HER MASTER'S VOICE

By Bonnie Angelo

Weeks before election day in 1992, Richard Nixon knew in his shrewd political bones that George Bush would lose. On the day after the final debate he wrote a note to Bush, "to buck the guy up," assuring him that "you hit a home run" and praising his "character and courage." Two weeks later, only hours after the votes were counted, Nixon wrote to President-elect Clinton, offering congratulations and declaring that he had the "character" to be a world leader. The old lion was betting that he could regain more influence through the neophyte in the White House than he had from Bush, who had studiously ignored him. He was right.

Nixon's unvarnished judgments and wily angling are back on display in a new book, Nixon Off the Record: His Candid Commentary on People and Politics, by Monica Crowley, a young aide who was close to him in the last four years of his life. The relationship began when, as a junior at Colgate, she wrote him a long letter expounding her Reagan-influenced views on politics and foreign policy. To her surprise, Nixon invited her to his office in New Jersey; upon graduation in 1990 the 21-year-old novice entered the 77-year-old ex-President's shrinking inner circle as his foreign policy assistant. More than that, she became an acolyte at the foot of the sage, an amanuensis chronicling his every word (she insists she did not tape his monologues but reconstructed his often page-long quotes from her notes). Assured by a long-time Nixon associate that the former President was "speaking to history," she is certain he would be pleased: "I felt that he trusted me enough to know that any portrait that I would present of him someday would be an honest one." That is, his version.

"The greats will always be remembered in their own words," Nixon told Crowley, in obvious and hopeful reference to himself. The book has the immediacy of a daily diary--and the sting of a man brooding over his raw deal, still eager to even old scores. Eisenhower "was very charming and warm socially, but he was a hard-ass...He didn't endorse me in 1960 until he absolutely had to." George Bush's Secretary of State James Baker, who froze Nixon out, was branded "an ass," Bush "a good man, but not strong." After the G.O.P.'s meanspirited 1992 convention, Nixon was worried that "We have too much bashing of everyone in this party. It's an embarrassment. So many people are gay, or go both ways...I don't want to hear about it. And I don't want to hear about abortion. That's people's own business...Fifty percent of all families are single parent; 65 percent of all women work. We can't crap on them."

It is perhaps fitting that the President whom his enemies labeled "Tricky Dick" lived to pass judgment on the President known as "Slick Willy." Throughout the 1992 campaign, Nixon denigrated Clinton: "He's Dogpatch...Even his wife is for him only because he is her ticket to power...[He] will be a disaster. But it will give me leeway to criticize him on Russian aid and everything else he screws up. With Bush I had to be restrained." But when the fledgling President sought Nixon's counsel on foreign policy, Nixon found him "very respectful with no sickening bulls----...It was the best conversation with a President I've had...This guy does a lot of thinking." Later, as his advice was downplayed or ignored altogether, Nixon reversed field again. Still, he acknowledged that "at least this Administration has treated me the right way."

Nixon smoldered over what he saw as the media's downplaying of Whitewater--which, in his not disinterested view, was worse than Watergate. "Clinton and Hillary are guilty of obstruction of justice, maybe more. Period...Watergate was wrong; Whitewater is wrong. I paid the price; Clinton should pay the price. Our people...mustn't let it sink." This, to him, was one last chance for the public to come around to his view that any President can get ensnared in transgressions.

More than two years have passed since Nixon surprised us all by actually leaving the scene--and here he is still making news. He would love that. "Politics is not for the weak of heart. Even grizzled types like me get bruised," mused one of the game's most complex players. His defensive valedictory, delivered to a fresh-faced admirer, shows that the bruises never quite heal.

--With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York

With reporting by Andrea Sachs/New York