Politico magazine and the atlantic. Following his career as a journalist where he worked as White House Correspondent and served on the spotlight team. In his capacity as a journalist, he has cover congress, the Supreme Court and every Residential Campaign from 1980 through 2012. He also served as the senior Political Correspondent for political integrity. Fornprofit Center Investigative journalism in washington, d. C. In 1996 he received a prize and the award from the White House Correspondents association for coverage of the presidency. The first time everyone had captured both awards in a single year. He is a frequent guest lecturer various universities, including stafford, harvard, the United States military academy, university of chicago and other institutions abroad. He is the author of three books. Dam, and tip ohe neill and the democratic century. Tonight his talk focuses on a third book about Richard Nixon. It is a biography of the 37th president of the United States. This book has won the award for best biography of the year, the New York Historical societys book prize in american history. And was a finalist for the pulitzer prize. After the program, please join us in the atrium where this book is for sale and signing. Please give a warm welcome to mr. Farrell and enjoy the program. [applause] john thank you very much. That was terrific. Thank you. Groucho marx used to say after that kind of introduction, i can hardly wait to hear what i have to say. [laughter] it is a great honor to be at the smithsonian. At a time when history and objective knowledge is under fire, the smithsonian is this great and wonderful institutional asset that we have. Just today, i was reading through the Smithsonian Magazine website and they have this marvelous story about how the of an African American in virginia got together with the white curator of the museum of the confederacy. Overher, they sat down beers. Grandfathersgreat fought for this out. Together theyd sat down and combined their two institutions to this new museum, i think its called the museum of the civil war in richmond. It is a marvelous story. I recommend that you read it, like everything in the Smithsonian Magazine. I think it is a great illustration, a great example of where we can go if we forget some of the things i will talk about tonight. Thank you for coming out on a night when you could sit at home and watch on cspan events very similar to those 50 years ago. [laughter] john one of the first questions i got asked repeatedly is why nixon, now . I was accused of being something of an oracle when the book came out after donald trump had been elected, facing off against a special counsel over a breakin at Democratic National headquarters. Staging his own saturday night massacres. Declaring war on the press and declaring that the press is the enemy. Powering with a foreign to affect the election. Obstructing justice, democrats muttering about impeachment, a friend of mine from the faculty of the university of virginia told me, we packed six years of nixon into two years of trump. [laughter] john its like nixon speed dating. [laughter] john i dont know how many of you are readers of the great oxford histories of america but basically they take civil war, the revolutionary period, the cold war and they give them to a fantastic scholar and he writes a book of history about this era. Richard white got the assignment to do the gilded age. Reconstruction and the gilded age from 1872 the 1890s. The 1890s. He had a reaction very similar to mine. He said i have written about a time of rapid change and failed politics. I finished it in a parallel universe. Which reminds me of what harry truman said. Which is that there is nothing , new in human nature. Men dont change, the only thing new in the world is the history you dont know yet. We can be sure that somewhere, from this perch and the great hereafter, that Richard Nixon is looking up at us now. [laughter] bob, i told, see, you theyd miss me when im gone. Why nixon now . One reason, selling books is a commercial enterprise. One reason is we had this amazing string of 50th anniversaries. This is the 50 year mark of the nixon presidency. Electede year he was began with the tet offensive in vietnam. Senator Eugene Mccarthys antiwar challenge in new hampshire. Robert kennedy entering the race. Therd wallace entering race. Lyndon johnsons abdication. The murder of Martin Luther king. The murder of Robert Kennedy, and the huge rivalry at the Democratic National convention in chicago. All of that led up to november of when nixon was elected. 1968 he almost didnt make it. By 500,000 votes in one of the closest elections ever. He barely clinched the republican election. Profiting from the blunders of his rival, michigan governor george romney. Mitt romneys dad was the republican frontrunner until he attempted to change his position on the vietnam war. He claimed he had been brainwashed by the pentagon. Romney was considered a bit of a lightweight. This did not persuade the skeptical public that he had the rains are the guts to become the next commander in chief. Eugene Mccarthy Rose to the occasion. Brainwashed, he said when told of romneys gash. Would have been sufficient. It was during that 1968 race of the election, that the Nixon Campaign pulled off a dirty trick that i argued, in my book, was worse than anything he did outward. In october of that year, Lyndon Johnson announced that he had reached an agreement for peace talks with the north vietnamese. After urging the soviet union, which was the norths armor and supplier, the United States would suspend bombing in southeast