In the fall of 1968, when I was 11, my dad took my to see Richard Nixon at a campaign stop in Bloomfield, N.J. It was a lovely fall day and I still remember the colored leaves on the trees on Bloomfield’s town green.
Even more memorable, of course, to my 11-year-old consciousness, was the huge size of the crowd, mostly cheering enthusiastically for Nixon, and the way my dad pushed me forward so I could get a good look.
I wasn’t sure, actually, that I liked the way he looked. But he was the candidate my dad was backing, as were all the cheering people around me, so I assured myself that he must be the right one.
Maybe seven years later, in college, I was assigned to read Joe McGinnis’s “The Selling of the President 1968.” In high school, of course, I had already read Woodward and Bernstein’s “All the President’s Men.” It was amazing to me that the man these journalists were writing about could have been the same one I saw standing in front of the cheering crowd on that golden fall day.
It’s probably impossible to talk about Nixon without talking in terms of division, opposition, and gulfs of understanding. That’s why Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland” makes such a good read for babyboomers like me. All these years later, we’re still trying to understand the complicated man who first taught us that politics was even odder than it looked.
