Nixon's Elusive Totality: It Depends on Who Writes the History

"Nixon's Elusive Totality. It depends on Who Writes the History," is a new look at Richard Nixon, one of the most controversial leaders in U.S. history.

Author Lee Huebner was a White House speechwriter for President Nixon, and has taught a university course about him for 25 years. He seeks in this book to look at Nixon "in his "totality" --as President Bill Clinton urged the country to do at Nixon's funeral. Huebner argues that both Nixon's critics and his defenders have missed out on this full story, as he traces in some detail the roots of the man's complexity, from his difficult childhood through his final Watergate crisis in 1973 and 1974, during which, as Nixon himself later put it, "I did myself in."

Nixon had dominated the U.S. political stage since 1948, when his lead role in the controversial Alger Hiss case established his reputation as a leading anti-communist crusader. His negative campaigning style in races for the U.S. House and Senate, and then for the vice-presidency in 1952 also gave him a reputation with many critics as a "hatchet man" and "smear artist." His televised "Checkers Speech" (which saved his career in 1952 by defending himself against false charges of campaign fund misuse), attracted what the was then the largest audience to gather for one event in human history, as did his series of televised presidential campaign debates in 1960 with John F. Kennedy. He became one of only two people to appear five times on a national presidential ballot, serving for eight years as vice-president under President Eisenhower and later for five years as a pathbreaking president. His historic trips to China and then to the Soviet Union in 1972 preceded his record setting re-election victory that Fall.

But then came Watergate.

On his last night in office before his resignation (now over a half century ago) he was assured by his close aide, Henry Kissinger, that history would remember him better than would his contemporaries. Nixon's s response serves as the subtitle of this book: "It depends on who writes the history."