Word: ehrlichman
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...result, the sections concerning Nixon's pre-1968 career consist of a turgid rehash of Ehrlichman's activities of a campaign advance man--events that made Ehrlichman a witness to press-plane partying but not to power. Even in his account of the Nixon presidency. Ehrlichman can't help giving the impression that he was a relatively peripheral figure For example, the first eight pages of a chapter supposedly about Nixon's political style is taken up by a story about Ehrlichman's trip to Sweden in 1972 and by the transcript of an utterly unremarkable press conference. As domestic...
...surprising, then, that Ehrlichman has to fill his pages with mere gossip from the Nixon years, items which he seems to think are "inside information." Do you know that Bebe Rebozo was "Nixon's source of undemanding mental relaxation"? Do you know that "Pat Nixon grew in her role as First Lady"? Do you know that Tricia Nixon once stuck Ehrlichman with the tab for lunch"? Do you care? And when Ehrlichman's narrative does occasionally touch on an illuminating point--like when he mentions that Nixon and Colson attempted to coerce network television executives to procure more favorable coverage...
...even gossip can be interesting if presented in a lively and humorous style. Ehrlichman, however, writes as if his imagination were chained to a post. His plodding exposition is replace with mixed metaphors, clichers, and spelling errors--its only humor is bitter and sarcastic. A sample of the Ehrlichman...
EVEN IF HE FAILS to convince his readers of his historical importance, Ehrlichman could still achieve his second purpose: self exoneration for his role in the Watergate crisis. But Ehrlichman's efforts here are as tiresome as they are tireless. His version of the Watergate scandal contains not a single previously unknown fact or innovative argument. Instead, it is a string of extraordinarily bitter and venomous recriminations and accusations. His main targets are John Dean, portrayed as a pathological liar, and his two trial judges--Gerhard Gesell and John J. Sirica--both the whom he sees as incompetent grandstanders...
...Watergate cover-up or the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office--the two crimes for which he served 18 months in federal prison. He pins the former caper completely on Dean, and hints quite strongly that Nixon commissioned the later. Far from admitting any wrongdoing. Ehrlichman claims that Nixon though of him as the "conscience" of the Administration. The problem with that story is simple: he enlists no new evidence in his cause and supplements, his charges with no compelling arguments. He merely stakes his word against Dean's, the prosecutors' and the witnesses'. But he tried...