Summary of the book "Richard Nixon" - By John A. Farrell

Who can benefit the most from this book:

• US-politics aficionados.
• Biography enthusiasts who love a scandal.
• People looking to deepen their knowledge of American history.

What am I getting out of it? Learn about America's infamous 37th president's life and characteristics.

It was the summer of 1945, and the Allies had already won World War II. The US needed to make peace preparations. They needed lawyers to settle contracts now, not ships and tanks.

Although his pre-Navy career was unremarkable, Lieutenant Richard Nixon had studied law. He was sent to an aeronautics complex in Maryland to negotiate with some accountants after returning from the Solomon Islands.

Lieutenant John Renneburg, another Navy officer, was being replaced by the serious-minded man in his early thirties. They struck up a discussion. Nixon was asked what he planned to do next by Renneburg.

Nixon was undecided. If he so desired, he might remain in the military. It was possible for him to pursue a business career in Manhattan's glamor; he and his wife, Pat, adored the city. Or there was always his former legal business in Whittier, California, his run-down hometown.

But he'd also recently gotten a letter, which he followed up with a phone call late at night when long-distance fees were lower. Herman Perry, a Whittier resident, had invited him to run for Congress.

The hefty young fellow impressed Renneburg. Nixon was persuaded to say yes by him. Nixon may, at the at least, get some law clients out of it, he reasoned.

He got a lot more than that, as you'll hear in this summary.

• You'll learn how Nixon became the youngest vice president in history.
• Why he lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy.
• And how he wound himself on the route to Watergate in this summary.

Humility

Thirty-four-year-old Representative Richard Nixon began his time in Congress with a flurry of positive news coverage. The Washington Times-Herald described it as "as uniquely American as Thanksgiving."

That wasn't incorrect. Frank, an enraged Scotch-Irish Protestant, and Hannah, a peaceful, repressed Irish Quaker, were his parents. They were in dire straits when Richard was born in 1913, in a home Frank had built. Frank's dreams of becoming a lemon producer in the little California town of Yorba Linda were dashed. He eventually abandoned up and moved to Whittier, where he bought a gas station that later expanded to offer groceries.

Harold, Richard, Donald, and Arthur Nixon were the four Nixon boys; a fifth, Edward, arrived considerably later. Both Arthur and Harold died of tuberculosis as children, while Harold died as a young man following a six-year illness. Frank had disregarded doctors' cautions about drinking raw milk from the family cow, which was a recognized cause of tuberculosis infection. Richard, who was reserved and restrained, took these tragedies particularly hard.

Despite his mother's protests, Dick – as he was known – did exceptionally well at school. He enjoyed reading biographies of great men, acting in plays, and playing the violin. He even made the football team, despite not being a jock who preferred to wear ironed shirts. He apologized for his shyness in the yearbook of his high school love, Ola. He resolved to study law and pursue politics in order to make a difference.

He transferred to Duke University in North Carolina after four years at Whittier College. He put in long hours, both intellectually and in order to make money. He and three other students lived in a two-bed cottage in the woods with no electricity or running water during his senior year.

Dick faced failure when he graduated third in his class in spring 1937: he had been rejected by several New York corporations, as well as the FBI. He sulked his way back into the family car after graduation. Back in Whittier, his mother had secured him a position at a law company.

Dick, who had never been a gracious loser, struggled at first. He botched his first case, resulting in a $4,800 settlement for his firm, and the chaste young Quaker squirmed horribly when addressing divorce matters. But he ultimately settled in and even became a partner. On the side, his entrepreneurial effort into frozen orange juice swiftly went bankrupt, earning him a few local enemies.

Dick, awkward as he was, recognized love when he saw it. He met Pat Ryan, a local actress, in a local theatre show and humbly tried to obtain a date for months. She eventually consented, drawn in by his earnestness and ambition. In 1940, they married secretly.

The danger of war loomed over their pleasant early years of marriage. Dick could have avoided the draft, but he knew that if he wanted a career in politics, he needed to serve. He began his naval officer training in August 1942, and the following year he was deployed to the South Pacific.

He performed admirably, but he was ecstatic to see Pat again and learn more about their future plans. Despite his uptightness, lack of connections, and history, he questioned if he could still make it far.

