failure of Congress to support that country when the North finally invaded, from the American point of view.

Likewise his arms talks with the USSR, and his renewing contact with China were both harbingers of a time of peace and prosperity for much of the world. At the time this book was written, Nixon was Watergate, and Watergate was Nixon. Like Longford, we now have a more nuanced view of the man and his time.

And what of Watergate? I think it's fair to state that Longford has much sympathy for Nixon throughout this book, and perhaps is a little too kind to him in this respect throughout these pages. Longford points out that Nixon didn't authorize the break-in, and indeed only found out about it well after the event. Where I think Longford lets Nixon off the hook a bit is in soft-pedaling on the notion that Nixon was responsible for an atmosphere of "whatever it takes" that pervaded the White House at that time. In fact in my opinion that is one of the sadder legacies of Nixon - of creating a feeling is now not only reflected in the White House, but within society more generally - the idea of doing what you need to, and justifying/explaining it away after the event. While Nixon's guilt in the Watergate saga was his complicity in the cover-up, the whole saga was a step toward increasing the dysfunction of US federal politics. Once the office of the President sullied itself in this way, life could never be the same. Nixon, although a great political operator, and at base not an evil or even amoral man, really dropped the ball on this one - he should have shut down the conspiracy the moment he first heard of it. Easier for me to say now that for him to do then, of course.

This book would I am thinking be hard to source now, but is still a worthwhile read, not least for the fact that it is written by an Englishman, who comes to Nixon's achievements and failures with a different worldview than most of the American authors or commentators. If you really want to go down the Nixon gopher-hole, there are probably better places to begin.

Cheers for now, from

A View Over the Bell