asia. Return, the russians promised Lyndon Johnson that hanoi would engage in productive talks. Then there was a hitch, the south vietnamese refused to join the talks. Johnson was curious. Just furious. Furious. You can her this on the johnson tapes that are online. All the more so when he learned that a Nixon Campaign official had been heard on an american wiretap of the saigons embassy in washington, urging saigon to drag its feet. They would get promised a better deal if nixon were elected. Johnson got on the phone with the Senate Republican leader, we could stop the killing out there, he said, that they have this new formula they put in there. Wait on nixon. They are killing 400 or 500 a day waiting on nixon. This is treated in treason said lbj. The choice that barack obama faced in 2016. He did not have proof of nixons personal collusion with a foreign power. Nixon the heavenly decide denied it. Ied. Ehemently den does any of this sound familiar . Johnson sat on the information. He sealed all the records in an envelope. Which became known as, i kid you not, the xfiles. Somehow, mysteriously, these things happen. It leaked out. It became a grail for investigative reporters and historians to prove that had nixon had known of these activities. You can go to the United States state Department Historian site to see how the pieces of the puzzle were put into place over the last 50 years as one journalist or researcher after another took up the chase. Nixon always denied a personal role. In his famous interviews with newsmen david frost, he insisted nor had heaware of, authorize any contact with the south vietnamese and could not have done that in good conscience. Until 2013, when conducting the research for my biography of nixon, that i found the scrolled notes of his chief of staff recording nixons orders to keep them working on the south vietnamese. And to do what they could do to monkeywrench johnsons announcements of the peace initiative. We cannot know what might have happened if the Nixon Campaign had not interfered in johnsons initiative. Most likely, those of you who are my age could remember the incredible stubbornness that the north and south vietnamese displayed towards each other in the years that followed. The russians followed promised productive talks may have failed. I am a biographer, not a vietnam or military war historian. I judge my subjects by what they knew and did in the time. Given nixons willingness to engage in such a dark and risky plot, and given the bloody debacle that would follow in cambodia and vietnam, hundreds of thousands of lives that would be lost, i came to the conclusion that this was more reprehensible than anything that took place in watergate. That was 1968. This 50 years ago summer, the moon landing. The great silent majority speech. Next spring, we will be witnessing the anniversary of the invasion of cambodia and the shooting and deaths at kent state. Then comes 1972, just as we are starting to think nasty things about Richard Nixon, he pulls a rabbit out of his hat. Why nixon now . We live in a world that Richard Nixon made. That february, 1972 opening to stunningat planet o, set peopleh ma on earth on a new course. It was the first great crack of the cold war. That indispensable step toward this integrated World Economy that would grant them a measure of peace. You can hear him on the tapes talking with this vision in mind. Electioning the 1960 for the governor of california, the one where he held the famous last press conference and said you wont have nixon to kick , around anymore. He moved to new york. As an international lawyer, he roamed the world for a prominent client, pepsicola. Everywhere he went in those wilderness years, he would stop and talk to u. S. Diplomats and foreign statesmen. Many of them he knew or had met on International Missions as Vice President under eisenhower. It was like one great postgraduate seminar. In 1967 in an article in foreign asias magazine called after vietnam, nixon described the world to come. Monolithic communism is doomed. There is a new age coming. The new age is an Information Age built around a technological revolution. It will be a computer revolution. This age is going to require freedom intellectual nimbleness, not factory lines or collective farms or five year plans. It was especially illsuited to the musclebound totalitarian regimes like the ussr. The nations of the pacific rim, japan, indonesia singapore, korea would lead the new age but there was one great threat, china. The chinese had to be brought out of their shell and integrated into this new International Economic order. Because all that progress and the promise of peace that could last a generation could be lost if a ramp that Nuclear Armed red china sought to solve the problem of a billion hungry restless and enslaved people with aggression. In 1969, almost as soon as he office, the chinese and the soviets engaged in a ridiculous over adispute godforsaken riverbank in siberia and the door was open to crack. Nixon was prepared and he had the foresight and courage to reach out to mao. In the 20 years of peace that he hopes for an talks about on the tapes, which he defines not as a time when there would be war on the world, but a time free from the battles he had witnessed in world war ii with the threat of a nuclear congregation and a third world war, is also now at 50 years and counting. Not for nothing, mr. Spock was urging captain kirk to negotiate with the evil klingons, relying captain kirk there is an old proverb. Only nixon could go to china. [laughter] there were domestic accomplishments as well. Again, in