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Nixon: I Am Not an Anti-Semite

Timothy NoahPosted Thursday, Oct. 7, 1999, at 7:02 PM ET

The National Archives' latest release of Nixon White House tapes is, as usual, a bracing antidote to historical revisionism. Whenever the academic world is tempted to adopt a more favorable view of Nixon's character, new Nixon tapes always seem to appear that squelch the impulse. (To read Slate's David Greenberg on Nixon revisionists, click here.) The theme of the latest release, according to articles in yesterday's Washington Post and today's New York Times, is Nixon's anti-Semitism. We already knew, of course, that Nixon had a pathological hatred of Jews. (Scroll down to the bottom of "Deep Throat: The Game Is Afoot" to see Nixon's outrage on discovering that Mark Felt, a high-ranking FBI official believed by both Nixon and Chatterbox to have been Deep Throat, is Jewish.) But even Chatterbox was taken aback at the virulence of some of Nixon's comments on the new tapes--which, sadly, are not available either in audio or in transcript form on the Web. (The best Chatterbox can do is refer you to the quotations in the Post and Times stories, which were based on the reporters' own transcriptions.)

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Here's a fairly stunning snippet from George Lardner's Post piece:

Washington "is full of Jews," the president asserted. "Most Jews are disloyal." He made exceptions for some of his top aides, such as national security adviser Henry Kissinger, his White House counsel, Leonard Garment, and one of his speechwriters, William Safire, and then added:

"But, Bob, generally speaking, you can't trust the bastards. They turn on you. Am I wrong or right?"

Haldeman agreed wholeheartedly. "Their whole orientation is against you. In this administration, anyway. And they are smart. They have the ability to do what they want to do--which is to hurt us."

And here's a similarly outrageous example from Irvin Molotsky's story in the Times:

"The only two non-Jews in the communist conspiracy," [Nixon] said, "were [Whittaker] Chambers and [Alger] Hiss. Many felt that Hiss was. He could have been a half, but he was not by religion. The only two non-Jews. Every other one was a Jew. And it raised hell with us."

Most stunning of all, however, was the Times' assertion that the Richard Nixon Library and Birthplace in Yorba Linda, which purports to be a serious research institution, "issued a statement saying the President was not anti-Semitic" [italics Chatterbox's]. Chatterbox, always wary of paraphrase, decided to take a closer look at the Nixon Library's statement, which you can read by going to the Library Web site and clicking on "The White House Tape Recordings, February to July 1971: A Guide to the Major Themes and Personalities."

Actually, the Nixon Library document nowhere says that Nixon was not anti-Semitic. The phrases "anti-Semite" and "anti-Semitic" don't appear in the Nixon Library document at all, aside from this passage:

President Nixon, after expressing the view that most Jewish Americans are insisting that the Administration go along with what he regards as Israeli intransigence on the Suez Canal and other Mideast peace issues while refusing to give him support on his Vietnam policy, remarks: "If anybody who's been in this chair ever had reason to be anti-Semitic [italics Chatterbox's], I did." H.R. Haldeman replies: "That's for damn sure." The President continues: "And I'm not, you know what I mean? Accepted, I'm not pro-Israel; I'm not going to let Israel's tail wag the dog."

However, the overall thrust of the portion of the Nixon Library document that interprets Nixon's remarks on "Jewish Americans" is indeed to downplay Nixon's comic-book anti-Semitism:

As with his attitudes toward African Americans, the President's words about the Jewish community on these tapes show that his basic sense of compassion and support for these communities tends to co-exist with terminology from an earlier time.

An earlier time? This was 1971, not 1917! Attitudes toward African Americans were appalling (many would say they still are), but attitudes toward Jews--particularly in Washington--were fairly benign. The Nixon Library seems eager to blame Haldeman for egging Nixon on:

It should be noted that the President's comments regarding lack of political support for the Administration among many Jewish Americans frequently occur when Haldeman is present, and that Haldeman is generally quick to note when some person who is the subject of adverse comment happens to be Jewish ...

It should further be noted that Haldeman's eagerness to enable Nixon's Jew-hating, which may have stemmed from his tendency to pander to all of Nixon's worst instincts, or may have reflected sincere anti-Semitism of his own--Chatterbox has no idea--does nothing to mitigate the appalling bigotry of Nixon's comments. The Nixon Library's gloss on Nixon's remarks about Jews ends by pointing out that despite Nixon's initial misgivings about appointing Herbert Stein to chair the Council on Economic Advisors (Stein, who prior to his recent death was a Slate contributor, was also Jewish),

the President, within months, would make Stein his Chairman of the CEA--just as he would give the Jewish state unequivocal, life-saving support in the 1973 Arab-Israeli War.* The actions of the President, as well as the substantial documentary record of the Nixon Administration, should always be kept in mind when evaluating his words on the White House tapes.

