In his Richard Nixon book “The Peacemaker: Nixon: The Man, the President and My Friend,” author Ben Stein has crafted the literary version of a Toyota Prius—a hybrid: part Nixon biography, part Stein memoir, and part fan letter to one of the most controversial presidents of the 20th century. In his fascinating tribute to Nixon, the author has provided a poignant and private look at Nixon the man, Nixon the president, and Nixon, Mr. Stein’s friend.
“Nixon, the greatest peacemaker of all time, who gave us a ‘generation of peace’, was humiliated over trivial matters that were way below what other presidents have done,” Mr. Stein writes in defense of the former president.
Mr. Stein offers a unique perspective and vigorous defense of America’s 37th president for several reasons: First, his father Herbert Stein was Nixon’s chief economist and the Stein family was close to the Nixons. Second, the author worked as a speechwriter in both the Nixon and Ford administrations, giving him unique behind the scenes experience with Nixon, the Watergate controversy and the Nixon family. Third, Mr. Stein details how much the media hated Nixon, primarily because of his well-publicized exposure of Alger Hiss as a Communist spy in the 1950s.
One of the biggest reasons why Mr. Stein was unapologetically devoted to Nixon at the time and remains a robust defender today is because Nixon supported Israel during 1973’s Yom Kippur War. Mr. Stein is an American Jew, and he details how a desperate Golda Meir, Israel’s prime minister at the time, begged Nixon for help in obtaining military hardware that could foil enemy SA-7 jets while the Israelis were under simultaneous attack by Egypt and Syria.
Mr. Stein writes that Nixon’s support of Israel was critical and courageous because “the whole complexion of the war changed on a dime” once Nixon moved to support Israel. Nixon stood with Israel despite world opinion, the anti-Semites in Congress, and the media powerhouses and did what he believed was right, Mr. Stein writes.
That admiration was mutual. Mr. Stein recalls the president frequently commenting on Herbert Stein’s intellect and referring to his parents by their first names. Mr. Stein also shares a recollection of Nixon expressing appreciation for the author’s expertise in distilling complicated topics like energy policy in presidential speeches to a level that the average American could comprehend.
Mr. Stein intermingles much of his own life story into his Nixon tribute, detailing how he went from a long-haired, tie-dyed Yale student protesting the Vietnam War to working in a Republican administration as a statistician. He got his big break though, when his editorials defending the Nixon administration appeared in various prestigious op-ed pages, catching the attention of the White House speechwriting department and the president himself.
“I was staggered that the powers that be trusted me to be involved at a high level,” Mr. Stein writes. “As I look back on those endless days and nights working on such immense subjects, I can hardly believe it really happened.”
Mr. Stein says he was told that he earned such a position before the age of 30 because he was the only writer on staff with serious training in law and economics.
Mr. Stein recalls in poignant detail Nixon’s farewell speech to White House staff in the East Room. “As far as I am aware, no president has ever spoken as candidly and deeply about his family and his feelings in front of a mass audience,” Stein writes in the chapter titled ‘Au Revoir: a Media Coup D-Etat.’ “We saw a man so powerful that he could have ordered nuclear war and basically end life on the planet. And here he was, stripped naked and confessing his sins – even sins he had never committed – to a nest of vipers called the national media.”
The book contains surprises, such as Mr. Stein’s life-long friendship with one of the two investigative reporters covering the Watergate saga, Carl Bernstein, and how he once worked with television screenwriter and producer Norman Lear as a consultant on how conservatives think and talk.
The Peacemaker should not be seen as the definitive biography of Richard Nixon and the Watergate era, but it does offer readers an insider’s perspective from a loyal supporter who greatly admired a complex president. Mr. Stein believes Nixon did the best he could to produce a generation of peace before being driven from office by a hostile media, and in that regard, history has to judge him a success.
