A number of times throughout their speeches,
Bob
Dole and Bill Clinton imply that Richard Nixon
was a typical American and "one
of us", borrowing the title phrase from Tom Wicker's book about Nixon.
In particular, Dole casts Nixon as a typical American: "He
was the boy who heard train whistles in the night and dreamed of all the
distant places that lay at the end of the track. How American."
It is ironic that Dole fails to grasp the full meaning
of Tom Wicker's phrase as the author originally meant it. Wicker explains
that the genesis of his book and its title was a chance meeting with Nixon
in 1957:
"But the greatest surprise, as Nixon and I approached
each other, was to see the vice president walking along rather slowly,
shoulders slumped, hands jammed in his trouser pockets, head down and his
eyes apparently fixed - though perhaps on nothing - on the ornate Capitol
floor. What I could see of his face seemed darker than could be accounted
for by the trademark five o'clock shadow; it was preoccupied, brooding,
gloomy, whether angry or merely disconsolate I was unable to tell." [1]
As Wicker explains, what he sees in Richard Nixon that
is symbolic of America is not the uniform patriotism that Bob Dole describes
as "Strong. Brave. Unafraid of controversy.
Unyielding in his convictions. Living every day of his life to the hilt
... How American."
In fact, Wicker's Nixon is far more self-seeking and contradictory:
"Nixon exalted American values and traditions but seldom hesitated to ignore
or distort them for his own advantage. He sought peace but made war..."
[2]
Wicker's conclusion is that "if John Kennedy embodied,
as Norman Mailer once wrote, something like the nation's 'romantic dream
of itself', perhaps Richard Nixon represented a harder and clearer national
self-assessment." In total contrast to the emblematic patriot offered up
by Dole and Clinton, and more in
line with Thompson's "hubris
crazed monster from the bowels of the American dream", Wicker presents
Nixon as a coldly-calculating, pragmatic individual, reinventing himself
whenever his previous incarnation lost its efficacy, unaware of the hypocrisy
of his own values and ideology.