If the Price Is Wrong...

"I SUPPOSE some will call it an apologia," Raymond K. Price says, referring to With Nixon, his just-published account of the Nixon White House. But, he adds, "I don't consider it an apologia because I don't feel apologetic." And indeed, this book by former President Richard M. Nixon's former chief speechwriter and current close confidante is not an apologia. It is, instead, the first serious attempt at a spirited defense of the 37th President, coupled with a fairly harsh attack upon the forces Price views as having contributed to Nixon's downfall.

Written by a self-described "inside the barricades" White House staffer whom even Nixon's harshest critics always viewed as one of Nixon's "good guys"--a gentle idealist, devoid of malice and full of integrity--With Nixon should be read by all who maintain a fascination, morbid or otherwise, with Richard Nixon and his White House years.

With Nixon is well-argued and well-written, much as one would expect from a former presidential speechwriter. But ultimately, Price's arguments, however earnestly he believes them, are less than convincing, because the weakness of his case leads Price to ignore the major issues involved in Nixon's downfall. Too often, Price is reduced to touting what he sees as Nixon's extraordinary statecraft in order to make the former president's offenses appear forgiveable. He writes.

Watergate...was an offense against our system of law. But a system of law is flawed if it throws out too many babies with the bathwater. This happened in Watergate. In order to pursue the scandal to its furthest reaches, the country was put through a trauma that came close to wrecking its economy and destroying the most hopeful initiatives toward peace of the past quarter century.

This defense is problematic at best, since it relies on value judgements, not facts. A great many reasonable Americans strongly objected to Nixon's statecraft. Many were horrified by the secret invasion of Cambodia, the Christmas bombing of North Vietnam, or the determined attempts to undermine couet-ordered busing programs. For these people, Nixon's record as president could only be considered one more mark against him in his battle for survival.

More important, the argument that the "rightness" of a president's policies can justify illegal, unconstitutional actions is extremely dangerous. This type of end justifies means reasoning can only result in the renunciation of any objective standard of justice, and in the creation of a president who is not bound by law.

Price is perhaps on safer ground when he insists that once the chase had started, both Nixon's political opponents and the press went after the embattled president with a special "anti-Nixon" vigor. He argues that in a less hysterical national environment, the final "smoking gun" of August, 1974--the revelation that Nixon had been aware of former Atty. Gen. John Mitchell's probable involvement in Watergate from the start, and had ordered the Central Intelligence Agency to head off the Federal Bureau of Investigation's investigation of the break-in for political reasons--would not have been considered an offense that necessitated the removal of a president. Only with a multitude of allegations--many of spurious--being pounded into the public consciousness over a two-year period did Nixon's position finally become untenable, Price argues.

But this is a hollow argument, one that does little to bolster Nixon's defense. It is all too easy to forget, in reading Price's attack, that the two years of national hysteria over Watergate misdeeds, real or imagined, would not have occurred if Nixon had not initiated the coverup in the days following the June 1972 break-in. Moreover it is certainly inadequate to argue that Nixon's actions of June 23, 1972 represented the president's sole obstruction of justice. His actions for more than two years following those June days constituted one ongoing obstruction of justice, as Nixon and company continued the coverup, and finally, began to actually coverup the original coverup itself. As J. Anthony Lukas '55 writes in his Watergate analysis, Nightmare: The Underside of the Nixon Years:

...Nixon's troubles were largely self-induced, even lusted after. The great irony of his life is that after seeking ultimate power for three decades, once he achieved it he remained overwhelmed by a sense of powerlessness...As his perversions of power multiplied, he could only maintain his own sense of morality by stoking the fires of grievance which had fed him for so long. So he courted new enemies, new mortifications of the spirit. And ultimately, the enemies who had once been largely his own private demons became very palpable foes who tracked him down and destroyed him.

IN ONE SENSE, Price is on the right track. Nixon's White House years will undoubtedly receive further analysis in the years ahead, analyses less damning and mroe favorable than those focusing on Watergate alone. But in his defense of Nixon's Watergate actions--in his argument that the press should have investigated Watergate, but just not so obsessively--Price is standing on quicksand. Even Price admits that although he continued to argue Nixon's Watergate case, he himself experienced "general doubts" about that case. And Price says that, given the opportunity, he too would probably have joined in the coverup.

The reader can be fairly certain the spirited defenses, poignant recollections and stark contrasts of the 37th president in victory and defeat in With Nixon are Price's own.

Price says the former president did not receive a copy of With Nixon until three weeks ago, when proofs of the 400 page book became available from the publisher. Nixon, he says, had absolutely no direct input in the writing of With Nixon. "I've quite consciously and deliberately kept a line between my book and his," Price says, adding "I made a point of not stealing from him." The former president has not yet read the Price book, although he has indicated he plans to. Praise for With Nixon has, however, already issued forth from the San Clemente contingent. "Mrs. Nixon and Julie have read it and they are both quite enthusiastic," Price reports. More objective readers may not be.