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Nixon's Shadow: The History of an Image
Looks at different images of and perspectives on Richard Nixon that were created and disseminated in American culture and explains how these images have transformed the way in which Americans view politics and politicians.
384 pages, Hardcover
First published October 6, 2003
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Displaying 1 - 13 of 13 reviews
February 5, 2019
David Greenberg has written a highly interesting and nuanced look at Richard Nixon through the eyes of multiple, disparate groups of people, and the nation itself. Not a biography per se, but with various biographical elements contained within the book, Greenberg sets out to show how Nixon was viewed at different times of his public life and afterwards, how the country viewed him overall and how/when the view shifted, and how people saw Nixon – often as a result of partisan ideology. One thing that is nice here is that Greenberg is neither a Nixon loyalist nor a hater; often it is difficult to find someone who does not have a strong opinion of Nixon one way or the other because he was, and still remains, such a polarizing figure from when he first burst on the national scene in 1946. I appreciate Greenberg's even-handed viewpoint, with attempts to cut through a lot of the noise surrounding Watergate and Nixon's transgressions.
Greenberg starts chronologically but then switches, once he gets to Nixon's resignation, to a topic-based approach. This does interrupt the flow of the book, but it then became clear why he did so. Early on in Nixon's career, he was still building up what would today be called his “brand”: that of an aggressive campaigner and anti-Communist crusader who hit his opponents hard and often. And then after eight years as Vice President, peoples' opinions of Nixon were pretty much chiseled in stone one way or the other. Greenberg spends a lot of time on Nixon's opening campaign for Congress, and then somewhat on his famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Checkers speech in 1952 relating to his supposed slush fund. Not much attention is paid to what he actually did as Vice President, aside from some dirty work for Dwight Eisenhower. These first few chapters are cogent but not particularly exciting to read.
Fortunately that changes once Greenberg gets to Nixon's presidency. Now he begins to focus on how subsets of Americans viewed Nixon: radicals, the press, loyalists, foreign policy experts, historians, and psycho biographers. All of these groups either loved or hated Nixon, underestimated him or refused to accept known facts about things that he did and said, blamed him for everything or blamed him for nothing.
Left-wing radicals, based on their policy viewpoints, hated Nixon from the beginning. They didn't like what he stood for, how he acted, and what he said. Once Watergate occurred, they were only happy – too happy – to dump on him for the moral decay surrounding the presidency. Nixon was never going to win with them no matter what he did. His self-implosion only confirmed for them what they had been saying about him all along. That their constant criticism regardless of what he did, combined with their deep-seated hatred, may have influenced Nixon to turn more readily towards his darker side never occurred to them. Or if it did, they didn't admit it. Nixon was paranoid about the Left. Too paranoid. But he did have a point in that the Eastern establishment did look down their noses at him, and many of them glossed over poor decision-making and lies that emanated from the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.
On the other side of the spectrum, you have the Nixon loyalists – those who went down with the ship, lashing out at everyone except for Nixon himself. These people, like Nixon, saw a vast liberal conspiracy out to gobble him up, never letting him try to lead the country out of the Vietnam War. For them, Nixon did no wrong. Even when faced with the damning White House tapes, they ignored the evidence and tried to turn the focus back on Nixon's detractors. Nixon, of course, encouraged this, being a precursor to his later attempt to rehabilitate his image after he resigned in disgrace.
The chapter about the press is also interesting. Nixon grew more and more insolent in his attitude towards the press, failing to understand – like FDR or JFK – that cultivating a friendly press would pay dividends later on. Instead he isolated himself from them and treated them with open contempt. In turn, the press played to type as being liberal-minded and over-critical of anything that Nixon did. With one big exception, as Greenberg points out: Watergate. Aside from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the press was asleep at the wheel for what became the biggest presidential scandal of the 20th century. In fact, Greenberg persuasively argues that many in the press began to think that they had been too hard on Nixon before, when he was Vice President and earlier in his presidency, so they decided to take the Watergate denials at face value. Given where we are now in terms of the relationship between the president and the press, it is hard to fathom that reporters weren't pressing for answers or taking seriously the fact that men with ties directly to the White House were caught in a burglary.
