Skip to main content

Francis Russell

March 2023
1min read


Author of President Makers from Mark Hanna to Joseph P. Kennedy

Most overrated:

John F. Kennedy, the youngest elected President, in his shocking death became a legend, a myth of enduring youth, a face on a silver coin, an inextinguishable flame. The image persists of a lost young man of wit and grace and charm in a vanished Camelot.

Yet what was he really? An ordinary man, in private life a crude philanderer, with no great love of the arts or of learning. What were the accomplishments of his thousand days? Very little, I think. Rather than accomplishments there were grim landmarks: the Bay of Pigs; the Berlin Wall, which Kennedy just let happen; the Cuban missile crisis, which ended by guaranteeing Castro’s position; the Vietnam War.

Most underrated:

No getting around it. There is a repellent quality to Richard Nixon, to his very physical appearance. His features antagonize. His voice grates. From his released tapes emerges a vulgarity of speech, a coarseness that seems ingrained. He lied to the American people, and in the end he destroyed himself, the first President ever to be forced from office. One thinks of the bathos of his Checkers speech, of the subsidized grandeur of his California and Florida ersatz White Houses, of the Ruritanian uniforms of his presidential guards. All that—and yet, and yet.

The 1960 election was so close that neutral political observers believe an honest count might well have given the election to Nixon. But an honest count in Illinois and Texas was more than political human nature could ask for. The night before the election Chicago’s Boss Daley telephoned Father Joe Kennedy to tell him he had nothing to worry about in Illinois. In Texas Lyndon Johnson, an old hand at ballot juggling, saw to it that a hundred thousand Republican votes were thrown out, more than enough to have given the state to Nixon. Nixon knew he had been swindled, but to his credit he did not protest the election, as he might well have done, merely saying that he did not want to subject the country to another Hayes-Tilden controversy.

Nixon did not end the Vietnam War, though but for Watergate he might have succeeded in some sort of compromise. By mining Haiphong Harbor and bombing Hanoi, he brought the North Vietnamese to the bargaining table, an action that Johnson hesitated to take five years earlier and that might then have ended that misadventure.

Nixon’s great and enduring achievement was, of course, his establishment of relations with Communist China, an act that has changed the course of history. When Nixon’s face, somewhat retouched, appears on a postage stamp, when his gaucheries are forgotten and Watergate is no more than a footnote, his recognition of China will be his monument.

We hope you enjoy our work.

Please support this 72-year tradition of trusted historical writing and the volunteers that sustain it with a donation to American Heritage.

Donate

Stories published from "July/August 1988"

Authored by: Fredric Smoler

VINTAGE 1929
Gallows Humor from the First October Catastrophe

Authored by: The Editors

Two Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago

Authored by: The Editors

One Hundred and Fifty Years Ago

Authored by: The Editors

One Hundred and Twenty-five Years Ago

Authored by: The Editors

One Hundred Years Ago

Authored by: The Editors

Seventy-five Years Ago

Authored by: The Editors

Twenty-five Years Ago

Authored by: The Editors

Fitz Hugh Lane’s seemingly traditional harbor scenes are now considered pioneering works of a unique artistic movement

Authored by: Edward Hoagland

He lived alone for two years in a small cabin on Walden Pond, but he was neither misanthropic nor solitary. Perhaps more than any other American writer, he can teach us how to live with ourselves.

Authored by: Fredric Smoler

A lifelong student of military history and affairs says that nuclear weapons have made the idea of war absurd. And it is precisely when everyone agrees that war is absurd that one gets started.

Featured Articles

The world’s most prominent actress risked her career by standing up to one of Hollywood’s mega-studios, proving that behind the beauty was also a very savvy businesswoman. 

Rarely has the full story been told about how a famed botanist, a pioneering female journalist, and First Lady Helen Taft battled reluctant bureaucrats to bring Japanese cherry trees to Washington. 

Often thought to have been a weak president, Carter was strong-willed in doing what he thought was right, regardless of expediency or the political fallout.

Why have thousands of U.S. banks failed over the years? The answers are in our history and politics.

In his Second Inaugural Address, Abraham Lincoln embodied leading in a time of polarization, political disagreement, and differing understandings of reality.