President Nixon: Alone in the White House Book

This is a very thorough overview of Nixon's first term in office. The author glosses over most of Nixon's second term, describing it as being swallowed up by the Watergate affair.

I first heard about this book when listening to the author talk about it on NPR. He described how he was able to get access to a huge amount of Nixon's personal notes. Apparently, Nixon would sit around through much of his presidency writing notes to himself on yellow note pads. By gaining access to Nixon's personal notes, Reeves says that he was able to get inside of Nixon's head more than previous biographers. And his conclusion? Nixon had a basic weakness: he believed that other people's natures were as flawed as his own. So before his various enemies got him, he had to hit them first.

The subtitle of the book also indicates another basis thesis of the author. Nixon, according to Reeves, only interacted directly on a regular basis with a small circle of people; Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Kissinger, and Buchanan. Secretary of State Rogers, in fact, would find out about major foreign policy decisions when the general public found out. This climate of secrecy permeated everything he did, and Nixon could not stand it when information leaked out to the public. This paranoia, of course, led to the infamous "plumbers" and ultimately his downfall.

In addition to probing Nixon's mind, this book covers all of the major policy decisions of Nixon's first term. And by the end, the reader gets a thorough sense of the important long-term impact of the Nixon presidency. Foreign policy, according to Reeves, was Nixon's primary interest. Domestic policy, in Nixon's view, was important primarily for one reason: the election of 1972. This is why Nixon cared more about opinion polls than any other data about life in the United States. His general disengagement with domestic affairs, along with his obsession with his reelection, helps to explain why it is so difficult to see any coherent Nixon agenda when it came to domestic affairs. He largely let Congress run the show, and in my view, we have not had an administration as liberal as Nixon since.