"At Least He Made the Trains Run on Time": The New Evaluations of Richard Nixon

A flood of recent scholarship has emerged on the life and times of Richard Nixon. Much of this scholarship, taking a prompt from Hoff, have been comprehensive works on the entire period of Nixon's presidency which reassess the common-held perception of Nixon as a reactionary evil genius. One of the best of these comprehensive works is Melvin Small's The Presidency of Richard Nixon. Melvin Small is a professor at Wayne State University who has written extensively on the Vietnam War and American foreign policy. In The Presidency of Richard Nixon, Small presents a concise but thorough analysis of the major themes of Nixon's presidency. Rather than heavy reliance on sifted primary documents and official papers, Small relies on secondary research, interview comments, and memoir excerpts in an apparent attempt to get to know the "real" Nixon. Small's work is a good synthesis of many of the prevalent new interpretations (especially Hoff's) and is a good starting point for enthusiasts of thematic elements as opposed to the hum-drum of blow-by-blow everyday accounts. Like Hoff, Small presents an administration that was surprisingly strong on the domestic front, grossly overrated on the international front, and not the source of all things indecent and unholy as those with memories of the period would have people believe. The one drawback to Small's account is that in his attempt to de-centralize Watergate, he treads perilously close to dismissing it.

Bruce Kuklick comments that Small's organization permits "the reader to see the development of policy in a certain area over an extended period." Small's thematic approach prevents Watergate from "overwhelm[ing] our understanding of the early 1970s. Kuklick concludes that Small "is devastating at showing the way politics debased Nixon as a human being," and furthers the Hoff thesis that "the core contest for understanding Nixon is American public culture." Larry Madaras praises Small's organization for "skirt[ing] the myopia of day-to-day events and clarify[ing] the successes and failures of of Nixon's foreign and domestic policies." Madaras concludes, "the former president [who once expressed his belief that history would remember him well but historians would not] would not have liked this book, but Small has delivered the most balanced and sympathetic treatment Nixon is likely to receive from historians now or in the future." Iwan W. Morgan calls the work, "the best single-volume study yet written on the Nixon administration." Morgan also praises Small for treating Nixon's "achievements and failures as president in an even-handed and judicious fashion."

David Greenberg calls Small's work "systematic and straightforward," and that it provides a model of how to write about emotionally fraught subjects from the recent past." Greenberg further praises Small for being "charitable without polemically belaboring the 'surprisingly' liberal tenor of Nixon's domestic programs." Greenberg is critical of Small's chapters on Watergate. Small's assessment "of the greatest constitutional crisis of the twentieth century winds up reading . . . almost like a post-script." Furthermore, Small's "compartmentalized schema underplays the interconnections among policy, politics and scandal - and the powerful magnetic force at the center that pulled them all together."

Another cue that Hoff can claim responsibility for giving to the academic world is the one that resulted in a plethora of splinter studies. These studies seek not to evaluate Nixon's tenure in its entirety, but instead focus on one particular aspect. Such normally occurs in this era of specialization and whenever comprehensive works awaken curiosities about such specialty areas. One aspect that Hoff and Small both found to be of particular interest was Nixon's record on the environment. Small went so far as to declare Nixon "the most environmentally conscious president since Theodore Roosevelt,"(p. 309). J. Brooks Flippen, a scholar of environmental history at Southeastern Oklahoma State University has responded to Hoff and Small with the aptly titled Nixon and the Environment, a comprehensive study of Nixon's environmental record. Brooks declares that "Nixon was no environmentalist," and he felt the environmental movement was a mere political fad that grew into a radical leftist threat. However, Brooks does point to significant achievements such as the establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Council on Environmental Quality. Drawing upon scores of archival material, government documents and periodicals, Brooks portrays a Nixon very similar to Hoff's: a purely political animal who developed an environmental policy not out of belief in the idea, but in an effort to win votes and counter the strength of "Ecology Ed" Muskie.

Michael Magliari states that Flippen "is under no illusions about Richard Nixon as a lover of nature." However, Fippen "constructs a detailed case for ranking Nixon among the top three environmental presidents of the twentieth century." David Greenberg states that Nixon and the Environment is one of the books that offers "an important corrective to the glib mischaracterizations that would reinvent Nixon as the ideological kin of Kennedy and Johnson." Under Flippen's microscope, "Nixon emerges as a reluctant, almost accidental environmentalist." Of the work, Greenberg states that it "should stand for some time as the definitive word on the subject. Despite Flippen "sounding like a revisionist," he "has no qualms about showing his colors on environmental issues." Karl Jacoby praises Flippen for addressing "familiar topics of the Nixon administration [such] as Vietnam and Watergate," while placing "those subjects in a new context, illuminating their interplay with Nixon's environmental policymaking.

