Be here this evening with johnai farrell. Jack farrell to his friends. And he has written his third book, his first book was calledl clarence dar darrow, attorney for the dammed and the second book was tip oneill, and then he turned to Richmond NixonRichard Nixon, the life. He. Pause hi is such a popular character. Because of that that trajectory i have to ask what made you turn to dick nixon . N i was drawn to his story. The original subtitle for the book was Richard Nixon, an american tragedy, and i was struck as i did the research i that people like Henry Kissinger and Elliott Richardson and would wright in the diaries and as watergate was collapsing around him they would say, this is really like classic greek tragedy, shakespearean scene of someone who has so many gifts, and yet this amazing tragic flaw which brought him down in quite a shakespearean manner. He was always whispering in his own ear, youre not good enough. They hate you. Theyre against me. And in the end it destroyed him and he had that one final moment of recognition, some of you may remember on the last day he wasg in the white house, when he addressed his staff and family in the east room, and he said, remember, others may hate you but if you hate them, then you destroy yourself. And so theres this wonderful moment of selfrecognition when he sees that the tragic flaw has brought him down in just the way that he feared the most and yet in the end thats what got him. Im struck by your comparison to iogo to his ohno hello. Dont believe that line is in the book. N you have said it and i look for it in book and dont i believe found it. Is that something you havei thought of since writing the book and what does is mean . When you write a propose val to a book you try to come up with analogieses to what the story and is when i wrote the proposal, that was in the proposal. I didnt use it in the book, probably should have, because as i went back and prepared to go out on the book door i came across the line, and i have used it, but if you remember the play, othello is a great generaa and iago is his lieutenant, very jealous of him and starts whispering in his ear, puts these this paranoia in othello, and in the end othello kill husband is beautiful wife because iago was so good at doing that. Nixon always had this susceptiblity of telling himself over and over again, im not good enough, and one of the most heart rending examples is when he comes back from chinese and has accomplished everything he wanted to do in his life. He has become president against all these odds, come from the back woods of california to become president of the united states. He wants to be a great man andrn he sees this opportunity in the cold war to drive a wedge between red china and the soviet union, and to bring china into the family of nations. Long before he was president , h wrote about this in an article in Foreign Affairs magazine, talking about how this new century was going to be aut century of an Information Age. E this is Richard Nixon in 1965. An Information Age dominated by computers and that the old communist monolithic societiest would not be able to compete with the nimbleness of science needed in 21st century. So he sees this happening as he is president. He goes china, he makes thus amazing breakthrough and comes back and he is talking to Henry Kissinger on an infamous whited house tape, and iago starts to whisper and he says you know henry, the American People are a bunch of sheep. They watched me on televisionn with all that hand shaking and stuff in china, and you and i know it really doesnt mean a thing. This is Richmond Nixon, not really being cynical about the American People but badmouthing himself because he had such a sense of inferiority. Thats where i i should have used it in book. It us a good one. You mentioned that Foreign Affairs piece from 1965 in which he seemed to have an enormous amount of sophistication about asia, in the book you point out he toured asia as Vice President , part and he learned a great deal and impressed a lot of people. He seemed to have literally taken that on as a study through this life. One thing about the book that got canes was you broke a bit of news having to do with the asian land war that everyone knew we shouldnt fight but Richard Nixon found us fighting when he became president in vietnam, of course, and the news that you broke had to do with a person f named Anna Chenault, but not so well known today who was sent on a mission by the, Nixon White House in waiting, before he was elected president. When he was still a private citizen but the nominee of the Republican Party. What was that about . Well, its almost 50 years, 50 years next year. Nixon was running in 1968, amazing year of turbulence, the year that bob kennedy and Martin Luther king were assassinated and you had ujeep mccarthy challenging lbj and new hampshire, riot ted democratic convention, and in the midst of this, Richard Nixon builds a pretty formidable lead but september of 1968 over his democratic opponent, Hubert Humphrey, because Lyndon Johnson, the signature president , announced he wont run for reelection because ofno vietnam. And then all of a sudden, the Democratic Party starts the voters start coming home in the fall of 1968, and the Blue Collar Union workers leave George Wallace, running a as a third party candidate, and start going back to the democraticc party. The Eugene Mccarthy antiwar folks start forgiving humphreyey because he does a