Debunking the Kennedy-Nixon TV Myth

At Slate David Greenberg challenges much of the accumulated mythology and misunderstanding surrounding the first Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960. His basic argument: the election did not hinge on the contrast in appearance between the two men on television.

Nixon Rises

At The Boston Globe Alex beam has an article on the seeming ubiquitousness of Richard Nixon in today's popular and intellectual culture. Nixon was a phoenix in his lifetime, constantly rising from the ashes of ignominious defeat. As in life, so too in death, I guess. As a historian I am especially interested in reading Rick Perlstein's new book, Nixonland.

Holden on Black on Nixon

In this week's Times Literary Supplement Anthony Holden provides a critical review of Conrad Black's mammoth new biography of Richard Nixon. Black's work represents an attempt at revisionist rehabilitation of Nixon. But Holden cannot help but see the subtext of Black's own current troubles, which include convictions on multiple counts of fraud, and which are currently under appeal.

One can understand an attempt to look beyond Watergate, though most historians have done that much, and Joan Hoff has already emphasized Nixon beyond Watergate in a revisionist work in her book Nixon Reconsidered. But it is impossible to decouple Nixon from the most sordid series of events of his presidency, a series of crimes and coverups and abuses of power and violations of the Constitution that are with the passage of time too easy to dismiss (and diminish) as political business as usual.