FROM LOATHED LIAR TO REVERED ELDER STATESMAN

A review of Kasey S. Pipes’s After the Fall: The Remarkable Comeback of Richard Nixon (2019)

(Rating 4 of 5)

                  In addition to writing my book reviews on this blog, I will afterwards publish copies on Amazon.com and Goodreads.com.  The difference of course is those copies of my reviews don’t come with pictures and video links.  This July I was contacted by Jennifer Duplessie of Regnery Publishing. She had seen my review of Conrad Black's A Life in Full: Richard M. Nixon and wanted to know if I would like to have a new book to review and offered this one to me for free on the condition that I review it.  I then googled Regnery Publishing to see what they are all about was and was very amused to learn that they were a right-wing publishing company that produces a lot of conservative- leaning  works from Republican Party officials and right-wing commentators.  I said I was amused because they clearly had no idea what my politics were.  Just because I like someone’s biographical work does not mean I would agree with them on all their political positions or even most of them.  But hey, free is free and I might enjoy reading something written by the other side and taking it apart.  So I said "yes" and received it in the mail a week later.  However I was still slogging through Winston Churchill’s World War II memoirs (reviews on that to follow) so was unable to get to it right away. 

                  I began reading this book two weeks ago, reading a chapter or two a day.  I have to say I was really glad I did.  It is actually a very good book.  It offers a view into a period of the life of President Richard M Nixon that is not often covered.  Richard Nixon’s political career and presidency is arguably one of the most studied in the 20^th century.  The only President of the United States who is forced to resign.  The resignation and helicopter trip that the Nixons took after being escorted by his successor President Gerald Ford and First Lady Betty Ford is usually the end of the story.  The pardon is spoken of but mostly in passing.  Traditionally the narrative ends with Nixon waving goodbye.  In this book that is where the story begins: a disgraced President beginning to look for his road to redemption. 

                   Pipes ‘s writes with a smooth narrative that is easy to follow and understand.  The book is broken down to chapters with the first third dedicated to Nixon crawling back into the public consciousness with a series of carefully placed moves that allows him to slowly convince the American public to give him another try. 

                  Before he would begin his public rehabilitation he would first have to survive.  Shortly after his resignation Nixon had a health scare that Pipes’s shows nearly killed him and did causing great financial damage as he had no health insurance at the time.  This would add to President Nixon’s financial desperation which would be part of the later motivational fuel to get himself reestablished.  Now this particular part of Nixon’s life I had read about before as it was covered in Bob Woodward’s Shadow.  

Nixon in his post presidential office

                  Then we arrive at the Frost/Nixon interview.  These were a mixed back for Nixon.  It did give him an opportunity to tell his side of the story and it was the first attempt to go public again trying to shape the historical narrative of his presidency. Pipes writes that Nixon was a tad bit ill-prepared for the questions on Watergate.   While the Frost/Nixon interviews were being done, Pipes explains Nixon had recently been working on his memoirs and he had just gotten to Watergate.  He was now re-exploring those memories going over the materials that led to his downfall.   Therefore he was not as well versed in everything that was encompassed by Watergate as Frost was.  This leading into his stumbled statement of “when the president does it that means not illegal.”

                  Despite its flaws in the interview that he gave David Frost the exposure would start Nixon on his trajectory toward recovery.  He would go on to write nine books, give more interviews, and become a foreign policy adviser for several administrations, not limited to his own party, up until his death. 

Nixon returns with two other former Presidents to see President Reagan

                 James Buchanan, who when he left office in 1861 did so with the country being torn in two, in an effort to redeem himself in the public eye wrote and published his memoirs establishing a precedent that most future former presidents would follow.  When Herbert Hoover left office in 1933 with the country in the middle of a severe economic depression, in an effort to redeem his image he would establish the Herbert Hoover Presidential Library.  He was the first president to do such a thing who would then be followed by all subsequent presidents.  Now Nixon forced to resign in 1974 was going to create a new type of post-presidency that would be mimicked by his successors.

James Buchanan

Herbert Hoover

“In fact, in the first ten years following Watergate, Nixon had done more than just survive as a former president—he had unknowingly established a template for future ex-presidents to follow.   Before Nixon, former presidents in the modern era mostly stayed behind the scenes, Truman had returned to Missouri and Ike split his time between his farm in Gettysburg and Gettysburg and summers in Palm Springs.  Neither of them made many public appearances or waded into public issues.
             “But Nixon, largely because he wanted to rehabilitate his name—and in any case was never one for retirement—chose a different path.  He made money from delivering speeches and writing books.  He gave interviews with the media in which he tried to shape public opinion on important national issues.  He became something of an elder statesman.  The Nixon template is the template used by former presidents to this day.” (p.170)

                 Pipes describes a former president, who is always thinking of history’s judgment, and is working to make sure that the narrative that its very minimum would give him a fair shake.  It was a virtual guarantee that his presidency was to be studied he wanted to make sure that it was going to be studied in all its aspects and he would try to influence this by befriending and is sometimes recruiting historians to take up his cause.

“The former president went out of his way to encourage any historian he didn’t think was a liberal.  One of his favorites, a former Dole Senate staffer named Richard Norton Smith, burst onto the scene in the 1980s with a biography on Thomas E. Dewey that became a finalist for the Pulitzer.  Nixon would write to Smith and compliment him as an ‘honest historian.’ It’s a telling remark that demonstrates how Nixon viewed the rest of Smith’s colleagues.” (p.179)

Nixon would even go so far not only to recruit a historian by the name of Jonathan Aitken , personally edit his work for him, and then go off and try to pitch the manuscript to various publishers.  This was a hard sell because of its clear bias.  There was one publisher willing to help him out.  Any criticism I do have of this work by Pipes is right here.  For this is a little bit of shameless promotion because the publisher of this book, Regnery, is the publisher that would ultimately pick Nixon’s biography written by his chosen biographer.  Talk about being part of your own story!

“Nixon had feared that a book favorable to him could not win a contract in New York.  So he planned accordingly.  Having the book published was more important to Nixon than who published it.  He urged Aitken to pitch his book to Regnery, the conservative publishing house in Washington.  Aitken did so and found success.” (p. 245)

My favorite part about the book is how Pipes shows Nixon’s relationships with the five presidents who followed him into the White House.  Nixon was still underground when Ford was in office; he actively worked to replace Carter; was a semi-formal advisor to Reagan until they broke over arms reduction; was cool to Bush; and surprisingly he was very warm with Clinton.  The Clinton one is the most surprising, but in some ways understandable both presidents were students of history and could see past political differences.  

Bill Clinton with an unlikely mentor 

The only other thing that I felt was missing from this book was there was no mention of President Nixon acting as the arbitrator to settle a strike of professional umpires union against Major League Baseball.  The fact that those in power baseball, which is America's past time, felt that he was the person to turn to help resolve one of their most important issues of the day I think is a major statement about how President Nixon was now viewed by the public.

Scene from Nixon funeral

             In the end I do strongly recommend this book is a fascinating study and a new look at one of the 20^th century’s most important political figures facing a unique challenge and rising to that challenge with great success.  President Nixon’s career is one of peaks and valleys and thanks to his tireless efforts he assured for himself that when he died he did so on top of a peak.  Now that I read the book I enjoyed it to the point where I regret that I did not get to it right away as it was given to me by the publisher.  However with holidays only weeks away and you are struggling gift idea for that history buff in your life this might be a good one. 

{YouTube videos from CBS Network and 2achselhaare}