Greenberg goes on to discuss the growing volume of Nixon psychobiographers and how, while often over-the-top on some of their premises, they have been too easily dismissed by academic historians and the general public. It's tricky (a nod to Nixon's infamous nickname Tricky Dick) to delve with concrete certainty into what one think is floating around in someone else's mind, and then try to interpret what you think is in there. Nixon clearly was a mental mess towards the end of his presidency, and no doubt his childhood shaped his personality, as every person's does. But trying to ascribe motives or rationales to why he did what he did is a bit specious for me to entertain seriously. That's not to say that I do not think that there were some demons lurking in the inner recesses of his mind, but we'll never know what they were. Nixon himself probably didn't know what they were.
The final few chapters were not quite as engaging: Nixon viewed from a foreign policy-only standpoint, where he generally comes in much more favorably, and Nixon being considered as a liberal by some historians. I am not buying the latter. Nixon was moderately conservative – for the Republican Party of his time. Not nearly as liberal as Nelson Rockefeller, he was not cozying up to the John Birch Society either. I do not view him from a liberal or conservative lens. I think Ronald Reagan was way more conservative than Nixon ever was. And, outside of his “Southern Strategy”, I doubt Nixon would recognize much of today's Republican Party. That does not mean he was a liberal either. I think Nixon was pragmatic, did what he needed to do to get elected, and domestically relied more on his Cabinet and aides such as John Erlichman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That is not to say that he didn't care about domestic policies; he just didn't care too much about them. He was focused on Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, and punishing his many imagined and real enemies.
If you have any interest in Nixon, this book is worth your while. If you have no interest in getting real deep into Nixonology, I would look elsewhere. I liked the book overall, although some parts of it were more interesting than others. There is no shortage of Nixon books out there, but there is a shortage of authors who try to present the man in a fair light. Greenberg is one of those authors. One line stood out to me in somewhat summing up Nixon's behavior: on page 263, Greenberg writes “Lacking either external constraints on his power or the internal restraints of conscience, Nixon could not step back from the precipice.” An apt way of attempting to understand an enormously complex man.
Grade: B+
Greenberg starts chronologically but then switches, once he gets to Nixon's resignation, to a topic-based approach. This does interrupt the flow of the book, but it then became clear why he did so. Early on in Nixon's career, he was still building up what would today be called his “brand”: that of an aggressive campaigner and anti-Communist crusader who hit his opponents hard and often. And then after eight years as Vice President, peoples' opinions of Nixon were pretty much chiseled in stone one way or the other. Greenberg spends a lot of time on Nixon's opening campaign for Congress, and then somewhat on his famous (or infamous, depending on your point of view) Checkers speech in 1952 relating to his supposed slush fund. Not much attention is paid to what he actually did as Vice President, aside from some dirty work for Dwight Eisenhower. These first few chapters are cogent but not particularly exciting to read.
Fortunately that changes once Greenberg gets to Nixon's presidency. Now he begins to focus on how subsets of Americans viewed Nixon: radicals, the press, loyalists, foreign policy experts, historians, and psycho biographers. All of these groups either loved or hated Nixon, underestimated him or refused to accept known facts about things that he did and said, blamed him for everything or blamed him for nothing.
Left-wing radicals, based on their policy viewpoints, hated Nixon from the beginning. They didn't like what he stood for, how he acted, and what he said. Once Watergate occurred, they were only happy – too happy – to dump on him for the moral decay surrounding the presidency. Nixon was never going to win with them no matter what he did. His self-implosion only confirmed for them what they had been saying about him all along. That their constant criticism regardless of what he did, combined with their deep-seated hatred, may have influenced Nixon to turn more readily towards his darker side never occurred to them. Or if it did, they didn't admit it. Nixon was paranoid about the Left. Too paranoid. But he did have a point in that the Eastern establishment did look down their noses at him, and many of them glossed over poor decision-making and lies that emanated from the Kennedy and Johnson Administrations.
