Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

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Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man

4.26 of 5 stars 4.26 · rating details · 164 ratings · 21 reviews

From one of America's most distinguished historians comes this classic analysis of Richard Nixon. By considering some of the president's opinions, Wills comes to the controversial conclusion that Nixon was actually a liberal. Both entertaining and essential, Nixon Agonistes captures a troubled leader and a struggling nation mired in a foolish Asian war, forfeiting the loya...more

Paperback, 640 pages

Published November 14th 2002 by Mariner Books (first published 1969)

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Sep 21, 2012 Chris rated it 5 of 5 stars

Originally assigned by Esquire magazine to cover the late stages of the 1968 presidential election from the vantage point of the Nixon campaign, featuring that political warhorse and his energetic team of legal associates and young fireballers, Garry Wills—under the prodding of his editor—turned a ruminative essay upon Tricky Dick into six hundred pages of analysis, diagnosis, deduction, induction, and reflection upon the state of the American national soul at the closing-out point of that tumul...more

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Jul 16, 2011 AC rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: 20th-21st-century, 1968

I had to put this book down for several months - because I had to digest certain arguments (especially in Part IV) -- that went against long-standing views of mine, but are so brilliantly argued, that I simply couldn't go on until they had been simmered, stewed, and thoroughly digested.

Wills is one of the most intelligent, brilliant, sheerly logical writers I have read in a long time -- his classical and Jesuitical training evident on every page. As such, this book is utterly compelling. His th...more

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AC Chris wrote: "I'm reading this now, AC, and you are so very right. It's fantastic, one of the best books I've read this year. Compared to Wills' brill...more
Sep 04, 2012 05:22pm

Chris Wills spends a long section (Part IV) dissecting -- nay, skewering -- Wilson's "liberal" foreign policy

Part IV is a superb dissection of the US libera...more
updated Sep 12, 2012 11:30am

Aug 10, 2011 Joe rated it 5 of 5 stars

This may well be the ultimate book on Nixon and his rise to power. However, I shan't pass judgment until I've read his autobiographical, Six Crises. While Perlstein's Nixonland is an insightful overview of the historical milieu that gave rise to Nixon, Wills' book explores not only the historical events that landed this self-made man in the White House, but the waves of American philosophical thought that lead to his rise. To put it more succinctly, Perlstein's book is an appetizer to Wills' mai...more This may well be the ultimate book on Nixon and his rise to power. However, I shan't pass judgment until I've read his autobiographical, Six Crises. While Perlstein's Nixonland is an insightful overview of the historical milieu that gave rise to Nixon, Wills' book explores not only the historical events that landed this self-made man in the White House, but the waves of American philosophical thought that lead to his rise. To put it more succinctly, Perlstein's book is an appetizer to Wills' main course. I highly recommend that the books be read in succession.

Per Wills, the long march to Nixon began at the turn of the 20th century as Woodrow Wilson and a succession of free market thinkers ratcheted up the liberal -- yes, I said liberal -- philosophy of individualism that gave rise to the robber barons of the previous century. It was a mode of thought that guided not only the economic life of the country, but its spiritual as well, making work and enterprise a religious endeavor. Morality could be measured by material success. Virtue lead to hard work which lead to success which lead to material wealth, rendering a man's inner morality visible. It was a very simple mantra, as Wills points out many times, straight out of Horatio Alger. Indeed, the rise of Nixon may well have been the last gasp of that mantra before its collapse into a coma where it has remained for some 40 years, twitching from time to time (Reagan, Gingrich, Tea Party), but never truly awakening before being knocked cold again by another damn recession.

