Before The Fall – William Safire, 1975 ★★★★

Run of the Milhous

From 1966 to 1973, William Safire was one of Richard Nixon’s top speechwriters. In Before The Fall, Safire makes use of his vantage point as crafter of the Nixon message to relate everything he saw, and much of what he didn’t, of Nixon’s triumphant, calamitous presidency.

Among the things he missed was the Watergate break-in which forced Nixon’s resignation. As that was dark ops and Safire was in the business of public relations, his orbit lay well outside the infamous Plumbers breaking into Democratic headquarters.

Yet this didn’t protect Safire from being bugged when Attorney General John Mitchell pegged him as a potential security leak.

A reason for suspicion? Safire was friendly with journalists, including a few who were unabashed Nixon critics. Never mind mixing with the media was part of Safire’s brief from Nixon Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman. Suspicion, Safire notes, came from the top:

If there had not been a botched-up break-in at Democratic headquarters, there surely would have been another Watergate, another incident that would have exposed the train of crimes done under the guise of “national security” or “domestic security” or just plain security.

Reading that passage, you might think Safire is thick with regret on casting his lot with Nixon. In fact, Before The Fall is a rather positive account about great deeds being done against mighty odds. This was a problem for Safire when it came to getting published; after paying a hefty advance, William Morrow & Co. rejected the manuscript because, as Safire puts it, “it did not join in the general revulsion.”

Safire explains that revulsion was a tide the Nixon Presidency was swimming against back when Watergate was just a hotel.

Safire's book includes photocopies of speeches with handwritten notes like these by Nixon. Safire notes Nixon's deft ability to pull engaging ideas and phrases from different sources. Here in 1969 Nixon seizes with yellow highlighter on a pregnant phrase: "silent majority."
Image from https://www.bostonglobe.com/news/nation/2019/11/02/echoes-silent-majority-years-after-nixon-speech/sBIX0rSysQfxHYhV4LO4bN/story.html

Nixon entered office confronted by bitter opposition from progressives, liberal Democrats, academics, union leaders, and much of the press. The unprecedented publication of government secrets known as the Pentagon Papers was all about undermining Nixon during the Vietnam peace talks, Safire writes, even though those secrets were not of his making. When Nixon’s signature was inscribed on a plaque left behind the lunar surface after man landed on the Moon, Safire notes how The Washington Post complained about it:

Nixon, who would ultimately be forced to resign for the abuse of power, all his life was on the receiving end of powerful abuse.

It is a point Safire harps on again and again, even while acknowledging it no excuse for government spying and lawbreaking. Nixon was a bully who had been bullied a lot. Safire recalls a comment the President made in 1971: “Most people are good not because of love, but because of fear. You won’t hear that in Sunday School, but it’s true.”

Having such a character at the center makes Before The Fall compelling reading. It certainly is a breather from the puffery you usually get from Presidential loyalists. Still, Safire resists the then-popular image of Nixon as villain, pointing out how his values and worldview aligned with most of the nation he led, whom he dubbed the “Silent Majority.” Not only was Nixon inherently decent, but he understood and tapped into the actuating drive of what it was to be American.

Nixon's positive qualities included boldness and decisiveness. He moved quickly to open doors with Red China, Safire writes, because he had to: "All the Chinese leaders were in their seventies, all had gone through the mystical experience of a thirty-year revolution, and all would probably go at once – that was why this was the time to move."
Image from https://www.historytoday.com/archive/us_presidents/richard-m-nixon

“People come first, and government is their servant,” went one free-market Nixon speech during his run for the Republican nomination in 1968. “The best government is closest to the people, and most involved with people’s lives. Government is formed to protect the individual’s life, property, and rights, and to help the helpless – not to dominate a person’s life or rob him of his self-respect.”

Nixon talked like a Republican, but as Safire notes, his presidency was full of liberal milestones. He ended the war in Vietnam, ditched the gold standard, and most dramatically, began diplomatic relations with Communist China. Even when he pushed back against his progressive predecessor’s Great Society policies, he replaced them not with massive budget cuts but rather what he dubbed the “New Federalism” of revenue sharing, eschewing Big Government spending but not the charity by giving state and local government more say in domestic spending and social policy.

Safire, a moderate who acknowledges some liberal social views of his own, marveled at Nixon’s ability to get things done:

Always considered a man of the political right, Nixon’s conservative coloration (particularly its anti-Communist hue) had enabled him to be progressive with relative impunity to his hard-core constituency, often to the surprise of his advisers.

Safire writes that he first met Nixon in Moscow in 1959, when the then-Vice President found himself in a debate about the American way of life with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. Safire, a public-relations executive at the time, was impressed with the polite yet vigorous way Nixon handled Khrushchev’s communist barbs.

“He’d be a good President,” Safire recalls thinking.