the first week after he was elected, i cant tell you what an impact it made at that time, but there was a Huge Oil Spill off the coast of Santa Barbara in california. Nixon had already been wellplaced on the environmental issue. He had russell train as an advisor to his campaign. William was ready to serve in his administration. So, nixon with a stroke of his pen does not wait for congress to pass a law, he creates this thing called the epa. He follows it up with a National Environmental policy act. For anybody who is ever been in a fight over the Environmental Impact statement. He signed legislation, the clear act clear air act in 1970. Automobile and mission controls. A ban on ocean dumping. A ban on ocean dumping. Protection of Marine Mammals and coastal zone management, all in the Nixon Administration. He has a very convoluted record on civil rights but there is no denying that he did more to integrate southern schools than any president for or since president before or since. Brown v. Board of education was in 1983. Eisenhower, kennedy and Lyndon Johnson wanted nothing of it. They dragged their feet. They had their administration and Justice Department filed some suits. It fell to Richard Nixon to actually get the schools integrated. In 1969 when he came into office, there were 186,000 africanamerican kids in schools in the south. In 1970, that number went to 2. 5 million. As a single great expert on nixon, the civil rights has said, it was the greatest School Desegregation in american history. They moved on. They created something called the philadelphia plan. They denied tax exempt status to segregated private academies. Those are the two biggies. The environment and civil rights. But there was more. He passed in conjunction with the Democratic Congress. Tax reform for low income individuals. Increased aid to education, increased food stamp budget, the Social Security costofliving raises an system of costofliving raises that secured old folks from inflation. The Occupational Safety and health act. The war on cancer. He doubled federal funding for the arts. He signed title nine, he signed the volunteer military, he dropped the voting age to 18. And in one of the most little noted accomplishments of his administration, but something that if you ever go out west you will on almost every indian reservation. He had a policy called selfdetermination for indian tribes. Makes him as day hero on the reservation. He had three biggies that did not get past. You will chuckle when you are what they are. The first was something called nixoncare. A mandated private insurance with government subsidy. If barack obama had gone out on the First Press Conference and said i am asking the republican and democrats in congress to pass Richard Nixons health program, he would have gotten all of the republican votes and none of the democratic votes. But because it was called plancare, the nixon reported 50 years later was shot down by congress. There is a great memo from the Nixon Library from Daniel Patrick moynihan. To india ambassador and United States senator from new york. It is a memo to the president set that says the scientists have come up with something worrisome. We are worried about this thing called climate change. Anglobal warming could be pop apocalyptic danger to world civilization. 1969. The third biggie was something the familyan called assistance plan. It is something we will come back to in our childrens generation. Guaranteed basic annual income, day care and job training. Replacing the welfare system completely. All of this liberal legislation bubbling up from the Nixon Administration in conjunction with the Democratic Congress. This is why many scholars like to look at the nixon years not as some isolated thing by itself but as the third act of great fulfillment of the new frontier and great society. If you take that time period from 19601972, that is when we really built the modern government structure in society that we have today. We might have seen it coming. He was elected to the house in 1946. He instantly made an impression on leadership. Committee toded a travel to europe and rebuild George Marshalls plan, nixon was chosen. He road far and wide, impressing ouall who met him. He saw the shattered cities of france and germany. He stood amid the ruins of hitlers chambers where the kids of berlin tried to sell him their fathers war medals. Much was at stake for nixon. He came from orange county, california. In those days it was rockford, republican and conservative. The man who would pluck Richard Nixon from obscurity, sent him to congress, built and paid for the campaign was thoroughly against the marshall plan. They sought as socialism, foreign aid, a waste of money. Pouring money down a rat hole. They warn him. They told him not to count on their support if they went through this. But nixon saw what he must do. He returned to his district, and for six months in 1947 and 1948, he campaigned for the marshall plan. He went to every rotary club, every chamber of congress he told them he owed them his best judgment, not his obedience. He convinced them. When the Party Primaries were held in california in the summer of 1948, Richard Nixon did not the republican nomination, he won the democratic nomination. He wagered everything and he carried the day, he ran unopposed in his first reelection campaign. Yet, this is the story of Richard Nixon. I thought of calling the book and yet. [laughter] and yet, not having opposition made him one of the few republican congressman who is available that summer of 1948 to begin the red hunt to chase down the soviet spy. Which is a