Of Resentment & Empathy: Mr. Nixon, Meet Mr. Clinton

What is this strange bond that links Bill Clinton and Richard M. Nixon? It was there for all to see when Clinton went out into the Rose Garden after Nixon died and spoke, with deep feeling, of the late President’s “resilience.” Nixon, after all, was the original “Comeback Kid.” The bond of sympathy was apparent again at the funeral Wednesday, when Clinton said in his eulogy, “May the day of judging President Nixon on anything less than his entire life and career come to a close.”

Nixon also acknowledged the bond. He told a confidante after his first meeting with Clinton, “You know, he came from dirt and I came from dirt. He lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the presidency, and I lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the presidency. He overcame a scandal in his first campaign for national office and I overcame a scandal in my first national campaign. We both just gutted it out. He was an outsider from the South and I was an outsider from the West.”

Nixon could have gone on. Both men were elected President with 43% of the vote in a three-way race. Nixon, a brilliant political tactician, used the “Southern strategy” to go after the George C. Wallace vote. He got reelected in 1972 by neatly folding the Wallace vote into the Republican vote and creating a GOP presidential majority that lasted almost a quarter of a century.

Clinton is also a brilliant political tactician who knows how to get out of tight spots. During the 1992 campaign, he appeared with his wife on “60 Minutes” to explain their marital difficulties. It was reminiscent of Nixon’s “Checkers speech” that kept him on the ticket in 1952. Both men made shrewd use of their wives for political advantage. Nixon did Clinton one better, however. He threw in his dog.

Clinton hasn’t won over the Ross Perot vote yet. But he has targeted it. That’s one reason why he turned into a deficit hawk. Clinton wants to do what Nixon did: build a presidential majority that will last for decades.

Both men have a record that defies ideological expectations. Nixon was a red-baiting conservative who went to China and initiated detente with the Soviet Union. And look at Nixon’s domestic legacy: environmental protection, affirmative action, wage and price controls, abolition of the draft. Clinton is the liberal who defies political correctness. He supported the Gulf War, enforced the death penalty and confronted Jesse Jackson. As President, he’s stealing the GOP’s issues--crime, welfare reform, the deficit and traditional values.

Their ideological slipperiness explains something else the two men share. Nixon was widely distrusted. So is Clinton. They both have the image of devious politicians. Slick Willie, meet Tricky Dick.

Conservatives never really liked or trusted Nixon the way they did, say, Ronald Reagan. And many liberals already feel disappointed, if not betrayed, by Clinton. But there is more to the distrust than ideology. A lot of it is purely personal. With Nixon, the joke was, “Would you buy a used car from this man?” With Clinton, it’s endless variations on, “I didn’t inhale.”

What’s odd is that the two represent such different character types. Nixon was cold, distant, calculating, formal and synthetic. Clinton is warm, open, approachable, laid-back and touchy-feely. Can you imagine Nixon answering questions about his underwear?

Nixon was hated by large numbers. He invited their hatred, even thrived on it. When his wife expressed amazement at his ability to persevere in the face of criticism, he told her, “I just get up every morning to confound my enemies.”

Through dogged determination, Nixon finally got people to respect him, even admire him. But something surprising came to light last week, after his death. A lot of people said they loved Nixon, that most unloving and unlovable man. That’s the Nixon mystery: Why did so many Americans love him?

With Clinton, the opposite is true. He is an extremely loving and lovable man. Clinton’s ability to connect with people is legendary. It paid off for him in the 1992 campaign. Remember the Richmond debate in front of a live audience? Clinton looked every questioner straight in the eye and spoke personally to their concerns. George Bush looked at his watch.

But there is a mystery about Clinton, too: Why do large numbers of Americans hate him? There’s a constituency that simply despises Clinton. They think he is a lying, deceiving, draft-dodging adulterer. A Clinton-bashing industry has sprung up, complete with newsletters. In fact, only one person surpasses Clinton as an object of hatred. And that’s Hillary.

Nixon was a resentment politician. He assumed, with good reason, that others were out to get him. So he made it his business to get them first. He was usually smart enough, and ruthless enough, to do it. Resentment drove Nixon from railing at the press (“You won’t have Dick Nixon to kick around any more”) to keeping enemies lists to the Watergate cover-up--when he finally went too far.

A supporter once said about Grover Cleveland, “We love him for the enemies he has made.” That may be the key to the Nixon mystery. Press-haters, Kennedy-haters, liberal-haters and counter-culture-haters all loved Nixon because he was the enemy of everything they hated. Nixon’s resentment was their resentment. Nixon hated the liberal Establishment, and he hated their radical children. And so did the Silent Majority.

In the end, even after Watergate, Nixon got his revenge on the Establishment. By becoming a statesman, he forced them to respect him. But he always hated them. Even in death, he let them know it. Nixon refused to allow his body to lie in state at the U.S. Capitol. That was his final message to the Washington Establishment: To hell with you all.

Clinton is an empathy politician. You get the sense that if he could meet every voter in America, he would charm them all. And get 100% of the vote. Sometimes it seems he aims to do just that.

But empathy, too, has a cost. The cost takes the form of a widely noticed characteristic of Clinton’s leadership style: He wants everyone to love him. That’s why he has so much trouble making tough choices--including appointments. Remember Zoe Baird?

Many conservatives hate Clinton because they think he’s a liberal pretending to be something else. They want to expose him as a phony--and Hillary as a hypocrite. How dare she talk about “the politics of meaning” after making a killing on the commodities market! Can a man who marries Hillary and appoints C. Lani Guinier and lets Ira Magaziner design his health-care plan and tries to end the ban on gays in the military be anything but a liberal? Clinton-haters hate Clinton for the friends he has made.

Like Nixon, Clinton seems driven by insecurity. Where does it come from? Nixon was probably correct, if a bit harsh, when he said, “He came from dirt and I came from dirt . . . . He was an outsider from the South and I was an outsider from the West.”

Nixon’s insecurity took the form of resentment, Clinton’s an exaggerated empathy. The result in Nixon’s case was a tragic character flaw. He assumed people were out to get him and he acted accordingly. In Clinton’s case, the result is different but still potentially serious. He wants everyone to love him--liberals, moderates, Perot voters, the Establishment, everyone--and that can make it difficult to be an effective President.

Someone once said of Nixon that he could have been a truly great President if only he had been loved. Clinton has the opposite problem. He needs some of Nixon’s toughness, even his ruthlessness. Clinton’s enemies need to feel that they will pay a price for crossing him. That’s what made Democrats like Harry S. Truman and John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson so effective.

It’s bad enough that Clinton’s enemies at home don’t fear him. It’s worse that his enemies abroad--the Serbs in Bosnia, the communists in North Korea, the military junta in Haiti--don’t fear him.

Clinton is paying a big price for his politics of empathy. It’s limiting his effectiveness as President. “Clinton talks too much,” a Republican said recently. “He’s always telling people what he thinks and how he feels. He’s the President. People want to know what he’s going to do.” Nixon was accused of trying to create “the imperial presidency.” Clinton is doing just the opposite. He’s de-imperializing it. And that’s reducing his stature in the country.*