Bending Notes And The Constitution

Before I was a frustrated pianist, I came to George Gershwin's thrilling jazz concerto, "Rhapsody in Blue," as an underachieving 11-year-old clarinetist. The piece begins with an almost impossible to believe two and a half-octave clarinet glissando blasting off from the F below middle C and bending slowly, in an aching blue note, toward a high B-flat. I can bend notes on an harmonica, but I never developed the embouchure of iron required to do it on the clarinet. I wish I'd practiced more.

I also wish I could say I'd heard it performed by my teacher, the Detroit Symphony Orchestra's first-chair clarinetist, Vincent Melidon, a buddy of my father the music critic. I still have the old B-flat Selmer Mr. Melidon sold my mother, but unfortunately the only thing that rubbed off on me was cork grease. Besides, if he ever played the Gershwin run during his DSO years, it probably wasn't on my instrument, since he would've used an A clarinet for his orchestral work.

Instead, I listened over and over again to the 1959 recording by the Columbia Symphony Orchestra conducted by Leonard Bernstein, who also played piano. And of course "Rhapsody" is all about the ivories, not the licorice stick. The story goes that Gershwin hadn't finished writing portions of the piece for its first performance, with a jazz band, in Boston in 1924, so he improvised. It's now a staple of the classical repertoire.

While the Bernstein performance will be in my head forever, I also love the two associated with Woody Allen's 1979 film "Manhattan," Gary Graffman's on the soundtrack album and Paul Jacobs' in the film itself. The movie's titles, featuring Jacobs' and conductor Zubin Mehta's "Rhapsody" plus black and white images of the streets of the city, Central Park, Yankee Stadium, and fireworks over the East River, are exquisite; pretty much the high point of the movie. You can also get performances of the piece for solo piano, including this one by French pianist Vera Tsybakov.

Gershwin said the work's rhythms were inspired by the clickety-clack of New York's subways and ELs. Thanks to a church friend, I had the chance to rhapsodize about "Rhapsody" to my Bronx-born wife, Kathy, before, during, and after a June performance by Orange County's Pacific Symphony and pianist Orion Weiss, whose rendering was as lyrical and modern as Bernstein's was muscularly classical.

Thumbing through the program before the concert, I was startled by another contrast, not between an old pianist and a young one but an old Nixon hand and his younger self. The program contained an interview with Nixon operative Larry Higby (above), now chairman of the Orange County Performing Arts Center, which includes the Pacific Symphony's home, the Renee and Henry Segerstrom Concert Hall. The article, which didn't mention Higby's Nixon service, contained this statement by the impresario:

The arts are for all of us. They enrich our lives and add meaning and dimension to our daily experiences.

True enough, now and in 1971, when Higby was adjutant to Richard Nixon's soon-to-be-disgraced chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman. But back then, in the midst of the Vietnam war, the only artistic meaning and dimension the White House cared about was whether the artist in question was pro or con. As documented in the Nixon library's new Watergate gallery and the on-line background available at the library's web site, Higby asked the FBI's J. Edgar Hoover to provide dirt about CBS's Daniel Schorr, participated in the notorious Jew-counting scandal, and facilitated the process by which counsel John Dean's enemies list made its way to a desk within a few feet of the Oval Office. Among other great and decent Americans enriching and adding meaning to our lives in that era and yet ending up on the enemies list assembled for the president of the United States was none other than Leonard Bernstein.

In a thoughtful post earlier this summer at NixoNARA, historian Maarja Krusten reflected on Nixon and Haldeman's practice of hiring young men as aides. It was true that they were energetic and eager to please, and they looked good. Haldeman's acolytes have often made a fetish of looking well-dressed and clean cut (though the last time I met the desperately ailing Haldeman, on the streets of Santa Barbara, he told me cheerfully that he'd never wear a tie again). But as Krusten relates, they lacked wisdom, as younger people sometimes do. That was probably the way Nixon and Haldeman wanted it. You tell an ambitious young man in a free nation to sic a federal police agency on a journalist, and he may actually do it. Nixon knew that older advisers were more likely to push back. Nixon's advocates often say that the enemies list was de minimis because no one on the list had his taxes audited, as Nixon vowed to do. That may be because when Nixon's boys tried to line up the IRS to harass his enemies, they encountered a man, Treasury secretary George Shultz (shown with Nixon), who told them to pound sand.