Robert Gottlieb disagrees with the assessment of Nixon as "the twentieth century's environmental President." Instead, Gottlieb argues that "new environmental movements" and "advocates like Ralph Nader" should be credited for "significantly [shaping] the political discourse" of the era. In Gottlieb's view, "the idea of a more structural challenge to the urban-industrial order implicit in the new environmental advocacy (that Nixon indeed feared) is a more fitting legacy . . . than the backroom politics described," by Flippen. Denise Scheberle criticizes Flippen's organization "based upon a timeline of the Nixon years, rather than on central ideas or events." The organization, "is well-suited for readers who want to trace environmental episodes in the White House," but "it makes it difficult for others who want to understand Nixon's position over time on any particular environmental law or topic."

In a day and age when presidents have considerable influence on the economy, it is no surprise to see a focus from both Hoof and Small on the Nixon economy. The venerable Allen J. Matusow responded to this particular area with Nixon's Economy: Booms, Busts, Dollars, and Votes. To students of Contemporary U.S. history, Allen J. Matusow needs no introduction. Matusow, of Rice University, has written extensively on the late 1960s including the groundbreaking work The Unraveling of America: A History of Liberalism in the 1960s. Much like Hoff's study of the Nixon economy, Matusow focuses on the role of Texas governor John Connally, who became Nixon's secretary of the treasury in 1971. Echoing Hoff's theme of Nixon's "aprincipled nature," Matusow asserts that Connally's plan "contradicted everything Nixon was supposed to believe." However, the plan "helped reassert [Nixon's] economic leadership and reclaim the Economic Issue." Thus, "in 1972, everything, even the economy, worked out for Richard Nixon." It was only after 1972 that "everything went wrong.," (p. 5). Ultimately, Nixon's strategy "demonstrated the dangers of activism and exposed the inadequacies of the usual tools of policy," (p. 307). Drawing on a wide variety of sources, Matusow makes a very convincing argument. He does, however, give Nixon a little too much credit for giving birth to conservative "tight money . . . policies" through his own mismanagement, (p. 308). Gerald Ford's lapel-button solution to the country's economic woes certainly deserve some credit. It is also hard to discount the original "new democrat" Jimmy Carter's insistence on surrounding himself with old democrats. In light of this, Nixon alone cannot possibly be held liable for spawning the pseudo-conservative economic anarchists who have graced the political scene since "The Gipper" came to Washington.

Nigel Bowles declares, "We shall not soon find an account of policy-making in the White House that throws so much light on the way in which the thirty-seventh president . . . conducted the country's economic business - nor one that illuminates Mr. Nixon's understanding and practice of politics - as Professor Matusow's." Larry Madaras states that "Matusow writes well and makes institutional history clear and interesting." Madaras further comments that Matusow's work is "inside history at its best and worst." However, Madaras is slightly critical of Matusow's conclusions as seeming "overly cynical." William C. Berman states that Matusow's work "is replete with penetrating and often startling insights, sharp analysis, and impressive research."

Steven Horwitz praises Matusow for his "extensive use of archival materials," and the "careful documentation of the role played by well-known economists in the Nixon administration." Expanding on the theme of modern presidents as strictly political animals, Horwitz states that Nixon simply personified, "an era when politicians are permanently campaigning, so that their explicitly stated goal, like Nixon's, is to get themselves and their party reelected."

Foreign policy is the one area in which Nixon is traditionally given the most credit. Hoff and Small disagree that this should be so, especially in the area of Vietnam. While Nixon has been given (somewhat begrudgingly) credit for the Paris Peace Accords which ostensibly ended the Vietnam War, Hoff and Small both differ. They paint a Nixon administration that unnecessarily prolonged an already unnecessary war and secretly widened it in such an ineffective way that it destabilized not only Vietnam, but Laos and Cambodia as well. Ultimately, Nixon bungled a real opportunity for a real, workable peace. Larry Berman agrees. Berman is a Political Science professor at the University of California-Davis who has written several books on the Vietnam War and the U.S. Presidency. One of these books is No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger and Betrayal in Vietnam. While Berman makes fantastic use of declassified documents and audio tapes, he fails in that he is far too judgmental in his assessment. The very use of the word "betrayal" denotes solidarity with a sentiment espoused by American Rightists and exiled South Vietnamese officials. No mention of why U.S. involvement in Vietnam was unnecessary to begin with. No mention of how Nixon and Kissinger had absolutely no intention of "abandoning" South Vietnam, planning all the while to prop the regime up with money, equipment and massive bombings. No mention of how South Vietnam was a corrupt construct built on the pillars of self-interest and political repression. No mention of South Vietnam's million-man modern army's apparent impotence. Berman seems angry, and through that anger, refuses to put everything in proper context, choosing judgement over assessment. Thus, Berman becomes less a historian than a propagandist. Despite this, Berman does an excellent job of airing the "Nixinger" dirty laundry so dutifully soiled by the clandestine peace negotiations.