Progress

Dick came from humble beginnings, but his rise through the ranks of college and the Navy made him a model Republican candidate. His serious, erudite remarks about life as a soldier wowed the audience, and he preached a pretty centrist style of liberalism. His appeal was wide-ranging.

However, establishing a good first impression was insufficient. He also had to make his opponent, Democratic incumbent Jerry Voorhis, look bad, despite Voorhis's good track record.

Nixon knew there was something in the air in the postwar years: a growing fear of Communism. Voorhis's greatest accomplishment in Congress, back in 1940, was the Voorhis Act, which was tough anti-Communist legislation. But it was in the past, and Nixon – with the help of the sly Murray Chotiner, who became a key member of Nixon's staff – decided to bring Voorhis down by connecting him with far-left Democrats.

Nixon looked at Voorhis' voting record selectively, making him appear, extremist when he wasn't. He also made some scathing charges regarding Voorhis' campaign finances, implying that Voorhis was financed by Communists — even while Nixon was engaging in dubious fundraising practices. Pat was particularly irritated by the campaign of nudges, winks, and half-truths. "I have to win," Nixon stated. And instilling terror in the public was a winning strategy.

Awkward Dick Nixon of Whittier, who campaigned in only one suit for the majority of the time, had discovered his ruthlessness.

And he brought that energy to Washington as a lawmaker. Sincere and hardworking, he was quickly selected to join the Herter Committee, a group of US government officials visiting Europe to study the effects of war. He also befriended John Kennedy, a young Massachusetts Democrat. Despite their disparate origins (Kennedy was from a wealthy family), they became friends on the late-night train to Washington.

Nixon was named to the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) soon after. The purpose of HUAC, which was already well-known, was to rid the United States of communists. Nixon made a lasting impression on the nation as a result of his relentless and ferocious work on this committee.

Nixon was pulled into the spotlight by a strange situation. Whittaker Chambers, an old journalist and former Communist, had been questioned by the committee. As a result, Chambers had appointed Alger Hiss, a senior civil servant, as an associate.

Hiss, on the other hand, vehemently denied any ties to Chambers or Communism. He assured the committee that he had never met Chambers. Except for Nixon, they all believed him. Nixon became the lone voice pursuing Hiss with surprising persistence for a first-term Congressman. When Hiss ridiculed Nixon's education at Whittier College, he grew even more enraged.

The Hiss case exploded into a national scandal as riveting as any spy book – and it turned out that Nixon was correct. Hiss was a Communist, and he had lied to the committee throughout the process. He was imprisoned for lying rather than spying.

Nixon was fond of reminding his advisers that it was the cover-up, not the crime, that had tripped up Hiss as his career soared.

Nixon will be judged in the same way one day.

Tricks

Anti-Communism was proven to be a winning formula in the landmark Hiss case. So, in 1949, while still establishing himself in Washington, Nixon ran for the Senate, marching to the same drum as before on the campaign trail.

Nixon and his staff painted Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, like Voorhis, as a dangerous Communist sympathizer. The strategy was clear, but it worked, and the Machiavellian rising star earned the nickname "Tricky Dick" as well as a Senate seat.

Pat was unsettled. She hadn't taken to politics, and she had two young daughters, Tricia and Julie, to look after. But they got a great deal on a new house — suspiciously excellent, in fact – and she hoped that a Senate stint would give her time to recover from all the campaigning. It didn't work out.

When speculation of the 1952 presidential election began, Tricky Dick was all ears. Senator Robert Taft, California governor Earl Warren, and war hero General Dwight D. Eisenhower were all running for the Republican presidential nomination. Nixon joined the general's staff in the hopes of becoming vice president.

On the Republican campaign trail, Eisenhower and Taft were initially in the lead, but a large contingent of California delegates promised to vote for Warren at the national convention. Nonetheless, Nixon understood that many of them were on the fence. He joined them on the train to the convention and carefully manoeuvred his way through the coaches, persuading the California delegates to convert to Eisenhower. The "great train robbery," which occurred right beneath Warren's nose, became known as the "great train robbery," prompting Eisenhower to pick Nixon as his running partner.

Nixon was subjected to uncomfortably close scrutiny during his presidential campaign. Financial irregularities were the subject of headline after headline. What was the source of this young entrepreneur's funds? Nixon began to appear as a liability amid rumours of slush funds and shady transactions. Eisenhower contemplated dismissing him.

