Richard Nixon Buchzusammenfassung - das Wichtigste aus Richard Nixon

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Zusammenfassung von Richard Nixon

Name: Richard Nixon
Rating: 4.3 (112 reviews)
Author: John A. Farrell

John A. Farrell

The Life

4.3 (112 Bewertungen)

37 Min.

Kurz zusammengefasst

'Richard Nixon' by John A. Farrell is a biography that examines Nixon's life and presidency, including the Watergate scandal and foreign policy achievements.

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Krisen & Skandale Geschichte der USA US-Präsidenten Politische Porträts Politik der USA Biografien

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Richard Nixon
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What’s in it for me? Discover the life and personality of America’s infamous thirty-seventh president.

It was the summer of 1945, and victory for the Allies in World War II was assured. The United States needed to prepare for peace. Now, instead of ships and tanks, they needed lawyers to settle contracts.

Lieutenant Richard Nixon had trained in law, although his pre-Navy career was unimpressive. Newly returned from the Solomon Islands, he was sent to an aeronautics complex in Maryland to negotiate with some accountants.

The serious-minded man in his early thirties was taking over from Lieutenant John Renneburg, another Navy officer. They fell into conversation. Renneburg asked Nixon what he planned to do next.

Nixon wasn’t sure. He could stay in service if he wanted. A business career in the glitz of Manhattan was possible; he and his wife, Pat, loved the city. Or there was always his old law firm in his run-down hometown of Whittier, California.

But he’d also just received a letter – followed up by a telephone call late at night, when the long-distance rates were cheaper. A Whittier man called Herman Perry had invited him to run for Congress.

Renneburg was impressed by the ponderous young fellow. He urged Nixon to say yes. At the very least, he mused, Nixon might get some law clients out of it.

As you’ll hear in these blinks, he got a lot more than that.

In these blinks, you’ll learn

how Nixon became the youngest vice president in a century;
why he lost the 1960 election to John F. Kennedy; and
how he ended up on the path to Watergate.

Humility

Thirty-four-year-old Representative Richard Nixon started his term in Congress with glowing write-ups in the press. “As typically American as Thanksgiving,” wrote the Washington Times Herald.

That wasn’t wrong. His parents were an angry Scotch-Irish Protestant called Frank, and Hannah – a quiet, reserved Irish Quaker. When Richard was born in 1913, in a bungalow Frank had built, they were struggling badly. Frank’s aspirations as a lemon grower in the tiny town of Yorba Linda, California, fell flat. He eventually gave up and opened a gas station over in Whittier, which would expand to sell groceries as well.

There were four Nixon boys – Harold, Richard, Donald, and Arthur; a fifth, Edward, arrived much later. Tuberculosis claimed two: Arthur in his childhood, and Harold as a young man, after six years of illness. Frank had ignored doctors’ warnings about drinking the family cow’s raw milk, a known source of TB infection. Reserved, repressed Richard took these tragedies hard.

Yet Dick – as people called him, despite his mother’s protestations – excelled at school. He read books about great men, performed in plays, and played the violin. He even made the football squad, though he was far from a jock; he preferred wearing carefully ironed shirts. In the yearbook of his high-school sweetheart, Ola, he apologized for his shyness. He resolved to study law and enter politics so he could do good.

After four years at Whittier College, he headed to Duke University in North Carolina. He worked hard – both academically and to earn money. In his senior year, he and three other students lived in a two-bed cabin in the woods with no electricity or plumbing.

When Dick graduated in spring 1937, third in his class, he stared failure in the face: he had been rejected by several New York firms, as well as the FBI. After graduation, he sulkily squeezed back into the family car. His mother had gotten him a job at a law firm back in Whittier.

Poor, bitter Dick – never a gracious loser – struggled at first. He made a hash of his very first case, costing his firm a $4,800 settlement, and the prim young Quaker squirmed hideously when handling divorce cases. But he eventually found his feet – and even became a partner. On the side, he made a few local enemies when an entrepreneurial foray into frozen orange juice quickly went bankrupt.

Awkward though Dick was, he knew love when he saw it. He met Thelma Ryan, known as Pat, in a local theater production, and spent months humbly trying to secure a date. Intrigued by his sincerity and drive, she eventually agreed. They married quietly in 1940.

Their happy early years of marriage were shadowed by the specter of war. Dick could have escaped the draft, but he realized that time in service would be vital for anyone wanting a future in politics. In August 1942, he began his naval officer training, and the following year he was off to the South Pacific.

He acquitted himself well, but he was thrilled to return to Pat and discover what their future together might hold. Despite his background, his lack of connections, and his uptightness, he wondered whether he could, nevertheless, go far.