Chatterbox won't dispute that this century has seen bigger anti-Semites than Richard Nixon. On the other hand, Nixon's comments about Jews make, say, Pat Buchanan's seem comparatively benign. (This is not to excuse Buchanan, who in the latest issue of George--OK, in a profile written by Chatterbox--implores, preposterously, that if he were an anti-Semite, "Would I have a Jewish doctor who deals with my heart? Would I have a Jewish broker?") Chatterbox would think that part of the burden of working at the Nixon Library is conceding that Richard Nixon, while no doubt misunderstood in many ways, was one wicked anti-Semite. But a glance back at the Nixon Library's Web site reminds Chatterbox that for the Nixon Library, the fundraising (hence the need to downplay controversy) never stops. "FOR YOUR NEXT SPECIAL EVENT, CHOOSE THE NIXON LIBRARY!" reads the lettering on a faux campaign button. Click it and you receive an energetic pitch to hold your next corporate dinner, or even your next wedding, on these hallowed grounds:

BEFORE YOU SIT DOWN TO DINNER in our terrazo tiled, birdseye maple lined foyer, join your guests for a sunset reception in our spectacular gardens. Promenade down the colonnade walkways, tour the original birthplace home of the President, and muse on the tranquility or our handsome reflecting pool.

Which raises the question: Where to put the chuppah?

*For Stein's own view of Nixon and Jews, click here.

E-mail Timothy Noah at .

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Timothy Noah is a senior writer at Slate.

COMMENTS

The Fraymaster responds:

The director of the Nixon Library, John Taylor, has posted this reply to Chatterbox:

I'm the director of the Nixon Library and thus the promulgator of the analysis of the tape opening that Timothy Noah quotes.

Here's what I noticed about the NY Times article: It neglected to mention a principal source of RN's frustration about the Jewish community, which is plenty clear in our analysis and the tapes themselves: Many of the same folks who wanted the U.S. to support Israel against her aggressive foreign enemies did not particularly want the U.S. to support South Vietnam against hers.

Do you or do you not believe this is a legitimate reason for a commander-in-chief in the middle of a war he inherited to be frustrated, particularly when he was still signing 30-40 letters a week to the families of KIA? Add that to the fact that he'd gotten about 20% of the Jewish vote in '68, and what you have is a politician and a President who basically viewed the Jewish community as predominantly liberal, Democratic, and anti-war. He didn't just think they were against him; they were against him.

And that's fine. Blocs of ethnic or religious voters are frequently against certain politicians, and maybe all those politicians get frustrated about it. That's fine, too--except when it's captured on tape. But here's the bottom line: Words are words, and actions are actions. When RN says "Jews" on the tapes, I hear "damn liberals," and I understand it. This is why the points that he saved Israel in 1973 and that his inner circle included Kissinger, Stein, Safire, and Garment are more than aspects of a "some of my best friends..." defense. These colleagues were politically simpatico! And this was a politician! It's not complicated! Also, find the tape in the new batch where he talks about how impressed he was after a meeting with Arlen Specter--then, I believe, a tough young prosecutor from Pennsylvania.

Anyway, back to the NYT omission. In a whole article about RN and Jews, why leave out the bit about Vietnam and Israel? Doesn't he have the right to have the most immediate source of his frustration even mentioned? Does the NYT want people to think these feelings sprang from him totally unprovoked?

Here's what I think: We're all still tiptoeing around the Vietnam War. We post-Vietnam elites all tend to think that Ellsberg was a great hero and that the war was immoral. We all tend to think that it was okay to be for Israelis' freedom from aggression but to be indifferent toward that of South Vietnamese. And so we still scapegoat RN for all the sins of the era to avoid having to ask tough questions about what really happened to Indochina, and to America, when Hanoi and the Khmer Rouge were permitted to have their way with people whom we'd pledged to protect (and almost succeeded in protecting). Check out Lewis Sorley's new book about Vietnam, for instance. [Buy the book here, or read more about it in this "Summary Judgment."]

Revisionism about the war is inevitable; revisionism about the toughest and best Vietnam commander-in-chief will come next. And the tapes won't stop it. More likely, the tapes will fuel it. Maybe it's a good thing he didn't burn them after all.

This Fray poster thinks words speak louder than actions:

This is a common conundrum: What to make of a person who speaks like an appalling racist, but who doesn't act that way. My solution: take them at their word. If Nixon wanted to talk like a wicked anti-Semite, why argue with him (or his defenders)? He talked like an anti-Semite, he basically admitted to it, so he was. Not a good quality in the most powerful office on earth. And another terrific reason to keep constantly in mind that racism is real and all over the place.

To which Taylor responds:

Alas, taking RN "at his word" isn't the solution. First, this was private speech. Yes, he taped it and so bears some responsibility for its becoming public, but that doesn't change the dynamics of the moment the speech was uttered. Also, this was how this President (and no doubt others) left off steam. I talked to him just about every day for ten years and never heard him make an anti-Semitic statement. So I've concluded that his opinions were political rather than cultural.

And again, what irks me about the newspaper coverage of the tapes is that reporters leave out what RN was angry about: Many of the same people who wanted him to defend Israel did not want South Vietnam defended (although it was in the latter place that he found 540,000 troops on his first day in office).

Let me just say this: Judge Richard Nixon and his anger if you will, but it is not fair to do so unless you try to put yourself inside his head just for a moment and think about the pressures he felt and the responsibilities he bore in connection with the Vietnam War. People who skip that step are people who don't want to make this a debate about Vietnam. And that makes me want to get inside their heads for a moment, because no matter what they say now, at that moment in our nation's life, Vietnam was the largest issue by far in our national, political, cultural, and social lives.

--Michael Brus (10/8)

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