Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage
Given that Eisenhower did not want Richard Nixon as his vice president––Ike tried to jettison him in 1952 and in 1956––a host of mutually conflicted feelings must have surrounded their lengthy association. Exploring their interactions in episode after episode, in settings ranging from Republican Party conventions to the White House to golf courses, Frank constructs a marvelous account of political history as well as astute portraits of the two men. Nixon emerges from Frank’s narrative with his oft-chronicled quirks intact but also as a more sympathetic character who, craving approval from the general who won WWII, emotionally suffered from Eisenhower’s diffident thoughtlessness. On the other hand, the ambitious and crafty Nixon capitalized on an Eisenhower weakness––his distaste for personally firing anyone––to outfox Ike, as with his famously maudlin Checkers speech. Pithily describing their relationship as having “a filial aspect, though one without much filial affection,” Frank chronicles it through Ike’s presidency and Nixon’s presidential campaigns with the rich, inside-politics mix of rumor and maneuver in which connoisseurs of political history love to marinate. --Gilbert Taylor--This text refers to theHardcoveredition.