Progress

Dick’s background was humble, but his ascent through college and the Navy made him a model Republican candidate. He impressed everyone with his serious, intelligent speeches about life as a veteran, and he preached a fairly centrist brand of liberalism. His appeal was broad.

But simply making a good impression wasn’t enough. He also had to make his opponent – the Democratic incumbent, Jerry Voorhis – look bad, even though Voorhis’s record was solid.

Tricks

The blockbuster Hiss case confirmed that anti-Communism was a winning formula. So in 1949, still barely established in Washington, Nixon launched a bid for the Senate, marching on the campaign trail to the same drum as before.

His opponent was the Democrat Helen Gahagan Douglas, whom Nixon and his team portrayed as a dangerous Communist sympathizer – just like Voorhis. The tactic was obvious, but effective, and the Machiavellian rising star gained both a Senate seat and the nickname “Tricky Dick.”

Drive

President Eisenhower wasn’t sure what to make of his gifted but green deputy, the youngest vice president in a century. In an effort to beef up the young man’s foreign policy expertise, Eisenhower sent Nixon on a long Asian and Middle Eastern tour. With Pat at his side, Nixon proved an able diplomat; he left a strong, serious impression everywhere he went. They returned home, exhausted, to find Nixon’s reputation skyrocketing.

Yet the couple felt uneasy. Pat had hated leaving her girls behind for two months, and Dick was tense, anxious – and on a cocktail of drugs to relieve those conditions and help him sleep. Even Checkers had gone and gotten pregnant. Dick didn’t much like the tenor of the times politically, either: Senator Joe McCarthy had picked up the anti-Communist banner with a zeal that even Nixon found distasteful. Early in 1954, Dick promised his wife he would soon be through with politics for good.

Peace

Unsure of what to do with himself, Nixon moved to New York in 1963 and found some work in the business world. An assignment for Pepsi-Cola let him travel through Europe and Asia. In Finland one day, he decided to take a detour to Moscow. He knocked on the door of former president Khrushchev, an old foe from his glory days, but Khrushchev was out.

Kennedy’s assassination in 1963 helped turn Nixon’s mind back to politics. He was starting to believe the country needed him after all. “I know the fucking Commie mind,” he told a friend. “But they don’t know mine.”

Philosophy

One of the new president’s idols was the man with whom he had occupied the White House a decade earlier: Dwight D. Eisenhower. Nixon sought to emulate Eisenhower’s decisiveness and centrism. But there were distinct differences between the two men.

For one thing, the beaming former general was easy and relaxed in the company of others. Nixon, on the other hand, detested his newly packed schedule of social engagements. Eisenhower was calm in a crisis and adept at seeking compromises; Nixon would always fan the flames. And last, but by no means least, Eisenhower was a secure and confident member of the establishment – while Nixon, the grocer’s son, had a chip on his shoulder a mile high.

Diplomacy

Temperatures rose steadily during Nixon’s first term. As he started looking ahead to the 1972 election, he realized he needed some big wins. And – troubled, paranoid, and devoid of ideological conviction though he was – he got them.

Vietnam was dragging on; there was no end in sight. But something even bigger lay to the north: Communist China. Isolated from the West for years, the thawing of US–Chinese relations would be a spectacular hit with the public. Nixon knew it.

Rage

Back in June 1971, almost a year before the China trip, the seeds for Nixon’s downfall had been sown.

Sunday, June 13 began well; the president’s daughter Tricia had gotten married at the White House the previous day. Nixon was delighted with the New York Times’ flattering description of his daughter. The Washington Post, however, was not so fulsome. Nixon called his press secretary and impulsively banned the paper from the White House. He was prone to such fits of rage.

History

On June 23, 1972 – six days after the bungled break-in – Nixon and his team had the conversation that became the Watergate scandal’s smoking gun. The FBI was investigating the burglars’ finances, and it would surely soon emerge how well-connected they were. So Nixon’s chief of staff, H. R. Haldeman, suggested they tell the FBI to back off.

“All right, fine,” was Nixon’s response. “Right. Fine.”

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Worum geht es in Richard Nixon?

Richard Nixon: The Life (2017) is a thorough biography of one of the most controversial American presidents. Tracing Nixon’s life from his humble upbringing through his meteoric political ascent to his crashing downfall in the Watergate scandal, it reveals a complex, troubled, and sentimental man.

Wer Richard Nixon lesen sollte

US-politics aficionados
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People looking to deepen their knowledge of American history

Über den Autor

John A. Farrell is a writer and journalist. He previously worked on the Spotlight team at the Boston Globe and has also written biographies of Clarence Darrow and Tip O’Neill. He was a Pulitzer Prize finalist for Richard Nixon: The Life.

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