Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972.

Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972 The press has lately gone anniversary-mad, making up for the tedium of domestic peace and (relative) prosperity by commemorating such colorful events of the recent past as Woodstock and the Apollo moon landing. Strangely, however, the 15th anniversary of another dramatic event in the lives of newspaper-and-magazine-buying baby boomers--the resignation of President Richard Nixon--attracted little notice. Whatever the reason, publishing houses are stepping in to fill in the gap. Several Nixon biographies are due out this fall, starting with Ambrose's book, the second in a three-volume work.

Today Nixon is often portrayed as a borderline-respectable figure ("He's Back!" according to a Newsweek cover story in May 1986), but The Triumph of a Politician shows that reporters had it right the first time. Nixon criminally abused the powers of his office, prolonged the Vietnam war to no advantage, and further polarized a badly divided nation. It's hard to see how revisionist history could plausibly alter this interpretation, and Ambrose is no revisionist; he admist he shouted "napalm" and "body count" during a 1970 speeach Nixon gave at Kansas State University. the author of an admiring biography of Dwight Eisenhower, Ambrose never misses a chance to contrast Nixon's paranoid style with Eisenhower's soldierly self-confidence. His best example comes from Eisenhower's last press conference, when the president was asked whether reporters had been fair to him. Eisenhower answered with words Nixon could never have uttered: "I don't see what a reporter could do much to a president, do you?"

Despite Ambrose's obvious antipathy for Nixon (and what appears to be downright hatred of Henry Kissinger), this is a responsible work that avoids the gratuitious smears that have marred much writing about Nixon in the past (especially Fawn Brodie's Nixon biography). Ambrose gives Nixon his due for his two acknowledged accomplishments--normalizing relations with China and establishing detente with the Soviet Union--and is even somewhat compassionate about Nixon's struggle to keep both Left and Right happy with his policy of "Vietnamization."

Still, a subject as rich as Nixon deserves exhaustive, Robert Caro-like legwork that Ambrose is unwilling to provide. Admittedly, Nixon would have been hard to bag for an interview, but Ambrose scarcely talked to anybody; he conducted only 20 interviews for his first two volumes. The bulk of his information came from sifting through the archival record (from which Nixon's lawyers have withheld the juiciest documents) and previous books and news accounts. As a result, Ambrose breaks little new ground. What's more, he is unable to give his subject the sort of flesh-and-blood vividness a Caro might provide. "I confess that I do not understand this complex man," he writes at the beginning of volume two. Alas, after reading this book, neither do I.

Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972. Stephen Ambrose. Simon and Schuster, $24.95.