The Greatest Comeback

The Greatest Comeback: How Richard Nixon Rose from Defeat to Create the New Majority, by Patrick Buchanan ★★★★
This is a delightful book to read, providing the reader with an inside view on the workings of politics in the circle of the presidency. Patrick Buchanan could provide that for Richard Nixon when he ran for president a second time in 1968, as Pat was one of the principle speechwriters and policy setters for Nixon during his campaign that led him to the White house in 1968. One gets the feel for the internal in-fighting among each of the two parties, and strategies that Nixon took to lead to his victorious campaign for the presidency. Principle tactics included taking great pains to  bring unity to the Republican party, avoid the radical fringes of the party, but to never ever bad mouth or speak thoughtlessly of other members of the Republican party. Pat provides a description of Nixon that is much different from that of the press, and even that of Chuck Colson in the books he wrote about his involvement in the Watergate scandal. Nixon, though occasionally moody, tended to be thoughtful, conciliatory, eager to seek and take advice from both his close confidants as well as liberals that he disagreed with. Patrick is a touch self-serving, in that he was probably as responsible as anybody for Nixon’s ultimate success. Contrary to the belief of some, there is not painted an internal conspiracy that pulled Nixon into the presidency, that is, unless Buchanan was lying through his teeth in this book. I trust Buchanan as having a high level of integrity, though perhaps unaware of the internal machinery that ultimately drives this country. At the very end of the book, Patrick Buchanan suggests that a sequel is in the works that details his knowledge of the ultimate downfall of Nixon—I will greet it with even more interest than this book.