I thought I’d finally get around to giving my book review on the above tome. For the purposes of background I have not seen the film although it is sitting on Sky Plus ready for me. I did want to read the book before watching the film.
I’ve read a number of books on Nixon and Watergate. The classic All The President’s Men is probably the one most have heard of (the book is, by necessity, more detailed than the film and doesn’t stop in 1972). I’ve read a much more detailed account called The Wars of Watergate by Stanley Kutler that was much more complex and took an age to plough through but was fascinating in its detail, and also the biography of Nixon called “The Arrogance of Power” in which the behaviour in the 1970s was traced back to the performance and personal life a couple of decades before.
What you always wonder with Nixon, as a total lay-person on him, Watergate and American politics of the time, is how on earth, if everyone professed to know what he was like, did he get elected to the office of President of the United States, let alone be re-elected in 1972 with 60% of the vote and carrying all of the 50 states except Massachusetts (and DC) in a landslide of epic proportions. This was a man who seemed devoid of charisma, devoid of charm, devoid of interpersonal skills, and a crook and a liar.
That is the dilemma I face, and is probably why I am, in this age of fluff, spin, superficiality and banality so fascinated by a character like Richard Nixon and will lap up much that is written about him. I find him more interesting than a JFK or the current incumbent because he seems to be a politician who ascended to the top despite himself. The comparisons with Gordon Brown aren’t worthless, but there is just no way Brown is ever going to garner that sort of support that saw Nixon sweep the 1972 election. Even if Paul Daniels was the Conservative candidate.
I have never seen the Frost / Nixon interviews, probably because I wasn’t interested so much in what happened after Watergate. Hence this book was something new to me, and the subject matter was another addition to my knowledge of this character, as told through the not unsympathetic eyes of David Frost. You sense Frost knew that he owed a lot to this interview and the interviewee, and you also read of a man very sure of himself even if others weren’t. That’s where the book is really good – Frost as the conduit for others. For the Zelnicks of this world who wanted to see Nixon in the dock and wanted to nail him, but knowing they couldn’t do the work for the interviewer (and their reaction to the early interviews and Nixon’s legalese style thwarting Frost are really good parts). Also this interview did wonders for John Birt, which is probably, in hindsight, one of its downsides!
What you got from the book was the sense of tension. The parts of the book relating to arranging and selling the interviews were fascinating, Frost’s take on Nixon’s style of interviewing also really interesting. The transcripts at the back are pretty good, but I felt, in some way, they took a little away from the drama in the first part. That is a minor criticism.
Nixon was Nixon, and you felt a little sorry (well I did) for him as a sort of tragic figure when other leaders, post-him, have got up to malevolence and not been subjected to anywhere near the opprobrium. I don’t know, maybe it’s the softy in me, because in The Arrogance of Power, he comes across as an utter bastard, and I probably think that’s correct. This book made me feel as though the world, not content with ousting an incumbent President, wanted to stick the boot in, and Frost used a scalpel rather than DMs to do it.
Good read, well worth your time if you are interested in this sort of thing.
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