Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: THURSDAY, March 29, 1990 TAG: 9003290704
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A/12 EDITION: EVENING
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Nixon still has the media to kick around - "too often they shoot first and literally ask questions later," he says, adding that Watergate "has elevated peeping-tom journalism and character assassination to a new level of respectability."
Still, instead of an enemies list, Nixon prints a list of his friends among journalists and says, "I could not possibly have gone as far as I did in the political arena without having the benefit of some balanced as well as negative coverage."
"In the Arena," his seventh book since leaving the presidency, is his most personal.
"In the end what matters is that you have always lived life to the hilt," he writes. "I have won some great victories and suffered some devastating defeats. But win or lose, I feel fortunate to have come to that time in life when I can finally enjoy what my Quaker grandmother would have called `peace at the center.' "
The book sums up a lifetime of victories, defeats and comebacks.
Almost dropped as the Republican vice presidential candidate in 1952 because of questions about a "slush fund," he saved himself with an emotional television address. In 1960, he was defeated for the presidency by John Kennedy in an election that he says his wife, Pat, still thinks was stolen from him.
Two years later, he ran for governor of California against Pat's advice ("she was right," Nixon says) and bitterly announced his retirement from politics, only to bounce back in 1968 to finally win the presidency.
But his second term was spoiled by scandal. Midway, he resigned. A tape recording showed that he had tried to block investigation of White House involvement in the Watergate break-in at Democratic headquarters, and impeachment appeared certain.
Nixon offers his standard defense on Nixon Watergate - that he was held to a higher standard than others.
"All administrations have sought to protect themselves from the political fallout of scandals," he writes. The break-in at Democratic headquarters and the cover-up were illegal, but "not unusual in political campaigns."
Other presidents, he adds, taped private conversations and suffered no rebuke for it.
And most people and other presidents used foul language, he says. "But since neither I nor most other presidents had ever used profanity in public," people were shocked when he released the White House tape transcripts and all its notations of "expletive deleted" - especially when the expletives were subsequently published.
Nixon says that despite his spats with the press - "you won't have Nixon to kick around any more," he told reporters after the gubernatorial defeat in 1962 - he has had good relations with many journalists.
He lists 73 of them by name, but leaves some others out "since being considered fair on Nixon by Nixon would almost certainly put them in dutch with their colleagues."
by CNB