Dick, on the other hand, had a surprise up his sleeve: an unprecedented television address. It would go down in history.

Nixon spoke to the nation with sincerity, recounting his humble beginnings, love for Pat, and military duty. He revealed their net worth and financial information regarding their home.

He addressed the crowd, "Pat doesn't have a mink coat." "However, she does own a respectable Republican cloth coat, and I constantly tell her that she'd look beautiful in anything."

There was more to come. He revealed that he had been given an odd political gift: a small spotted cocker spaniel named Checkers by his six-year-old daughter Tricia. He told the country that his children adored the dog. And they planned to keep it.

It was OK and good for wealthy men to compete for high office, Nixon said, citing the Democratic nominee Adlai Stevenson as an example. Humbler men, on the other hand, should be able to do the same.

The "Checkers speech" was mawkish, humiliating, and enthralling to see on television. Nixon wasn't just a master manipulator behind closed doors; he could also do it in front of the camera.

He decided to continue on Eisenhower's ticket. They were victorious. Richard Nixon was elected vice president of the United States in January 1953, seven years after entering Congress.

Drive

President Eisenhower was perplexed by his bright but inexperienced deputy, the youngest vice president in history. Eisenhower sent Nixon on a long Asian and Middle Eastern tour in order to improve the young man's foreign policy expertise. Nixon proved an effective diplomat with Pat by his side, making a powerful, serious impression wherever he went. They went home, tired, to discover Nixon's fame had risen to new heights.

Nonetheless, the pair was uneasy. Dick was tense, worried, and on a cocktail of pills to ease those conditions and help him sleep. Pat had disliked leaving her girls behind for two months, and Dick was tense, anxious, and on a cocktail of drugs to relieve those conditions and help him sleep. Checkers had gotten pregnant as well. Dick was dissatisfied with the political climate as well: Senator Joe McCarthy had taken up the anti-Communist banner with a passion that even Nixon despised. Dick promised his wife early in 1954 that he would be done with politics forever.

Nixon, on the other hand, had to stand up when the president suffered a heart attack.

Nixon found the enthusiasm he needed to fill in for Eisenhower and did a solid, dignified job. After his recovery, the president was apprehensive of Nixon's obvious ambition, but the two were re-elected in 1956 by a landslide. Nixon felt like a new man as he began his second term as vice president.

Nixon's reputation for dirty dealings was unquestionably earned. His harsh pragmatism, however, was not always in the service of evil. Nixon became a key figure in the Civil Rights Movement as the 1950s progressed. He became a close friend of Martin Luther King and fought tirelessly to see that the 1957 Civil Rights Act was passed. On progressive topics, he was never ideologically fanatical.

Votes, on the other hand, always came first. When he won the Republican presidential nomination in 1960, as predicted, he had to tread carefully on civil rights issues in order to avoid alienating white Southern supporters. His hesitancy, though, paid him dearly. For a minor parking offence, King was sentenced to four months of hard labour late in the campaign. A phone call from the vice president might have gotten him out in a matter of minutes, but Nixon didn't want to upset the apple cart. Senator Kennedy, Nixon's opponent, intervened instead, benefiting from a boost in the polls.

In 1960, there were a number of other challenges to contend with. Eisenhower appeared hesitant to support his deputy, and Kennedy, who thrashed Nixon in a series of televised debates, was charismatic and in step with the coming progressive era. Nixon did a good job of keeping the vote close.

But defeat was defeat, and Nixon's years in the wilderness began. He returned to California, enraged by electoral fraud, and ran a half-hearted campaign for governor of California in 1962, cutting an unhappy, resentful figure. When Nixon lost, Supreme Court Justice Earl Warren, the former governor whose presidential bid Nixon had thwarted a decade before, burst out laughing.

Peace

Nixon arrived in New York in 1963, unsure of what he wanted to accomplish with his life, and found work in the business world. He was able to travel through Europe and Asia as part of a Pepsi-Cola assignment. He decided to take a detour to Moscow one day while in Finland. He knocked on the door of former Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev, an old foe from his glory days, but Khrushchev was not there.

