Know Your Enemy - Nixon Agonistes

Matt and Sam discuss Garry Wills's 1970 masterpiece of political reporting and analysis, "Nixon Agonistes."

Duration: 1h 31m
Broadcast on: 06 Nov 2022
Audio Format: other

"What is best and weakest in America goes out to reciprocating strength and deficiencies in Richard Nixon." It's difficult to think of a more electric meeting of author and subject than Garry Wills and Richard Nixon, a meeting that produced what might be the best book ever written about American politics, Wills's Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man. What begins as reporting from the campaign trail during the 1968 presidential contest—where Wills introduces us to Nixon, George Wallace, Nelson Rockefeller, and more—eventually becomes a profound meditation on the fate of liberalism in the United States. Wills found in Nixon the key to unlocking the reigning—but by then faltering—myths of their country's history and self-understanding, and what they reveal about each other.

Along the way he discusses the complex psychological dance between Nixon and Dwight Eisenhower; takes us on a tour of Nixon's hometown, Whittier, California; describes the Republicans' "southern strategy"; examines the roiling anger and protests over the Vietnam War; and offers on-the-ground reportage from the 1968 conventions (the GOP's in Miami, the Democrats', infamously, in Chicago). Matt and Sam try to make sense of it all and ponder what Nixon Agonistes might say about how we got here and where we're going.

Sources:

Garry Wills, Nixon Agonistes: The Crisis of the Self-Made Man (1970)

Confessions of a Conservative (1979)

Outsider Looking In: Adventures of an Observer (2010)

Kevin Phillips, The Emerging Republican Majority (1968)

Tom Wolfe, The New Journalism (1973)

KYE, "Joan Didion, Conservative, (w/ Sam Tanenhaus)" Jan 13, 2022

...and don't forget to subscribe to Know Your Enemy on Patreon for access to all of our bonus episodes!

-All right. Welcome listeners to episode 64 of Know Your Enemy. I'm your podcast host, Matt Sootman, and I'm here with my great friend Sam Adlerbo. Hey, Sam. -Hi, Matt. -I'm so excited for this episode. -I feel sometimes like we cry wolf with, "I'm so excited for this episode," but I am also truly excited for this episode. -Yes, we're paying off a promise. We've been talking about Gary Wills here and there. In this episode, we are diving into his amazing book, Nixon Agonista's The Crisis of the Self-Made Man, 600 pages, published in 1970, maybe the greatest book ever written about American politics. It's at least up there, and we just go through it, and it's a barn burner. -Yes, we were talking about before we started recording, just reminding ourselves just how much fun we have when we just geek out together, and I think the listeners will find it's a classical classic, Know Your Enemy. -I hope so. We're not going to do too much scene setting because at the start of the episode, we give you all the background and details, a little biography about Gary Wills, the context for this book, so this is going to be a quick intro. -I did want to ask you, Matt, because I mentioned it on the bonus episode that you were hunting in Pennsylvania with your father. How did it go? Were you hunting deer? -Yes, I was hunting white-tailed deer. It is archery season right now in Pennsylvania. -Did you get any? -No, I did not. -Oh, my God. -Archery is tough because they have to get within a certain range, but we saw a lot of deer, we saw a few big bucks, but no, I did not return to New York as the great hunter-bearing meat. -I thought you were going to have venison on the roof. -I was talking that up too much. I'm going to have a big pot of chili with venison and have all my friends over for a party, but I will say I did record this episode at home, so in the spare room of my parents' house, so that might account for my lack of expletives in this episode. -That's right, yeah. -Maybe some of your sobriety, too. -Yes. -That's a bigger ask than going to a few baseball games a year, which is how I fulfill my suddenly duties. I won't regale listeners with hunting stories,

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Matt and Sam discuss Garry Wills's 1970 masterpiece of political reporting and analysis, "Nixon Agonistes."