tiptoe towards a split with lbj on vietnam and all of a sudden what at thee beginning of september, Richard Nixon had this young guy who was a vote counter, and his name was allen greenspan. In counter. R. He send him a memo and says were going to win 410 electorae votes, humphrey will be luckive he wins a sing state because wallace will take the rest. But aclosed dramatically by september and then Lyndon Johnson says to nixon, wered seeing some progress on vietnam. I May Institute a bombing halt. Now, Richard Nixon thought he lost the 1960 election because the kennedyed stole it from him, and he had seen johnson in 1966 do an october surprise in the offyear Congressional Election biz announcing that he was closer to peace in vietnam. So nixons paranoia kicks in and sees forces lined up against him, ready to steal something from him once again, and he uses this connection, woman named anna shen know, who was very well known in the palaces of asia because her husband, claire chenault, had led the flying tyings in the battle again the japanese in world war ii, and he sends her to the southam series to tell them if they can hold on, Richard Nixon will be aelectricitied and they can gate better deal. So instead of going to paris and join peace talks the south vietnamese resist and dont joint the peace talks. This is a known story because some opinion that fall Lyndon Johnson got win offed and send the fbi out to tail and tape to tap the the tapes always come back to tail and to tap the republican envoy Anna Chenault and the south Vietnamese Embassy and the president ial palace in saigon. So johnson is getting all this inflammation and he sees what is happening, he gets on the phone, calls the republican senators live Everett Dirkson and says im reading their hand, everett, and this is darn near treason. So, he confronts nixon, and nixon denies it, but it hasis actually happened, and the great tragedy of this story is that there really was a peace stealer from the soviet union to johnson that summer, and the soviet said, if youll do a bombing halt we can promise there will be productive talks elm well get the north vietnamese to the table. So what nixon saw as a dirt from y trick, johnson believed was a chance to end the war earlier. But nixon examiner seeded and the south vietnamese pull back, and the peace talks dont happen and nixon is elect in one of the closest elections in american history. 43 of the vote. 43 of the vote. He so, elements of the story come out over the years, but nixon denied it. If you go back and watch the famous frostnixon interviews, david frost asked him specifically issue did you send Anna Chenault to talk to soughtf vietnamese, and nixon said no, i would never do Something Like that. So the last big piece of the puzzle and the piece that con fronted lynn johnsonson in 1968 is whether Richard Nixon had been directly involved, and as im going through this vast amount of material thats been released in last 20 years at the Nixon Library in yorba linda, there are hand written notes by nixons chief of staff, hr haldeman, back haldeman, and writing down what nixon is telling him, and nixoning says, keep Anna Chenault working on the south vietnamese, any way we can Monkey Wrench johnsons initiative. Monkey wrench meant throw a monkey wherever into the gears and stop it. That was my little contribution to history. History is studies like a rainy day at the beach and youli pull out a jigsaw puzzle busca theres nothing else to do and then the sun comes out and you go away but your brotherinlaw comes up behind you and he starts putting a few pieces of the puzzle together andts putti eventually the husbandle is assembled. That was my little piece of the puzzle. And a crucial piece. One that that strikes in the about your book has been the extraordinary way that yous manage to remain dispassionate and yet have a sort of edge on the seat involvement in what is going on now, you did not live all of this history, but i think a sadly, i lived some of it. Many of us have lived much of it. For our generation, read the book feeling as though i was reliving my life. Did you feel that way at allat when you went back through this . Did you feel personally involved in these events, the larger events, if not the specific i events to Richard Nixon roz life. I was a little bit torn itch was in college during watergate so i wasnt in college at the time of the great vietnam protests, and yet nixon was a bad guy for people of my generation. And so when i started to go into his life, i approached i it as a biographer, which is telling myself, you have to be objective, have to be fair, have to look at this guy dispassionately and see it from his point of view. T what i found as i looked intoo nixons life was that my sympathy, my empathy for him, grew, even as i was findingas iw thinkings out about watergate or this about vietnam which is a horribly cynical act. Was looking what he came from and what he had to do to get to where he was. He was born in the california outback, as i said, and his father was a blow hard, somewhat abusive, managed to be someone who could fail to grow lemons in orange county, one of the most bountiful citrus belts in the world, and took it out on his son, and he had five sons and two of them died in nixons childhood. His baby brother, arthur, died in like a week, shocking theba family of meningitis, and then his older brother, harold, the golden boy of the family, contracted tb and died over a period of six