Carol Eisenberg states that "Berman does an exemplary job of showing how the peace negotiations fell apart in December 1972." However, Berman "muddies the waters by his repeated suggestion that Kissinger and Nixon betrayed the South Vietnamese regime by bludgeoning it into a disadvantageous peace agreement." This is particularly frustrating to Eisenberg since all the while "the entire thrust of Berman's narrative is to show the exact opposite." Eisenberg further castigates Berman for "endorsing the notion that the Nixon administration handed South Vietnam to the Communists." Philip Zelikow writes that while Berman believes that "Nixon and Kissinger never expected peace," and were "prepared to violate the accords they negotiated," his "evidence does not sustain such a neat indictment." George C. Herring calls the work a "stinging indictment of the secret negotiations that ended the war" and "a valuable addition to the literature" but that it "occasionally lapses into expose' mode."

In exploring Nixon, many writers have painted his Congressional career with the same brush that his presidency is painted with: a malevolent evil genius. Nixon is portrayed as the great low-blow specialist who excelled in the grand tradition of dirty politics. While neither Hoff nor Small explored this aspect of Nixon's career, many of the same themes are presented by Irwin F. Gellman in his work The Contender: Richard Nixon: The Congress Years. Gellman, a Franklin Roosevelt scholar and professor at Chapman University, seeks to reevaluate many of the commonly-held perceptions of Nixon as "a practitioner of skullduggery and the quintessential 'Red-baiter.'," (p. 3). Gellman instead states that "Rarely do Nixon's biographers concede that his challengers lacked managerial, tactical, and ideological skills," (p. 453). Gellman draws upon official and secondary sources to paint a picture of Nixon that is strikingly similar to the one put forth by Hoff and Small: a political pragmatist whose actions were based largely on perceived threats and political realities rather than a principled ideologue.

Bruce Kuklick is critical of Gellman's "ugly writing, with regular errors of diction and grammar, that often muddle's the author's meaning." Furthermore, Kuklick criticizes Gellman for "quoting Nixon and other characters at length without considering to whom remarks were addressed or what their context was." However, Kuklick praises Gellman's "massive research . . . in the primary sources." Echoing Hoff's thesis of Nixon's "aprincipled nature" Kuklick states, "the sad aspect of Gellman's book is that it allows us to see Richard Nixon not as a malevolent genius, but as the product of our communal political life. Henry Graff criticizes some of Gellman's errors and the fact that the book, "does not register the nuances of what happened."

The works reviewed here are by far not the last word on Richard Nixon, nor should they be. While these works represent a real attempt at objective review of a topic still relatively close to the surface for many, a danger always exists of going too far back in the opposite direction. Rather than being too harsh on Nixon, the interpretations can always shift to being too lenient. In an era when presidents regularly are excused for offenses that Nixon would have been publicly crucified for, it is easy to become cynical to the point of longing for an earlier time when Nixon, in his own way, "made the trains run on time." If historical interpretation is a reflection (and in some way, an assessment) of the time in which it was written, it then becomes a quest not to practice restraint in judging Nixon, but to practice restraint in judging the present. Contemporary historians are hampered by many things. Not the least of these things are the collective living memories and the residual emotions that always seems to accompany them. Try as they may, humans are not completely objective, especially about events they lived through and people they knew. Nowhere is this phenomenon more apparent than in the collective memory's assessment of Richard Nixon. But as the country moves farther and farther away from the early 1970s and bigger and better abuses of power have been brought to light since then, it is gradually becoming easier to sift objective evaluation from knee-jerk response. In her 1994 book Nixon Reconsidered, Joan Hoff postulated that perhaps the time had come for an objective analysis of Richard Nixon's presidency. In Hoff's assessment, Nixon "achieved more than most of us would like to admit," (p. 3). Hoff's study presents Nixon's administration as a "case study of the strengths and weaknesses of the modern presidency," and Nixon himself as no better or worse than any president before or since, (p. 13). Hoff focuses on Nixon's domestic and foreign policy in an attempt to shift the focus away from the Watergate scandal. Whether it was Hoff, the sudden emergence of adequate historical perspective, the death of Nixon himself, or the jogging of the collective memory due to the troubled presidency of Bill Clinton, scholars have responded to the call.