Product Description

Nixon and I met for the first time on October 2, 1989, and he was exceedingly generous with the commodity that was the most precious to him: time.... And, surprisingly for a man who had been so often damaged by those he trusted, Nixon trusted me immediately. I became a member of his small circle of advisers. I listened as he confided his views on international affairs and world leaders, American politics and policy, Watergate, and his own personal career, and human nature.
--Monica Crowley

Nixon off the Record is the unique story of Richard Nixon's intense political life after he left the presidency--told by Monica Crowley, Nixon's foreign-policy assistant and political confidante during the last years of his life.

With fully reconstructed conversations based on extensive notes made at the time, Nixon off the Record puts the reader in the room with the thirty-seventh president, listening to his views on leadership, his opinions of White House predecessors and successors, his activities and thoughts during the 1992 presidential campaign and election, and his assessment of Bill Clinton's first year in office and his potential challengers in 1996. Nixon's views give voters uncommon criteria by which to measure presidential candidates--including Bob Dole--and their ability to exercise effective leadership.

Richard Nixon was one of the most controversial and indestructible presidents of the twentieth century. With her privileged perspective and unlimited access to Nixon, Crowley has written a perceptive and spirited memoir that shows not just what Nixon thought in the last years of his life but who he was. She offers an unprecedented behind-the-scenes view of Nixon's activities and opinions, giving the reader a front-row view of recent American political history.

Nixon's unparalleled experience placed him in a unique position to judge leaders who had come before and after. His assessments are candid, astonishing, and sometimes explosive. This book places those judgments in context and brings them alive for the last American presidential election of the twentieth century.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #765606 in Books
• Published on: 1996-08-05
• Released on: 1996-08-05
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 231 pages

Amazon.com Review
A final, purifying apologia by Richard Nixon, as told to Monica Crowley, his young, just-out-of-college assistant, shortly before his death in 1994. Crowley divulges Nixon's disappointment with the Bush re-election campaign, his later efforts to ingratiate himself with the Clinton administration, and his desperate schemes to once again become a key political player. Once the most compelling and infuriating political figure in the last half of the 20th century, Nixon Off The Record reveals that his 20-year exile from the political arena was more painful and humiliating than anyone ever imagined.

From School Library Journal
YA-Crowley, who served as foreign-policy assistant to former President Nixon from 1990 to his death in 1994, kept a daily diary in which she recorded his views on a variety of topics. Nixon believed that three main qualities are required for effective leadership: "head, heart, and guts." He analyzed other presidents, from FDR to the present, and potential candidates in terms of the presence or absence of these traits. When Clinton became president, he enabled Nixon to reemerge as a respected elder statesman by inviting him to the White House and openly seeking his advice. The other presidents who followed Nixon failed to do either, and so, in the strange world of politics, it was a young Democratic leader who gave renewed value to Nixon's judgment and experience. To the author, Nixon was a generous and enriching mentor, and the trust, respect, and affection each held for the other shines through the narrative. The book is easy to read, and gives an intimate, sympathetic, and seemingly unedited look at Nixon the man, as well as his opinions and analyses of people, politics, and historical perspective, and a clear vision for the future. His urgent hope was that history view his life evenhandedly, both its highs and lows. Students interested in government and politics will look forward to the companion volume.
Judy Sokoll, Fairfax County Public Library, VA
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal
Crowley, a foreign policy assistant to Richard Nixon from 1990 until his death in 1994, kept a diary of Nixon's thoughts about leadership, the 1992 election, and President Clinton. The diary is the basis for this book and a forthcoming one on foreign policy. Nixon believed he was the only great postwar president and Clinton the worst. Despite this, they established an improbable detente because Clinton, more than any Republican president, actively sought the former president's counsel. Nixon's wise advice, in turn, helped compensate for that provided by an inexperienced State Department. This cordial relationship was ended by Clinton's failure to attend Pat Nixon's funeral and by Whitewater, which was becoming all too reminiscent of Watergate. The section on the 1992 campaign becomes mired in detail, but the one on leadership finds Nixon at his most insightful. Truman and Eisenhower are fondly remembered as "tough sons of bitches," while Johnson is denounced as a "calculating bastard." Crowley, much to her credit, remains in the background, letting Nixon be Nixon. She presents a sincere portrait of the former president, who even in his twilight years never lost his zeal for politics. Recommended for public libraries.?Karl Helicher, Upper Merion Township Lib., King of Prussia, Pa.
Copyright 1996 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Customer Reviews

A Surprising New Nixon: a kinder, gentler portrait
As Joe Eszterhas notes in "American Rhapsody", Bill Clinton was not the only President with his own personal Monica. Clearly some differences between the two politicians lay in the nature and quality of their relationships with their very junior employees.

Nixon's Monica was a promising young student of political science whose initial letters of admiration to the Old Man in California prompted a job offer, which had Monica functioning in what appears to be a variety of roles: research assistant, personal assistant, professional best friend, occassional therapist, and, apparently surreptitiously, scribe.

Watergate at least taught Nixon the dangers of indiscrimately taping conversations. Instead of speaking for the benefit of a series of bugs planted in the Oval Office, generating a real- time archive of his Presidency, he speaks now in quasi-retirement to his young assistant apparently hoping that she would indeed record (and possibly redact, for all the reader will know) his current thoughts on American politics for history. Certainly his former "expletives deleted" are nowhere in evidence, and his speech is lucid and well-argued. Monica apparently took written notes in the evenings, and the whole exercise came about without benefit of a recording device.

