Summary for GCSE

James Burns’s 2005 summary of Nixon as “brilliant and morally lacking” shows the difficulty historians face in interpreting this complex figure, resulting in a range of different ideas.

Even before Watergate, historian Arthur Schlesinger criticized Nixon’s misuse of power, blaming it on the unchecked growth of presidential authority since WWII.

Other people, like the psycho-historians of the 1970s, labelled Nixon as psychologically damaged, even psychopathic, and in 2000 journalist Anthony Summers painted him as drunkard wife-beater, though such views are now discredited.

Nixon himself portrayed his career as a series of battles, through which he overcame setbacks through determination. A few biographers have praised his resilience, and defended his actions – even Watergate.

Critics have argued that Nixon was a cynical pragmatist, caring only about political gain rather than principles. In the 1990s, historians like Herbert Parmet and Stanley Kutler suggested that his reforms merely schemes to outmanoeuvre liberals, while others saw his appeals to the ‘silent majority’, and his support for environmental reforms and the Family Assistance Plan, merely as a ploy for votes.

At the same time, however, other historians were reassessing Nixon as a liberal. Tom Wicker and Joan Hoff highlighted his progressive policies, and a former aide explained that any contradictory actions stemmed from the political reality that his voters were conservative.

Later, David Greenberg and John Farrell portrayed Nixon as a shape-shifter, constantly adapting his image to the needs of the moment without fixed convictions.

Keith Olsen (2011) concluded that Nixon’s presidency left a sordid legacy of mistrust; whilst law professor Cass Sunstein (2017) ranked him among the five most important presidents of all time.

Interpretations of Nixon's Presidency

In 2005 historian and political scientist James Burns asked of Nixon: "How can one evaluate such an idiosyncratic president, so brilliant and so morally lacking?" … and historians have struggled to interpret this complex and contradictory character.

AN ‘IMPERIAL PRESIDENCY’?

In 1973 – even BEFORE Watergate – historian Arthur Schlesinger listed Nixon’s abuses of office, but blamed it as an inevitable outcome of the expansions of presidential power Congress had allowed since WWII.

A PSYCHOPATH?

The psycho-historians of the 1970s represented Nixon as a psychologically flawed, even psychopathic character who found it difficult to link behaviour to morality, addicted to lies “to shore up his grandiose fantasies” … and all because his mother did not love him. All nonsense, of course … but as late as 2000 British journalist Anthony Summers portrayed him as a man ruined by inner demons – a drinker and wife-beater, with Mafia connections.

A FIGHTER?

Nixon, on the other hand, portrayed his own career as one of ‘battles’ to overcome ‘crises’. “We won’t grovel, we won’t confess” he wrote in 1990, insisting that he had only played by “the rules of politics as I found them”. Some biographers have agreed – British biographer Jonathan Aitken (1993) praised his rise from modest beginnings, and his resiliency in dealing with setbacks; and Conrad Black (2007) defended him even over Watergate.

A PRAGMATIST?

Many historians have presented Nixon as an unprincipled schemer who cared only about votes. Herbert Parmet (1990) and Stanley Kutler (1992) suggested that he only implemented domestic reforms to outflank his liberal opponents. For John Robert Greene (1995), Nixon’s administration had a bunker mentality, full of chauvinistic defensiveness, self-righteous intolerance and an ‘us-versus-them’ mindset, and was concerned only with one outcome: to gain ‘political capital’.

Historian Matt Lassiter (2006) suggested that political gain lay behind Nixon’s appeal to the (largely white) ‘silent majority’; and Scott Spitzer (2012) suggested that Nixon supported the FAP because it would gain him the support of the working poor, most of whom were white and lived in the South.

And in 2012 Brooks Flippen suggested that Nixon’s support for environmental reform was to get the support of young voters.

A LIBERAL?

In the 1990s, historians started to suggest that people had got Nixon wrong and that, really, he was a progressive liberal. Tom Wicker (1991) pointed out that, with opinion moving to the right, Nixon COULD have implemented regressive policies … but that he chose instead sweeping reforms. Joan Hoff (1994) agreed, evaluating Nixon’s policies as “so far in advance of his time that congressional liberals preferred to oppose them than to allow Nixon to take credit for upstaging them”.

But what about Nixon’s right-wing, illiberal actions? In 1996 John Whitaker (a former Nixon aide) explained that Nixon was “both liberal and bold” but that “throughout his career, Nixon's liberal instincts were held on a tight leash by his conservative constituency and this political reality constantly led to seemingly contradictory actions throughout his presidency”.

In 2016, Douglas Shoen labelled Nixon: “America’s last liberal”, decades ahead of his time, although “his domestic liberalism resulted less from deep-seated convictions than from political pragmatism”.

A SHAPE-SHIFTER?

In 2003, historian David Greenberg portrayed Nixon as a man continually re-inventing his image to match the moment … to the point where there was no ‘real’ Nixon. Similarly, John Farrell (2017) saw Nixon as one of those ‘he-believed-it-when-he-said-it’ politicians for whom “convictions meld with calculation”.

CONCLUSIONS

In his 2011 study of the Watergate Scandal, historian Keith Olson portrayed Nixon's presidency as both sordid and arrogant, leaving a legacy of fundamental mistrust of government.

By contrast, law professor Cass Sunstein (2017) suggested that Nixon belongs on a list of “the five most consequential Presidents in American history”.