Nixon’s Presidential Character
According to James David Barber’s “Presidential Character and How to Foresee It”, Nixon is a typical “Active-Negative” president, or compulsive type, which means he devoted lots of energy and emotion into his presidency yet felt relatively low emotional reward for the effort he made. It is through five factors – character, world view, political style, power situation and climate of expectations that shape Nixon’s presidential character together. It is also suggested in the film Nixon by Olive Stone that Nixon’s tragedy is deeply rooted in his character and thus predictable.
The film Nixon introduced Nixon’s life as both the most controversial President in the US history and a human being of contradiction (Oliver, 2010). It shows how his positive-negative presidency character forms and how this character leads to his tragic resign. (The film mainly focuses on the fermentation of the Watergate event. It’s an integrated product/result of his character. The main reason that leads to this scandal is his power-holding struggle.)
Character
According to barber, a president’s personality is an important shaper of his Presidential behavior. Personality is the way president orients himself toward life enduringly. It’s his stance when he confronts experience and himself; it’s his self-esteem and by which criteria he judges himself; it’s also his strength and weakness. Nixon is conceit about his political experience, while self-abased about his image. He’s aggressive and suspicious to everyone, while trying to escape himself. He was shy and introvert and yet he frequently exposes himself in a world of outgoing and extrovert people, the world of politics (Oliver, 2010). He not only judges himself by achievement but also wants affection. He seems to pour lots of energy into politics, yet at the core of his peculiar way of approaching the Presidency was an image of the self. All he wants is to be loved, which he never got.
He sacrifices himself to satisfy his people. He almost always hides his true self, sees everyone who disagree with him his personal enemy. He can’t separate his life with his job/politics. He’s face and smile never appears in the same place. Her daughter sees him as the kindest person, her wife sees him as an unhappy man, while his people hate/despise him, his colleagues fear him. But does he really know what he wants? What in his core is a tragically insecure human being who’s longing for love. He’s perfectionistic conscience can’t let him quit. He pays too much attention on his image. He’s focus on diplomatic affairs; he meets, listens to and talking with his people.
Political Style
Nixon’s political way of ruling seems to be very different as compared to that of his predecessors’. He rules in a very unique way which no one expects him to employ durin his reign
Moreover, he emphasizes rhetoric and personal relationship elements. He’s been a hard worker and an excellent debater with great enthusiasm during his college life. The two main themes he’s seeking are power and peace. He uses every tough means to achieve his political goal such as diplomacy, even dirty means like wiretap the political opponent if necessary. He misuses his presidential power to do illegal things.
Rooted in insecurity and repression, all of his self-contradictory behavior can be traced to his childhood life full of hardship. Ascetic Quaker family life repressed his enjoyment of life; death of his brothers strikes him with sadness of loss and impermanence of fate; his cold and strict mother Hannah Nixon cultivates his hard-working and tough quality but also enhances his insecurity. There’re several scenes in the film that shows how tremendous Hannah Nixon’s impact is on Richard Nixon’s personality and world view throughout his life. She refuses to talk with little Nixon when he lies about smoking. This forms Nixon’s defensive and sensitive personality and tendency to please others. On his brother Harold’s funeral, she asks him to stay tough and strong for the survival of family. “But what about happiness?” young Nixon asked sadly. “Strength in this life first, happiness in the next.” Hannah answers (Oliver, 2010). This forms his toughness, self-sacrifice and compulsive quality. And when Hannah Nixon is interviewed about his son’s win of election, she said coldly, “I’m proud of all of my sons.” Despite his mother’s cold response, Nixon describes her as “a Quaker saint”, always setting survival and mother’s expectation prior to self-gratification – even his pursuit and practice of presidency has a tendency of self-sacrifice. When his wife asked, “Do you really happy? Is this (presidency) really what you want?” Probably a happy lawyer with a happy family would be more close to the answer in his heart. It seems like to be a president can’t make him happy.
Climate of Expectations
Nixon desires to be loved by his people, his family members, and also his mother. From Nixon’s perspective, the main reason that causes his personal tragedy--losing control of himself and his power, is that there’re conflicts between his political value and his individual value; and his misestimate of steps he should takes to lead to his goal.
