A few weeks ago, I headed to Orange County for my nephew’s wedding, which was in Yorba Linda. We had a free day before the wedding, so we did what any history-loving nut would do. Richard Nixon was born in Yorba Linda and his Presidential Library is on the land where he was born. His childhood home is still there and is a part of the library’s exhibits. We spent a few hours at the library before finding a brewery, having a beer, and then meeting family for dinner.
It should come as no surprise that I’m not a huge fan of Nixon, but I also was only four years old when he was elected and not quite ten when he resigned. So, everything I know about him is from the perspective of history.
When we were done walking through the library, which was a wonderful trip down the memory lane of history, we stopped at the gift shop. I bought a book that looked like the only one that would present a balanced perspective of the man and not be a hero-worshipping paean. Being Nixon; A Man Divided by Evan Thomas was the book I purchased.
Thomas presents Nixon as a man beset by massive insecurities and inadequacies. Nixon described himself as an introvert in an extrovert’s profession. He also described himself in all sorts of other ways that were complete contradicted by his outward statements and actions. After reading Being Nixon, I came away with a much stronger and visceral view of the man than I ever had before. He was a lunatic.
On the other hand, he truly did accomplish a lot during his Presidency. Opening China, thawing relations with the Soviet Union, establishing the EPA, signing the Clean Air Act and Water Pollution Control Act, extending the Voting Rights Act, creating an Office of Consumer Affairs in the White House, expanding the national park system, establishing OSHA, the Rail Passenger Service Act (which created Amtrak), the end of the draft, and all sorts of other good things. moderate and progressive things that no Republican would be able to do today.
The odd thing is that it isn’t necessarily Watergate that renders him a lunatic. In some ways, Watergate was not unusual with the standards of the time. LBJ had a taping system in the White House and many politicians (if not most of them) engaged in dirty tricks. It may be that Nixon’s involvement and the cover-up were worse than what others did, but I’m not so sure.
No what makes him a lunatic was his insecurities and how he dealt with them, and how he also was so ham-handed and contradictory with the dirty tricks he engaged in, as well as just his normal interactions with people. An example: after Mary Jo Kopechne died in the accident involving Ted Kennedy, he ordered somebody in his orbit to tail Kennedy to try to catch him philandering. (Side note: he was absolutely obsessed with the Kennedys.) At the same time he was doing that, he saw Ted Kennedy at an event and sympathetically counseled him to never give up, to keep fighting. There are numerous examples of Nixon doing things like this. He was a massive contradiction … or as the title of the book suggests, a man divided.
I’ll leave you with the final paragraph from Being Nixon:
Nixon was no saint. But the fears and insecurities that led him into sinfulness also gave him the drive to push past self-doubt, to pretend to be cheerful, to dare to be brave, to see, often though sadly not always, the light in the dark.
The key word in that paragraph? Pretend.
Nixon’s lunacy is relevant to the 2024 election because of this. During his Presidency, Nixon regularly “issued orders” to his aides and advisors that would have been catastrophic if they had carried through on those orders. But the wiser, smarter people who surrounded him would regularly ignore those orders and by the next day the orders would have been forgotten.
If Trump gets elected again this year, I have absolutely no faith that he will surround himself with the wiser, smarter people who are needed to prevent a damaged, emotionally stunted man from doing great harm to this nation and the world. From what he has said over the last year or two, he plans on surrounding himself with people who will be totally 110% on board with the chaos he wants to unleash. When he issues an order that rational, sane people would reject and ignore, people like Stephen Miller, Michael Flynn, and the others he mentions as being a part of his team the next time around will absolutely jump at the chance to implement those orders.
Elected officials are no different than any other human beings. They are imperfect, damaged, insecure individuals who frequently act publicly in a way that compensates for and hides their imperfections, damage, and insecurities. As a result, when electing somebody, it is almost as important to see who they would surround themselves with as it is who that person is.
In this case, Trump is trumpeting that he has failed this test, as he has so many others. A man who is very possibly the most damaged man to serve as President since Nixon is telegraphing to us that he doesn’t want to be held back if he wins again.
(A final note: George W. Bush was a President I couldn’t stand. He rarely did anything I agreed with. An odd thing happened, however, on his way to a post-Presidential life. He became very, very human and I’m almost at the point that I wouldn’t mind sitting down with him and having a chat. At the Nixon Library, there is an exhibit. Paintings of wounded veterans. Dozens and dozens of them. The paintings are incredible and say something that is very real. One of the paints is a huge canvas with the painted images of probably 15-20 veterans on the single canvas. All of the paintings were done by … by George W. Bush.)
They're temples filled with history, that I know you love so much.
I've been to Monticello, Mount Vernon, FDR's in Hyde Park, Martin Van Buren's and Teddy's at Sagamore Hill which is my favorite. Been there a few times, and it's the only one including Jefferson's where it felt like any minute he'd walk in. All the rest of them are more museum like. But Teddy's place feels as if the family still lives there. There's an undeniable warmth while you're there.