On the other side of the spectrum, you have the Nixon loyalists – those who went down with the ship, lashing out at everyone except for Nixon himself. These people, like Nixon, saw a vast liberal conspiracy out to gobble him up, never letting him try to lead the country out of the Vietnam War. For them, Nixon did no wrong. Even when faced with the damning White House tapes, they ignored the evidence and tried to turn the focus back on Nixon's detractors. Nixon, of course, encouraged this, being a precursor to his later attempt to rehabilitate his image after he resigned in disgrace.
The chapter about the press is also interesting. Nixon grew more and more insolent in his attitude towards the press, failing to understand – like FDR or JFK – that cultivating a friendly press would pay dividends later on. Instead he isolated himself from them and treated them with open contempt. In turn, the press played to type as being liberal-minded and over-critical of anything that Nixon did. With one big exception, as Greenberg points out: Watergate. Aside from Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, the press was asleep at the wheel for what became the biggest presidential scandal of the 20th century. In fact, Greenberg persuasively argues that many in the press began to think that they had been too hard on Nixon before, when he was Vice President and earlier in his presidency, so they decided to take the Watergate denials at face value. Given where we are now in terms of the relationship between the president and the press, it is hard to fathom that reporters weren't pressing for answers or taking seriously the fact that men with ties directly to the White House were caught in a burglary.
Greenberg goes on to discuss the growing volume of Nixon psychobiographers and how, while often over-the-top on some of their premises, they have been too easily dismissed by academic historians and the general public. It's tricky (a nod to Nixon's infamous nickname Tricky Dick) to delve with concrete certainty into what one think is floating around in someone else's mind, and then try to interpret what you think is in there. Nixon clearly was a mental mess towards the end of his presidency, and no doubt his childhood shaped his personality, as every person's does. But trying to ascribe motives or rationales to why he did what he did is a bit specious for me to entertain seriously. That's not to say that I do not think that there were some demons lurking in the inner recesses of his mind, but we'll never know what they were. Nixon himself probably didn't know what they were.
The final few chapters were not quite as engaging: Nixon viewed from a foreign policy-only standpoint, where he generally comes in much more favorably, and Nixon being considered as a liberal by some historians. I am not buying the latter. Nixon was moderately conservative – for the Republican Party of his time. Not nearly as liberal as Nelson Rockefeller, he was not cozying up to the John Birch Society either. I do not view him from a liberal or conservative lens. I think Ronald Reagan was way more conservative than Nixon ever was. And, outside of his “Southern Strategy”, I doubt Nixon would recognize much of today's Republican Party. That does not mean he was a liberal either. I think Nixon was pragmatic, did what he needed to do to get elected, and domestically relied more on his Cabinet and aides such as John Erlichman and Daniel Patrick Moynihan. That is not to say that he didn't care about domestic policies; he just didn't care too much about them. He was focused on Vietnam, China, the Soviet Union, and punishing his many imagined and real enemies.
If you have any interest in Nixon, this book is worth your while. If you have no interest in getting real deep into Nixonology, I would look elsewhere. I liked the book overall, although some parts of it were more interesting than others. There is no shortage of Nixon books out there, but there is a shortage of authors who try to present the man in a fair light. Greenberg is one of those authors. One line stood out to me in somewhat summing up Nixon's behavior: on page 263, Greenberg writes “Lacking either external constraints on his power or the internal restraints of conscience, Nixon could not step back from the precipice.” An apt way of attempting to understand an enormously complex man.
Grade: B+
September 14, 2008
When I read this book, the floor below me was in the thick of a gay porn party. I admit, that this environment may have skewed my perceptions and memories of this book. That said, that might have been the prefect touch of surreal needed to understand Nixon. This is not a book about Nixon but that postmodern notion of what is a Nixon. Like “Nixonland,” this book approaches Nixon as a cipher of his times; a man able to master his own inhumanness into a political tool, his own obvious campaign defects used to reflect the defects of the time. Often overlooked, is that Nixon’s own lack of being was a true key to success. Common to the most successful modern politicians is a lack of a divided self, that the public, ephemeral surface identity is no different from the private person; it is same willingness to give one’s self over to the public Richard Cramer identified in “What it Takes,” and it was this ability that Nixon was a master. If anything, Greenberg misses his own conclusion; there is no Nixon the man, only Nixon the brand.
