The real tragedy is that in that passion, that desire, that ambition ...coupled with his upbringing and his setbacks along the way, he sowed the seeds of his own destruction.
Perhaps if Nixon had been elected in 1960, both Vietnam and Richard Nixon might have evolved differently, and the world today just might be a different place. Such is the power of character, of the people we place in that office. As the late journalist Richard Ben Cramer explains, what it takes it win has not always given us Presidents we may want to govern us.
This is the story of Richard Nixon. So much has been written about Nixon. Much of it has come in waves. There was the period after his resignation, of the bad Nixon. Then after his death, the better Nixon. Now writers, journalists and historians are trying to tie all the threads together.
Perhaps Bill Clinton put it best in his eulogy for Nixon, when he said that “the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career must come to a close.”
John Farrell gives us that overview in Richard Nixon: The Life
My conversation with John Farrell:
