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Essay on Nixon...The Man
Richard Nixon remains a man difficult to understand. Friends, associates, critics, and commentators see many different things in the man. Was he, as many of his former associates noted, a man with two very different, conflicting parts: the good and bad Nixons, the light and dark sides? In this sense, was the battle for Nixon the battle of his better self against his worse self, a battle that was ultimately lost to the forces of darkness? Or, was Nixon a paradox, a contradictory figure who could be so brilliant, yet make so many needless mistakes in Watergate; lead an anticommunist movement, then embrace China and the Soviet Union; praise the free market, then impose wage and price controls; preach about self-sufficiency, then propose the Family Assistance Plan? Nixon as paradox could do all these things, embrace all these beliefs, and travel these many roads. Or, was Nixon little more than a political chameleon, changing color and political stripes to fit the whim of the day?
Fundamentally, Nixon had no central philosophical beliefs, no deep ethical moorings. He was amoral, not immoral. His central pursuit was a rather narrow and short-term self-interest. This allowed him to shed what seemed to be deeply felt and long-held beliefs when it suited his career. While his chameleon like quality suited his rise to power, it did not guide him in the uses of power.
In the second week of January 1971 the Republican National Committee was assembling in Washington for its midwinter meeting. It was nearly two years since the inauguration of Richard Milhous Nixon, the first authentic Republican politician to become President of the United States since Calvin Coolidge was elected in 1924, the heyday of the Grand Old Party. Whatever Nixon's identification problems with the rest of the country, he should have had none whatever here with the members of the National Committee, so many of whom he knew so well....
