Dick and the Boys

YOU HAVE TO APPROACH a book on leadership by Richard Nixon with a healthy does of cynicism. It is absurd, if not pathetic that probably the most mortally decrepit U.S. President ever has judged himself fit to assess such 20th century leaders Churchill De Gaulle MacArthur or Chou En-Lai.

An old Dick does not fail to deliver. Leaders, a compendium of his reminiscences and musings on statesman he has known, irritates because it is self-servicing, sketchy, and often trite. More often than not, Nixon's attempt to regurgitate and refine his staunchly

But Nixon's latest attempt to explain away--and subsidize--his retirement years is not entirely without insight or interest. His paranoiac sliminess aside (a big aside). Nixon does evince some of the flashes of political acumen and pragmatic grasp of world affairs that surfaced from time to time during his shortened Administration. Thirty years of hobnobbing in the world's corridors of power have somewhat of a rubbing-off effect, as Nixon himself wouldn't hesitate to tell us: It sure beats some other forms of occupation, like acting for instance. But this is getting ahead of the game. To give the man his due, let's take the book's main points the way Nixon would have us remember them:

*Nixon was the personal friend of a lot of the leaders and most of them respect him highly. This is by far the number one point the ex-prez seems intent on conveying to the reader. Yes, there's some biographical information on each statesmen, and some analysis of reason for their success or failure. But the book rises and falls on the anecdotes Nixon tells about Churchill, Adenauer, Yoshida, et. al., This is a tactic that could--no, should--work; after all, where Nixon really can add to history, so to speak, is through piercing insight gained through personal encounters with the greats. But not-too-strangely enough, by the end of a given chapter on a leader, the numerous anecdotes weigh heavily. The purpose of Nixon's personal stories, it seems time after time, is not so much to illuminate these often mysterious characters, but to impress us with his past intimacy and rapport with such illustrious leaders.

"I believe that our respect was mutual," he writes of his relationship with DeGaulle. DeGaulle was a great leader, and hence the readers can infer the same about Nixon. The preening emerges during his discussion about Brezhnev. During meetings in Moscow, Nixon "sensed" that the Soviet leader was "pained that our exchanges during the October crises had been so tough." The implication lingers that it was Nixon's "toughness" during the crisis following the October 1973 Middle East War that caused U.S: diplomacy to succeed. Other examples abound of anecdotes apparently designed to point up that Nixon himself had the same sorts of qualities of leadership hr praises in others.

*Point two: Free enterprise and pro-Westernism is good. Socialism stinks, These messages of supreme faith come through loud and clear throughout Leaders. Much of Nixon's analysis gets lost in his effort to distill these dual ideas, especially in his discussions of Third World leaders. Here, for instance, "stubborn adherence to socialism" is the lynchpin for his criticisms of people like Nehru or Nasser, his too-brief analyses of these figures are left turgid and unrevealing.

What's more, all-too-evident ideological tendencies leave Nixon smelling of the Worst sort of moral arrogance. Summoning a strong dose of roundabout logic, he finds it necessary to justify his rather rosy conclusions about leaders like the Shah or Sadat. "We may not like authoritarian rule," he writes predictably, "but for many countries there simply is no practical alternative to their present stages" Perhaps Nixon is indeed right to suggest potential pragmatic and philosophical pitfalls which foreign policies face in trying to follow idealistic, human rights based programs. But in the process, indeed throughout the book, Nixon betrays the condescension implicit in the notion that some peoples are somehow "unprepared" for democracy or that well, yellow people are for some reason thicker-skinned than whites and can therefore bear injustice and suffering better.

* Great leaders are unusual people--that's the third point. This is the last of the great Nixonian themes and as good a summary as any of his rambling and superficial analysis. His ruminations on this point like much of the rest of the book, sound straight out of a fourth-grade civics textbook. "Great leaders excite great controversies. If one wants insight into how an individual thinks and feels as an adult, it makes common sense that his family background and early years will often provide a clue. "The successful leader must know when to light and when to retreat, when to be silent and when to compromise, when to speak out and when to be silent" Future Churchills and DeGaulles must be snapping to attention.

Nixon's simplistic outlook is not confined to ridiculous quotes called at random from the text of his work, however For all the contact and friendship he had with the world's power-brokers. Nixon adds strikingly little to stereotyped images of the Churchill and DeGaulles So what if Churchill was fascinating at the dinner table? Nixon's 35 page discussion of the British leader reads more like an informed person's biography than a President's memoirs.

BUT THOUGH LEADERS fails in its primary task of providing insight into many of the world's leading actors, it does give an engrossing glimpse into a fertile, though dangerous, mind. For observers of a President way out of touch with the complexities of his office and wallowing in stagnant ideology, Nixon's intellectual abilities and grasp of world politics sounds frighteningly refreshing--or at least provocative.

His ruminations on U.S. Soviet relationships in the chapter on Khruschev and Brezhnev, for example, are moderate if self-congratulatory in their defense of detente. Nixon only predictably lambasts the "superdoves" but also lashes out at the "superhawks," in a not-too-subtle Jab at the strident Reagan approach to dealing with the Soviets. A "hard-headed detente" is the best strategy the U.S. could adopt in this nuclear age, he creditably argues When Nixon sets aside ideology and self-interest partially (he can never do it fully), he does prove insightful and at times persuasive. Such glimpses may be one explanation for how a second-rate crook got as far as he did.

However, such moments are rare, and as a result we see more a portrait of Nixon's own failings than cogent portrayals of modern-day statesmen. And nowhere is this point better driven home than in the final pages of the book, where Nixon sums up his reflections on leadership. Closing what has in truth been a halfway interesting read, one is struck by the noticeable lack of comment on the moral qualities of leadership. Oh, Nixon doesn't miss the chance to make a comment or two about Khruschev's untrustworthiness or duplicity. But when it comes to the leaders he really would like to emulate, he is systematically silent about their personal incorruptability. For it was moral worth that Nixon himself could never attain. And that's something he can't gloss over.