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 Love him or Hate him Nixon was no Dummy This is a four-part story of Richard Nixon's reign. Each section is devoted to one of the four elections of 1966, 1968, 1970 and 1972, and thus it is a political history that attempts to capture and make sense of the temper of those turbulent and changing times as seen primarily through Richard Nixon's character. In this sense it parallels Oliver Stone's biopic called "Nixon." When Nixon prepared to make his second run at the Presidency, Vietnam had ignited a rage in the nation's young. This rage intersected with the cultural cross currents of the quickening pace of the civil rights movement and the rise of leftwing radical groups. Many conservative whites thought the wheels were coming off the nation morally and culturally. Nixon, seen by many at the time (and since by historians), as a tragic but brilliant figure, wore his deep felt hurt, anger and anxieties on his sleeve for all to see, but despite this he was judged (and proved to be) a smart political tactician. Perlstein's story centers on Nixon's character and how it proved to be a critical factor in shaping both domestic and foreign policy during his reign and in the process being responsible for making fundamental realignments in American domestic politics as well as changing the course of U.S. foreign policy with his ground breaking overture to China. During the first part (1966), reading the tea leaves left by Reagan who had recently won the California governorship on a new "law and order" platform, and encouraged by a resounding defeat of a host of liberal LBJ legislation -- by essentially the same "law and order coalition" -- Nixon could see where the future was headed and plotted a course that he hope would set the troubled nation on a more even keel and get him elected in the process. He did indeed win in 1968 (the second part of the book), with a narrow victory ensured only by the reactionary coalition of former Southern Dixicrats and incensed culturally conservative Republicans -- the very coalition he had set his mind on colonizing. Nixon saw that this "new reactionary white power" was going to be the Republican ticket into the future, and the answer to his prayers for a more robust if not a permanent republican congressional majority. So he put his plan into action, and succeeded in effect breaking up the liberal coalition that had existed since FDR's presidency. Nixon's "so-called" Southern strategy, as immoral and as illegitimate as it may have been (its subtext was clearly to play the race card), lives on even in today's "Red and Blue" political alignments. And although I was not a Nixon lover, Perlstein has given Nixon his just due, and the man, his character flaws and all, reveal that he was indeed a shrewd American politician. Five Stars  photocopied history I never thought history repeats itself, but I've come to believe that historians repeat each other. This second generation of Nixon haters lazily accepts their received history. Well, I agree with Richard Norton Smith that history is too important to be left to the historians. I have a doctorate in communication and have published three books about Nixon and the media as well as academically refereed articles or book chapters on this subject. While I'm by no means a hagiographer of Richard Nixon's, I do try to be even-handed in my research. It seems to me that these young Nixon historians have a good first book published, which was probably their dissertation, and then when they don't have a committee to oversee the rigid validity of their research, go wild with their partisan biases in subsequent works. I'm thinking of Perlstein with his highly regarded first book on Goldwater followed by this flotsam on Nixon and Greenberg out of Columbia University with his Nixon book and then subsequent polemical Nixon articles afterward. It's not surprising that Perlstein has a positive blurb about his book from John Dean and that Greenberg is a protege of Bob Woodward's. This is essentially the same damn Nixon book I read in about 30 different incarnations while I was working on my own dissertation in the '90s. Nixonland -- America Today Mr. Perlstein has written a book of the origins of the presidential cultural wars that blaze on today. He covers the presidential and congressional elections of 1964, 1966, 1968, 1970, and 1972 as the conservative right was on the rise and liberalism started its long decline. In the center of all this was Richard Nixon, watching LBJ's landslide win of 1964 over Barry Goldwater, and calculating his own reverse landslide win of eight years later. LBJ's civil rights legislation turned the Solid South into a Republican bastion before his death and gave a racist anchor to Richard Nixon's electoral wins. The chaos of these 8 years transformed the body politic and made way for the conservativism of today. Are We Still In Nixonland? I'm 49 years old, not quite old enough to have a first hand memory of the events and forces covered in this book but I still feel like I've been living in Nixonland all my life. I've read hundreds of books about the 1960's (and the early 1970's, often confused with the 60's) and this is the best. If you fell asleep in 1965 and just woke up and wanted to understand politics and culture today, I'd tell you to read Nixonland before I introduced you to "blogs" or even the 1990's. It takes time to make sense of such a defining era. It's a heck of a page turner too, no one ever said that the period between 1965 & 1973 was boring! Perlstein does a great job of weaving 1960's popular culture into the story but not in a trivializing way. Even if you are, say, 25, you live in Nixonland too. Like me you grew up with music from Nixonland, TV shows from Nixonland, a culture from Nixonland and, of course, politics shaped and defined by Nixonland. I agree with the author that we are still fighting pretty much the same battles that were first thrust upon the national stage in the form of Richard Nixon and others like RFK, Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater and George McGovern who make up the characters in this grand story, all the wierder because its all true. I honestly think, however, that the 2008 election might just mark the beginning of a new era. Some of these battles are getting old. I think we are heading out of Nixonland but we are not there yet. If you want to know where we are and how we, as a country, got here, Nixonland is the place to start. | |||||||||||||