June 9, 2015
Interesting recap of the various images of Nixon, some self-crafted, some imposed by friendly or critical onlookers to his long and winding career. The chapter titles serve as a valid sketch of the images:
1. The Califonia Conservatives: Nixon as Populist
2. The Fifties Liberals: Nixon as Tricky Dick
3. The New Left Radicals: Nixon as Conspirator
4. The Washington Press Corps: Nixon as News Manager
5. The Loyalists: Nixon as Victim
6. The Psychobiographers: Nixon as Madman
7. The Foreign Policy Establishment: Nixon as Statesman
8. The Historians: Nixon as Liberal
Greenberg makes the point that the images layered and overlapped over time, and also makes the point that at this stage of presidential politics, partly as a result of Nixon's imagecrafting, we cynically expect politicians to be in the business of crafting their image, not presenting their true persona or policies.
1. The Califonia Conservatives: Nixon as Populist
2. The Fifties Liberals: Nixon as Tricky Dick
3. The New Left Radicals: Nixon as Conspirator
4. The Washington Press Corps: Nixon as News Manager
5. The Loyalists: Nixon as Victim
6. The Psychobiographers: Nixon as Madman
7. The Foreign Policy Establishment: Nixon as Statesman
8. The Historians: Nixon as Liberal
Greenberg makes the point that the images layered and overlapped over time, and also makes the point that at this stage of presidential politics, partly as a result of Nixon's imagecrafting, we cynically expect politicians to be in the business of crafting their image, not presenting their true persona or policies.
February 15, 2022
David Greenberg's Nixon's Shadow takes an unusual approach to Richard Nixon: examining how different segments of the American public perceived him, Rashomon-like, through his long and controversial career. While most public figures could be examined this way, it seems especially fitting for Nixon, one of the first politicians to successfully harness television and modern media to his advantage, and whose career was both made and broken in large part by such means. To conservatives he was a hero fighting communists and clearing out liberal corruption in government; to liberals, he represented everything ugly and sordid about modern politics. To reporters, he was a baffling, sometimes infuriating subject of scorn and fascination; to '60s radicals, he was the Devil himself. Historians have been as varied in their perceptions of him, treating Nixon either as a foreign policy sage (some, improbably, even positing him as "the last liberal president") while others damn him for corruption, paranoia and amorality. All interpretations coexist, leading to a plethora of media portrayals that inform, inflect and contradict each other.
Greenberg stresses how much Nixon himself encouraged these varying interpretations. He made his name as a Red-baiting Congressman and Senator, smearing his opponents as Communists while jousting with Alger Hiss; secured his Vice Presidency through his "Checkers Speech" and sparred with Khruschev in Moscow; lost his first bid for the Presidency through a botched debate with John F. Kennedy and seemingly destroyed his career with his spiteful "last press conference" in 1962. Then, after spending years carefully rebuilding his image as an elder statesman, Nixon reentered the arena with a controlled television campaign, a brilliant mixture of advertising, painstakingly crafted television appearances and courting the press, stressing his status as a "New Nixon." While the uniquely fractured climate of 1968 certainly helped Nixon win, his "rocking, socking" campaign provided the blue print for a half-century of increasingly vicious campaigns.
Nixon's slick ads and posturing convinced many but never entirely dispelled lingering distrust: for every statesmanlike utterance and brilliant speech, he undercut it with glib remarks about protesting "bums" and baiting the press ("One can only be angry with people he respects," he snarled during a particularly heated news conference). Whether by accident or design (likely some of each), Nixon's presidency confirmed both admirers and detractors in their opinions: either he was a firm, fatherly statesman leading America through one of its darkest periods, or an embryo tyrant eschewing national unity for politically advantageous division. As Watergate unfolded, Nixon's earnest-seeming "disclosures" and infuriated denials ("I am not a crook!"), along with theatrical Senate hearings, the melodramatic Saturday Night Massacre and, finally, those damning tapes caused Nixon's presidency to unravel.
