Abstract
For Richard Nixon history was about the future not the past. When revealing to the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities (better known as the Ervin Committee) that his boss had routinely taped Oval Office conversations in secret, White House aide Alexander Butterfield remarked, “The President is very history-oriented and very history-conscious about the role he is going to play.”3 The recordings were mainly intended to provide source material for the writing of the presidential memoirs that Nixon hoped would shape his grandiose image for posterity. It was the supreme irony that their revelations of his misdeeds were the instrument of the downfall that would largely determine his place in history.
Reputation, reputation, reputation! O! I have lost my reputation, I have lost the immortal part of myself, and what remains is bestial.
William Shakespeare, Othello
The history books will write Richard Nixon in large letters.
President Nixon to his Cabinet, November 11, 19711
Clare Booth Luce [told me in 1972] that each person in history can be summed up in one sentence She said, “You will be summed up, ‘He went to China.’” Historians are more likely to lead with “He resigned the office.”
Richard Nixon, 19902
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Preview
Unable to display preview. Download preview PDF.
Notes
H. R. Haldeman, The Haldeman Diaries: Inside the Nixon White House (New York: Putnam, 1994), 374.
Quoted in Stanley I. Kutler, ed., Abuse of Tower: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: Touchstone, 1997), xiv.
The cartoon is reproduced and analyzed in Daniel Frick, Reinventing Richard Nixon: A Cultural History of an American Obsession (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2008), 227, 229. It can also be viewed at The New Yorker http://cartoonbank.com.
Quoted in Jonathan Aitken, Nixon: A Life (London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1993), 535.
Michael Schudson, Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past (New York: Basic Books, 1992), 187.
Monica Crowley, Nixon in Winter (New York: Random House, 1998), 308.
Richard Nixon, RN: The Memoirs (New York: Grosset and Dunlap, 1978), 1084.
See also his Frost interview remarks quoted in Joan Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 341.
George Gallup, Jr., “‘Watergate’ Twenty Years Later,” in The Gallup Poll: Public Opinion 1992 (Wilmington, DE: Scholarly Resources, 1993), 105
Gerald Ford, A Time to Heal: The Autobiography of Gerald R. Ford (New York: Harper, 1979), 178.
For discussion, see Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913–62 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1987)
Iwan Morgan, Nixon (London: Arnold, 2002), esp. Chapter 2.
See, for example: Earl Mazo, Nixon: A Personal and Political Portrait (New York: Harper, 1959)
Ralph de Toledano, Nixon, 2nd ed. (New York: Duell, Sloan & Pearce, 1960).
These studies also conflated Nixon’s family history with that of the United States, a theme more extensively emphasized later in Edwin Hoyt, The Nixons: An American Family (New York: Random House, 1972).
John Kenneth Galbraith, “The Good Old Days,” New York Review of Books, June 29, 1978, 3.
For similar critiques, see Richard Rovere, “Richard the Bold,” New Yorker, June 19, 1978, 96–97
John Osborne, “White House Watch: R. Nixon, His Book,” New Republic, May 27, 1978, 9
Daniel Schorr, “Nixon: Wrestling with Himself,” Progressive, August 1978, 41.
James MacGregor Burns, “A Final Appeal to History,” New York Times Book Review, June 11, 1978, 54.
Nixon, RN, 762–763 (quotation), 889, 1033; Frick, Reinventing Richard Nixon, 64–76. For discussion of the late 1970s popular mood, see Bruce Schulman, The 1970s: The Great Shift in American Culture, Society, and Politics (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2001)
Dominic Sandbrook, Mad as Hell: The Crisis of the 1970s and the Rise of the American Right (London: Allen Lane, 2011).
Stanley Kutler, ed., Watergate: The Fall of Richard M. Nixon (St James, NY: Brandywine Press, 1996), 213.
Richard Nixon, Six Crises (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1962), 69.
David Frost, “I Gave them a Sword:” Behind the Scenes of the Nixon Interviews (London: Macmillan, 1978), 270
Stephen Ambrose, Nixon: Ruin and Recovery 1973–1990 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1991), 566.
Richard Nixon, In the Arena: A Memoir of Victory, Defeat and Renewal (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1990), 276–277, 331–332.
For analysis of how the Reagan White House’s scandal management drew lessons from Watergate, see Robert Busby, Reagan and the Iran-Contra Affair: The Politics of Presidential Recovery (New York: Palgrave, 1997).
Jon Wiener, “Inside the Nixon Liebrary,” Nation, September 1990, 242–245; Frick, Reinventing Richard Nixon, 182–198
Bostock quoted in Christopher Goffard, “A New Take on Watergate at Nixon Library,” Los Angeles Times, April 1, 2011, www.LATimes.com/news/local/.
