Like the mythological Egyptian bird that consumed itself by fire and rose renewed from its ashes, Richard Nixon is a latter-day phoenix. Defeated by John F. Kennedy for the presidency in 1960 and by Pat Brown for the California governorship in 1962, Nixon told a press conference: “You won't have Dick Nixon to kick around any more.”

As so often in his career, his words masked the reality of his actions. He at once began working toward the comeback that culminated in his two victorious campaigns for the White House in 1968 and 1972. Resigning the presidency in 1974 rather than face impeachment and conviction for Watergate crimes. Nixon began his final battle: the vindication by history. Making the case for himself in his 1978 memoirs, he has worked to convince Americans of his greatness as a foreign-policy leader and to obscure the truth of Watergate and other improprieties by blocking release of documents and tapes that might further blight his reputation.

His current campaign enjoys some success. A November, 1988, Louis Harris poll, asking a cross section of Americans to rank the last nine Presidents from F.D.R. to Reagan in 11 categories, rated Nixon as “best in foreign affairs,” well ahead of all the others, except Reagan, who was a close second.

Although a decisive plurality of the poll said that Nixon had set the lowest moral standards of all these Presidents, he scored better than Johnson, Ford, and Carter in several other categories. Having suffered the worst public humiliation of any President in U.S. history by resigning from office and having continued a spirited fight for vindication, Nixon has partly redeemed himself with some Americans who find considerable appeal in a man who doggedly struggles to overcome self-inflicted defeats.

Two new biographies by Roger Morris and Stephen Ambrose will undercut Nixon's efforts to create a positive historical image. …

Stephen Ambrose's biography [Nixon: The Education of a Politician, 1913-1962], the second of a three-volume work, begins in 1962 when, he says, Nixon launched his second drive for the presidential nomination, and ends with his reelection to the White House in 1972. Ambrose, a distinguished professor of history at the University of New Orleans and author of a fine two-volume biography of Eisenhower, has produced a study that is equally damning of Nixon but less convincing than Morris’ book [Richard Milhous Nixon: The Rise of an American Politician].

Ambrose's biography rests on a more limited body of sources. Although he makes extensive use of Nixon's jottings on news summaries compiled during his first term and of some letters and memos in his presidential papers, the book largely rests on printed materials, memoirs and secondary accounts by journalists. Ambrose has also done some interviewing, but much less than Morris.

The result is a book that does not take us much beyond what we already knew about Nixon in the decade after 1962. Ambrose says that “It is not news that he [Nixon] was devious, manipulative … passionate in his hatreds, self-centered, untruthful, untrusting, and at times so despicable that one wants to avert one's eyes in shame and embarrassment. Nor is it news that this same man could be considerate, straightforward, sympathetic and helpful, or that he was blessed with great talent, a superb intellect, an awesome memory, and a remarkable ability to see things whole, especially on a global scale and with regard to the world balance of power. If he was the ultimate cynic, a President without principle in domestic politics, he was also the ultimate realist, a President without peer in foreign affairs.”

The most interesting feature of Ambrose's book is the extent to which he contradicts his own assertion about Nixon's matchless leadership in world affairs. Ambrose has warm praise for Nixon as a President with a world view who understood the need for a “new era of negotiations” with the Russians and the Chinese. Indeed, Nixon had the imagination and foresight to do what no other post-1945 President had done—seek detente with the Soviets and normal relations with China that became essential steps in the developing end to the Cold War. Yet Ambrose is sharply critical of Nixon's slow withdrawal from Vietnam, which cost so many additional lives for no productive end. He also faults Nixon's policies toward Cambodia, Chile, India and Pakistan, describing them as leaving a legacy of serious unresolved problems.

In time, Ralph Waldo Emerson said, every scoundrel becomes a hero. Richard Nixon is not there yet.