I served former President Nixon and, at his direction, his estate and presidential library for nearly 30 years; Kathy equaled that, for a total of 60 between us. I was his chief of staff from 1984-90. I admired him for his peacemaking achievements and relentless diligence as an elder statesman. But even in those quieter years, he had his weaker moments. One morning, sitting opposite me in his office in 26 Federal Plaza in New York City, he ordered a little dirty trick. Angry at a prominent journalist, he told me to send the person an anonymous note saying that "we" knew something embarrassing. I didn't do it, and I hoped he wouldn't mention it again, which he didn't. If he had, I pray that I would've done the right thing.

Kathy, who succeeded me as Nixon's chief aide and was holding his hand when he died in 1994, also saved him from a humiliating crisis or two by saying no. It wasn't easy. Once, she reports, he was speechless with anger. She was afraid he was about to fire her. She's tougher than I am, and she held her ground. I can imagine it was a lot harder when Nixon was powerful and his young men wanted to keep their West Wing offices.

My apologies to Vincent Melidon for calling him "the late" in an earlier iteration of this post, and my thanks to his nurse, who corrected my error in a gracious comment.

Nixon, Yorba Linda, And Washington

The Nixon Center, established by former President Nixon in 1994, lost that designation in March, when it announced its independence from those now running Nixon's foundation in Yorba Linda. Writing today at "The National Interest," the center's blog, veteran journalist and media think tanker Marvin Kalb reviews recent events in Yorba Linda:

Unlike most other presidents, Richard Nixon seems never able to rest in peace. Apparently, not even at the Nixon Library. Recently, a new Watergate Exhibit was opened, and predictably [Ron and Anne Walker] were outraged. According to Mrs. Walker, who was in attendance, the current Director, Timothy Naftali, in his introductory remarks, never “missed using one accusatory buzz word” after another: “abuse of power,” “dirty tricks,” “whitewash,” and “cover up.” Naftali was even asked whether Nixon was anti-semitic, and, lo and behold, noted Mrs. Walker, a “very few days later, several news stories contained newly released quotes on that very subject.” She had hoped that the new exhibit would be “fair and balanced,” (a description familiar to any Fox viewer), but “it did not come out that way”...

Ron [Walker] was head of Nixon’s advance team at the White House. Sharing his loyalist views are other former staffers, now gathered around the Nixon Foundation: Larry Higby, who was Bob Haldeman’s deputy, and Dwight Chapin, who was deputy assistant to Nixon, among others.

As I've noted at the "National Interest" site, while I strongly supported Naftali's efforts to install the new exhibit, Kalb attributed words to me elsewhere in his post that were written by historian Robert KC Johnson.

Kalb concludes:

Rather than think about the Nixon Library as a weapon in a political war, the Walkers might try to let Nixon be Nixon, blemishes and all, and then have faith in the library visitor to reach a “fair and balanced” judgment of Richard Nixon’s place in American history.

Kalb says that 37's greatest victories were in foreign policy. Not only did Nixon agree, he hoped the work would continue. With the support of Henry Kissinger and other high-ranking associates, he founded the Nixon Center to apply his principles of enlightened pragmatism to the challenges the United States faced in the post-Cold War world. It's hard to be sure what he would've thought about the Watergate exhibit in Yorba Linda. But there's no doubt he'd be deeply disappointed that his living legacy has lost its toehold in Washington.

Bring On The Nixon Psychobiographers!

Richard Nixon, who strenuously resisted introspection, despised nothing more than so-called psychobiography, which combined the traditional historical method with speculation about subjects' hidden (even to themselves) motivations. As far as I can tell, that kind of history has gone mainstream, as it probably should have. Leaders are far more than the sum of their memoranda, especially ones as emotionally reserved and complicated as Nixon. Politics probably couldn't have been an unhappier choice for someone of his driven but painfully introverted temperament. Yet he felt called to make a difference, and his powers of solitary concentration and focus enabled him to envision foreign policy moves that made the world safer for billions of people.

Some insiders' insights from historian and former Nixon tapes archivist Maarja Krusten's new blog, NixoNARA. First, from one of Maarja's latest posts:

[I]n Nixon’s approach to issues as a student, a candidate, a president, and a creator of government records, we see...what has become an all-too-familiar refrain, “they’re against us, we won’t be treated fairly, try to out maneuver or crush them.” Ironically, more openness to reflection, and a willingness to consider data rather than relying so heavily on emotivism—a sense that archivists as civil servants would not treat his records fairly–would have made it much easier for him and for the National Archives.