Nixon's thoughts were drawn back to politics after the assassination of John F. Kennedy in 1963. He was beginning to believe that the country did, in fact, require his services. He informed a pal, "I know the fucking Commie mind." "However, they have no idea who I am."

The evil side of the 1960s became more prominent. Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, the Vietnam War erupted into a bloodbath. A hundred American soldiers died every week by 1967. Nixon didn't have any particularly compelling ideas about how to handle the problem, but he had enough foreign policy experience to make Johnson's critiques sting. Nixon made it apparent early on that he would run for president as a peace candidate.

One requirement for running as a peace candidate was that there had to be a conflict. When signals of a probable power-sharing agreement between North and South Vietnam surfaced, Nixon decided to intervene behind the scenes. He employed a number of persons, notably Chinese-American Anna Chennault, to persuade South Vietnamese President Thieu to reject an agreement, claiming that the conditions would be better under a Nixon administration the next year.

Nixon has always denied interfering in this manner, although the evidence exists. Were any of his political acts as audacious as illegally sabotaging a Vietnam peace treaty in order to win an election?

Despite this, he managed to win the election. Nixon faced out against Hubert Humphrey, a Democrat, and George Wallace, an independent, in a three-way election in 1968. It came at the end of a tumultuous year that saw the assassinations of Robert F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, Jr., both of whom provoked massive riots.

Nixon had evolved into something more than a peace candidate by that point. He was the candidate for both international and domestic stability. He was the confident face of the "forgotten Americans," the pre-'60s generation of ordinary America shocked by the excesses and crises they saw around them. Nixon, who was still on sleeping drugs and anxiety medication, was the voice of reason.

When President Nixon first entered the White House in January 1969, it was a chilly winter day, but he was overjoyed. It was now or never for him. He did, however, have a job on his hands, to put it bluntly. Nixon and his national security adviser Henry Kissinger quickly grasped how serious the situation in Vietnam was. They tried what Nixon called the "Madman Theory": if the North Vietnamese thought he was utterly insane, they may cave in. It was a complete failure.

The 1969 bombing of Cambodia, a neutral country where the North Vietnamese were seeking refuge, was one test of the Madman Theory. This intervention aided the communist Khmer Rouge in seizing power in Cambodia, which they did with ruthlessness.

Philosophy

Dwight D. Eisenhower, with whom he had shared the White House a decade before, was one of the incoming president's idols. Nixon aspired to be as decisive and centrist as Eisenhower. However, the two males had significant disparities.

For one thing, in the company of others, the beaming former general was easygoing and calm. Nixon, on the other hand, despised his freshly jam-packed social calendar. In a crisis, Eisenhower was cool and collected, and he was good at finding compromises; Nixon, on the other hand, was always stoking the fires. Last but not least, Eisenhower was a secure and confident establishment figure, whereas Nixon, the grocer's son, wore a mile-high chip on his shoulder.

What did Nixon want to accomplish with his newfound presidential power? Nothing in particular, as his assistants gradually understood. Nixon was pragmatic from top to bottom, with no true philosophy.

Pat Buchanan, the advisor, phrased it this way: "Neither fish nor fowl." Nixon refused to take a stand on the most sensitive social issues, such as gun control or gay rights. "Get the hell off it when it comes to abortion," he added. He obviously held strong opinions; there are recordings of him ranting about Jews, African Americans, and Ivy Leaguers. But, in terms of politics, he was eternally adaptable, unwilling to take a stand that may cost him votes.

Nothing summed it up better than the phrase "civil rights." Nixon oversaw significant progress in school desegregation, which was the realistic, progressive, and legal thing to do. Yet, in order to keep the Southern support, he carefully avoided claiming credit for it.

In 1970, he and his vice president, Spiro Agnew, presented a renowned piano performance at a dinner, mocking their own racial ineptitude. Nixon started with a traditional American song, but Agnew kept interrupting him with "Dixie," the Confederate anthem.

Aside from his sense of humour, the president was deeply troubled. He was driven by insecurity, which drove him to work harder – and spends less time with Pat and his family.

Some events, such as the shooting of three student demonstrators at Kent State University in May 1970, shook him as well. Nixon awoke at 4:00 a.m. one night, with the horrible pictures from Kent State etched in his mind, and drove his valet to the Lincoln Memorial. They encountered some demonstrators there, and the sleep-deprived president endeavoured – but failed – to appease them. His wandering lasted until breakfast when he was convinced to return home by a distraught team of attendants.

