How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority
August 4, 2014
After losing one of the most agonizingly close presidential elections in U.S. history in 1960, followed by a humiliating loss for California's governorship in 1962, Richard Nixon seemed doomed for history's trash pile. In his "last" press conference, he famously said: "You won't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference." Instead, he regrouped and emerged triumphant in the 1968 presidential election. But how? One of the people best equipped to answer the question is Nixon's first pre-1968 election hire: the young conservative Patrick Buchanan. In this account from January 1966 to Nixon's inauguration in 1968, Buchanan offers memories and insights on the meetings, memos, stump speeches, and conversations Nixon waded through to get to the White House. Details and factoids abound for politics junkies, like Barry Goldwater urging Nixon in a memo to consider Ronald Reagan for his ticket in 1968. Buchanan is a capable writer and skilled at providing succinct summary of the complex politics of the era. Buchana's opinions are controversial, calling affirmative action "a system of racial entitlements" and saying that Nixon's resignation due to Watergate was "the first political coup d'état in U.S. History". Buchanan's memoir is deeply loyal to Nixon, and ultimately, a political defense.