Nixon: anti-semitism? Who knew?
Every so often, a new batch of material from the Nixon tapes is released.  And we get a chance to focus on suddenly relevant topics which would have slipped through unnoticed at a different moment, such as Nixon ruminating on Fred Thompson and his belief that he is “dumb as a rock” and probably outwitted by the Democratic half of that investigation looking into Watergate.
And then, it always seems, that the news media reports that the new tapes “reveals Nixon at his most crass”, which does not make sense to me unless each new tape release shows a crasser side than the last, which it doesn’t — it’s always about the same.
For instance, we now have Nixon balking at the idea of hiring a token “house Jew”– and determing that Leonard Garment was “the House Jew”. This is shocking! Who knew about Richard Nixon’s rampant anti-semitism? Surely this hasn’t come out in the previous tape releases!
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And then there’s this:
The documents span a wider period and include a memorandum that may intrigue students of Nixon’s character. In the document, written in December 1970 to H. R. Haldeman, a top aide, Nixon expresses both anger and pain that his aides have not been able to establish an image of him as a warm and caring person. He makes several suggestions about how this could be accomplished, warning frequently in the single-spaced 11-page document that it must appear that the examples of his warmth were discovered by others and not promoted by White House aides.
“There are innumerable examples of warm items,” he wrote, saying that he had been “nicey-nicey to the cabinet, staff and Congress around Christmastime” and that he had treated cabinet and subcabinet officials “like dignified human beings and not dirt under my feet.”
With regard to the “warmth business,” the memorandum says, it is important to emphasize to anyone who may write an article that the president “does not brag about all the good things he does for people.”