Nixon's moods were still influenced by sleeping drugs and other medications, and he couldn't regulate his alcohol. Three drinks were all it took for his paranoia to skyrocket. In the White House tapes, you can hear the ice cubes tinkling. He's also slurring his words, which you can hear.

He covertly established a tape-recording system in the White House in 1971, concerned about retaining a record of all his judgments. It didn't take long for it to catch him directing the monitoring or sabotage of everyone from political opponents to journalists and Jews.

Diplomacy

During Nixon's first administration, the temperature progressively increased. As he began to plan for the 1972 election, he understood he would need some significant wins. And he got them, despite being disturbed, neurotic, and lacking in ideological passion.

Vietnam dragged on indefinitely, with no end in sight. But to the north, something much greater loomed: communist China. After years of isolation from the West, the warming of US–Chinese relations would be a huge public hit. Nixon was well aware of the situation.

The timing was excellent. Both sides took some tentative steps. The United States table tennis team visited the country in spring 1971 and received a warm welcome. Henry Kissinger was soon on his way to Beijing, his face hidden under a pair of dark sunglasses and a cap. He had told the press that he was suffering from food poisoning in a Pakistani hotel. He was, in reality, preparing for Nixon's momentous visit to China's capital.

Nixon was the best – and only – candidate for the job. Even the American right would trust him by Chairman Mao's side, having earned a name for himself as a diehard anti-Communist. The visit, which took place in February 1972, was a resounding success. He and Pat were awestruck by the pandas and paid a visit to the Ming Tombs. Nixon walked along the Great Wall and declared it to be a "great wall." The American press – as well as the people they reported to back home – were stunned.

It was dubbed "the week that altered the world" by Nixon. He was just as correct on that as he was on the wall.

The warming of relations with China, however, had come at a price. A battle started in the Dominion of Pakistan in March 1971. West Pakistan was waging a violent campaign against East Pakistan's Bengali population, which would soon become Bangladesh. 200,000 people died in six months as a result of the millions that fled to India. The United States provided some assistance to the refugees but hesitated to censure the Pakistani government, which was meant to administer both East and West. Nixon required their assistance in order to travel to China.

Nixon's first term ended on an almost unimaginable hectic note. Nixon's administration made a massive intervention in the US economy in addition to pulling off the China visit. It decoupled the country's money supply from the gold standard, unsure of what would happen next. Nixon gave a spirited, confident speech, despite the lack of a defined plan, and the stock market skyrocketed. What would be the long-term consequences? That wasn't the issue; all the administration needed to do was get through the vote.

Nixon would actually win nearly every state in the 1972 election. But, following his victory, he was even more agitated as usual. He sneered at his opponent, George McGovern, and exchanged a sarcastic remark about the media with Kissinger. Something was on his mind — well, two things.

Vietnam was one among them. Watergate was the other.

Rage

The seeds for Nixon's demise had been sowed over a year before the China trip, in June 1971.

Sunday, June 13 started off brightly; the president's daughter Tricia had married the day before at the White House. The glowing depiction of Nixon's daughter in the New York Times made Nixon quite happy. The Washington Post, on the other hand, was less enthusiastic. Nixon summoned his press secretary and issued an impromptu ban on the publication from the White House. He was prone to temper outbursts.

Nixon was juggling a lot of balls. Preliminary talks with China were beginning, peace talks in Vietnam were progressing admirably, and he was secretly negotiating a treaty with the Soviets. The following catastrophe, on the other hand, appeared out of nowhere.

Nixon heard that the Times had leaked some highly sensitive official documents detailing the genesis of the Vietnam War when he finally started work that Sunday. The Pentagon Papers, as they came to be called, exposed years of rash, ill-informed decision-making.

In terms of politics, this may not have been a major issue for Nixon: his Democratic predecessors, Kennedy and Johnson, fared worse. But the more he considered it, the more concerned he became about the consequences of allowing a leak like this to continue unchecked. What kind of precedent was established? What else might possibly leak? The president had built himself up into a panic attack. He was never one to shy away from a battle.

