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Like Hunter S. Thompson and R.W. Apple, Haynes Johnson is one of the journalistic old guard that covered Nixon for much of his political life. Johnson was a national correspondent with the Post from 1969 to 1972, and was an editor there during the Watergate scandal, in charge of the special edition covering Nixon's resignation. With an MA in American History, and a Pullitzer Prize for his articles on the civil rights struggle in Selma, Alabama in 1966, Haynes Johnson is superbly placed to cover the death and historical significance of Richard Nixon. [1]

However, like his colleague at PBS Newshour Michael Beschloss, Haynes Johnson is now another 'talking head' expert on television, and his obituary for Nixon betrays a rather simplistic assessment of Nixon's history. For Johnson, many of Nixon's achievements and setbacks can be ticked off according to their historical 'firsts'. Nixon was "the most controversial and paradoxical of all American presidents", "the first American chief executive forced to resign his office under threat of impeachment", "won one of the largest of the greatest electoral triumphs", "no politician in U.S. history stood at the center of major national debates so long. None was so perservering...". Further, "in all of American history no politician was subjected to such public scrutiny for so long", he was "the second youngest vice president in American history", "he delivered probably the most embittered, self-pitying farewell remarks ever made in American politics", "He was certainly America's most tenacious politician", and "his rise and sudden fall in disgrace are without parallel in U.S. political history".

This superlative scorecard view of the 'Great Men' in American history is misleading, as it presents Nixon as the inevitable agent of his own successes and failures, ignoring the times and events which surrounded him and over which he had little control.

When Johnson delves beneath what Beschloss calls the "historical stock exchange" view of Richard Nixon, and examines the historical surroundings of his life, the obituary presents a more complete picture. As Johnson explains of Nixon's early victories, he exploited the already existing paranoia over communist infiltration to win election to Congress and the Senate and then gain the Vice Presidency. In 1968, as Johnson notes, Nixon's victory did not come about from his own political mastery, but because "the 1968 presidential year was the most destructive in American history", with assassinations and mass protests across America giving Nixon the opportunity to reinsert himself into the political battle: "Nixon capitalized on the feeling of national disintegration by promising to restore peace at home and abroad." Finally, in his post-Watergate years, Nixon was able to utilise his foreign policy expertise to rehabilitate his image. Taking advantage of the collapse of the Soviet Union, "he lobbied avidly for more American aid to Boris Yeltsin, the first president of the non-communist Russian republic, and was credited with helping persuade Congress to grant such aid."

This interaction between Nixon's own political skill and his sense of historical opportunism - exploiting the possibilities for reinvention as they were presented to him by external events - creates a more balanced image of the 'Great Man'.

[1] http://www.journalism.umd.edu/faculty/hjohnson/cv.html
 

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