Was his suspicion of civil servants -- not just archivists but members of the diplomatic and intelligence services -- a function of temperament or philosophy? Probably a little of both. Like many during the Cold War, Nixon had a Manichean view of the struggle between freedom and communism. At home, in the political and policy arenas, he saw everything (literally) as a matter of right vs. left. Since civil servants tended to be liberal, it seems not to have been much a stretch for Nixon to conclude that, knowingly or unknowingly, they were participating, if only in a tangential or a symbolic way, in the global communist project. A natural consequence of their ideological bias, in his view, was their hostility to him, the hated persecutor of Alger Hiss.

Getting to know them better would've enabled a more accurate view, but Nixon's introversion ruled that out. I take exception with those such as Rick Perlstein who focus on Nixon's alleged class resentments. Like many introverts, he resented those who were more socially adept than he, which, in politics, was just about everyone, no matter what side of the tracks they came from. He'd always tell us that socializing was a waste of time, but the real issue was that he didn't enjoy it, because it was exhausting. Instead, he spent a considerable amount of time alone, reading, thinking, planning, deciding, and accomplishing.

And yet there's no question about the unfortunate consequences of Nixon's corrosive assumptions about civil servants. In a comment at Maarja's blog, the former head of the Nixon tape processing unit, Fred Graboske, writes:

Our tapes processing staff held widely-ranging political views. Some, such as Maarja and I, were Republicans. Others were Democrats, some Independent, some agnostic, and one was a Socialist. I saw no evidence that anyone’s personal views of Nixon, or general political views, affected their archival work. President Nixon believed that the civil service was predominantly Democrat in its views (probably correct) and that it consequently attempted to sabotage his programs (not correct). If Nixon had understood this, he could have spared himself some grief during his Presidency...

The nadir of Nixon's cold war against federal bureaucrats was his asking one of his aides, Fred Malek, to count the number of Jews working in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where, Nixon had decided, liberal officials were purposely skewing data to hurt the administration. First he had another aide, Larry Higby, make sure Malek wasn't Jewish. The unsavory episode is described in the upcoming Nixon library Watergate exhibit that's been opposed by Nixon's White House aides.

About the worst excesses of Nixon and his men, another NixonNARA commentator, historian and blogger Jeremy C. Young (shown here), says this:

To be fair, had Nixon possessed “more openness to reflection, and a willingness to consider data rather than relying so heavily on emotivism,” he probably wouldn’t have done the things that make his aides so sensitive to the publicizing of his papers. Gerald Ford, a man possessed of a very similar political worldview to Nixon’s, committed none of Nixon’s sins and was accordingly unconcerned with the publication of his official papers.

Ford also committed none of Nixon's political and policy breakthroughs. He would probably have finished his career as House minority leader if Nixon hadn't turned to him in 1973 as the choice for vice president that would be least offensive to the most U.S. senators. Also thanks to his inoffensiveness, he ended up as the right president for the aftermath of Watergate. But it's hard to imagine him (or Ronald Reagan for that matter) functioning as effectively as Nixon did in the first four years of his presidency -- for starters, transforming relations with the Soviets and the Chinese and the conduct of the Vietnam war.

Landing On Schorr

Nearly 40 years after Nixon aide Larry Higby called J. Edgar Hoover to order an investigation of CBS reporter Daniel Schorr and five months after Schorr's death, the agency has released his file.

Shultz: "Dean Has A Problem With Me"

George Shultz (later Ronald Reagan's secretary of state) was serving as Richard Nixon's secretary of the treasury when White House counsel John Dean asked him to order 50 politically motivated tax investigations. Shultz told Dean to pound sand. In this interview with Nixon library director Tim Naftali, now available on the library's YouTube site, Shultz said, "It was an improper use of the IRS, and I wouldn't do it."

According to on-line background materials, the library's new Watergate exhibit, opposed by Nixon's White House aides, covers such matters as Bob Haldeman aide Larry Higby's more successful effort to get FBI director J. Edgar Hoover to conduct an investigation of CBS News correspondent Daniel Schorr.

Trojan Sources

There's irony or aptness, depending on your perspective, as Dwight Chapin returns to his alma mater, the University of Southern California, to participate in a Nixon foundation co-sponsored panel discussion about President Nixon's China initiative. A 1963 USC graduate, Chapin hired classmate Donald Segretti to run dirty tricks during Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign. It was often said that they first stocked their bags of political tricks as undergraduates.

Chapin was jailed for perjury in Watergate's wake. He's making news at the Nixon library by charging that Nixon was present when chief of staff H. R. "Bob" Haldeman gave the order to create the dirty tricks unit. Until now, Nixon was never directly implicated.