years that wasted the familys finances. Of six so, by this point they had soldm the lemon farm, moved to crossroads outside of whittier and hi fought bought an abandoned church and taken down the road and put on a corner and opened a Grocery Store and began to sell goetz rid and dicks job was to drive into los angeles to the markets at 3 00 a. M. And get the produce and bring it back to this store and polish and it prepare and it then go off to school. He did this while trying to maintain a lot of extracurricular activity, drama, football, debate, and very successful, very bright individual. But all the time knowing that the good kids inside whittier, the kids in the sort of garden side of the town, looked down on him because of his family situation. So he was always had this resentment but at the same time this amazing drive and resilience. Anything about dix nixon todr admire, out the resilience, the ability to picks himself up and even in the last years of hisms life, after watergate 0, mount a semi successful come back, at least public relationswise, unless he appears on the cover of Newsweek Magazine with a big headline, hes back. And nixon is the one, and nixon won in 1968, 43 or not he won the Electoral College because it was threeway vote with George Wallace and Hubert Humphrey. Then he is president and continues the vietnam war, but we get changes in the way the draft works works and start to vietnamize the war more aggressively and people step back, College Campuses get cooler. Not so much after the cambodia invasion in 1970 but you know what im talking. In general he deescalated and moved us towards an american withdrawal, which would happen. But he also did a lot of other things especially the first term, which stands to surprise people who dont remember those years. Im going to refer to a few of them. Ito expanded Social Security benefits. The epa act he signed. Osha. The safety and Occupational Health administration. Title ix for women athletes help had a healthcare propose sal in the book that was amazingly like we now think of as obamacare. Very close to what we see is a obamacare. His administration pioneered the idea that we should rather that gone to a single pair payer system, thats right ran medicare or canadian or european system shes tell the Insurance Companies their american candidate that everybody has to have insurance. Were going to keep the private insurance framework, and the very slight differences between that scrimmage obama in that that principle and obama is that nixons principle was to make ii a mandate for every employer to provide insurance, whereas obamas mandate was that all of us have to buy insurance if oure employer isnt doing it. Ted kennedy told me before he died, this is my biggest legislative error was not taking this deal from nixon in especially nixon offered it twice in each of his two terms especially in 1973 when he was desperate for Domestic Support and offered but the democratss said, you know, hes so weak, were going to get him out, new president will come in and with the new president well get medicare for all, singing payer, and jimmy carter, a conservative from georgia and the innation was raging and carter promise aid balanced budget in stayed of Getting National health care you had a huge tight between ted kennedy and jimmy carter,challe challenges carert in the primm maries and reagan racing is elected heralds in a new conservative era, ted kennedy knew he missed hit chance without taking the proposal. But there were other thing thursday nixon accomplished that would by todays lights in post reagan era would count as liberal programs, expansions of government power, provision of new rights, provision of new programs and benefits for people. Did he get any kind of satisfaction from that part of his legacy . Dishe have any joy. Two things. He had been part of the world war ii generation, and he world war ii generation had seen a great crisis, two great crises, the depression and world war ii. And can see how muscular government, fix problems. So not like in the post reagan era where bill clinton says the era of Big Government is over and reagan said government is not the solution, government is the problem to inningson and to Dwight Eisenhower in particular, who nixon served as vicepresident. There was nothing to be ashamed of or afraid about government. If we needed for National Defense to build highways across the country, connecting every state capitol, we would just do it. That was the way that Dwight Eisenhower thought. When he had to invade normandy and bring done adolph hitler, do we need 5,000 ship inside let get 10,000 ships. This was their thinking. There was really no feeling that government was this great evil force in our lives in those days. World war ii generation felt differently. Nixon himself had certain things in the domestic side that he realized that he needed to do for the public. The environment is a prime example. He is eye electricitied in and the days later we have the biggest oil spill in our history up to that time in santa barbara, california, and nixon flies out there and this is just as the Environmental Movement is kicking off and nixon has two choices, either good along with it or you can resist and it he see is its vastly popular, has sort of a gut feeling that california is a beautiful place and we should keep it that way, and so you get this amazing tide of environmental measures, and its in the book that at one point the major en