Greenberg astutely analyzes all his, while also cataloging key figures in crafting Nixon's image. There are mini-profiles of figures like Roger Ailes, Nixon's media adviser and future Fox News founder who sold the "New Nixon" to the public; William Safire, who went from Nixon's liberal-baiting speechwriter to a liberal-baiting New York Times columnist (it is Safire whom we can blame for "-gate" affixing itself to every scandal, however minor, since 1974); last-ditch Nixon defender Baruch Korff and historian-apologists like Joan Hoff and Stephen Ambrose; "media enemies" from Daniel Schorr and Herblock to Hunter S. Thompson. The book's most bizarre segment explores psychobiographers like Fawn Brodie and Bruce Mazlich who tried to profile Nixon along Freudian lines, ascribing every tic and failing to a traumatic episode in his past (one writer blamed Watergate on Nixon receiving fellatio from a bum!). All played their part in shaping how we think about the 37th President; but ultimately, Greenberg shows, Nixon authored his own image, even if he lost control over it.
Greenberg also explores how these clashing Nixons informed fictional portrayals, from novels and plays to films and television. There's striking continuity between Herblock's cartoons, the wicked satire of New Left radicals, Oliver Stone's rambling '90s biopic and Nixon's head in a jar ruling over Futurama (aroo!). But there are also continuities in Nixon's role in modernizing modern conservatism, albeit more in his media savvy and polarizing rhetoric than his pragmatic policies; the same resentments Nixon mobilized animated Republicans after him, who instinctively ape his "Silent Majority" sloganeering even when they can't win a majority of voters. Even elements of the "New Nixon" survive in historians, reporters and others who overemphasize his achievements, trying implausibly to depict Nixon as a far-seeing visionary rather than a brilliant but fatally spiteful man who possessed more sin than virtue.
Richard Nixon went to his grave believing that he'd forever be misunderstood by a hostile media and unfair historians. Greenberg's book suggests that he protested too much, on multiple counts. The press both helped and hurt Nixon throughout his career, depending on the time, moment and the material Nixon gave them. Historians often bent over backward to be "fair" to Nixon, even though he gave them little enough to be "fair" about (and in recent years, historians are trending the other way, as more and more of Nixon's misdeeds come to light). And, again, if anyone was to blame for Nixon's image, positive or negative, distorted or accurate, it was Nixon himself. People saw what they wanted to see in this complex, tortured man; but if Nixon couldn't be honest with them, why on Earth would he expect them to see an accurate picture?
Greenberg stresses how much Nixon himself encouraged these varying interpretations. He made his name as a Red-baiting Congressman and Senator, smearing his opponents as Communists while jousting with Alger Hiss; secured his Vice Presidency through his "Checkers Speech" and sparred with Khruschev in Moscow; lost his first bid for the Presidency through a botched debate with John F. Kennedy and seemingly destroyed his career with his spiteful "last press conference" in 1962. Then, after spending years carefully rebuilding his image as an elder statesman, Nixon reentered the arena with a controlled television campaign, a brilliant mixture of advertising, painstakingly crafted television appearances and courting the press, stressing his status as a "New Nixon." While the uniquely fractured climate of 1968 certainly helped Nixon win, his "rocking, socking" campaign provided the blue print for a half-century of increasingly vicious campaigns.
Nixon's slick ads and posturing convinced many but never entirely dispelled lingering distrust: for every statesmanlike utterance and brilliant speech, he undercut it with glib remarks about protesting "bums" and baiting the press ("One can only be angry with people he respects," he snarled during a particularly heated news conference). Whether by accident or design (likely some of each), Nixon's presidency confirmed both admirers and detractors in their opinions: either he was a firm, fatherly statesman leading America through one of its darkest periods, or an embryo tyrant eschewing national unity for politically advantageous division. As Watergate unfolded, Nixon's earnest-seeming "disclosures" and infuriated denials ("I am not a crook!"), along with theatrical Senate hearings, the melodramatic Saturday Night Massacre and, finally, those damning tapes caused Nixon's presidency to unravel.
