My Kingdom for a Horse

Now I understand why Pat Buchanan was so busy promoting his new book on Nixon. It was a preemptive strike (if you will) against a new book and documentary timed for release on the 40th anniversary of Nixon's resignation August 8. Almost anyway, as the HBO documentary, Nixon on Nixon, premiers Monday, Aug. 11.

It seems more tapes have become available to the public, which cast the former president in an even more sinister light. Ken Hughes is the author of the most recent book on Nixon, Chasing Shadows. You can read an excerpt here. David Greenberg reviews both the book and the documentary for the Washington Post. Hughes apparently focuses largely on the Chennault Affair, in which Nixon used a friend of a friend to sabotage Johnson's attempt to end the Vietnam War in 1968, as Nixon feared it would give Humphrey a boost in the tight election. Eerily similar to Reagan's own efforts to sabotage Carter's attempt to end the Iran Hostage crisis in 1980, but the Gipper seemed to skate clear of this controversy. Hughes doesn't let Nixon off the hook.

It seems that this kind of skulduggery has become part and parcel of the Republican bag of dirty tricks. Of course, Nixon wasn't the first to resort to such nasty deeds to get what he wanted, nor are such dirty tricks exclusively Republican. Johnson was certainly no saint, and no doubt saw any kind of peace agreement in Vietnam as a way to undermine Nixon's candidacy. But, what sets Nixon apart from others is that he didn't seem to have a single altruistic bone in his body. He was perhaps the most cynical and duplicitous president ever, undermining the efforts of his own cabinet, notably Henry Kissinger, who the former president thought was straying from the path.

Nixon comes across as a later day Richard III. As much as Buchanan tries to point to the good Nixon did, the bad just piles up against him, made even worse by Nixon's copious tapes, which ultimately proved his undoing and still haunt his battered legacy 40 years after.

O Pioneers!

It is hard not to think of Nebraska without thinking of its greatest writer. Here is a marvelous piece by Capote, Remembering Willa Cather . I remember seeing a stage production of O Pioneers! and being deeply moved by its raw emotions. I had read My Antonia before, and soon found myself hooked, like Capote was by the simple elegance of her prose and the way she was able to evoke so many feelings through her characters. Much of it came from the fact that she had lived those experiences herself. Her father dragged the family from Virginia to Nebraska in 1883, when it was still a young state, settling in the town of Red Cloud. named after one of the great Oglala chiefs. Red Cloud was still alive at the time, living on the Pine Ridge Reservation in South Dakota, in the aftermath of the "Great Sioux Wars" of 1876-77. I don't know whether Cather took any interest in the famous chief, although it is hard to imagine not. Upon his death in 1909, he was eulogi

The Triangle Shirtwaist Factory Fire

Welcome to this month's reading group selection. David Von Drehle mentions The Melting Pot , a play by Israel Zangwill, that premiered on Broadway in 1908. At that time theater was accessible to a broad section of the public, not the exclusive domain it has become over the decades. Zangwill carried a hopeful message that America was a place where old hatreds and prejudices were pointless, and that in this new country immigrants would find a more open society. I suppose the reference was more an ironic one for Von Drehle, as he notes the racial and ethnic hatreds were on display everywhere, and at best Zangwill's play helped persons forget for a moment how deep these divides ran. Nevertheless, "the melting pot" made its way into the American lexicon, even if New York could best be describing as a boiling cauldron in the early twentieth century. Triangle: The Fire That Changed America takes a broad view of events that led up the notorious fire, noting the gro

Colonel

Now with Colonel Roosevelt , the magnum opus is complete. And it deserves to stand as the definitive study of its restless, mutable, ever-boyish, erudite and tirelessly energetic subject. Mr. Morris has addressed the toughest and most frustrating part of Roosevelt’s life with the same care and precision that he brought to the two earlier installments. And if this story of a lifetime is his own life’s work, he has reason to be immensely proud. -- Janet Maslin -- NY Times . Let the discussion begin!

Dispatches from Vilnius

Search This Blog