Book Review: Nixonland

[CarsonPalmer]

I figured I might as well post a review of a book I'm working my way through right now: Nixonland, by Rick Perlstein. In a lot of ways, Nixonland is sort of an odd book. It starts in 1965, with Lyndon Johnson and the liberal wing of the Democratic Party at the height of their powers. LBJ is turning into his idol, FDR, the Republican Party is in a shambles, and Richard Nixon has become "the patron saint of losers". It jumps back in time to provide a run-through of Nixon's life up until that point, his childhood, his early political career, Alger Hiss, his time as a VP, the loss to Kennedy in 1960, and the final, humiliating defeat to Pat Brown in 1962 for the governor of California that seemingly put his career on ice permanently.

With that out of the way, it returns to 1965, and begins the story proper. The book reads like a whirlwind tour of the era from 1965-1972, tracing the disintegration of the political consensus that existed when LBJ trashed Barry Goldwater to the end of the story to the election of 1972, when Nixon beat George McGovern. Tricky Dick himself moves in and out of the pages, and some chapters touch him only on tangents, such as a chapter about Ronald Reagan's run for governor. Always taking center stage, though, is the movement which Nixon rode to the White House, a movement of "oppressed" middle class white people angry about what they saw as unfair policies, and disillusioned with the grand promises that had seemed so real in 1965.

The book's biggest weakness is how it skims over some events, which don't receive nearly as much treatment as they deserve. Vietnam, in particular, is often shunted off to the side (although, in fairness, the story of Vietnam is not really the story that Nixonland is out to tell; domestic policy and the political climate get much more attention). The book's strength, however, is that it is a genuinely good political history. Backdoor machinations and scheming fill Nixon's rise and fall and rise, but so do good descriptions and explanations of how nuance, the "greys" of politics, were overwhelmed by the more appealing "black and white truths" that Nixon, Reagan, and others like them threw against LBJ's liberals.

A lot of the figures involved in the book are ultimately tragic. Nixon comes off as a sad, bitter, man; Johnson is doomed to vain frustration as he tries to keep the Great Society going, Pat Brown's solid accomplishments are drowned out by the more charismatic, style-over-substance Reagan, and Martin Luther King watches his reputation fall and his creed of non-violence tossed aside. It isn't a happy book, by any stretch, but it is a very good and vivid one, albeit with some weaknesses. As far as I can see, though, those weaknesses are weaknesses of not enough information, not weaknesses of bad information.

Anyone else read it?

[Glocksman]

I did, and while I agree that the book skimmed over Vietnam, don't forget the subtitle 'The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America'.

In the end, Nixon's electoral 'southern strategy' and 'silent majority' rhetoric proved more divisive to the nation at large than Vietnam did and we still see the effects today.

My takeaway from the book is that Nixon accomplished a lot, failed a lot, and could have been so much more if he hadn't been so fucking paranoid.