For the historical significance of presidential libraries in general, see Benjamin Hufbauer, Presidential Temples: How Memorials and Libraries Shape Public Memory (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2005).
David Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow: The History of an Image (New York: Norton, 2003).
Stephen Ambrose also charts Nixon’s foreign policy interest in the first two volumes of his biography: The Education of a Politician 1913–62 and The Triumph of a Politician, 1962–72 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1989)
Richard Nixon, The Real War (New York: Warner, 1980), 3 [quotation], 96–125, 279–306
Peter Carroll, It Seemed Like Nothing Happened: The Tragedy and Promise of America in the 1970s (New York: Holt, Rinehart & Winston, 1982), 343.
Richard Nixon, Real Peace (New York: Warner, 1984)
Richard Nixon, No More Vietnams (New York: Arbor House, 1984), 237
Richard Nixon, 1999: Victory without War (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1988), 321.
See Hoff, Nixon Reconsidered; and Melvin Small, The Presidency of Richard Nixon (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1999).
Foreign policy critiques include: William P. Bundy, A Tangled Web: The Making of Foreign Policy in the Nixon Presidency (New York: Hill & Wang, 1998)
Jeffrey P. Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1998)
Larry Berman, No Peace, No Honor: Nixon, Kissinger, and Betrayal in Vietnam (New York: Free Press, 2001)
J. Brooks Flippen, Nixon and the Environment (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2000)
Dean Kotlowski, Nixon’s Civil Rights: Politics, Principle, and Policy (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001) exemplify domestic reassessment.
Robert Sam Anson, Exile: The Unquiet Oblivion of Richard Nixon (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1984), 235.
Larry Martz, “The Road Back,” and “Interview: The Sage of Saddle River,” Newsweek, May 19, 1986, 26–33.
Greenberg, Nixon’s Shadow, 303. See also, Schudson, Watergate in American Memory, 193; and Thomas J. Johnson, The Rehabilitation of Richard Nixon: The Media’s Effect on Collective Memory (New York: Garland, 1995), 6.
Larry Sabato, Feeding Frenzy: How Attack Journalism has Transformed American Politics (New York: Free Press, 1991)
James Fallows, Breaking the News: How the Media Undermine American Democracy (New York: Vintage, 1996); Gallup, “Watergate Twenty Years Later,” 105.
Marvin Kalb, The Nixon Memo: Political Respectability, Russia and the Press (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 144–159; Crowley, Nixon in Winter, 127–129.
Peter Baker, The Breach: Inside the Impeachment and Trial of William J. Clinton (New York: Berkley, 2001), 134–135, 121, 343.
Party strategies are also discussed in Nicol C. Rae and Colton C. Campbell, Impeaching Clinton: Partisan Strife on Capitol Hill (Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2004). For Nixon’s charges of excessive partisanship against Conyers in 1974, see RN, 990.
Bob Woodward, Shadow: Five Presidents and the Legacy of Watergate (New York: Simon & Schuster, 1999), 515.
James T. Patterson, The Restless Giant: America from Watergate to Bush v. Gore (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005), 251–252.
Ann H. Coulter, High Crimes and Misdemeanors: The Case against Bill Clinton (Washington, DC: Regnery, 1998)
William J. Bennett, The Death of Outrage: Bill Clinton and the Assault on American Ideals (New York: Free Press, 1998)
Paul Johnson, A History of the American People (New York: Perennial, 1999), 917–923, 951–961.
James Pfiffner, The Character Factor: How We Judge America’s Presidents (College Station TX: Texas A & M University Press, 2004), chapter 6 (quotation p. 139).
See also Rick Shenkman, “Remember Watergate?” History News Network, July 7, 2003, http://hnn.us/articles/1553.html.
This discussion is based on Robert Busby, Defending the American Presidency: Clinton and the Lewinsky Scandal (New York: Palgrave, 2001), 170–214.
John Nichols, “Arthur Schlesinger v. the Imperial Presidency,” Nation, March 1, 2007
Andrew Rudalevige, The New Imperial Presidency: Renewing Presidential Power after Watergate (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 2006)
Charlie Savage, Takeover: The Return of the Imperial Presidency and the Subversion of American Democracy (Boston: Little, Brown, 2007)
James P. Pfiffner, Power Play: The Bush Presidency and the Constitution (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2008).
Paul Krugman, “Standard Operating Procedure,” New York Times, June 3, 2003
John W. Dean, Worse than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush (Boston: Little, Brown, 2004)
Chris Matthews comments on “Plamegate” on MSNBC’s “Hardball,” September 30, 2003.
Stanley Herschensohn, An American Amnesia: How the U.S. Congress Forced the Surrender of South Vietnam and Cambodia (New York: Beaufort Press, 2010)
Dennis Prager interview, “Professor Bruce Herschensohn on Amnesia,” December 23, 2010, Ellis Washington Report, www.elliswashingtonreport.com/.
