If your commander-in-chief believes that saying something makes it so, you’re in a very bad place indeed.
Photo illustration by Elizabeth Brockway / The Daily Beast
"If President Donald Trump’s administration may be called a farce, then in the Marxist equation its tragic progenitor is surely the presidency of Richard Nixon.
"That’s the conclusion I came to reading John A. Farrell’s absorbing new biography of Richard Nixon. In it, the Nixon White House models precisely what can go wrong when a man consumed by paranoia and with an ax to grind reaches the Oval Office. Which is pretty much where we are right now.
"Although Richard Nixon: The Life doesn’t dwell on the similarities between the two men, the timing of the book’s publication makes it impossible to ignore the elephant in the Situation Room. You may not be able to blame Forty-five squarely on Thirty-seven, but it’s to be hoped that the past can teach us something of use."
For my full review of Richard Nixon: The Life (Doubleday, 2017), by John A. Farrell, visit The Daily Beast.