Sherry Chandler

A Fable

The incomparable Lance Mannion tells us a fable, or possibly a foundation myth:

Reading Rick Perlstein’s magnificent Nixonland and in my head watching Richard Nixon nursing his grievances and resentments as he outwits and outmaneuvers one rival after and another, defeats and destroys various political opponents, survives setbacks personal and professional that would have convinced other men that it was not meant to be, I can’t help admiring the man even as I cringe and wince as he crawls and connives and plots and finagles and cheats and lies his way towards the White House, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Watergate.

But it’s really not Nixon himself I’m admiring. It’s his story. The bare bones outline of it. I admire that story because it is a great American story. It’s in fact the American myth.

Nixon’s story has been acted out again and again throughout our history, but usually with this one slight difference.

The hero of the story is a hero.

At least as we like to tell it.

Nixon’s story is the story of the talented and ambitious kid born in obscurity, raised without privilege, lonely and out of place in his family and among his friends and neighbors, working hard, surmounting obstacles, and with each obstacle overcome finding a new one springing up in his path, earning his way, succeeding at long last despite everything.

We know this story because we’ve been told it over and over with the intention of the people telling it to us being that we admire the heroes and heroines of the various versions of the story and model our own story after theirs.

Nixon’s story is exactly the same as Abraham Lincoln’s story.

It’s the same as Barack Obama’s story. And Bill Clinton’s story.

It’s Thomas Edison’s story, and Andrew Carnegie’s, and Mark Twain’s, and Helen Keller’s.

So where did Nixon go wrong? Or did he go wrong? Go read and learn.

Meanwhile, Tom Watson is more direct. If I read him right, he thinks we may still be living in Nixonland:

Recalling Nixon through the rear-view mirror with Watergate stamped into the chrome, we tend to remember the defeated Final Days President, the broken man and his comeback on David Frost. But the Nixon I saw for that brief moment - and the Nixon portrayed in Rick Perlstein’s terrific Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America, was a vibrant politician at the pinnacle who connected with the masses, carving an electorally successful path between the feuding liberal Democrats and their crippling war and the growing right wing class anger of Goldwater and Reagan. That’s the Nixon you see on the cover of Nixonland.

I’m about five chapters into Perlstein’s satisfying reader, and he brings back all that feeling of Nixon’s utter dominance of the political landscape from LBJ’s sad sunset to his own long and dramatic tragedy. And along the way, the characters are dreamily compelling to this child (literally) of the 60s - and amazingly current as well. You’ll find traces of Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton and John McCain in Nixonland, and you’ll discover bits of this presidential race as well. The set pieces remain so very much the same on the stage of our cultural landscape - it’s almost scary how little we’ve changed.

Possibly related posts:

A Fable or a Rant

Not MY commander-in-chief

Glück

How is Al Gore like Richard Nixon?

Great American Novels???

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