Is it just a hit piece?
>>23824748you can trust someone with a name like perlstein
>>23824748It's a pretty good book desu. Nixon was very flawed despite his greatness, so any overall positive portrayal is very suspect.
>>23824748That pic is pvre burgerpunk kino
>>23824756fpbp
>>23824803Nixon's only flaw was that he surrendered without putting up a fight. Watergate has always been complete nonsense.
>>23824878One of the greatest presidents this country has ever seen. That fucking retard Reagan being so beloved instead of Nixon shows that there's no hope for this country.
>>23824933Yeah kind of insane that one of the best presidents is still hated because boomers were raised on media that whined about Watergate incessantly.>>23824928 It was a complete media psyop, nobody would've even cared if they didn't bring it up 24/7.
>>23824748What’s up with the presidential biographies on the board this week?
>>23825165They probably beget eachother, one fag sees a post and then makes his own post
>>23825270provide a better explanation, preferably one conspiracy-oriented
>>23825280election time->need to pretend that the institution of voting has even the slightest patina of legitimacy->try to create an image of legitimacy by referring to past presidents as better and as though they had agency, virtue, honor, etc. , therefore portraying voting and democracy not as "never once legitimate" but the less damning "it might not be today but it once was"
>>23824748whats a good book on nixon? that isn't seethingly anti-nixon?
>>23825527Conrad Black
>>23825527the one by buchanan
>>23824748I only find intelligent people interesting. Most presidents have been glorified administrative mob bosses. However, there have been 2 presidents in the last 100 years who not only extremely intelligent but are very interesting people. They are Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton. There are no presidents in recent time more interesting than these 2. Agree with other assessments…Nixon land is interesting but the author is biased
>>23825527Nixon Agonistes. Interesting as it was written in 1970. Garry Wills was also a conservative with a classical and Jesuitical training and the overall theme is about the unraveling of classical liberalism, combined with a penetrating character portrait of Nixon.>It is also the case that Wills' logically drawn determination of the causation of and correlation between the strains of resentment bubbling below the surface of late-sixties America—from all corners and comers—is endowed with an inductive rigor and tiered process of intellectualization that withstands probing scrutiny better than Perlstein's more casually constructed polemics; and notwithstanding the (acknowledged) debt that Perlstein has to Wills in how he crafted the historic chain of American political evolution, the latter—in his linkage from the Founding Fathers through to the pivotal political philosophy of Woodrow Wilson and the bifurcation of the classical liberal spirit in the wake of the Great Depression via the instantiation of the New Deal—proffers an original take that is simply the better thought-out, constructed, and elucidated of the two. It's a closer match as regards the entertainment value contained in each, but even here Wills compares favorably with Perlstein—indeed, the dry and ironical tone with which Wills picks apart the latent absurdities within events, actions, words spoken or written, opining advanced or relegated, that transpired during the course of the political campaigns and backgrounds that are given coverage within, is deftly and wittily done—the pages flew by, which wasn't always the case with Nixonland.
That was from a review. But this is Wills describing Nixon. If this kind of thing bothers you then you won't like Wills:>”The disjointedness of the talk seemed expressed in his face as he scowled (his only expression of thoughtfulness) or grinned (his only expression of pleasure). The features do not quite work together. The famous nose looks detachable…, but the aspect that awes one when he meets Nixon is its distressing width, accentuated by the depth of the ravine running down its center, and by its general fuzziness (Nixon’s ‘five-o’clock shadow’ extends all the way up to his heavy eyebrows, though--like many hairy men--he is balding above the brows’ ‘timberline’). The nose swings far out; then, underneath, it does not rejoin his face in a straight line, but curves far up again, leaving a large but partially screened space between nose and lip. The whole face’s lack of jointure is emphasized by the fact that he has no very defined upper lip…. The parts all seem to be worked by wires, a doomed attempt to contrive ‘illusions of grandeur.’”But watching Nixon's face is mesmerizing:https://youtu.be/2wksepum_6I