(His personality is shaped largely by his family (Barber, 1985). He’s born in poor farmer family which belongs to working class, and brought up under restrictfull Quaker influence. “People vote for you not because of love but because of fear.” “Money works.” “Everyone is political.”
His personality is contradiction. He’s personality shapes his presidential behavior and it’s patterned. The repression that comes from his family environment tears him into two parts. Since childhood he’s always required to hide his true need in order to fulfill his family expectations. And mistake means loss of his mother’s love. There’s two Nixon. No one knows who he really is.
His personality leads to the disastrous consequences, such as his resignation of the Watergate scandals, “A president’s personality is an important shaper of his Presidential behavior… (Barber, 1985)” At the first place, he’s skeptical and evil nature leads him to illegally tap his political opponent. He’s self-denial further leads to his trust crisis against the whole world. Nixon’s over-confidence in the capacity in which his in, makes it hard for him to change his ways of operating, thus brining everything to a standstill. His personality affects the way he performs, a thing which consequently makes it hard for him to be able to rich his expectations, even after being able to reach his goals and desires (Oliver, 2010). The fear of losing power makes him to be indecisive, thus making it hard for him to be able to deliver the promises he made. Insecurity blinds his expectations, making him to abort different missions particularly when they are in progress, a good example being ending Vietnam War. He pays too much attention to himself. He can no longer act out of ration and see what is right and what is wrong. He’s trapped in his self-concern. He lost himself.
Nixon cannot be able to enjoy what he has, simply because he wants too much, expect too much, and the nation and people’s need doesn’t accordance with the true need of his own. “You want them to love you, but they never will (Barber, 1985).” “Those who hate you won’t win unless you hate them, then you destroys yourself.” He’s a man of foresight as well as a man who’s lost. But it turns out that the biggest enemy of him is himself.
Power Situation
Nixon is a leader who consequently uses his power in order to oppress his enemies. Nixon does not use his power in order to be able to achieve his goals, but in order to fulfill his unending desires (Barber, 1985). He’s born in a time during which lots of big events going on. His power-seeking roots in the insecure caused by his Family and his failures in his early political career.
From my perspective, he’s a tragically insecure human being with a bold and far vision in the essence. He’s a hero both produced and limited by the time he happened to born in. He ends the Vietnam War, opens China, brings peace with the Soviet Union ( fails to end the Vietnam War in the way he promised,). However, he fails to save the nation’s economy/from the Depression, fail to solve Watergate scandal. He’s the only U.S. president to resign the office. He’s a community/contradiction of greatness and disaster, peace and darkness, morality and evilness, power and powerlessness, legend and tragedy (Barber, 1985). This is rooted and thus can be predicted in his early life, from his family to his early political success, in terms of personality, world view and political style.
World View
Nixon’s view of the world is very different, since he acts very naïve, thus making him a victim of what he expects from the world.
Nixon’s early life also continually affects his world view. According to Barber, a president’s world view consists of his primary, politically relevant beliefs. Nixon is a realist. His class has a profound influence on his political stance. Poverty makes him understand the hardship of working class, which develops his alliance with lower class and hostility to elite class. He also believes in endeavor (Barber, 1985). On his path to approach presidency starting from a working-class civilian, he was defeated by strong opponents and bounds back. He can rely on nothing but his endeavor and perseverance. After several losses of elections of US state government and president, finally, his election of president in 1972 proved that his endeavor and perseverance are worthwhile. Another important element that consists his world view is his belief of threats of uncertainty (Oliver, 2010). The prime threat is credibility of people. It is his distrust of people that motivates him to maintain a tense, wary readiness for danger for fully control. It is also part of the reason why he attributes his failure to external reason. He has a tendency of focusing on anger towards his personal enemy’s and in this case being the Democratic Party. Nixon does not reconcile with hi inner self, and so he believes that the world seems to be very negative from what it seems to be.
Seeing Nixon as a complex human being with active-negative quality and analysis his pattern of personality, we are able to foresee that Nixon may not be the most suitable person for President (Barber, 1985).
“When they look at you, they want to be you. When they look at me, they find themselves.”
References
Oliver, S. (2010). Nixon (1995) HQ “Do you think of death, Dick?” Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JWRVyaKnGcA
James, Barber. (1985). The Presidential Character: Predicting Performance in the White House. Englewood Cliffs.
