The Invisible Bridge: The Fall of Nixon and The Rise of Reagan, Perlstein - B+/Incomplete

       This is the third volume of the author's majestic, incisive decade-and- a-half, 2600 + page analysis of the rise of the right from the mid-1950's until Reagan's presidency.  The previous book ended with Nixon's landslide reelection. This one is about the ensuing presidential term when America lost faith in itself. In this era, Reagan emphasized the language of American exceptionalism at all times, often flying in the face of very unpleasant facts. "This is a book about how such rhetoric came into being ..." 

     Nixon declared that he had achieved peace with honor and attempted to celebrate the return of the POW's as a triumph. He and his administration had spent four years politicizing their imprisonment. The New Yorker magazine suggested it was as if "the North Vietnamese kidnapped 400 Americans and the US had gone to war to retrieve them." Many, many Americans were disconcerted by the sanctification of men who had bombed civilians in an undeclared war while our ally imprisoned 10,000 political prisoners in much harsher conditions. One man traveling the country dismissing Watergate and "choking up" over the POWs was the governor of California. "He was an athlete of the imagination, a master of turning complexity and confusion and doubt into simplicity and stout-hearted certainty." He was an ebullient optimist. That imagination and his inherent optimism had brought him through his chaotic childhood.

     In the late winter of 1973, Sen. Sam Ervin and Judge John Sirica began their separate pursuits of Watergate.  Nixon fired his two closest aides, his White House Counsel and Attorney General in April and announced that he would conduct an investigation of his own. Ervin's televised hearings began in May and the new AG, Elliot Richardson, appointed Archibald Cox as the Watergate prosecutor. The televised hearings captivated the nation and day by day, shocking detail by shocking detail, the Nixon presidency began slipping away. That summer, inflation and a fuel shortage continued to diminish life in America. In late June, the most damning, compelling and memorable witness of the hearings, John Dean, White House Counsel, buried the entire Nixon Administration with a 295-page opening statement and days of precise testimony. The following month, a White House aide testified to the existence of a recording system at the presidential mansion. Nixon continued to stonewall the issues around Watergate and the Ervin Committee finished its revelations.

    The fall saw the Pinochet coup in Chile, the indictment and resignation of the Vice President, the YomKippur War, the nomination of Gerald Ford to replace Agnew, and the Saturday Night Massacre. Calls for impeachment rang out around the land and in the House. The devastating Arab oil embargo followed.  The energy crisis hurt everyone and contributed to Nixon having the lowest approval rating of any president ever by the time he presented his State of the Union. Just about the only Republican still enthusiastically supporting him was Reagan. Soon, Haldeman, Ehrlichman, Colson and Mitchell were indicted. In April, Nixon hurt his case further by releasing transcripts of the White House tapes that revealed him to be guilty as charged, and a frequent user of "expletive deleted' language. On July 24th, the Supreme Court approved District Judge Sirica's subpoena of the White House tapes. By the 9th of August, Nixon was flying to California resigned and disgraced.

           I began the Perlstein series three and-a-half years ago knowing it was a highly acclaimed treatise on the rise of the right, in order to better understand the results of the 2016 election.  I am leaving the series a third of the way through this tome as I believe I have accomplished my objective. And I wish to add that the first 281 pages of this book are extremely well done, if not excellent. I simply do not wish to slog through the Ford and Carter years. 

            My readings here confirm many of the conclusions I've  come to believe over the decades about our country. There is nothing new about hate, vitriolic personal attacks and the ability to preach and act in the face of reality and facts. Delusional conduct, speech and belief are inherently human traits. The only difference today is the 24-hour news cycle, the ability of loonies to spread their ideas wide and far through today's internet platforms and, for the last four years, a chief executive willing to light fires and fan flames. The Founders endlessly declaimed against partisanship. This country fought a civil war that killed 620,000 - 750,000 in a population of 31 million. Immigrant anarchists led to widespread unrest, labor wars and fighting in the streets in the late 19th-century. Bryant led a populist pushback on behalf of farmers against the railroad barons and Wall Street. The religious right in the rural west  and south imposed the absurdity of Prohibition on the urban north.  The Depression created further class fissures in our society. A century after the Civil War, the South fought a losing battle against civil rights for people of color. The Vietnam War remains as divisive today as it was in 1965. A woman's right to chose has been the established law for 47 years - but, one would hardly know that. It hasn't been, and I guess it never will be, pretty.