Anthony Summers has written a highly contentious biography - but given his works on previous subjects such as Marilyn Monroe and J. Edgar Hoover (cross-dressing homosexual), a revelatory warts and warts account of Richard Nixon was to be expected. The book has hit the headlines for three principal allegations: Nixon sabotaged Lyndon Johnson's Vietnamese peace talks in 1968 in order to ensure election to the Oval Office; He consulted a psychotherapist frequently, drank heavily and abused prescription drugs; and he walloped his wife Pat on at least two occasions, making her contemplate divorce.
The first charge against Nixon is unsurprising and the evidence produced by Summers is persuasive. Nixon, in the run-up to the election, advised President Thieu of South Vietnam not to attend the Paris peace talks, promising him that a Nixon administration, if elected, would demand better terms for him. Once elected, of course, he did no such thing. Nixon's duplicity probably made little difference to the outcome of the war; Thieu was determined not to fold his cards anyway. But what it did do was undermine the election campaign of Hubert Humphrey, which had been greatly boosted by the cessation of bombing and the prospect of peace talks.
Neither does it come as a surprise, given his highly erratic behaviour and rambling speeches, that Nixon was often drunk and took refuge in drugs. Nixon's crutch was Dilantin, a drug which is approved only as an anti-convulsant for epileptics. Nixon, among others, found that it worked as an anti-depressant, took it in incautious quantities and in tandem with alcohol despite the risk of adverse reactions such as mental confusion. Perhaps the most frightening revelation is that Nixon, towards the end of his tenure, often issued off-the-wall orders for military action which, thankfully, were ignored by his staff. Woodward and Bernstein, in The Final Days, painted an extraordinary picture of a president out of his mind; according to Summers he was stoned out of his mind.
The charge that he was a wife-beater is anecdotal and one of Summers's secondhand sources is a dead reporter. However, another source is John Sears, a long-time Nixon aide and loyalist. Following the book's launch in the US last month, Julie Eisenhower, the couple's younger daughter, issued a statement denying that Nixon ever struck his wife.
All in all the author paints an appalling picture of Nixon. A miserable, corrupt loner, a violent bully given to terrible displays of temper, a clinically paranoid drug abuser and drunk. The reader who starts into this book with only the gut instinct that Nixon was unlikeable will find more than enough to confirm that the instinct was spot on.
Anthony Summers - who lives in Ireland - spent five years researching this book and carried out over 1,000 interviews; there are no less than 120 pages of detailed source notes. It is a commendable achievement, although it is not without shortcomings. The structure is loose. The coverage of political events is uneven. The resignation in disgrace of vice-president Spiro Agnew gets a total of 11 lines. Nixon, we are told, had wanted rid of him anyhow but we're not told why. The granting of a pardon to Nixon by President Ford (which certainly saved him from a trial and perhaps even the slammer) is disposed of in six lines, even though it was a decision that drove the then popular Ford out of favour and out of office. This is not a book for serious students of politics.
Nor is it, perhaps, a book for anyone who saw anything worthwhile in Nixon's presidency. Nixon was the most intelligent US president since the second World War. He applied that intelligence astutely to foreign affairs, and scored epoch-making triumphs in the nuclear arms reduction agreement with the Soviet Union and the diplomatic breakthrough with China. Mr Summers records the achievements but will not recognise their import. Nixon, according to the Democratic Party senator Daniel Pat Moynihan, was the most liberal incumbent of the Oval Office for a generation. It is an arguable thesis - but that Nixon is not remotely identifiable in this unashamedly partisan biography.
Summers has written a racy, digestible book which fairly gallops along. His exhaustive research shines a bright beam into the dark corners of Nixon's makeup and his machinations. The subtitle could just as easily have been Nixon, the Case Against; nevertheless, it is a compelling read which will appeal to a wide audience.
Eoin McVey is Managing Editor of The Irish Times