It is absolutely impossible to read a biography of Richard Nixon divorced from what the man would grow into within a certain part of the American consciousness. My mother was raised by Eisenhower Republicans. The first election in which she was eligible to vote was 1972. To this day her vote for Nixon hangs like a specter in her mind. Hunter Thompson believes that such a man as this transcends objective journalism; that it was specifically this tendency to overtly rational thought that Nixon perverted in the first place. Even now, it feels dishonest to review a biography on him without mentioning such things.
Fairly or unfairly, political biographies, particularly those of presidents, will, for some time, be measured against the triumph of Robert Caro's The Years of Lyndon Johnson. This is, most likely, unfair for numerous reasons, the least of which is that Caro has spent more than forty years writing this four, soon-to-be five, volume work. Stephen Ambrose has clearly set-out to achieve something different, in his own three-volume life of Richard Nixon.
As a retelling of a life, Ambrose first part works well enough. Here are the facts, Jack, and there is enough wiggle-room allowed for a reader's interpretation. Yet, too often it seems that Ambrose has not taken the initiative to separate myth from history. To whit: he recounts the scene before Nixon's "Last Press Conference" in the defeated candidates hotel room, only to leave the reader uncertain as to what prompted Nixon's rebuke of the press. It is perhaps the greatest testament to Nixon the man to say of a 600-plus page biography, even knowing that it is part one of three, that I wish it would have been much longer. Though he takes a few paragraphs out to engage in some counter-factual history, what if Nixon had won in 1960, we are left with only hints of a stolen Kennedy election. Though it may be too much to ask for a conclusive answer, surely a deeper analysis of this pivotal hinge in American history, not to mention the life of Richard Nixon, is in order.
While Ambrose has done much to give Nixon's image a, probably much-needed, softening, we are left wondering beyond facts which could be simply distilled from deep historical reading amongst stacks of newspapers. Ambrose takes not nearly enough time to get into Nixon's life and relationships and root around. He vacillates between Nixon as inherently unknowable mysterious figure and entirely public persona. Jumping from episode to episode, we witness Ambrose's Nixon growing in stature and influence, without our having much sense of the man. There is little achieved to dissuade the reader of their preconceived notions of this most loved and hated man. If the subject himself were not so fascinating, one wonders what purpose the work would serve?
Though Ambrose may be correct in railing against so-called "psychological biographers," surely the more uncertain motivations and personal machinations of such a towering and vast historical figure as Nixon, a more careful analysis of the man as situated within a time that he helped to co-create, might tell us more about ourselves and our history.
Nixon's spirit, love him or hate him, remains noticeably absent throughout the work. Thompson's 2,500-word obituary speaks more to the substance of Richard Nixon, albeit from one drastically derisive point of view, than Ambrose has captured.
