Breach Of Faith – Theodore H. White, 1975 ★½

From a History to a Screed

It begins at the conclusion, a few dry words from Warren Burger, the Chief Justice of the U. S. Supreme Court that ended a stalemate: “The generalized assertion of privilege must yield to the demonstrated specific need for the evidence in a pending criminal trial.”

With that, the curtain rang down on what had been one of the most consequential and popular presidencies in American history. What began as a counter to New Frontier adventurism and Great Society excess ended with genuine horror as well as displays of shocked virtue that would have embarrassed Captain Renault. Like this book.

In spinning his story, Theodore H. White often leaves key details unexplained, apparently figuring readers are also in the know and just want this recent tumult explained. He is not writing a history but a sermon, complete with hellbent evildoers and brave angels.

The Making Of The President 1972 – Theodore H. White, 1973 ★★★½

Nobody Loves a Winner

The problem with total victory is that victors often have a hard time overcoming them. It offers no moral guardrails, no ego checks to counter bad impulses, while falsely beguiling the victor into seeing only a clear road and an open horizon ahead.

All this was a problem for President Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign long before the votes came in. The fourth and final volume in Theodore H. White’s “Making Of The President” series examines what happens when four years of success becomes its own poison pill.

In so doing, White turns in an engaging book even while it struggles to get a handle on the elephant in the room: the arrests of men connected to the Nixon re-election campaign who had broken into Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate hotel.

The Making Of The President 1968 – Theodore H. White, 1969 ★★★★

There's a Riot Going On

That saying back in 1968, “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows,” clearly didn’t apply where Theodore H. White was concerned. When it came to that year’s presidential election, he handed you the whole meteorological report.

White’s “Making Of The President” series was three books into its four-book run when this 1968 edition came out, at over 500 pages by far the fattest and most sprawling of them all. He goes on too long in several places, data maven that he was, but when he’s done filling you in on the election’s many twists and turns, you get a strong sense of living through one chaotic year, and of why it turned out the way it did.

Did the country really go through a period of dramatic leftist radicalization and come out of it electing Richard Nixon? Yes, and the two things were closely related. White, a genteel liberal himself, makes clear a candidate touting law and order had considerable appeal when cities were ablaze with riot and campuses under student siege.

The Making Of The President 1960 – Theodore H. White, 1961 ★★★★

Tarnished, But Still A Classic

Can a book’s credibility be hobbled by privileged access to its primary subject? Can that same access, used to its fullest degree, redeem the book’s faults and render it an enduring classic?

Yes, and yes. Here’s the proof.

Covering the 1960 Presidential election, Theodore White interviewed John F. Kennedy, flew with Kennedy, ate with Kennedy, gossiped with Kennedy. He did everything but sleep with Kennedy, though he does wind up in bed with the guy here, figuratively speaking.

It was for a good cause. This book remains not only a vital record of one of the country’s most charismatic politicians but a deep dive into how a presidency could be won. Even White later admitted he got carried away, but his invested narrative and sense of purpose pull you in.

One Of Us: Richard Nixon And The American Dream – Tom Wicker, 1991 ★★★

Tricky Dick and His Critics

Presidents are not well-balanced people. They go out of their way risking derision, abuse, even murder to affect miniscule changes in how things are; at best making compromises, at worst committing crimes. Such an impulse must be questioned; either they are corrupt or insane.

Few presidents wore that derangement so openly as Richard Nixon, a childhood misfit who ran for national office five times and looked more miserable and awkward each time at it. In a business that demands compulsive socializing, he was a proud loner who cultivated many strategic allies but very few friends.

Yet he made himself the most consequential president of the second half of the 20^th century, an era which gave us several.

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.

The Presidential Transcripts – The Washington Post, et. al., 1974 ★★½

Watergate in Real Time

The Watergate scandal reshaped American politics, destroyed one of the 20^th century’s most dynamic leaders, and defined an era of cynicism and paranoia. What was it like going down?

Unlike most scandals, people can hear and read this one for themselves, thanks to President Richard Nixon’s hidden tape machines. After a Senate investigating committee subpoenaed the tapes, The Washington Post, which had been covering Watergate since it was just a third-rate burglary, wasted no time printing a 693-page paperback that contained key Nixon meetings when Watergate was under discussion.