by Evan Thomas
Random House 2015
619 pages Biography
When my husband and I began reading Being Nixon by Evan
Thomas, he said that he wanted to understand why Nixon would allow something as
"stupid" as Watergate to happen. When we finished the book this
morning, he said the same thing. "I never could understand why Nixon let
something so stupid to happen." I asked if he didn't learn anything about
Nixon in the 3 months we had spent reading this book out loud to each other.
And then he responded that he had come to see that Nixon's paranoia and lack of
self-understanding had allowed an ugly and arrogant atmosphere to permeate the
White House which enabled his minions to engage in dastardly acts.
Being Nixon attempts to explain, both historically and psychologically, the life of Richard Nixon, the
37th President of the United States. It
is a one-volume, full-life biography and tells stories and anecdotes that
reveal Nixon to be an extremely complex man. The book is over 600 pages long,
but there was little repetition and a never-ending supply of insight that was
fascinating to two adults who lived through the entire era covered by the book.
My husband and I kept our phones handy so that we could look up the time line
and the incidents to refresh our memories.
My husband reminisced about sitting behind Eisenhower and
Nixon in 1956 at the Republican National Convention where he served as a junior
page. He remembered the photograph that was taken of him shaking Nixon's hand
at a campaign rally in 1960. (We tried to find the photograph, but it is buried
in generations of memorabilia).
Watergate is, of course, the watershed moment in the career
of Richard Nixon, and Thomas attempts to show the personality characteristics
that defined the man and led to this moment—from a childhood where he didn't fit
to his role as an elder statesman after he left the White House. Of course, in
a biography, the perspective of the author can't help but find its way into the
narrative, and Thomas's self-described goal is to understand the complex makeup
of the man who wanted to have "peace at the center" of his life, but more
often he was "subject to episodes of venting and lashing out." Thomas
tells us that Nixon was never comfortable socially and was hopelessly,
helplessly awkward.
Thomas says that what he hoped to accomplish with his
biography was to understand what it was like "to actually be Nixon." Most
reviewers agree that he mostly accomplishes his goal. The
Chicago Tribune reviewer concludes that Being Nixon is a
biography of "eloquence and breadth." I have to agree. My husband and
I learned a lot about a time period in the life of our country and in our lives—things
that we probably missed because we were busy creating families and molding
careers.
I also actually learned some, but not enough, about being
Pat Nixon, and I didn't particularly like what I saw. Thomas indicates that Pat
was very supportive but very distant from her husband. I could not get over the
fact that when Nixon decided to resign, he made the decision without conferring
with his family, and when he told his daughters what he planned to do, he had
them go and tell their mother. Her response was "But why?" Yet,
Thomas tells us that Nixon was attentive to his wife, and she to him. Not sure
that was the case.
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