or more precisely:
The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose From Defeat to Create the New Majority
by Patrick Buchanan

For a certain kind of contemporary conservative, with traditional social and moral values, a respect for law and order balanced by an unwillingness to compromise on infringements on personal freedom, and supportive of a government policy of fiscal conservatism, a modest foreign policy balanced by a strong national defense, looking out primarily for national strategic interests, Pat Buchanan stands alone as the elder statesman. Yet, to the traditional conservative appalled by the liberalism of the Bushes and their ilk who dominate the GOP, a puzzling aspect of Buchanan has always been his stalwart loyalty to the presidents in whose administrations he served. For much of the Republican party, such a stance on Reagan is to be expected, and many presidential contenders for the GOP nomination would give much to be able to claim the degree of affiliation with the Gipper which Buchanan has earned. In the case of his first president, however, Buchanan’s associations with Richard Nixon are undeniable, and his loyalty to Nixon’s memory has led to such vigorous defense and unprompted nostalgia in his writings, that even the John Birch Society took space in their weekly magazine to comment puzzlingly on Nixon’s “Other Pat”.

Aside from the blows Nixon struck the party and by extension, the conservative agenda, with the Watergate disgrace, his own record is nothing any conservative admires. When Buchanan touts Nixon’s achievements such as pulling out of Vietnam, arms limitation treaties, rapprochement with China, lowering the vote to age 18, appointing Warren Burger to the Supreme Court, performing the majority of the school desegregation and establishing the EPA & OSHA, a conservative is left wondering if the columnist and speechmaker citing such acts is the same man who mounted a primary challenge from the right to a sitting Republican president, and inspired terror in the left with his early primary victories in the 1996 election. How can a champion of life on moral grounds applaud the president who created the Burger Court, or the critic of the Israeli lobby celebrate Nixon bailing out that country in the Yom Kippur war?

The Greatest Comeback goes a long way to, if not answering those questions, or justifying Buchanan’s view of Nixon, helping to understand the relationship between the two men, and in portraying the 1968 presidential campaign from the eyes of one of Nixon’s inner circle, gives an insider’s perspective. In hindsight, so much in politics looks inevitable, and the disaster of the Democratic administrations in the 1960s makes the Republican reclamation of the White House seem even moreso. But Buchanan describes a party in turmoil at the outset of the campaign, and a nation reeling from numerous domestic shocks and divided by an unpopular foreign war. Republicanism looked dead, and a young right-wing editorial writer and reporter for a St Louis newspaper picked Richard Nixon as the man who could save the party as vessel where conservatives might find a berth, and have some say in charting the course, even if the forces arrayed against them in this country would never let them steer.

Even for the reader who lacks a personal stake in the outcome of a campaign to win a presidency anyone with a cursory knowledge of recent American history knows is doomed to failure, the book is an objectively interesting first-person historical account of the time period. It is interesting to see in the political struggles and deals of the day who were the major players who mattered a great deal in the pursuit of offices and policies, but seldom appear in the history books. To most contemporary readers, even with some knowledge of political history, Nelson Rockefeller is a footnote, a mere governor and lame duck interim Vice-President for a caretaker administration, better known for an obscene public gesture than any political position or action he ever took, and certainly not as significant as the ancestors who made his name famous. George Romney is merely the father of the most recent Republican nominee. John Lindsey is all but forgotten and Hubert Humphrey would be even more so were it not for the mildly silly perception of his name. George Wallace is some old crank people are vaguely aware might have been racist and RFK is just another one of those tragically dead Kennedys. The Greatest Comeback brings the reader back to a time when they were the titans of the American political landscape, giving them the same sort of life and reality which the leading presidential contenders have.

A less conservatively-aligned reader might find Nixon, at least as a literary character much more sympathetic than he might think, as Buchanan portrays him as a centrist interested in uniting his party, and building a team of advisors including Buchanan, Alan Greenspan and Willian Safire to give him a broad spectrum of Republican perceptions and a test audience to determine how his speeches and positions might be received among the different factions and subcultures. There are the descriptions of crisis management and behind the scenes views of the campaign’s reactions to breaking news and current events that makes wonkish drama like "West Wing" or "Scandal" so popular. Above all, it is an historical first-person account of one of the most turbulent couple of years in America in the last half-century, described from a rather unique perspective for such time periods – a high-level staffer on a national political campaign. By its very nature such an account is both more objectively removed & professionally dispassionate, and at the same time, personally involved, in or toward a wide array of types of events, than almost any other occupation’s account. For Buchanan and his colleagues the issues and events of 1968 were meaningful and important, and had a direct effect on their lives, and they were also things these men and women had to deal with in the course of their jobs and to solve in a practical manner, rather than a passionate or idealistic way.

While the approach described is very much an exercise in practical politics, there is not as much cynicism as one might expect. They are trying to win, but they also seem sincerely convinced of their own ability to handle the problems for the greater good, rather than getting into a position to impose their ideology on the country, for its own good, of course.

A common if somewhat useless complaint these days is on the lack of civility in politics, whose own accuracy is exactly what renders it both useless and suspect: in the knock-down, drag-out brawls taking place, any call for civility tends to seem like an attempt to trick the other side into lowering its guard for a sucker punch. Indeed, all too often, it seems that such cries come in response to a particularly effective tactic or are issued in such a way as to be an accusation. Buchanan’s account brings up what appears to have been a time of greater civility, with amusing or even touching anecdotes of Nixon shouting an exchange of good natured insults with a Democratic Senator across a golf course, or attending, along with one of his fiercest media critics, the college graduation ceremony of both of their daughters, inspiring an acknowledgement of mutual humanity through the political enmity; of Buchanan watching the Chicago riots with Normal Mailer in the same hotel room, or ruefully discussing the character of a journalist with a Democratic politician, among many accounts of political enemies and rivals who later became personal friends.

While Buchanan is never shy about stating his views on even controversial issues in many of his books, The Greatest Comeback is a memoir, not a policy book. A regular reader of Buchanan can attest to his admiration for the Crusaders, and his ability and willingness to criticize contemporary politicians of either party for their ignorance of and insensitivity toward the issues and interests of Middle Eastern states. Whatever his own views, there is no doubt about Buchanan’s ability to fairly relate the position of the other guy and defend his right to his own perspective. This characteristic renders his memoir much less ideologically risible to those who disagree with him than many might suspect in a man with such an outlier ideology (in another work, Buchanan once recalled Nixon telling him "You're the only extremist I know with a sense of humor" ). I would like to point out again, that having never voted for a Republican in a national election or having any use for the Nixon administration, I hardly came to this book a partisan enthusiast for the historical protagonists. If my 62 year old, right wing, devout Catholic and member of the John Birch Society father can binge-watch “The West Wing” on Netflix and praise the show while deploring its politics, there is no reason that a reader of any political stripe or ideological distaste for Richard Nixon cannot enjoy this book (and at least liberals can take comfort from the knowledge that Nixon’s win will lead to the EPA & Roe v. Wade). I would sincerely recommend this book to anyone interested in that era of American history and politics.