forerunner to mccarthyism. Ironies abound. Why nixon now . It is a compelling story. There may be no american airport named after nixon, but there are films and books and one hell of an opera. Did you know that the evil empire from star wars was based the Nixon Administration . Don draper was modeled on young Richard Nixon. There is a reason why in the movies the bad guys put on Richard Nixon masks as they prepared to stick up a bank, and why everyone laughs when they do. [laughter] john he is the only president to resign in disgrace. It was senator bob dole who joined the u. S. Delegation and s funeral. Esident walked into the white house and came across jimmy carter, gerald ford and Richard Nixon. There they were said dole, see no evil, hear no evil, and evil. [laughter] john it was that same bob dole, terribly wounded in italy in world war ii, so wounded that they wrote on his four head in his own blood not to waste your time this one is gone. He recovered but lost the use of his right arm. He could not perform the most elemental of political tasks, the handshake. It was bob dole who would tell you that of all the committeemen and delegates and chamberlain and congressmen, there was one man who never neglected to extend his left hand. When greeting bob dole. That was Richard Nixon. It was dole who broke down, his features contorting and weeping while giving the eulogy at nixons funeral. The original title of the book was going to be Richard Nixon an american tragedy. It is not my poetic original flourish. Elliot members like richardson and Henry Kissinger wrote it. They put it in their diaries and letters. As kissinger wrote, deeply insecure, nixon acted as if cruel fate singled him out for rejection. Then he contrived to make sure his premonition came to pass. It was set of kissinger was that he was a selfmade man who worshiped his creator. [laughter] john that was not Richard Nixon. Nixon was not an easy man to like. He knew it and it hurt. He had a dickensian childhood. His dad was brutal and abusive, a miserly tyrant. Two of his brothers died in childhood. One, a curlyhaired golden baby of them arthur died of tuberculosis. The pride of the family took years to succumb to tuberculosis. Splitting his family as his mother took away to care for him. Wrecking the familys finances. Dick did made it into made it into yale and harvard but his family could not send him. He came to believe it was his fathers stubbornness to give away the family cow, whose milk had killed his brothers. His mother would retreat to the closet to pray. Himr once would she tell she loved him. That was not their way. He came to say that he was an unlovable human being. It left him plagued by an intense and painful insecurity and selfdoubt. He became iago to his own othello. Whispering in his own ear, you are a loathsome creature, no one likes you, you are no good. So when he campaigned, he campaigned with rossi and ruthless aggression. In doing so he became a truly tragic figure. We can glimpse the seas of watergate in nixons actions as a precursor. A john the baptist of macarthur. His redbaiting campaigns that helped launch the mccarthy era were infamous. Nowhere is that clip tragic flaw clear but in the metal of race. Here we come to another and yet. For all the good that he did as president of the United States, his record on race is checkered and revealing. He grew up in whittier, a quaker outpost in southern california. In college, he was the founder of a social club that remarkably , for the 1930s, recruited and accepted black members. Congressirst ran for in 1936 he spoke out for racial justice. The local naacp made him an honorary member in the same klan wasat the burning crosses to defeat a referendum on fair employment. When he won his first senate race, one of his great supporters was a guy named any kenny washington, a teammate of Jackie Robinson at ucla. A year before robinson took the field for the brooklyn dodgers. They held a Victory Party for nixons campaign. In 1950s he befriended Jackie Robinson and Martin Luther king. A daring move for a politician with national ambitions. After getting nixons help in passing the 1957 civil rights bill, king wrote in a letter, it is altogether possible that nixon has no basic racial prejudice. And it was not just the public nixon. I came across this letter to his old law partner from the time. Whittier had a black shoeshine man who worked in the town barbershop. He saved and sent his brilliant daughter to columbia university. When they came to visit washington, nixon had them as guests. Two years before brown v. Board of education. Amongst all the southerners, Richard Russell stood fulbright in the Senate Dining room. In a private letter to his former law partner, never realizing that anybody would see it, she is a very pretty and intelligent girl. It renews your faith in this country to realize that a daughter of a barbershop shine to get a masters standing in the highest percentage of her class. King was very impressed with this liberality from nixon but being a perceptive man, he was a bit weary. There is a danger in such a personality, king wrote. That it would be turned on merely for political expedience. I hope this is not the case with nixon, wrote dr. King. If Richard Nixon is not sincere, he is the most dangerous man in america. Perceptive assessment was borne out in the 1960 president ial campaign, which nixon lost to john f. Kennedy. There were many reasons for that loss. Nixon bungled the first debate. He made a rash promise to campaign in all 50 states. And wasted the last week in alaska. As importantly, in keeping that 50 state