Greenberg astutely analyzes all his, while also cataloging key figures in crafting Nixon's image. There are mini-profiles of figures like Roger Ailes, Nixon's media adviser and future Fox News founder who sold the "New Nixon" to the public; William Safire, who went from Nixon's liberal-baiting speechwriter to a liberal-baiting New York Times columnist (it is Safire whom we can blame for "-gate" affixing itself to every scandal, however minor, since 1974); last-ditch Nixon defender Baruch Korff and historian-apologists like Joan Hoff and Stephen Ambrose; "media enemies" from Daniel Schorr and Herblock to Hunter S. Thompson. The book's most bizarre segment explores psychobiographers like Fawn Brodie and Bruce Mazlich who tried to profile Nixon along Freudian lines, ascribing every tic and failing to a traumatic episode in his past (one writer blamed Watergate on Nixon receiving fellatio from a bum!). All played their part in shaping how we think about the 37th President; but ultimately, Greenberg shows, Nixon authored his own image, even if he lost control over it.
Greenberg also explores how these clashing Nixons informed fictional portrayals, from novels and plays to films and television. There's striking continuity between Herblock's cartoons, the wicked satire of New Left radicals, Oliver Stone's rambling '90s biopic and Nixon's head in a jar ruling over Futurama (aroo!). But there are also continuities in Nixon's role in modernizing modern conservatism, albeit more in his media savvy and polarizing rhetoric than his pragmatic policies; the same resentments Nixon mobilized animated Republicans after him, who instinctively ape his "Silent Majority" sloganeering even when they can't win a majority of voters. Even elements of the "New Nixon" survive in historians, reporters and others who overemphasize his achievements, trying implausibly to depict Nixon as a far-seeing visionary rather than a brilliant but fatally spiteful man who possessed more sin than virtue.
Richard Nixon went to his grave believing that he'd forever be misunderstood by a hostile media and unfair historians. Greenberg's book suggests that he protested too much, on multiple counts. The press both helped and hurt Nixon throughout his career, depending on the time, moment and the material Nixon gave them. Historians often bent over backward to be "fair" to Nixon, even though he gave them little enough to be "fair" about (and in recent years, historians are trending the other way, as more and more of Nixon's misdeeds come to light). And, again, if anyone was to blame for Nixon's image, positive or negative, distorted or accurate, it was Nixon himself. People saw what they wanted to see in this complex, tortured man; but if Nixon couldn't be honest with them, why on Earth would he expect them to see an accurate picture?
February 14, 2012
Not as good as Frick's recent book on a similar subject, but a bit more comprehensive and level-headed. I believe I finished this driving through West Chester-- what was I doing there? Where were we going? A PO box probably, I guess, I don't know, it was cold and clear out and beautiful.
August 19, 2016
Very well balanced take on Nixon's presidency and how his administration strategically altered his public image. Very interesting read, well informed, thorough, and objective as well as casual enough for a reader to pick up without any extensive knowledge or memories of Nixon.
July 3, 2013
Fascinating book. Review is here.
http://www.misterfweem.blogspot.com/2...
http://www.misterfweem.blogspot.com/2...
July 19, 2023
Too academic for my tastes, but very informative. It was a bit of a slog to get through, but some of the chapters were more captivating than others. (My favorite was the section showing the allegedly liberal side of Nixon's administration.)
Worth the read, but only if you're a super history nut.
Worth the read, but only if you're a super history nut.
August 29, 2023
Slow in middle chapters, but overall a nice read
September 27, 2007
Fascinating not only for people interested in Nixon but for people interested in the concept of a person as a brand. Nixon understood personal branding better than many, but failed pretty miserably in his execution. His MySpace page would have sucked.
March 21, 2011
"...the pleasure in hearing Nixon hold forth was based not on a wish that he return to influence but on the safety of knowing that he would not."
Slanted, but not radically, to the left. Some great Goldwater quotes. Approaches balance for such a polarizing subject.
Slanted, but not radically, to the left. Some great Goldwater quotes. Approaches balance for such a polarizing subject.
February 15, 2013
Richard Nixon is perhaps the most fascinating American political figure of the second half of the 20th century. David Greenberg does a fine job showing the various ways Nixon tried to mold his image and how Nixon's image was molded by others. A well written look.
February 10, 2007
Pending.
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