Presidential Historian Robert Dallek Reveals True Nature of Nixon-Kissinger "Partnership"

 

Terence Smith

As an installment of the Alma & Joseph Gildenhorn Book Series event at the Aspen Institute, Presidential historian Robert Dallek shared his research and spoke about his new book, Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power (HarperCollins). Dallek spoke candidly to moderator Terence Smith, special correspondent for PBS's The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer, about President Richard Nixon, his national security advisor and later Secretary of State, Henry Kissinger, their unique relationship and its effects on US foreign policy, and their seemingly unquenchable thirst for more executive power.

 

Robert Dallek

Referring to the newly declassified audio tapes of conversations between the two that he listened to as research for the book, Dallek said: "I was amazed and shocked at the fact that they left this material behind ... and at the constant use of vulgar language about people and about the press." Describing both Nixon and Kissinger as "eager and enthusiastic to lie," Dallek detailed what he came across in writing the book.

The event was to have also featured journalist Elizabeth Drew, author of Richard M. Nixon (Times Books), the latest edition in that publisher's American Presidents series. In her absence, Smith offered some of Drew’s insights on Nixon and highlighted some discoveries of her own from her research. Said Smith: "[Drew] reports that Nixon had tremendous mood swings, intensified by his penchant for alcohol, the effects of which he compounded by taking, unprescribed, Dilantin, an anti-convulsive drug never approved as mood-altering medicine. The effects of this combination was to lead Nixon to make rash decisions. For example, she writes that Nixon was drunk on the eve of the invasion of Cambodia. She also posits that of the various theories that 'but for' Watergate, Nixon would have been a great president, that, however large his achievements, there is no 'but for' – that the events that led to Nixon's downfall came from within his soul, and that the traits that led to it – his uncontrolled drinking, his literal paranoia, his determination to wreak revenge on or 'destroy' (his word) his perceived 'enemies,' that his defiance of constitutional constraints, lead her to doubt that this otherwise smart and talented man was fit to hold the most powerful office in the nation."