KING RICHARD: Nixon and Watergate: an American tragedy.

• Author: Capie, David

KING RICHARD: Nixon and Watergate: an American tragedy

Author: Michael Dobbs

Published by: Scribe Publications, London, 2021, 396pp, $35.

As a student of American politics at Victoria University many moons ago, I remember being struck by the number of classmates who flocked to write essays about the presidency of John F. Kennedy. In some ways I suppose it should not have been surprising. Kennedy's striking eloquence, his famous charm and movie-star looks, not to mention his tragic fate, set him apart from a crowd of grey politicians. But while most of my fellow students were drawn to the 35th president, I found myself instead fascinated by the 37th. Richard Milhous Nixon was everything Kennedy was not. The son of a struggling grocer from southern California, he was an awkward, intense, polarising introvert. Where Kennedy was smooth, witty, and held court with the media, Nixon sweated before the television cameras and growled at the press. I wondered how this complicated man, a loner with few true friends, incapable of small talk, had risen to the highest public office in America. What qualities drove him to persist even after his shattering defeat to Kennedy in 1960 and failure in the California gubernatorial race two years later? What character flaws set in motion the crimes and coverup that would ultimately bring down his presidency?

A similar curiosity animates Michael Dobbs fresh new account of Watergate. Set in the hundred days after Nixon's second inauguration, Dobbs argues that the unravelling of the Nixon presidency was a peculiarly American tragedy. In Greek or Shakespearian tragedy,

a ruler who wants to do good commits a fatal error of judgment stemming from pride or hubris that leads to a personal crisis. This is followed by a catastrophe of some kind in which he is publicly disgraced. The hero's suffering evokes feelings of awe and pity from the audience, who learn lessons from the way the crisis is resolved. Dobbs argues that Nixon's strengths were also his fatal flaws. He 'worked harder than anyone else, hated his enemies more intently, took bigger risks, and dreamed bigger dreams. He never accepted defeat and was constantly remaking himself.' Everything Nixon achieved, and subsequently lost, Dobbs concludes, was the result of his own actions.

The idea of Nixon as a tragic figure is not new. It has been evoked in various ways by Henry Kissinger, Pat Buchanan, Evan Thomas and William Safire. And the idea of the 37th president...