WATERGATE by Thomas Mallon: Book Review [The Ryan Dixon Line]

In Watergate, Thomas Mallon’s exceedingly entertaining, panoramic re-telling of the eponymous presidential scandal now forty years old, Richard Nixon’s downfall is framed as the inevitable, near-farcical conclusion of one of our most tragic national epics: the 1960’s.

As the novel opens in 1972, Nixon is cruising toward a second term with an all-but-inevitable election victory over George McGovern. He has every reason to believe that his decades of hard work are finally going to pay off and he will finally be able to move past the painful, crushing defeats. After all, the bêtes noires of the previous decade have been vanquished— assassins’ bullets and Chappaquiddick have neutered the Kennedy’s, Lyndon Johnson is a long-haired recluse back in Texas, Vietnam is in its final (albeit protracted) death rattle, and the Iron Curtain has been revealed to be made mostly of scrim.

Yet, the past is the great unseen, parasitic antagonist of Mallon’s novel. So powerful in fact, that it consumes the characters more so than the cover-up itself. The scandal metastasizes up the chain of command and soon not even the perpetrators are sure what really happened during the night they broke into the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex or, in fact, why they did so.

As the novel marches towards its well-known conclusion (no need for spoiler alerts in this book review), “Watergate” – the place, the crime, the cover-up, the scandal – reveals its true form as a wrathful, deadly and ethereal phantom, come to take its final revenge. Just when you thought it was safe to leave the 60s…

While previous fictional works that tackled all-things Watergate have often been presented from clearly defined points-of-view, Mallon structures his novel like one of Shakespeare’s history plays, seamlessly guiding us around all tiers of power and ambition in the D.C. hierarchy. That Richard Nixon isn’t the star of his own cabaret and is instead just another tap dancing ensemble member allows him to be seen in a completely new and complex light. Venturing to add to the seemingly infinite comparisons of our 37th President to famous stage characters, one could equate this Nixon with another mangled icon of mid-century American malaise, Arthur Miller’s Willy Loman.

While both Mallon’s Nixon and Loman drag the past with them like an intractable piece of carry-on luggage, one of the most impressive feats of Mallon’s imagination is to makes us realize that Nixon was no more a Willy Loman than he was just a figure out of Shakespearean or Greek tragedy, a psychopath, a paranoid, a drunk, a Machiavellian, a racist, a progressive.

The real Richard Nixon might have been all of those things, but he was also so much more. That’s why portrayals throughout the years, from the rightfully acclaimed performances of Anthony Hopkins and Frank Langella to even Dan Hedaya’s acting alchemy in Dick never seem to capture the man in full. It’s Mallon who has finally figured out the secret sauce: Richard Nixon defines us more than we could ever define him. He is his own archetype.

And it’s just the Old Man’s luck that he’s made all the more fascinating in Watergate by getting to share Mallon’s glittering stage with three female characters of equal depth. While Pat Nixon, Rose Mary Woods, Nixon’s secretary, and Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the grand dame of D.C. politics, each share a unique love for Richard Nixon, it is by no means blind loyalty.

Mallon paints the trio’s dedication to Nixon in specific, complicated ways and each character is provided with their own imaginative space outside his presidency. Pat Nixon fondly drifts in and out of the memory of an extramarital affair that took place during their exile years in New York, between the time her husband lost the California governor’s race in 1962 and the 1968 presidential election. Rose Mary Woods struggles to balance her monk-like dedication to her boss with having a semblance of life outside 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. And then there’s Alice Roosevelt Longworth, the nonagenarian daughter of President Theodore Roosevelt. She knows where all the bodies are buried and serves her endless supply of bons mots with a side of acid strong enough to make the creature in Alien melt.

While Alice Longworth practically steals every scene she’s in, Mallon isn’t satisfied with simply making her a Lady Bracknell for the DC set. As the novel progresses, she’s revealed to be the ideal emotional consigliere for Nixon. Below her hilariously cutting, emeritus ice queen routine is a roiling sea of unending torment made manifest by the suicide of her only daughter decades before. Like Nixon, the triumphs, grudges and secrets of the past both provide her with unwielding power and hold her hostage. It’s of no surprise then that near the end of the novel, on the night before Nixon’s resignation, it’s Longworth who sets weepy, self-pitying Tricky Dick on the course towards eventual public redemption.

While Mallon works hard at giving Watergate perpetrators such as Fred LaRue and Howard Hunt three dimensions, one can’t help but be slightly disappointed when the novel says temporary farewells to Nixon and his Three Graces. (Of course, it’s a very forgivable sin to write characters with so much depth that they hold our imagination captive even when we’re not with them.)

Only Elliot Richardson, the Massachusetts blue blood who foolishly thinks that the key to his own presidency will be resigning from his post as Attorney General when he refuses Nixon’s order to fire Watergate special prosecutor Archibald Cox, makes a manly impression. Richardson is the consummate Washington player, bouncing from job to job like Tigger, always analyzing how the next post can get hem closer to the throne. But as Mallon deftly reveals, many of those “can’t miss” moves have hidden booby traps and an heir apparent can just as quickly become an exile of his own making.

For the most part, Mallon has managed to endow his novel with a narrative and expositional balance that should satisfy those who once thought kaftans were sexy and those who believe that “gate” was always just a generic adjective for scandal. What matters most is that Mallon has far surpassed the basic goal of any successful work of historical fiction. History doesn’t just come alive in Watergate, the novel feels more real than fact.

Follow Ryan Dixon on Twitter @ryanbdixon. Order a copy of his graphic novel Hell House: The Awakening HERE.