While Nixon pushed back and made his points during an impromptu debate with Premier Khrushchev, Safire snapped away with a camera. His and other images taken that day helped sell the then-vice president as able to go toe-to-toe with the Soviets.
Photo by Elliott Erwitt from https://www.magnumphotos.com/newsroom/politics/elliott-erwitt-behind-the-image-the-kitchen-debate/

The book then fast-forwards to Nixon as he prepared the groundwork for a 1968 run. While working as a lawyer in Manhattan, Nixon began to assemble his team, including Safire, focused on winning over Republicans by campaigning for them in the 1966 mid-term elections:

If Nixon had anything, it was a sense of timing, an instinct for the ebb and flow of public boredom in men seeking to pique the public’s interest. He had been in the wilderness from 1963 through 1965; he was in the public eye again for a few months in 1966; now he would recede into the background again for a while, letting them come to him...

Safire keeps himself very much in the picture, if seldom at the center. He recalls the surge of ebullient patriotism he felt walking to his office in the Old Executive Building, just a few steps from the White House, and the surprise of being summoned by loudspeaker at a Super Bowl because Nixon wanted some remarks drafted.

Being a speechwriter meant being on call to offer ideas, not just spin. He quotes himself speaking up several times in staff meetings, usually with positive results. Nixon did a lot of talking, and writing, with his writers, encouraging some lively internal debates.

Safire looks at the camera in a shot taken on Air Force Two in 1972, conferring with Vice President Spiro Agnew (at far left). As the pugnacious vice president gave Nixon a voice to push back against critics, Safire was assigned to write for him. To the right of Safire is Pat Buchanan, valued by Nixon for his hard-right spin.
Image from https://whcacannonball.blogspot.com/p/vice-president-agnews-trip-to-new.html

He got on well with most of President’s men. Haldeman was a secretive ramrod who warned his staff on the first day about making “end runs,” yet Safire found him supportive and loyal, and fairly receptive. Henry Kissinger, the National Security Adviser, was brilliant if brutal to his staff, an egomaniac with a charming way of acknowledging this.

Attorney General John Mitchell was cagey and insular, a quiet backer of liberal policies who actually pushed back when Nixon considered a domestic spying plan in 1970. But he was part of a larger problem. Safire writes: “On a personal level, I can say, “He was always nice to me,” before adding, “but the son of a bitch bugged my telephone.”

Nixon himself was laser-focused on re-election from the moment he walked into the Oval Office, making sure his speechwriters were, too:

“Please, Bill” – the President leaned forward and tapped my knee – “don’t try to please the press by saying something new all the time. Keep saying what works. Tom Dewey told me you have to tell people something at least four times before they remember it.”

That was a big part of the problem as Safire saw it; Nixon was so driven he couldn’t relax. This fed his need to know what the Democrats were up to in 1972. Even if he didn’t approve the break-in at Watergate himself, he fueled a mindset that drove others with fewer scruples.

“Nixon’s Dr. Jekyll worried about Nixon’s Mr. Hyde, and usually tried to suppress him, but mostly only tried to conceal him,” Safire writes.

The book is very long, but as it jumps from topic to topic, it manages to be a lively read. There is a chapter on school desegregation (which Nixon favored), a chapter on busing (which Nixon didn’t), a chapter on Nixon and the Catholics, and one on Nixon and the Jews. It is very much a work of its place and time in that it namechecks people like Georges Pompidou and Helen Hokinson as if the reader will know who they are.

Nixon relaxes in 1971 with his oldest daughter, Julie, a nurturing presence in a White House not known for warmth. Safire calls her "my favorite Nixon" and recounts several moments of thoughtfulness that reflected the better side of her father.
Image from https://picryl.com/media/president-richard-m-nixon-and-daughter-julie-nixon-eisenhower-on-the-prow-of-567578

Safire must have been a prodigious notetaker, or enjoyed privileged access to Nixon’s fabled secret tapes, given the long sections of dialogue in the book. There are extensive, verbatim accounts of meetings, some quite momentous, like Nixon briefing Congressional leaders on China or pushing his financial gurus on taking the country off the gold standard.

Throughout the book, the tone remains one of guarded appreciation.

Arthur Burns, a top financial adviser, tells Safire: “He has a noble motive in foreign affairs to reshape the world, or at least his motive is to earn the fame that comes from nobly reshaping the world. Who can say what his motive is? But it’s moving him in the right direction.”

On the whole, Safire agrees. When it comes to Nixon’s bombing of Cambodia in 1970, Safire defends it not only militarily but for helping get North Vietnam to the peace table. The same went for the Soviets. Nixon could work more successfully for peace than his Democratic predecessors because he didn’t talk like he wanted it so much.

As Kissinger put it: “Nixon is the first president in a decade that has the Russians coming to him. He didn’t get in that position by being a bleeding heart.”

Hating Nixon was a popular pastime, but in the fullness of time and later impeachments his legacy has become one of grudging respect. Safire may not change your mind, but his energetic account of Nixon’s White House days gave me ample food for thought and kept me reading.