promise, he found he could draw large crowd in the then democratic solid south. He, like kennedy, sought to walk the edge, and balance a campaign for white southern votes with that from black votes in northern cities. But telling moment arrived when near the end of the Campaign King was arrested in georgia for in old traffic charge. Shackled and taken to a backwoods prison in the middle of the night, family and friends fearing he would not emerge alive. John and Robert Kennedy intercede with the georgia governor and get king freed. The Nixon Campaign said, no comment. Jackie robinson flew to where nixon was campaigning, begged him to intercede and robinson left the hotel suite with anger and disillusionment. Longer,own nicks and king recalled. He had been supposedly close to me. He would call me frequently about things, seeking my advice. When this moment came, it was like he never heard of me. This is why i considered him a moral coward. The kennedys did a better job of walking that line that fall. Holding onto majority states to make a difference in a race decided by 113,000 votes. And when nixon ran again in 1968, Jackie Robinson supported nelson rockefeller. When Richard Nixon was elected president , the Nixon White House had Jackie Robinson investigated and a dossier compiled by the fbi. Was evidence in 1960 that the Kennedy Campaign had stolen votes, enough to win in illinois and texas. Jack kennedy was dick nixons friend. There were invited to attend jackies wedding. Nixon refused to campaign in massachusetts in the year when kennedy ran for reelection to the senate. He is the kind of man the country needs, said the Young Kennedy. Said the Young Kennedy after meeting nixon in the house of representatives. Nixon prayed aloud when kennedy dodged death on the operating table at walter reed in poor, 1954. Brave jack is going to die. Oh, god, dont let him die. The hurt and anger was twice as intense when nixon concluded that the kennedys had stolen a fixed election. Nixons daughter julie said it 1960 thatperience of left her father with a grim resolve of never being out cheated again. Nixon took his anger and hatred and he honed it, and used it. He had an unequal ability to tap resentment of class, of race, of envy. He could see in his audiences what he felt in himself. In part, through the self discernment, nixon recognized the effects of human character and employed that knowledge to poison and manipulate the voters. He persuaded americans to gnaw on grievances and resentments and look at each other as enemies. You want to look at the start of the great polarity, look at Richard Nixon. He was the first postwar politician, and certainly the most successful to build a career on the deliberate and contrived polarization of the American People on issues like class and race. His staff wrote memos calling for a calculated and carefully contrived form of polarization that would occur by telling white americans their rights and taxes were taken to appease a lazy, racial minority. The repercussions happen today. Fox news style with founded by roger ailes, who was Richard Nixons media adviser. Dont let the revisionists tell you that watergate was a hoax, that nixon was railroaded out of congress by the Democratic Congress or liberal press. The tapes are online. Just like you can read the mueller report. [laughter] ruth john in a case of nixon you have to stomach the cynicism, insecurity and the antisemitism. The little boys on the white house staff dont know how to play the game. He told them in the hall of 71. He would have to coach them himself. I want more wiretapping. Why dont you put more money on surveillance and so forth . Maybe its the wrong thing to do, but if we have to start, we have to start now. Real scandalget a on any one of the leading democrats scandal . Now youre talking. This, too, was nixons legacy. He did not recognize this until the end. But theres no scene in politics, law, art, or commerce to match that of august 9, 1974. A tormented nixon standing in the east room, pouring out his plea, only inling war assassinations do americans experience such mythic moments. No scene in a career of astonishing spectacle was as memorable as nixons farewell to the white house staff that friday morning. At the moment it may well have been the most raw, acutely painful, and unforgettable speech in american political history. His daughter tricia recorded the scene. Do not trip over wires. Stand on name marker. Reach for mamas hand. Hold it. Applause. Daddy is speaking. People are letting tears run down their cheeks. Must not look. Must not think of that now. She wrote in her diary. The real nixon being revealed as only he could reveal himself. By speaking from the heart, people could know daddy, and was not too late. He tried one more time to tell him who he was. How lonely, how alone. No one will ever write a book about my mother, he said. I guess all you would say this about your mother. My mother was a saint. I think of her two boys dying of tuberculosis. Nursing for others in order for her to take care of my older brother. Seeing each one of them die. And when they die, it was like one of her own. Shell have no books written about her, yet she was a saint. Then came proof of his astonishing resilience. We think when someone dear to us dies, when we lose an election, when we suffer defeat, all has ended. Not true. Its only a beginning, always. The young must know it. The old must know it. It must always sustain us because greatness comes and you are really tested when you take some knocks, some disappointment. When sadness comes, because only if youve been in the