The lid came off the middle class in the '60s, and Nixon was the silent majority's answer to putting it back on. We all know where that lid wound up, even though Wills, while writing the book, did not. Formerly invisible factions - blacks, women, college students -- were now visible, and the white working class were appalled at having their mores challenged in the streets by "non-earners." In 1968, George Wallace came along, and had his rather vocal following (is it me or is Ron Paul our modern day George Wallace?), scaring the bejesus out the GOP establishment who were afraid the Democrat/3rd Party man could swipe a good chunk of their base. Nixon, despite having a loser label on his head, having lost the 1960 Presidential race and the California Governor's race 2 years later ("You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more," he told a flock of reporters who had dogged him throughout the latter campaign), Nixon swooped-in to take the nomination in Miami from Nelson Rockefeller, Ronald Reagan, and George Romney.

He and Agnew went to DC promising law and order, uh, for everyone else anyway. How could such a straight and narrow Quaker (he formed a club at Whittier College called the Orthogonian, or Right Angles), go off the rails the way he did. Wills gives some pretty strong clues in this book. Hint- it was not just Nixon that got us that point, but the nation as a whole.(less)

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Apr 26, 2011 James rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography, political-science, amer-history, chicago-pub-library, presidents

Wills convincingly argues for the view that Nixon was really a liberal in the modern political sense. His approach to Nixon, based on this premise, is both enlightening and intelligent. Richard Nixon was certainly a national enigma, our president of polarization--I personally saw that happen in my family. Considering the policies initiated by Nixon; for example, going off the gold standard, expanding major government programs like the EPA, and opening ties to Red China, the view of Nixon as a li...more

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Feb 21, 2013 David Bales rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: 2013

Written back when political commentary had more of an academic/elitist bent, Garry Wills explores the life and career of Richard M. Nixon from the lemon ranches of southern California to the White House. Published in 1970, Wills writes of the poisoned America of 1968, of LBJ's Vietnam War and how it disillusioned the public and how the cooly efficient political machine of Nixon is able to resurrect his dreams and emerge from a Republican pack of eager politicians that included Nelson Rockefeller...more

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Jul 10, 2011 Mel rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: us-presidents

This book earned Wills a listing on Nixon's famous enemies list because of statements like "The belief that our electoral system guarantees the choice of the best men and policies can only give voters a sense that the whole operation is a mockery when Richard Nixon is freely chosen to preside". Overall, Wills treatment of Nixon is fairly balanced. I actually felt sorry for the misery Ike put Tricky Dick through before Nixon's 1952 Checker's Speech.

Some reviewers make the point that Wills postul...more

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Oct 28, 2012 Hadrian rated it 4 of 5 stars

Shelves: biography-memoir, american, history, nonfiction, politics-and-foreign-policy

This is one of the most searing analyses I have read of Richard Nixon. An equal assessment might be when Hunter S. Thompson said in 1994 that Nixon was the death of the American Dream and that his body should be burned in a trash bin. This coarse yet logical analysis of the 'most artificial character in politics' also serves as a greater indictment of the contradictions of classical liberalism, as well as a view of the state of American society in the late 1960s, and how a Richard Nixon could co...more This is one of the most searing analyses I have read of Richard Nixon. An equal assessment might be when Hunter S. Thompson said in 1994 that Nixon was the death of the American Dream and that his body should be burned in a trash bin. This coarse yet logical analysis of the 'most artificial character in politics' also serves as a greater indictment of the contradictions of classical liberalism, as well as a view of the state of American society in the late 1960s, and how a Richard Nixon could come to power at all.

The first part of the book is a more biographical analysis. His Quaker upbringing. His saintly mother, temperamental father, his brothers dying young. Early senatorial career and elections, uniquely vicious. His resentment of the entrenched Northeastern power structures, later blossoming into conspiracies of the liberal elite, soldiers in the university system. His early struggles for power against Eisenhower, whom he resented, and later outmaneuvered in that brilliant display of political whoring known as the 'Checkers speech'.

