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The Richard Nixon ExperienceAuthor: Randal Wallace
It has been 50 years since the Administration of Richard Nixon. In that time, the left has waged a war on history to define Richard Nixon as a failure as President. For much of the half century Richard Nixon's name was synonymous with corruption and Government overreach. Podcasts, Documentaries, Cable Network specials have all controlled a narrative that cast Richard Nixon as the 20th centuries great American Villain. But all of that has changed. First in 2013, Geoff Shepard, Richard Nixon's youngest Watergate Defense team member, petitioned the National Archives for access to sealed Watergate materials. What he found was a treasure of exculpatory material that has sent shock waves throughout the world of serious historians and legal scholars. Was there more to the story of Watergate? The documentation he exposed certainly seems to say so and that is not the only area where scholars are finding that there was way more to Richard Nixon's tenure than had ever been appreciated. Richard Nixon worked to protect civil rights, advance women in government, protect the environment, set new higher standards for workforce safety, share revenues with local government, restructure the inner workings of the Federal Government, with plans to make it work more efficiently and more effectively and he even worked to provide a better healthcare and welfare system some 40 years ahead of his time. He opened up women's sports, lowered the voting age, ushered in an era of Judicial restraint, desegregated the Southern School system, poured millions into entrepreneurial programs for minorities, passed tough laws on organized crime, ended the draft and passed billions of dollars into cancer research that has led to most of the advances against the wide variety of deadly diseases we see today. And that list does not even get into the Foreign Policy achievements we associate with his incredible five and a half years as President. We thought it Language: en-us Genres: History, News, Politics Contact email: Get it Feed URL: Get it iTunes ID: Get it Trailer: |
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Richard Nixon stars in Episode 418 THE GREAT AMERICAN AUTHORS (Part 16) SPIRO T AGNEW and THE NIXON NOVELS : "The Canfield Decision " and JOHN EHRLICHMAN'S "The Company"
Episode 160
Monday, 5 January, 2026
Send us a textIn this episode of Great American Authors, we take an unforgettable look at two astonishing works born from the tumultuous aftermath of Nixon-era Washington — The Canfield Decision by Spiro T. Agnew and The Company by John Ehrlichman.Today, The Canfield Decision enjoys a surprisingly warm reception online, with roughly 87% of readers awarding it three to five stars on Goodreads and similar platforms. But that wasn’t always the case. Upon its release, critics and much of the media savaged the book, dismissing it as thinly veiled political wish-fulfillment from a disgraced Vice President. We unpack the striking discrepancy between that early panning and the thoughtful, often affectionate audience it’s gained in recent years — readers who find nuance, ambition, or just plain fun in a novel penned by a man few expected to ever write fiction.We place the book in the context of Agnew’s political fall from grace. Once the second-in-command in the nation, Agnew’s public resignation and subsequent legal troubles left him a pariah. Remarkably, The Canfield Decision became his first major step back onto the national stage — a work that speaks volumes about ambition, image, and reinvention. What did Agnew hope to say with this book? And why do modern readers connect with it in ways early reviewers didn’t anticipate?From there, we pivot to another Nixon-era insider turned novelist: John Ehrlichman, author of The Company. A former aide to Richard Nixon and one of the central figures of Watergate, Ehrlichman wrote a sprawling fictional chronicle of power, corruption, and betrayal in America’s secretive intelligence community. Unlike Agnew’s quietly redemptive tone, Ehrlichman’s The Companybristles with bitterness toward the very system he once served — especially toward Nixon himself.We explore the reviews then and now for The Company, and how Ehrlichman’s own disillusionment shaped a narrative that many readers and critics call prophetic, sprawling, and ethically complex. As we compare and contrast these two presidential novels, we also ask: what happens when real political trauma is transmuted into fiction? What does each author reveal about themselves — and about American power — in the act of storytelling?Join us for a deep, insightful, and sometimes surprising conversation about politics, prose, reputation, and the curious afterlives of The Canfield Decision and The Company — two books that defy expectations and challenge how we think about presidential literature.
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