deepest value, can you ever know how magnificent it is to be on the highest mountain. There was a faded doom about the man, kissinger thought. Men in the audience wept. In the end for Richard Nixon, came words as wise as ever spoken in the great old house. Rich and selfknowledge purchased at a price. Always remember, others may hate you but those who hate you dont , win unless you hate them. And then you destroy yourself. Dick and pat made their way out to the south lawn, walked on the lawn red carpet and shook hands with the Vice President , and climbed the steps of the president ial helicopter, armie one. He gave one defensive wave, as if to ward off defensive grief, and then thrusted his arms victory, andhis entered the helicopter. Army one lifted from the lawn, the National Mall dimmed in a summer mornings haze. Below, boulevards, halls, core doors, pulsed with visionaries and visionaries, with dreams, scheming with amorous ambition and revelry and purpose. Soared oversword statues of heroes and monuments to great statesmen, who ranked with such american audacity, he came so near only to fail. Its so sad, pat said to no one in particular. He spent the night flight to california alone, each in his or her cabin on air force one. The president had a cocktail. At noon, somewhere over missouri, the resignation took effect. Why nixon now . Its essential that we learn from nixons parting words. Todays hate and polarization are more than just political phenomenon. They trenton, in this 21st century world, the american they threatened, in this 24th century world, the american ideal. And that ideal is that a selfgoverning people, varied in National Origin and faith and the color of their skins, can still be, like Ronald Reagan told us, as John Winthrop preached to his fellow pilgrims, as they sailed towards massachusetts bay, the city upon a hill. That the numeral begin not only shines for others among virtues of liberty and equality, but demonstrates the nations are s diverse and these ideals are achievable. That is the challenge americans face right now. If we lose this battle in this wealth, and its deep abiding belief, and we surrender all the hard won gains weve made in equality, gender, race, sexual orientations, and its difficult to see how other democracies resist hatred there. I would argue thats the meaning of Barack Obamas nobel prize. Obama had not done anything particularly wonderful to qualify for it except to win an election. It wasnt awarded to him. It was awarded to us. It was the world saying to us, bravo. Keep inspiring us. Keep being america. We were that people than, and we will be that people again, but we have to work on it. American success is no done deal. , but wee exceptional are not predestined to succeed. America is just that an , experiment. Experiments can fail. Benjamin rush said after the revolution, nothing but the first act of the great drama has now closed. John adams said you cannot guarantee success, but we can do something better. We can deserve it. Our exceptionalism doesnt guarantee we will always make the right choice. The price today of the wrong choice is deep. After writing three books i have been christened, by the new york times, no less. Quite heavy stuff for an old newspaperman. One thing historians get to do is quote abraham lincoln, sort of like getting your union card. [laughter] john in 1838, for seeing civil war, lincoln told his countrymen, of all the armies of europe, asia and africa combined, with all the treasurer of the earth, for the bonapartes of the commander cannot by force take a drink from the ohio river. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we will live alltime or die by suicide. Nixon taught us that, teaches us that now. Why nixon now . Its only a beginning, always, he said on the east room the day he relinquished the presidency. The last year, i was invited to lecture at vanderbilt and a om is, university of chicago, mary washington, Montgomery College mcgill, university of , texas. Its reassuring, having toured these campuses and engaged in conversations and debate with my childrens generations, that millennials have it figured out. Part when i saw their values were good, fair and generous. So i submit to give them a chance to not tear themselves apart, to not die by suicide or succumb to hatred. We always rally to meet outside threats. Wars, natural disasters, terrorist attacks. My parents generations prove that. Men and women. E an arsenal of democracy. But as lincoln warns us, the threat comes not from afar, but from ourselves. Others may hate you. But if you hate them, thats when you destroy yourself. And thats the real answer to the question, why nixon now . So, we have some time for questions. I can go on forever. His life is immensely rich. And we will have someone with a boom mic, so cspan can get everything down. And here he is. [applause] did nixon ever have a friend . John did nixon ever have a friend . He had one famous friend, and he was in the presidency. Everybody pretty much agreed the relationship was like this. That they would go out on bbs boat, and he would say nothing and nixon would say nothing and they would turn around and come back two hours later and get off the boat. [laughter] john and nixon valued him because nixon had this amazing brain. Because he was so personally awkward, almost everything had to be rehearsed. He would go through these weeklong reversals for his press conferences. There is a story i was told about after he left the presidency and was making his comeback, he brought a bunch of reporters, journalists and editors to his home in new jersey. After