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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

Missing The Point Author Doesn’t Do Justice To Fascinating Nixon-Kennedy Relationship

Oliver Stone Special To The Los Angeles Times

“Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry That Shaped Postwar America”

By Christopher Matthews (Simon & Schuster, $25, 377 pp.)

The rivalry between John Kennedy and Richard Nixon personified the seminal tension that drove postwar American politics for some 30 years. As these two ambitious veterans of the Pacific War sought to define themselves on issues domestic and foreign, fitting themselves to their turbulent times, voters inevitably shaped their political consciousness in relation to them.

Public perception of each was a mirror of the other. You either loved or hated them; neutrality was practically impossible. And while both had a genius for getting votes, the defining fact of the Kennedy-Nixon careers was that many more people loved JFK than hated him, while more hated Nixon than ever managed to love him.

Christopher Matthews, a syndicated political columnist, TV commentator and Washington bureau chief for the San Francisco Examiner, has attempted to trace this vital rivalry in his book, “Kennedy & Nixon.” Yet one would never know from this study that the author was describing the two most compelling political figures of recent times.

A key theme is that the men were actually friends, but there is little or no documentation for this questionable assertion. Moreover, there are annoying factual errors, misquotes even of famous phrases and a complete absence of what has been called the “deep politics” of this pivotal period in American history. Matthews’ book is history-at-facevalue, a popular gloss intended for a public that lacks the sophistication to demand more detail, more insight, and more truth.

This last point is illustrated as early as the introduction, when Matthews blandly insinuates a conclusion that is so wrong-headed, so completely unfounded, as to make the entire book suspect.

The subject is Nixon’s instruction to his chief of staff, Bob Haldeman, on the June 23, 1972, White House tape, to use the CIA to shut off the FBI’s probe of the Watergate burglary. Matthews asserts that Nixon’s aim in committing this impeachable offense was to prevent the exposure of “what he believed to be Kennedy’s secret bungling and betrayal of the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.”

There is no reference to this specific motive anywhere in the June 23 conversation, and no serious student of Watergate has, to my knowledge, ever proposed such an interpretation of the “smoking gun.”

In the closing chapters, Matthews tries to shade this bizarre view by suggesting that Nixon was attempting to attach to his own Watergate scandal the shield that had protected Kennedy from exposure. Here, oddly, Matthews comes close to a truth that he carefully avoids in his book: that as Nixon himself said, Watergate “tracked back” directly to the Bay of Pigs.

It is in this regard that “Kennedy & Nixon” passes from the realm of merely unremarkable popular history into historical cover-up. For, while admitting in passing that the CIA plots to assassinate Cuban dictator Fidel Castro began during the Eisenhower-Nixon administration, Matthews seeks to shift the responsibility for them entirely onto Kennedy. It was JFK and his brother, Robert, he says, who pushed for Castro’s murder, ignoring Nixon’s heavily-documented involvement in attempts to get rid of Castro.

Matthews quotes CIA Director Richard Bissell’s assertion that it was “inconceivable” that Kennedy did not know of the plots. Given that the overthrow of Castro was to have been Nixon’s October surprise in 1960, it is equally inconceivable that the murder plots, which commenced in the summer of ‘60, were unknown to the vice president who, according to such historians as Arthur Schlesinger and Michael Beschloss, presided over plans to remove the Cuban leader.

Matthews’ chapters on the JFK killing and Watergate are as shallow as they are disingenuous. To accept his interpretation of these dark and complex events, one must believe, despite years of research and libraries of books, that there was nothing more to Dallas than one lone nut, and no more to Watergate than a “third-rate burglary.”

Matthews declares that Kennedy died “as he lived,” an unmitigated Cold Warrior. This despite the fact that at the close of his brief tenure, Kennedy had sought detente with the Soviets, better relations with Cuba and a withdrawal from Vietnam following the 1964 election, which he did not survive to win.

The book, in sum, is a bland argument, not a history.

MEMO: This sidebar appeared with the story: OTHER VIEWS Here’s what other critics say about “Kennedy & Nixon:” Marv Kelley/Detroit Free Press: …Christopher Matthews goes back to the 1930s to tell why the rivalry was much more than a single, indelible encounter… . It can be argued that Nixon let the ghost of John Kennedy drive him to his political grave. What can’t be disputed is that Matthews has written a compelling book about a chapter in U.S. political history that never seems to grow old. Michiko Kakutani/New York Times: For Christopher Matthews, the rivalry between Kennedy and Nixon was no simple personality contest. Rather, it was a rivalry, in his words, that “changed them and their country,” a rivalry “that shaped postwar America.” These are large claims to make, and in trying to prove them, Mr. Matthews frequently over-reaches himself. The resulting book, while seasoned with fascinating anecdotes about Nixon and Kennedy’s involvement with one another, is melodramatic and reductive.

This sidebar appeared with the story: OTHER VIEWS Here’s what other critics say about “Kennedy & Nixon:” Marv Kelley/Detroit Free Press: …Christopher Matthews goes back to the 1930s to tell why the rivalry was much more than a single, indelible encounter… . It can be argued that Nixon let the ghost of John Kennedy drive him to his political grave. What can’t be disputed is that Matthews has written a compelling book about a chapter in U.S. political history that never seems to grow old. Michiko Kakutani/New York Times: For Christopher Matthews, the rivalry between Kennedy and Nixon was no simple personality contest. Rather, it was a rivalry, in his words, that “changed them and their country,” a rivalry “that shaped postwar America.” These are large claims to make, and in trying to prove them, Mr. Matthews frequently over-reaches himself. The resulting book, while seasoned with fascinating anecdotes about Nixon and Kennedy’s involvement with one another, is melodramatic and reductive.