In the aftermath of his Presidency, the consensus view of Richard M. Nixon was nowhere more sharply put than in Jonathan Schell's The Time of Illusion. What characterized the Californian's politics, we were told, was the pursuit of a deliberate policy of “positive polarization.” Now, a decade after Schell's analysis, we are reminded that this singular propensity was displayed well before Nixon became Chief Executive. By the time he reached the age of 47, he had “polarized the public more than any other man of his era.” He was “the most hated and feared man in America—and next to Eisenhower himself, the most admired and wanted.”

The first half of historian Stephen E. Ambrose's projected two-volume biography [Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962], though, focuses on Nixon's personal ordeal, which is no less striking than the talent and political conditions that combined to produce the dominant figure of America's first three postwar decades. The account is a fascinating one, amply bolstered by factual details and shrewd insights. Ambrose is not discouraged by the familiarity of much of his material; he even manages to enliven the oft-told story of the Milhous and Nixon family backgrounds. But he also illumines many relatively little known incidents, such as the White House power struggle in the days following Dwight D. Eisenhower's 1955 heart attack.

The author is precise about Nixon's early work as a member of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC)—especially his successful pursuit of Alger Hiss—and makes it clear that Nixon was the Congressman responsible for giving the Committee what credibility it had. During the same period Nixon went abroad with the Herter Committee to assess Europe's postwar economic needs, only to find upon his return that California's 12th district was 3:1 against foreign aid. Undeterred, he voted for the Marshall Plan and waged a campaign to win over his constituents.

An uncompromising anti-Communist (without being a nationalist of the Robert A. Taft school), the young Nixon consistently supported President Truman's European containment program. However, he joined many in his party and some Democrats (including John F. Kennedy) in hitting the Truman Administration for the “loss” of China, and later protested the firing of General MacArthur. Eventually, he abandoned bipartisanship, together with most of the GOP; as Eisenhower's running-mate in 1952, he went along with John Foster Dulles’ critique of containment.

The most important part of this volume deals with Nixon's vice presidency. One of his more visible roles in the office involved helping to lead his fellow Republicans away from their traditional isolationism. He was among those within the Administration who opposed the Korean armistice, and he favored military intervention to assist the French at Dienbienphu.

Unlike many Republican hardliners, Nixon was not what was termed in those years a “hard-shell” conservative. For all his opposition to unionism, he was not sufficiently anti-labor to support “right-to-work” laws. And as Ambrose shows, he was sympathetic to the struggle for racial equality, perhaps more so than anyone else high in the Administration (this has been noted by David Garrow, too, in his recent biography of Martin Luther King Jr.). Indeed, while for reasons of political necessity he adopted a “Southern strategy” that ruled out overt gestures of support for the civil rights movement, Nixon's personal conviction hurt him in the South during his first run for the Presidency.

The years under Ike were a period of almost unrelieved frustration for the young man from Whittier. Ambrose, who is also Eisenhower's principal biographer, gives us a fascinating description of the relationship between the two men, furnishing copious evidence for the claim that Ike “used Nixon in the most cynical fashion.” He recounts how Nixon became completely infuriated at Eisenhower's conduct during the 1952 “secret fund” flap; how the President wavered before agreeing to retain the squirming Nixon as his running-mate in 1956; and how, after making that decision, Ike failed to lift a finger to stop Harold Stassen's campaign to dump Nixon in favor of Christian A. Herter. Yet Nixon's interest in expanding the constitutional responsibility of the vice presidency was fine with Eisenhower—as long as it did not involve giving too much leeway to this “immature” young man. As with Hubert H. Humphrey under Lyndon B. Johnson, Nixon suffered humiliations that almost seem built into the office.

Ambrose contends that, deep down, Ike “felt warmly toward Nixon, indeed regarded him almost as a son.” The avuncular President simply “came out of one of those 19th century American families in which the son could never, not ever, live up to his father's expectations.” The author adds that “Eisenhower treated his own son that way.”

