The Nixon Memo : Political Respectability, Russia, and the Press

Rating:
Summary: Kalb's Epilogue Memories of Watergate, nails the coffin shut
Review: Although this book from the University of Chicago Press exhibits the character of media coverage about former President Nixon from early in 1992 until Nixon's funeral in 1994 quite accurately, I failed to agree with the tone in which his disgrace is continually hammered away at. Unlike feeling bad about a recent election, my sympathy with Richard Nixon is due to my desire to echo a complaint from his final press conference after losing an election in California in 1962, when he blamed the press for not having a single reporter who wrote whatever the candidate said. The complaint that I would like to make in this review goes much deeper. Reviling Nixon as I do, it is ultimately ironic that I find his sympathy for democracy in Russia much more appealing than the glory of gloating on being the lone surviving superpower, an approach to global politics that American political thinking was engaging in back in 1992 and still has not yet shaken off, which is particularly glaring in the never-ending struggle to impose regional changes in 2004 in places like Baghdad. If anything, the efforts of the current Bush administration to spread democracy in the times and places of its choosing seem so unlikely and altogether much worse than whatever Nixon was suggesting in 1992 that it is almost unthinkable that any policy expert at this late date could even guess: what was Nixon thinking? Comedians had provided audiences with some of their greatest laughs by contemplating that question, and this book is perfectly clear on that in the final paragraph of chapter nine:

National Public Radio, usually sober in its presentation of the news, was struck by the fact that Bush and Clinton had both delivered their speeches on April 1--April Fool's Day. The afternoon program "Talk of the Nation" invited Rich Little to do one of his famous Richard Nixon impersonations on the air. "Having marched up this hard road and won back your confidence," Little/Nixon pronounced, "I ask you once again to make me your President." The phones "went berserk," said an NPR spokesperson, obliging the network to confess that it was all a joke. (pp. 138-139).

Nixon then went to Russia and met with Yeltsin on June 4, 1992, and "on February 10, 1993, soon after Clinton took office, a totally different kind of discussion took place." (p. 141). Like talking about small change today, Nixon thought he might be able to help with "rescheduling Russia's huge $84 billion foreign debt for fifteen years." (p. 142). As Nixon said, "One of the things that is absolutely essential is that we not consider Russia to be a defeated enemy." (p. 144). I never hear anyone saying that about Osama bin Laden, but he probably isn't talking to former American presidents right now.

Nixon met with Clinton, who was "looking for a way to help Russia without having to come up with new money. . . . For reasons ranging from strict regulations imposed by the International Monetary Fund to bureaucratic chaos in Russia, less than half of the money had actually been delivered, much of it in grain credits, which helped feed the Russian people but also increased Russia's foreign debt." (p. 158).

This book is almost about intellectual respectability. Names dropped in June, 1994, can still sound impressive: Graham Allison, dean of the Kennedy School at Harvard; Thomas Friedman, diplomatic correspondent of The New York Times and author of a front page article on March 10, 1992, with the headline, "Nixon Scoffs at Level of Support for Russian Democracy by Bush." I wish there was an easy way to describe the manner in which the point of view adopted by Marvin Kalb, formerly moderator of "Meet the Press," in THE NIXON MEMO harps on Nixon's personal flaws to undercut the point on American foreign policy being promoted by Nixon in March, 1992. Nixon feared that Russia could reemerge as a major problem for the United States, but in a larger sense, the failure of the American political system to come up with any decent solutions for places like Russia, then or now, leaves those who read the papers following stories which are all boiled down to individual self-promotion. Expecting anything from Nixon that might continue to make sense is still unlikely in a perfect world, and on Comedy Central could be considered as crazy as any other journalistic assignment. A rare moment of reverence, much noted and largely adhered to by news media thereafter, was reflected in the way that American reaction to September 11, 2001, became a factor in promoting the belief that Americans needed to rally behind the efforts of our president at that dismal time to join in his war on terror.

The index on pages 229-248 has many distinguished names and topics. An appendix on pages 217-223 has Nixon's memo, How to Lose the Cold War. It starts with Russia, mentions "President Yeltsin's economic reforms" on page 218, as well as, "If Yeltsin fails, the prospects for the next fifty years will turn grim." Nixon praises Yeltsin for `throwing away the keys of what Lenin called the "jailhouse of nations".' (p. 219). "He has moved decisively toward privatization of Soviet enterprises and decollectivization of Soviet agriculture, steps Gorbachev refused even to consider." (pp. 219-220). "If Yeltsin is replaced by a new aggressive Russian nationalist, we can kiss the peace dividend good-bye." (p. 222). "Most important, a democratic Russia would be a non-expansionist Russia, freeing our children and grandchildren in the next century of the fear of armed conflict because democracies do not start wars." (p. 222). Sure, this sounds like the same old, same old Nixon to some people, and Wilsonian democratic Crusades are as popular as ever now. This book dotes on how such policies are seen by the press.