House Committee on the Judiciary Majority Staff Report to Chairman John C. Conyers, Jr., Reining in the Imperial Presidency: Lessons and Recommendations Relating to the Presidency of George W. Bush (Washington, DC: Government Printing Office, 2009).
Patricia Cohen, “John Dean’s Role at Issue in Nixon Tapes Feud,” New York Times, February 1, 2009
Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin, Silent Coup: The Removal of a President (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991) [the publisher stopped selling the book after the court case but it can be read on www.silentcoup.com. John Dean’s Watergate memoir, originally published in 1976 was re-issued with an afterword that trashed attempts at Nixon revisionism. See Blind Ambition: The End of the Story (New York: Polimedia, 2009).
Rick Shenkman, “The Watergate Transcript Controversy: The Story Behind the Story,” History News Network, February 5, 2009, http://hnn.us/articles/61160.html; Len Colodny, “Hidden History: The Day Nixon Lost His Presidency,” The Nixon Era Times, undated, www.watergate.com/stories/watergate.asp.
For a statement of this thesis posted on his Nixon Era Center website, see Peter D. Klingman, “What Did The President Know and When Did He Know It? Redefining Richard Nixon’s Guilt and John Dean’s Role in the Watergate Cover-Up,” www.watergate.com/stories/watergate.asp; Robert A. Schneider (AHR editor), “‘The Nixon Tapes,’ an Author, and the American Historical Review,” History News Network, February 9, 2009, http://hnn.us/articles/61694.html; Clark Hoyt, “They Still Have the Nixon Tapes to Kick Around,” New York Times, February 21, 2009.
Joan Hoff, email to HNN, undated, reproduced in HNN Hot Topics: The Watergate Transcript Controversy, February 4, 2009, http://hnn.us/articles/61197. For Hoff’s more extensive assessment of the tapes issue, including detailed criticism of Kutler’s Abuse of Rower editing, see Joan Hoff, “Why the Nixon Tapes Pose Problems for Scholars, John Dean, and the President,” The Nixon Era Times, www.watergate.com/stories/watergate.asp.
Joan Hoff, “Researcher’s Nightmare: Studying the Nixon Presidency,” Presidential Studies Quarterly, 26 (Winter, 1996), 259–275
James Worsham, “Nixon’s Library Now a Part of NARA: California Facility Will Hold All Documents and Tapes from a Half-Century Career in Politics,” Prologue, 39 (Fall, 2007), www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/fall/nixon-lib.html; Gillian Flaccus, “Federal Archivists Take Control of Nixon Library,” Washington Post, July 12, 2007.
Geoff Shephard, The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President: Inside the Real Watergate Conspiracy (New York: Sentinel, 2008)
Adam Nagourney, “Watergate Becomes a Sore Point at Nixon Library,” New York Times, August 6, 2010
Guy Adams, “Nixon’s backers make last stand over Watergate,” The Independent, August 14, 2010, www.indepndent.co.uk. The full text of the Nixon Foundation letter can be accessed through a link [Nixon stalwarts’ 158-page critique] in Goffard, “A New Take on Watergate at Nixon Library.”
Karin Tanabe, “Nixon library re-examines scandal,” Politico, April 1, 2011, http://dyn.politico.com/click
Jon Wiener, “At the new Watergate Gallery, the truth finally wins out,” Los Angeles Times, April 5, 2011
Robert Johnson, “The Nixon Library’s Watergate Exhibit,” History News Network, April 11, 2011, http://hnn.us.blogs/entries/138399.html.
For a critical view by the wife of the Nixon Foundation chair, see Anne Walker, “The New Watergate,” The New Nixon Blog, April 5, 2011, http://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2011/04/the-ne w-watergate.
Goffard, “A New Take on Nixon at the Watergate Library;” Maarja Krusten, “What Role Should a Presidential Library Play?” History News Network, May 3, 2010, http://hnn.us/articles/125934.html; Hufbauer, Presidential Temples.
Naftali quoted in Wiener, “At the new Watergate Gallery, the truth finally wins out;” de Tocqueville quoted in Lexington, “Two Cheers for America,” Economist, September 19, 2009.
Editor information
Copyright information
© 2012 Michael A. Genovese and Iwan W. Morgan
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Morgan, I.W. (2012). Richard Nixon, Reputation, and Watergate. In: Genovese, M.A., Morgan, I.W. (eds) Watergate Remembered. The Evolving American Presidency Series. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011985_6
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137011985_6
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-0-230-11650-4
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-01198-5
eBook Packages: Palgrave Political & Intern. Studies CollectionPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)