One of us Book

What is it about Richard Milhous Nixon that captures the imagination? Is it his obvious insecurity occupying the highest office? His impoverished early life? His supposed moderate outlook in an age of extremist conservatives? Tom Wicker's biography tracks Nixon's life right up to the moment of the Watergate break-in, conveniently serving-up enough background for interested readers to continue reading Woodward and Bernstein's account of that episode.

The tragedy of Nixon is on full display here, and in such fairness that liberals and conservatives alike will be hard-pressed to take issue with Wicker's depiction. One surprise was the shallowness of Nixon's foreign policy. While he is often vaunted for opening up China and bringing the USSR to the negotiating table on the SALT treaty, Nixon and the ever-present Kissinger suffered by viewing all geopolitical events through biploar lenses.

The Indo-Pakistan War, the rise of Allende in Chile, and giving the Shah of Iran a blank check to purchase weapons-- each of these situations was forced into a paradigm of US vs USSR, with tragic consequences. The suffering of the Bengali people, the police state of Augusto Pinochet, and the inevitable overthrow of the Shah by Khomeni were all direct consequences of Nixon and Kissinger's inability to recognize nationalistic events instead of communist boogeymen.

Wicker also demonstrates that much of Nixon's duplicity and contempt for Congress was learned at the feet of Dwight Eisenhower, in whose presidency Nixon served as vice-president for eight years. Nixon learned that presidents could lie to the public, to Congress, and obtain blackmail material on critics via J. Edgar Hoover's FBI by following Ike's example. One cannot condemn Richard Nixon while venerating Dwight Eisenhower-- the former is a direct consequence of the latter.