A further insight is gleaned from the diary of Ike's personal secretary, Ann Whitman, who watched the two during their eight years together from a privileged corner. The difference between them, Whitman wrote, is obvious: “The President is a man of integrity and sincere in his every action. … He radiates this, everybody knows it, everybody trusts and loves him. But the Vice President sometimes seems like a man who is acting like a nice man rather than being one.”

Nixon's secretary, Rose Mary Woods, must have seen things differently, for she understood the difficulty of his position within the Administration. The Vice President was nonetheless loyal, dedicated and competent in every sense, observes Ambrose. Although undermined by Eisenhower, he managed through diligence to be fairly effective, particularly at binding together discordant elements of the GOP. Repeating a pattern he exhibited at Whittier College and again at Duke law school, he was the thorough student, working overtime to master his job so that he would be ready, if necessary, to assume the Presidency. Party chairman Meade Alcorn thought him the best informed person in the Administration.

Still, as Ambrose demonstrates, many of Nixon's troubles were self-inflicted; his need to succeed created friction throughout his political career. During the 1946 House campaign against Jerry Voorhis, Nixon “made the transition from nice Quaker boy to ruthless politician without even noticing.” His combativeness drew fire, and saddled him with the image later dubbed the “old” Nixon.

Helping to bring down Hiss hardly endeared the Congressman to liberal intellectuals, and Nixon knew this. Yet no matter how much the Eastern Establishment preferred to ignore what James Burnham called “the web of subversion,” something had to be done about internal security. Whittaker Chambers’ efforts and the Harry Dexter White case confirmed that those guilty of laxity were not rushing to assume responsibility. If the Republicans exploited the issue by Red-baiting and doing everything possible to fan hysteria, the Democrats made themselves vulnerable by denying not merely their own accountability but the very existence of a problem.

Nixon's performance during the HUAC hearings—especially his interrogation of witness Jack Warner on why Hollywood studios failed to show the same zeal against Communism that they had against Hitler—and his vitriolic Senate race against the wife of movie actor Melvyn Douglas led to unfair whispers of anti-Semitism. Actually, Helen Gahagan Douglas threw the first bit of mud by likening her opponent's record to that of fellow-traveling Congressman Vito Marcantonio and attempting to stick Nixon with the “soft-on-Communism” stigma; nevertheless, all that was remembered was “what Dick did to Helen.”

In his first campaign with Eisenhower, Nixon did his job all too well, questioning the loyalty of such figures as Harry S. Truman, Adlai E. Stevenson and Dean Acheson. Ike admonished his young running-mate for being too partisan, even though he had sent him out to give the Democrats hell. Since childhood, Nixon had learned to use words instead of fists; now it was his extravagant campaign language that made him the favorite target of Democratic leaders.

The Eisenhower-Nixon tension persisted into Nixon's Presidential campaign against Kennedy. When asked at a news conference for an example of a decision Nixon had helped him make, Eisenhower replied: “If you give me a week, I might think of one.” He called Nixon afterward to apologize, but the damage was done.

Despite additional frustrations caused by the White House and the lateness of Ike's campaign efforts in his behalf, Nixon managed to push Kennedy to a photo-finish. Then, just two years later, his political life seemed to expire with his loss to Pat Brown in the California gubernatorial contest, made memorable by a parting shot at the press: “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference. …” Ambrose concludes this volume by describing how Nixon “drove home from his last press conference … already discussing his future.”

Today, nearly 13 years after he was forced to resign from the Presidency, Richard Nixon is again gaining prominence, his former Secretary of State has linked arms with him to issue foreign policy pronouncements, and the release of his White House papers by the National Archives has begun without causing any great stir. A third resurrection, if not a complete rehabilitation, is under way. A new set of judges apparently is ready to leave behind the old Herblock caricatures. And Ambrose has made an important contribution to advancing the remarkable turn of events.