What is startling to observe is that Nixon's political instincts and instant readings of personalities apparently sharpened considerably in his post-White House years. The former President who rails to Monica alternately about Bill (and Hillary) Clinton and George Bush, while minutely observing the election of 1992, is as sharp as a tack. So are in his daily readings of campaign trail news and in his (perhaps paranoia-inspired) minute interpretations of discussions with the politicians who came calling for advice.

Nixon as political strategist had much to offer right to very end, and his exile as armchair quarterback in San Clemente must have been a sort of purgatory for such an experienced and decisive politician.

The Nixon whom Crowley describes is startlingly endearing in his insecurities: perhaps because their implications are neutralized by his enforced retirement. He pretends on occassion to disdain television, claiming to get his detailed information from "Mrs. Nixon". Upon Clinton's election, Nixon waits by the phone for calls for advice with the same petulant, obsessive nervousness of a teenager. When the calls finally begin, Nixon is clearly touched by the respectful tenor of Clinton's approaches. Just as it took Nixon to open China, perhaps it took Clinton, a centrist Democrat, to open Nixon.

Nixon is old-fashioned, gracious, entirely proper and even humble in his dealings with this young woman. Nixon apparently never explicitly asked her to provide him with this voice from beyond the grave. His kindness and eagerly professorial demeanour with Crowley, however, clearly aroused a real loyalty in her, and her treatment of her elderly employer and his frequent telephone calls is both fond and indulgeant.

The narrative comes to its natural end with Nixon's death. His observations regarding the Clinton presidency and, what he believes to be its weak foreign policy, are eerily precient. One closes the book with a sense of great wistfulness, perhaps like that which Kissinger is said to have long-ago expressed. A man with so much skill and talent and even conviction, be it popular or not, not only destroyed his presidency, but many of the opportunities to use his gifts in the service of the international community for the rest of his life.

For those with any compassion for Nixon, the book is suitably touching. For die-hard Nixon-haters, this narrative may provide the final catharsis.

Should Have Been On The Couch
If you ever wondered what an ex President might talk about with his friends then you need to buy this book, a real fly on the wall type book. I have to admit up front that I really liked this book. It was not that I have a deep interest in Nixon or that Nixon spelled out some overly insightful view of the political landscape. It was just that this author did such a good job of detailing out (quoting) so many of Nixon's musings about the political landscape from 90 to 94. I was most surprised at how petty he came off. He was whining and complaining about the press in about every three sentences. Regardless of the situation, he somehow related it back to how the press and Democrats unfairly went after him during the Watergate scandal. At this point in his life he must have focused on it so much that he saw the whole world through this hate filled prism.

I guess it was not such a surprise about Nixon disliking the press, but what did surprise me is that it seamed that he disliked any President that came after him. In his mind, they all fell short of his accomplishments and were far from a close second. He of course would then work in a diatribe about the press and how they will never give him the credit he deserves. It was interesting that he had such a low opinion of Bush Sr., he went after Bush on the poor reelection campaign, which was fair enough, but he also let him have it about every aspect of his Presidency. Yet his opinion would change the minute anyone in the Bush administration called him. Once he was shown some attention his opinion would suddenly change and all was right again with Bush, at least for a few weeks. I was surprised by this very apparent selfish and almost immature behavior.

I was again surprised by his roller coaster ride with President Clinton, during the campaign he down right hated the man. Once Clinton became the President and started calling Nixon, he is thought of by Nixon as FDR reincarnated. Well it was very predictable that when Clinton started to distance himself from Nixon that the ugly side of tricky Dick came back into the picture. Overall Nixon came off as a man with a very bruised ego and a bit bitter. I thought he some good views on the political situation of the time, but it was basically common sense. I kept thinking that if you follow politics you would have many of the same observations. I guess I just thought given his long career that he would somehow have insight that really would have surprised me. Overall the book was very interesting and a fast read. I had trouble putting it down. If you are interested in American politics then this a great book.

Fun book, perfect beach reading for political junkies
A quick, easy read, Miss Crowley's book gives us a portrait of a fading, but occasionally wise, ex-president. Nixon is exposed, his warts and his decencies. The petty, self-important Nixon is here, an old man given to bitternesses, especially towards George Bush. Bush was Nixon's protege and semi-creation (if not for Nixon's sponsorship, Bush would have ended his career as a failed Texas pol or minor cabinet secretary) yet Bush rarely asked Nixon for the elder's advise- and Nixon pouted over the affront. Nixon arrogantly considered himself one of America's greatest presidents, a minority view amongst conservatives as well as liberals. Nixon enjoyed the flattery Bill Clinton sent his way. Nixon's strong points come out in this book, too. He remained intellectual sharp until the end and intellectually curious. He was a quick study of personalities and situations. He understood what the icy Hillary Rodham Clinton was all about after one short meeting. He knew Ronald Reagan was having mental problems two years before Reagan's public announcement of his Alzheimer's affliction. My only problem with Monica Crowley's book is that she uses quote marks for most conversations though she admits that she didn't use a tape recorder. She claims she wrote notes after conversations- but who can have that perfect a memory even if her notes were scribbled five minutes after a given conversation took place. Still, Miss Crowley's book is fun and valuable.