they all sat around and had chinese food, he stood up and with no notes, gave this amazing Tour De Force about the world situation and the american political situation. And they were astonished. They were amazed at this brain. One of the guys had to go to the bathroom. As they were walking down the hall, there was a table with one of nixons famous yellow legal pads, which he wrote his thoughts on. And word for word, was the speech they just heard, which they thought was spontaneous at the table. That was nixons way of doing things. He would sit in an armchair with his yellow legal pad, tens of thousands of pages at the Nixon Library. What he wanted was quiet. His brother told me one of the things that nixon loved was the sea. I said why did nixon love the , beach so much . His brother said white noise. , the waves, create this barrier of Everything Else that amazing brain could keep ticking. So, his closest friend was probably pat, and that was a rocky relationship. His relationship with his daughters was sometimes strained. He was an awkward human being, somewhat peculiar. Henry kissinger makes the argument that a large part of the allegiance of people for nixon is because they identify these qualities in themselves in him. They feel sorry for him and they sympathize and empathize for him. And i have to say as i wrote the book, i did too. [inaudible] how would you compare the moral character of nixon and trump . John how would i compare the moral character of nixon and trump . I think its safe to say now that were not going to see a comparative record of accomplishment at the end of the trump era unless something miraculous happens in the next year that we dont know about. Again, as i wrote the book, there were always surprises that come to you. And the surprise to me is that its an amazing record of accomplishment that nixon left behind. And, as somebody said in my speech, nixon was all about expedients. There really was not too much he had locked in his heart as a guiding principle. Pat buchanan said the ideological buffet of the Nixon Administration was like a smorgasbord. Took a little bit of conservative here, liberal here, didnt make a difference. He was not an ideologue. But the great moral admirable character that nixon had, that i think, is his amazing devotion to peace. He had been this young soldier in world war ii, young sailor in world war ii, served in the same South Pacific field, solomon islands, as jfk, joe mccarthy, ben bradlee and John Mitchell and Richard Nixon all served there at the same time. Never knew each other. All within a couple of miles from each other. But he came home like many of the guys from world war ii determined that there were going to stop it. He had this great devotion to his mother, who was a quaker. He was determined his great moral characteristic he had was this drive for peace and i dont see it in the current president. But its early yet. President s have a way of surprising us when the diaries when the books come out later, but nixon definitely wanted to bring home his chinese, moscow peace plan and lay that on his mothers grave. See mom . See what ive done. Sure. How could such a flawed man, with such a flawed character, accomplish so much . John he had how could such a flawed man with such a flawed character accomplish so much . If you think about his story, he was amazing. He comes back from war in 1946 and nobody knows his name, except for a few of the people back in orange county, who decide that, we get some young servicemen and he will be the sacrificial goat against the six term new deal congressman. And nixon goes out and the governor doesnt know him. The two senators dont know him. The Los Angeles Times has no idea who he is. And he wins that race. In six years hes Vice President of the United States. Meteoricstonishing rise, and eight years after that, hes running for president. So, he was smart. He was shrewd. He had that great ability, i think to, as i said, to recognize the grievance in his audience, see it in himself, and then make that connection because they shared it. It might not have been over the same thing, but that feeling of resentment. And when he did focus his mind on something like, what he called his structure of peace. The used to hold up his hand and say, the United States, russia, china, japan, europe. Thats the structure of peace. Thats the way we keep the peace for 20 years. And we kept it for 50. So he did have vision. Amazing resilience. Comes back, loses to kennedy. Comes back, loses the 1962 election. Makes a great his political comeback ever and gets elected by 113,000 votes im sorry, 500,000 votes. And then goes on to win one of the greatest landslides ever. Plummets again in watergate. Reaches some kind of uneasy peace with himself, enough that people give him credit as an elder statesman in his later years. But there was just no holding him down. He just had that amazing grit. Sure. You obviously interviewed many people who dealt with him during his life. Interview orone one statement by one of these people that stands out to you when you were doing your research . John is there any one statement or one interview that i did that stood out when i did the research . With all my biographical characters, there comes a moment, months or years into the process, where all of a sudden you see the shadow across the stage. And you say wait a minute. And you walk over there and you follow them, and you say thats him. I finally got a glimpse of the real him. And that moment came when i interviewed his brother, ed, who was a geologist, many years younger than dick, and lived outside of seattle. But