This study of the widely disparate politics of the late 1960s (from Classical Liberalism to Reagan-Goldwater Conservatives; from the Democratic Left to the Radical Left) centers on how Richard Milhouse Nixon, a man the author called “the least ‘authentic’ man alive,” somehow came to be elected as this nation’s president.
Wills forms a tremendously penetrating portrait of the era’s politics without succumbing to any of the easy depictions that articles and documentaries tend to make of the Sixties. Hippies are certainly not all warriors of natural benevolence to Wills, nor are all politicians, the GOVERNMENT, or even conservatives treated as a repressive ESTABLISHMENT. (Even Nixon, himself, gets a very fair chance in the book.) While Wills’ own politics seem to lean firmly on the Democratic end of the spectrum, his sharpest criticisms are often levied on the Left (which is natural since they heavily dominated – almost smothered – the cultural and intellectual environment at the time). It’s interesting to read takes on the most politicized of decades that you seldom hear anymore: Arthur Schlesinger naively trying to explain that student protestors couldn’t possibly be angry with the universities themselves because “we’re liberal, too”; Wills’ observation that charges of “McCarthy-ism” were already becoming over-used by the Left shortly after Joe McCarthy lost his Senate seat; or the fact that three people died during the 1968 Republican National Convention in Miami while there were few serious injuries during the infamous rioting at the Democratic Convention that year in Chicago.
At the center of Nixon Agonistes is the vacuity of Nixon’s vision, a man who apparently had no discernable political leanings until he ran for office and who, even as part of the Eisenhower administration, was left out of any decision making process because he simply never had any original or compelling ideas of his own. Wills opens his preface by saying that the people of this country and Nixon deserve each other, a statement he maintains is both compliment and insult to both parties. “What is best and weakest in America goes out to reciprocating strength and deficiencies in Richard Nixon.” In response to the issues of the day, such as segregation, welfare, and inflation, Nixon blathers on about the self-made man, the free market, about a near absolute individualism where the government plays as little a role in shaping society as possible. Wills describes this concern with individual freedom and right to free enterprise as a Classically Liberal stance that calls upon both our highest qualities (guaranteeing others’ freedom to live as they choose) and also our lowest (to not become involved in others’ lives in order to help them).
There’s a great deal on radicals in Nixon Agonistes, to which Wills applies his generally sharp analysis. However, to properly understand a movement or aesthetic, it’s ideal if you can sincerely feel that sensibility in order to know its real motivations and origins. Wills never seems to have felt much for any bohemian styles and probably never had an interest in the more art-centered music of the times. Still, it’s interesting to read an intelligent writer – an apparently complete outsider to youth culture – describe the hippies gathering in Chicago for the Democratic Convention:
The keynote of the kids’ clothing is softness. No edges. Even last year’s military jackets have the padding torn out – droopy epaulettes, wilted fronts, frayed bottoms, every sag and hang eloquent: “I ain’t a-marchin’ anymore.” All things tend to the shaggy – thin fringes of adolescent bead, girls’ eyes in a charcoal of lashed shadow. Even their talk is soft – diffident, blurred, shoulder-shrugging, with a mutter of disruptive rhythmic fillers (“like the war, see, y’know”). Their clothes are all of the muffling sort – blankets, capes, serapes, shepherd’s coats, hoods, wooly sweaters, thermal underwear like tailored mattresses. These are “soft sculptures” by Claes Oldenburg. Velvet, velour, fur – on the head, Russian astrakhans, soft Indian bead-bands, Arab turbans, Foreign Legion veils. Prophetic bandages. The shoes are moccasins, soft boots, sandals worn to a velvet pliancy – Paul Krassner, of the Realist, wears shoes made of some carpet-stuff that looks like grass. Better even than moccasins are bare feet. Bell-bottom pants are mandatory for girls, worn with light sweaters. No bras, of course. No edges.
Almost everyone else who would mock Sixties styles did so in terms of either their uncoolness (their naïve nature passé-ness) or their “too far out there” kookiness. It’s interesting that the softness (“no edges”) is what struck this writer’s eye.
It’s a heavy work, absolutely full of analysis of the politics and topics of the era, but it’s often the overall feel to the book that captures my eye the most. There are chapters named “The Common Man”, “Liberals”, “Radicals”, “The Establishment”, “The War on War” and – a very 60’s term – “Plastic Man”. Despite the great amount of detail and argument in Nixon Agonistes, the sparse cover always grabs me just as much. It has that fattened Sixties font, which works perfectly with the huge blurb featured almost on top of the title: “Whether you’re for or against him, you will never feel the same about Richard Nixon after you read this ‘stunning, astonishing book’ -The New York Times”. It’s got the same look and feel as any number of ads and titles in magazine and book publishing from those years. Anything can be so … “Sensational!” It’s anonymously, modestly wrapped, but has some tremendous content inside of it.