American Political Mythology from Kennedy to Nixon.

Busch, Andrew E.

By Richard Bradley. New York: Peter Lang, 2000. 267 pp.

DOI: 10.1177/0360491802238712

Richard Bradley's American Political Mythology from Kennedy to Nixon is an attempt to understand the political and cultural linkages between the "myths" of John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson, and Richard Nixon and how the interactions of those myths have contributed to the development of American politics over the past four decades. Bradley defines "myths" for his purposes to be "idealized generalizations about the world that motivate action" (p. 10).

Bradley examines the Kennedy myth, the Warren report and subsequent rise of the "culture of conspiracy," the myth of "King Richard" Nixon, and the "transvaluation of American values" through the cynicism promoted by Nixon. He also discusses at length the role of Lyndon Johnson as a transitional figure who started as the heir of Kennedy and ended as the despised precursor of Nixon. Finally, later events are worked into the analysis, including the strengthening of the culture of conspiracy, the Clinton scandals, and Nixon's tireless efforts to rehabilitate his image.

In summary, Bradley argues that Kennedy has come to represent the myth of the "good king." To some extent, this myth was simply a continuation of the myth of the presidency since George Washington, although features specific to Kennedy were crucial (e.g., the image of Camelot, with JFK as King Arthur). Lyndon Johnson, while initially benefiting from his connection to Kennedy, gradually became the "bad king." Indeed, for at least some Americans, LBJ was, from the beginning, a "usurper to the throne." By the time Nixon resigned in disgrace, he had supplanted Johnson as the ultimate bad king. Bradley demonstrates the degree to which monarchical language was used by historians, journalists, politicians, and in popular culture in all three cases and contends that the radical transformation of American politics and society in that period cannot be understood without reference to the collapse of the myth of the president as good king.

The strength of this work lies in an interesting thesis and a number of largely forgotten points that Bradley illuminates. For example, he points out that both white segregationists and blacks widely assumed that Kennedy had been killed for his stand on civil rights, a fact that draws into question much of the later criticism of Kennedy for having supposedly dodged that issue.

There are, however, several weaknesses in the work as well. Most elementary, the book could have benefited from tighter copyediting. More substantively, the analysis contains large holes. According to recent polls, Kennedy remains the most popular president in the past forty years. At the time of his death, however, his reelection was not ensured. Indeed, major newsmagazines in mid-1963 declared a potential Kennedy-Goldwater race "breathtakingly close." How and why assassination improved Kennedy's long-term image is not fully addressed.

Similarly, there is some discussion of how Johnson's 1964 landslide turned into dust, but not enough. Was it because Johnson really was the "anti-Kennedy"? Or would Kennedy have found himself in the same situation had he lived? JFK would not have easily avoided some of the specific ailments that Bradley cites: Vietnam and race riots caused by differences in how blacks and whites understood the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Of Nixon's 1972 landslide, there is not even a mention, let alone an explanation.

In many respects, this work quite successfully illuminates the respective myths as understood by the counterculture Left but then transposes that interpretation onto the entire country. This somewhat one-dimensional view can be seen in the too brief treatment of Alger Hiss, whose tangle with the future president was the source of much of the Left's hatred of Nixon. Bradley asserts that Nixon was propelled by "the destruction of another man's reputation ... he had become famous by destroying Alger Hiss" (p. 130). Yet subsequent information has made it obvious that Hiss was indeed a Soviet agent. Does this not make a difference in how Nixon should be evaluated?

In the end, Bradley misses the opportunity to add a layer of depth and complexity to the evolution of the myth by dismissing a bit too easily parallels between Nixon and Bill Clinton. In one of many inconsistencies, where Nixon's attempts to copy Kennedy are "embarrassing" (p. 133) and "an obscene parody" (p. 134), Clinton's effort to imitate Kennedy is cast as skillful invocation (p. 171). Bradley's brief against Nixon--that he acted as if the law were whatever the president wanted it to be, that he tried to save his own reputation by cynically claiming that "everyone did it," that he was a relentless spinmeister obsessed with his historical legacy--sounds a bit too familiar for comfort when assessing the forty-second president. Yet the mythic implications of the parallel remain unexplored.

--Andrew E. Busch
University of Denver