![]() ![]() ![]() At his worst he stood on the brink of madness. A darker spirit animated him - malevolent and violent, driven by anger and an insatiable appetite for revenge. In Nixon’s first State of the Union speech, he said that he was possessed by “an indefinable spirit - the lift of a driving dream which has made America, from its beginning, the hope of the world.” He promised the American people “the best chance since World War II to enjoy a generation of uninterrupted peace.”īut Richard Nixon was never at peace. ![]() He was - as an English earl once said of the warlord Oliver Cromwell - “a great, bad man.” Richard Nixon saw himself as a great statesman, a giant for the ages, a general who could command the globe, a master of war, not merely the leader of the free world but “ the world leader.” Yet he was addicted to the gutter politics that ruined him. This essay has been adapted from chapters 1 and 22 of Tim Weiner’s new book, One Man Against the World: The Tragedy of Richard Nixon, with the kind permission of Henry Holt and Company. ![]()
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