The summa of Nixon's arguments includes not only resentment, but also the idea of classical liberalism - not to be confused with modern social liberalism. In today's world, the free hand of the market as seen in classical liberalism can be a strong and powerful force, but it does not know what it does, nor can it foresee what harm is causes. We see free exchange of moral ideas, with began with Ralph Waldo Emerson and confused contradiction of the university system then and the 'free media' now. Economic classical liberalism which began with John Stuart Mill and presently exists through the profane incarnations of Milton Friedman and Ayn Rand. And finally, the political and moral liberalism of Woodrow Wilson, Nixon's idol of foreign policy. Although the author then did not know of Nixon's secret peaces, bombings, and reconciliations with Mao, he could, strangely enough, be characterized as both a brutal realist and a woolly idealist.

Yet it was not necessarily these elements which led to the primary cause of his downfall. Nixon was the one with his hand caught in the cookie jar, spying on too many people. His paranoia might have got the better of him then. But executive privilege has existed long before him, and long after. And the contradictory elements of his policy, and those who helped him carry it out, continued to exist long after, in Reagan's movie-star presidency, the deranged crusades of Bush administration, in Fox News, in Romney and the Tea Party as a pale, geriatric, age-spotted imitation of the previous. This pernicious blend of characteristics continues because there is a large segment of the population which thirsts for them. It still believes in the primacy of the market, of economic social Darwinism, of resentment against a previous ruling elite.

We have seen the enemy, and he is us.(less)

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Nov 25, 2012 Erik Graff rated it 4 of 5 stars · review of another edition Recommends it for: Americans

Recommended to Erik by: no one

Shelves: political-social-science

This is a rather remarkable book. I've read several, more recent books by Wills, but nothing quite like this. One presumes from the style of his writing--dense, sometimes almost lyrical--that he spent a great deal of time stitching together and revising the original National Review, Esquire, New Politics and Saturday Evening Post articles into this subtle analysis of American political culture.

This is not really a biography of Richard Nixon, though it does have many elements of biography, includ...more This is a rather remarkable book. I've read several, more recent books by Wills, but nothing quite like this. One presumes from the style of his writing--dense, sometimes almost lyrical--that he spent a great deal of time stitching together and revising the original National Review, Esquire, New Politics and Saturday Evening Post articles into this subtle analysis of American political culture.

This is not really a biography of Richard Nixon, though it does have many elements of biography, including visits to Whittier, California and interviews with friends of the Nixon family. The focus, however, is on Nixon, the "new" Nixon during the 1968 presidential campaign, the one he won, albeit with many retrospective reflections back to the Hiss case, the 1960 campaign, the 1962 gubenatorial campaign, etc. However, there are also minibiographies here as well, biographies of Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Richard N. Goodwin and others.

All of these biographies are chosen as representative of a broader theme, namely, the nature of "liberalism" in American during the second half of the twentieth century. In fact, the book may be looked at as being primarily a meditation on this, the prevailing ideology of the period, and on why and how liberalism fractured in stresses of U.S. imperialism abroad (SE Asia) and the struggle for racial equality at home.

This is early Wills, but he is no longer the conservative follower of William Buckley, no longer the National Review writer. His sympathies by the late sixties had turned, turned sympathetically towards the Civil Rights movement, antipathetically against the war in Vietnam. There is even a hint of identification with the "New Left" as a movement, inchoate at times, in opposition to and differentiated from an "Establishment" or "System" in crisis.

For anyone interested in a thoughtful study of what the term "liberal" has come to mean in this country in its interconnected philosophical, political, economic and cultural senses, this is a good introduction. So too for anyone wanting a sense of the sixties and of how that decade realigned American politics.(less)

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Mar 24, 2012 Alec rated it 5 of 5 stars

This was the most stunningly intelligent books I have ever read. Over forty years old at this point, I found it as salient today as the day it was written, and devastatingly incisive. The terrifying question that this begs is: how have we changed so little in the last half a century?

