Martyr Or

By Laurence I. Barrett

NIXON: THE TRIUMPH OF A POLITICIAN, 1962-1972

by Stephen E. Ambrose; Simon & Schuster; 736 pages; $24.95

RICHARD MILHOUS NIXON: THE RISE OF AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN

by Roger Morris; Henry Holt; 1,005 pages; $29.95

Two obese volumes by heavyweight authors on Richard Nixon are upon us this fall, each an installment of a trilogy. Promised for 1990 are two more Nixon books by other serious writers, columnist Tom Wicker and political scientist Herbert Parmet. Despite the wide shelf of literature by and about the 37th President, the urge to discover him anew remains strong. It is not only because Nixon made headlines and history for three decades or that he was the sole President ejected between elections. He also continues to fascinate because it is difficult to come to terms with a leader who debased the presidency while skillfully, even bravely, steering the U.S. into the geopolitical waters it still sails.

Long before Watergate confirmed the worst fears of his enemies, Nixon was a perfect model for caricature. Foes saw him as a rootless mutant, sui generis, combining McCarthy's feral atavism with Machiavelli's cunning intellect. Friends perceived him as a courageous champion of basic American values. They remain united in the belief that he suffered a martyr's fate at the hands of the liberal aristocracy whose reign he challenged. For years, Watergate gave the bashers the better of the argument.

The passage of time permits deeper reflection. These two books, though treating different phases of Nixon's career and offering contrasting styles of - biography, point toward a fresh view. All the familiar sins and successes are rehearsed, along with the inner torment that destroyed Nixon's judgment. But he also begins to appear as much more a product of his time and place than many care to admit. If he frequently exploited the country's most base instincts, he also reflected legitimate resentments. The silent majority he mobilized survived him, eventually evolving into the right-wing populist movement that anointed Ronald Reagan.

Stephen Ambrose's Nixon, the second of the historian's three volumes, covers the period between his subject's debacle in the 1962 California gubernatorial election and vindication by landslide in the presidential election of 1972. As in his first installment, Ambrose sets out the chronicle in meticulous detail, relying more heavily on facts than dicta to lead the reader's judgment. Fact: Nixon was so habitual a deceiver that in 1962, 48 hours after saying defeat would at least restore his family life, he left for the Bahamas without his wife and daughters. Fact: during 1968 he artfully cultivated Lyndon Johnson's goodwill for his own benefit and later repaid his predecessor with small kindnesses. Fact: Viet Nam and other realities he inherited on Inauguration Day forced him to choke his own genuine hawkishness and preside over the retreat of American power.

One of the best passages in the book recounts the campaign of 1968, a year of tragedy and stress. Nixon capitalized on the turmoil, playing to Main Street's abhorrence of disorder. Yet he also threaded his way between the extremism of George Wallace and the ambivalence of Hubert Humphrey. Nixon's caution almost enabled Humphrey to recoup in the final days, but the Republican knew his constituency well enough to squeeze out a puny plurality. Over the next four years, he built that slight advantage into a mighty force despite the agony of Viet Nam. Ambrose leaves his protagonist in inexplicable melancholy after the 1972 triumph, the ripples of Watergate just beginning to grow into a tidal wave.

Roger Morris' Richard Milhous Nixon, to be published later this month, tracks the future President from distant ancestry through the 1952 election. A Harvard-trained political scientist who worked briefly in Nixon's White House, Morris has written critical books on two former colleagues, Alexander Haig and Henry Kissinger. Now he starts a Nixon trilogy that promises (threatens?) to be more exhaustive than Ambrose's. From Morris we learn details about Nixon's first political victims, Jerry Voorhis and Helen Gahagan Douglas (why Voorhis flubbed the debate with his upstart opponent, why prominent Democrats such as Joe and Jack Kennedy wanted Douglas defeated).

With a sure sense of West Coast history, Morris shows how Nixon's early career grew naturally from a raw strivers' culture. Just as Nixon fought hereditary barons in campus politics, he later bucked the genteel Republicanism of Earl Warren. Morris demolishes the stereotype of Nixon as disembodied political gypsy. Nixon had roots in the same soil that produced the sagebrush rebellion. Morris also reconstructs the network of Nixon's early financial backers, including some of the millionaires who would later sponsor Reagan. After only six years in Congress, Nixon connected with a national following. Ultimately, it would unseat the mandarins who created the Eisenhower candidacy, those Eastern stalwarts who chose Nixon for the 1952 ticket because they needed the new sect's strength.

Neither Ambrose nor Morris provides startling revisionism on the President whose impact, positive and negative, is still keenly felt today. Rather, they give an emerging perception, reminding us that Nixon was an uncommon leader of whom there is still more to learn.