Author Description

Nixon Reconsidered is an eye-opening look at the Nixon phenomenon, arguing that Nixon's notoriety over Watergate has obscured the fact that he achieved much more than most people would like to admit. In this major work of revisionist history, Joan Hoff argues that the Nixon presidency "remains more important than those that have followed in its wake and most that preceded it in this century.". When given credit for certain accomplishments, Nixon is remembered for his dramatic successes in foreign policy, such as opening relations with China. Contrary to prevailing wisdom, Hoff argues that Nixon's most lasting achievements are in domestic rather than foreign policy. She points out that it was Nixon rather than Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson who actually desegregated southern schools. It was Nixon who led Congress to our first concrete federal legislation on the environment. Nixon's bold attempts to achieve welfare and health care reform (opposed by both liberals and conservatives at the time) anticipated current reform efforts and are the most progressive initiatives of any president since FDR. And Nixon's civil rights record on women and Native Americans is also impressive, as is his reorganization of the executive branch of government.. Nixon Reconsidered analyzes Nixon's foreign policy with the same incisiveness. Despite the fact that Nixon's reputation as a foreign policy expert and international statesman grew during his postpresidential years, Hoff presents a convincing case for the ephemeral nature of his dramatic diplomatic innovations as president. This section of the book contains much information from recently declassified sources. The entire book is based on interviews with Nixon and others in his administration, as well as on research into the Nixon Presidential Papers and the papers of his closest aides. Hoff presents revealing information from a computer analysis of the 2,700 pages of transcripts of the secret White House tapes. Rather than concluding, as most studies of Watergate have, that it was an example of the "system working," this book concludes that the "sad, unintended tragedy of Watergate is that it stifled significant reform of the U.S. electoral system and paralyzed the process whereby presidents are held constitutionally accountable.". The real travesty of Watergate is that it has obscured Nixon's place in history as the best and the worst of the modern presidents. A generation after his resignation, and now that Nixon himself is no longer here to reinvent himself, the time has come to place the thirty-seventh president in historical rather than histrionic context. This timely book, based on over ten years of research, does just that.