The first 3/5 of the book consists of a series of anecdotes which roughly Sketch our the 1968 Republican primary, as well as its background, and the surrounding environment at the time. He uses this setup to begin to...more

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Aug 03, 2011 Dan Cohen rated it 4 of 5 stars

Good book - very thought-provoking. I found it gave me some new insights (albeit fuzzy ones - hard to pin down) into American politics and social thought that is hard to pick up from more conventional sources. For example, the distinction between the Presidential and non-Presidential parts of the political parties. In a sense, it's not really about Nixon at all but about ways of thinking. Some sections (eg. on the nature of liberalism) were fairly hard work.

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Oct 29, 2008 Hanny rated it 5 of 5 stars

Much larger theme than the book suggests: post-war America and the contradictions of classical liberalism.

His specific analyses (radicals, Ike, etc.) are so interesting and substantive that his general ideas (concluding chapters) fall flat, even if the ideas in them follow from what came before.

He's not good on people he seems to have a strong emotional reaction against, like Nelson Rockefeller or Reagan (not looking forward to Innocents at Home). Nor is he fair to Moynihan, whom he takes to tas...more

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Mar 29, 2013 Jake rated it 5 of 5 stars

Just a fucking amazing, thought provoking book. Putatively about the 1968 election, it's more about the american political tradition and the fracturing of the new deal coalition. Also, great stuff on Nixon and how bizarre a character he was.

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Jan 01, 2013 Jeffrey Thiessen rated it 5 of 5 stars

Maybe the best book I've ever read? It's certainly up there. An incredibly great insight into the most savage president ever sworn in, and makes some really tremendous arguments in terms of how his policies would be placed today.

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May 08, 2008 Robert rated it 5 of 5 stars · review of another edition

A book that I wish I had read about 8 years ealier. It taught me not only that I really enjoy reading Gary Wills, but also gave me some insight into the value system of Robert E. Lee and how it contrasts with that of the folks who engineered the diaster in Vietnam. It was also one of the earlier discussions of the distinction between economic and social realism and the extent to which Nixon had a claim to the traditional liberal label.

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Sep 15, 2009 Keith rated it 5 of 5 stars

Man! Maybe the best book on U.S. politics I've ever read, edging me even further toward believing that Woodrow Wilson remains the most insidious influence on how America defines role in the world.

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Jan 28, 2009 Carl rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: nonfiction, nonliterature, best-5-nonfic

Terrific character study by one of the top intellectuals of the last fifty years. Wills does a brilliant job with this intricate character -- his writing is as fluid as that of any historian I have ever read.

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Apr 20, 2008 Patrick rated it 3 of 5 stars

If you can fight your way through Wills' thickets of prose it seems we haven't learned squat since 1968. The big question is, who is the most Nixonian - Obama, Clinton or McCain?

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Dec 19, 2007 L.mayville rated it 5 of 5 stars

I'm going to read this book again before I try to explain to anyone else what it is actually about. All I know is that I loved it.

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Mar 07, 2011 Jeffrey rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: non-fiction

a towering analysis of Nixon prior to Watergate covering all of his flaws and imperfections.

Willis nails it.

Illuminating

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Jan 10, 2010 GWC rated it 5 of 5 stars

Shelves: top-10, non-fiction

Astonishingly good. I'm not sure I fully buy the main argument, but it's still an amazing book.

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Mar 22, 2010 Keith added it

Was written when Nixon was campaigning before he took office in 1968. Nevertheless a remarkable psychological portrait. Wills observes Nixon, the things he says, and reveals some interesting sidebars on Spiro Agnew and Rockefeller. The "Checkers Speech" is also covered and investigated.

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Shelves: jeff-books

May 14, 2013 John A. rated it 4 of 5 stars

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About Garry Wills

Garry Wills is an author and historian, and a frequent contributor to the New York Review of Books. In 1993, he won a Pulitzer Prize for General Non-Fiction for his book Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America, which describes the background and effect of Abraham Lincoln's Gettysburg Address on November 19, 1863.

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Lincoln at Gettysburg: The Words That Remade America

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