ABSTRACT
Richard Nixon, some say, should not have been petty about the criticism he received from some professors and the media. By 1972, Nixon stood higher than before in public estimation. Nixon, so a man who once worked for him describes, is like a golfer who has no natural swing, no special grace, no power in his wrists—only a fierce desire to master golf, because it is a necessary instrument of his ambitions. The education of Nixon, could it be retraced, would reveal a map social scientists might pore over for years to come, tracing through it the contours and the fault lines of this most fascinating of societies. Nixon became the primary incarnation of the nation's self-understanding. Yet the symbols of the presidency, revealed differently in the life of each president, go far beyond the tragedy of Nixon. Nixon was in a good position to glimpse in advance the sacredness of the role he was to undertake.
