Books: Poor Richard's Almanac

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Most Americans older than 13 already know more about Richard Milhous Nixon than they may realize or, in many cases, appreciate. To a remarkable extent, his life has been led in public, his up-and-down and then up-again-and-down- again career a long-running soap opera that played on all the networks. The ubiquitous male lead was regularly humiliated (Who can forget the Checkers episode in 1952 or the "last press conference" in 1962?), but he always bounced back, a new Nixon, ready for another crisis that would again display his anguish before a dumbfounded public.

He even survived his spectacular flameout after Watergate to become an elder statesman of the Republican Party. But his role in history remains enigmatic. An unlikelier politician would be hard to concoct: reserved, secretive, glowering, as awkward at backslapping and glad-handing as an android at a stag party. Yet he became the most durable public figure in postwar American life, five times a candidate for national office and four times a winner. How could this have happened? The question can be interpreted as friendly or hostile; anyone interested in the recent past must ask it and look for answers.

That is what Historian Stephen E. Ambrose has done in Nixon: The Education of a Politician 1913-1962. His unauthorized but authoritative biography does not offer a trove of new information; instead it examines evenhandedly the voluminous record amassed by Nixon and his friends and enemies. This Nixon is neither hagiography nor hatchet job but something better: a balanced, thorough account of an engrossing story.

The outline is familiar enough: Southern California childhood (straitened but not so impoverished as Nixon later claimed), Whittier College, Duke University Law School, service as a naval officer in the backwash of the war in the Pacific, successful Republican campaign for Congress in 1946, Red hunting, Alger Hiss, the Senate in 1950 (after a bitter contest against "the pink lady," Helen Gahagan Douglas), Ike and the vice presidency in 1952. Ambrose's account of this progress throws a few details into intriguing relief. The young Nixon ("Gloomy Gus" to family and classmates) was regarded as emotionally pinched but unimpeachably honest. Old friends from Whittier could scarcely recognize the belligerent, deceptive figure who emerged during his first California campaigns.

The difference, Ambrose suggests, may have been triggered by Nixon's experience in the Navy, where he learned to gamble. One day he asked a fellow officer, "Is there any sure way to win at poker?" Not only did Nixon become an excellent player and use his winnings (estimated variously at $3,000 to $10,000) to help finance his entry into politics; he came to see life as a winner-take-all affair. To someone who later criticized his underhanded tactics in his 1946 race against Democratic Congressman Jerry Voorhis, Nixon replied, "I had to win. That's the thing you don't understand. The important thing is to win."