Nixon's foundation is currently enjoying a Haldeman renaissance. Joining Chapin at the USC event will be Haldeman's aide Larry Higby, who also features in the library's proposed new Watergate exhibit.

Time To Get Watergate On The Way

After the Nixon foundation's war over Watergate became public on Aug. 6, National Archives officials said final decisions about the Nixon library's new exhibit, due to have opened on July 1, would be made in a few weeks. But thanks to Wikipedia, one learns that the background for the new exhibit already appears on on the Nixon library website, complete with photos, White House tape snippets, and even a memo disclosing that Nixon's aides had conducted an investigation into whether one of their own, Fred Malek, was Jewish (see "Higby to Haldeman, July 8, 1971"). President Nixon had wanted his staff to find out how many Jews were working at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, where he believed liberal opponents were skewing data. White House personnel chief Malek was in line for the assignment, hence the theological exploration by chief of staff H.R. Haldeman's aide, Larry Higby. Malek gives more details in an oral history interview with library director Tim Naftali.

Rooting around, you can get a pretty good idea of the contours of the exhibit. Included, for instance, are details on the White House's attempts to intimidate the late Daniel Schorr, then a CBS correspondent. According to NPR's 1994 interview with Schorr, in 1971 Higby called J. Edgar Hoover, director of the FBI, looking for dirt. Instead, Hoover launched a full-field investigation. When Schorr naturally found out about it, the White House pretended that it planned to offer him a job, which Haldeman and Nixon discuss in this tape segment (which also reveals that they'd sicced the IRS on him). Finally, in December 1971, Hoover, laying one more lie on the pile, wrote a letter to the White House saying the investigation had been completed:

Mr. Schorr indicated surprise at being considered for a Federal position but, nevertheless, furnished the necessary background data.

It ain't pretty. It wasn't going to be. As a foreign affairs visionary, Richard Nixon made the world safer for billions of people in his own time and in generations to come. His positive legacy will ultimately withstand Watergate. But that doesn't mean the story doesn't need to be told. At Fox News, Sean Hannity loves to say about any scandal involving liberals, "If we were caught doing something like this..." Imagine if Obama's aides were caught engaging in shenanigans such as these. If prior administrations did things that were just as dark, as some argue, then let Watergate be fully illuminated in the hope that powerful men and women will at least hesitate to do it again.

To those who still insist that it's unfair to Nixon that presidents get kid glove treatment at some other taxpayer-operated museums, they've got a point, of course. It's an inevitable consequence of a president resigning, not that I ever want to see that proposition tested again. Maybe the lesson is that, after a decent interval, which is to say the first generation after a library opens, all the gloves should come off. Maybe striking a blow for curatorial objectivity at presidential libraries will be Nixon's last historic first.

We're Gonna Hire Our Political Enemies

Thanks to an NPR retrospective on the death of Daniel Schorr (left), I've belatedly learned about a local angle (besides the man from Yorba Linda himself) on the 1974 articles of impeachment against Richard Nixon, namely Orange County businessman Larry Higby, once Nixon chief of staff Bob Haldeman's aide.

It all started when the White House decided it didn't like Schorr's reporting on the CBS Evening News. As Schorr told NPR's Terry Gross in a 1994 (rebroadcast on July 30, a week after Schorr's death; the transcript is here, and you check it out on iTunes here):

[Nixon] had Haldeman have his assistant Larry Higby call J. Edgar Hoover and simply say the boss, the president, wants to have some background stuff on a correspondent named Daniel Schorr.

But either Higby or the FBI's usually pretty canny director missed the point. Rather than dishing whatever dirt happened to be on hand, Hoover ordered a full field investigation, the kind the FBI does on those in line for high-level government jobs. When agents visited Schorr himself, inadvertently revealing that the White House and a federal police agency had developed a constitutionally unhealthful fixation on him, Nixon aides concocted the story that they were planning to offer one of Washington's most prominent journalists the lofty post of PR man for the Council on Environmental Quality.

This bumptious episode turned deadly serious, Schorr told Gross, when the use of the FBI against a journalist was cited by the House Judiciary Committee in one of the three articles of impeachment it approved in the summer of 1974.

Admiring Nixon for his final comeback, Schorr became a regular guest at Nixon Center events in Washington during the 1990s. At one, the ex-president smiled at him and said, "Damn near hired you once." To Gross's apparent surprise, Schorr chose to take Nixon's remark as a backhanded apology. "[Only] he who is without blemish should be casting stones around," Schorr said. "I consider life too short to have grudges, retain grudges, and furthermore, I find him interesting."