Nixon's attempted press repression was declared unlawful by the Supreme Court as a result of the ensuing fight with the press. However, as things began to spin out of hand, the commander-in-chief made the decision to fight fire with fire. It was time to toss the rulebook out the window.

Nixon's paranoia grew so strong that he lost interest in the legality of his actions. He formed the Special Investigations Unit and enlisted the help of a ragtag group of misfits to carry out shady operations. All involved knew the unit's mission was to bring down Nixon's foes no matter what it took.

Nixon was hardly the first president to approve of such conduct. Under his predecessors, snooping, suppression, and covert actions in other countries had all been carried out. But the blank check for criminality that he gave his team was something else entirely. And he hadn't exactly entrusted the job to the most qualified individuals.

The break-in at the Watergate office complex, where the Democratic Party was headquartered, in 1972 was so poorly organized that it was ludicrous. The attackers intended to bug Democratic offices, photograph papers, and then sneak across to Capitol Hill to bug George McGovern's office as well. However, they left a massive trail of evidence in their wake and were quickly apprehended by the cops.

The president was unaware of the break-in: on the White House audio, he appears to have had no idea. He could have convincingly denied all knowledge and blamed the incident on rogue operatives. However, this was Richard Nixon, and he decided to go all-in.

It was the cover-up, not the crime, that proved so costly for Alger Hiss all those years ago.

History

Nixon and his team had the chat that became the Watergate scandal's smoking gun on June 23, 1972, six days after the botched break-in. The FBI was looking into the burglars' finances, and it was clear that they were well-connected. H. R. Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, urged that they order the FBI to back off.

Nixon responded, "All right, alright." "All right, that's OK."

The cover-up only intensified. Officials lied under oath, and hush money payments accumulated. The Washington Post received damaging information from a person known as Deep Throat.

Nixon, on the other hand, managed to survive. In fact, he did exceptionally well in the run-up to his reelection. The trip to China, as well as the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks, or SALT – a significant step forward in negotiations with Russia – had altered the narrative. Vietnam was admittedly more difficult; as Nixon put it, bombing "the living bejeezus" out of the North produced poor results. But, with the election approaching, he pulled off one last ruse.

The withdrawal of American soldiers from Vietnam began gradually. Those in authority were well aware that this would result in the Communist North soon retaking the South. In effect, it was a defeat for the United States. However, the impending troop homecoming gave it a good spin. "Peace is near," Kissinger declared to the nation.

Nixon won the election in stunning fashion in 1972, but his fear was understandable. Vietnam was far from being resolved, and Watergate was about to resurface.

Incriminating evidence could be found anywhere, including on Nixon's own White House tapes. Watergate's dizzying frenzy was eventually reduced to a simple struggle over whether the recordings should be made public as proof. Nixon's defeat was a foregone conclusion.

He didn't leave office without one last theatrical outburst. His final farewell to his White House staff was an odd and passionate diatribe in which he expressed some loneliness and melancholy. He went on to say, "My mother was a saint."

Dick and Pat Nixon sailed away in the presidential chopper in August 1974, with Dick flashing a victory V.

Vice President Gerald Ford followed him; the dishonest Spiro Agnew had been ousted in yet another scandal the year before. Nixon was granted a presidential pardon by Ford.

At first, Nixon did not accept his defeat gracefully. But his frantic efforts to clear his identity came to nought. Over the years, he cooled down, wrote a few books, and even returned to international policy. By 1989, when he was asked to speak to China after the Tiananmen Square massacre, he had earned the title of a senior statesman.

Dick was devastated when Pat died in 1993. She was laid to rest at Yorba Linda, California, the town where Dick was born. He chastised the Clintons for failing to attend the funeral. He died a year later, at the age of 81.

"The highest accolade history can award is the label of a peacemaker," he said during his first inauguration, and these words became his tombstone.

The main message in this summary is that Richard Nixon was born into a humble household in rural California, but he worked his way up to earn a law degree. He began his tumultuous political career after World War II, soon becoming the youngest vice president in a century because of his unique style of political ruthlessness. He recovered from his 1960 election loss to John F. Kennedy and was elected president in 1968. His paranoia and wrath contributed to his legendary downfall in the Watergate scandal, despite a number of significant achievements, including a historic visit to China.