looked almost the same as him and carried many of the same family traits, and some of the same resentments. He must have been 84 or something at the time. We had this marvelous discussion. And he said do you want to get some lunch . I, of course, said sure. Do you have a restaurant around here . I would be glad to have the publisher pick it up. He said ah, come on. He was a pilot. Pilots always have hot cars. We get in this pontiac, we zip onto the interstate going 80 miles per hour. And he says next exit, burger king. [laughter] jokes aside, that was the moment that i really got a sense for who dick was as a young man. Especially since the physical it was like i was talking to nixon himself. Go back there a little bit. Why did eisenhower picnics in, and why did he keep him . John why did eisenhower hate nixon . Why did he keep him . Eisenhower was, maybe with a side of churchill or franken roosevelt, eisenhower was one of the great titans of world war ii. And then he comes home and wins the presidency. And hes told by his advisors they need somebody young. It would be nice to have somebody from the Younger Generation who fought the war. California would be great. Why dont we pick this young kid, nixon . It was never really a love affair. It was more like an arranged marriage by the republican party. And i didnt really not like nixon as much as i sort of ignored him because nixon was staff. Eisenhower had liberated europe. He was used to palling around with churchill. He knew what young lieutenant commanders were for. They were to take this telegram to that office over there. And nixon, having gotten this far, and having these wonderful assignments like welcome churchill when he arrives, and sit in the car with him when he comes back, is just gaga. The idea that he wanted eisenhowers approval. And he couldnt get it. And that brought out a lot of nixons worst traits. His nervousness, his drinking. And eisenhower then began to look at him, made him uncomfortable to be around. So given the chance to get rid of him after four years, eisenhower tried, but nixons base in the party was too strong. But that was so unfair because ike had had his heart attack in the first term and if you wrote a script of how a Vice President of the United States should behave, Richard Nixon just ticked every one of those points of. He never took over the oval office. He was respectful, he was diligent. He was everything you would want somebody to be. Eisenhower calls him up to the forum in pennsylvania and say, dick, how would you like to not be Vice President in the next term. When you already have this fragile personality, that thing drove him nuts. In the end, ike kept him because he was known as the taft winning taft wing of the republican party. Nixon had done the famous checker speech in 1952 and made a name for himself. In the end, eisenhower didnt have the guts to kick him off the ticket. Given the way he had to leave office, how did nixon interact with president s who came after him before he died . John given the way he had to leave office, how did nixon interact with president s who came after him . His advice was taken seriously on Foreign Affairs. Not so much he liked to write these long memos and pass them around about whos going to win the nomination next time out, and stuff like that. He was never that good at that. George schulz told me he was never that good on Foreign Affairs either. [laughter] john but he had enough of a reputation that residents president s listened. Reagan knew him going way back and reagan was too smart a man to know that nixon thought he was stupid. So reagan took him with a grain of salt. George h. W. Bush always thought nixon had toyed with him, used him. There was this amazing letter in George H W Bushs letters to his sons talking about how nixon spoiled that beautiful white house. But, they did talk to nixon. And it was at a crucial time, of course, because gorbachev was there. Saying to ourselves, lets not get carried away. It would be prudent to get carried away and think this guy is going to be a hero with everything we know about the soviet union. Bush was an optimist, schulz was an optimist, baker was an optimist, and they wanted to see what would happen after the wall fell. Nixon was, no, no, gorbachev was just another stalin in a velvet glove. So, he was wrong on that one. And then he got in a pissing match with bush and wrote a very nasty op ed in the new york times, saying bush was mishandling this important relationship. Which, if you remember the obituaries after george bush died, every single one of them was led by president bush, who masterfully handled the fall of the iron curtain. So, nixon was wrong on that one. Bill clinton talked to him a lot, which was strange, considering that no two people no two politicians could have ever been more opposite. And hillary, of course, had been on the staff of the Judiciary Committee that voted to impeach him. But clinton respected him and listened to him. And nixon was sort of he didnt despair about the fact he didnt have a great deal of influence in his exile years. But he was a realist enough to know that he was not at that point, he didnt even reach the class of kissinger, who really did have all their ears and probably did have much more influential input. Yes, sir . In light of all you learned, if you could interview Richard Nixon, what question would you most like to ask him . [laughter] john what one question would i most like to ask Richard Nixon if i could interview him, other than why didnt you bring the tape . [laughter] john im fascinated when i do a biography about the formative years