Conrad Black interviews

The first interview was on TVOntario; the broadcast I watched was aired at 11 PM ET last Sunday. The show was "Conversations with Alan Gregg;" this particular interview originally aired on TVO last Friday. Its subject was his latest book, the biography Invincible Quest: the Life of Richard Milhous Nixon.


According to Conrad Black, Richard Nixon's lonerhood came from his early poverty and independent (self-helpful) attitude. He was a “strange” fellow, but made up for it by being well-informed and capable while in office. He was also a good speechmaker.

Nixon hated the media, imprudently, and reached over them through television. This attitude was a mistake on his part. He thought “everything was difficult” and personal success never came easy, at least for him.

Nixon and Kissinger were quite a team. They respected each other’s abilities, but were suspicious of each other’s “personality quirks.” Nixon’s prime achievement was geopolitical. He successfully waged peace without crippling NATO in the process.

When Mr. Gregg asked why, given Nixon's real policies, he was considered “right-wing,” Mr. Black answered that he was both poor when young and skeptical of big-government programs designed to help the poor. (He didn't take the State's coin, nor did he endorse others doing so.)

Mr. Nixon had a certain magic act when making a speech, of “pulling the rabbit out of a hat” in one. He had a gift, but not like Reagan’s gift of political hypnosis.

With respect to Watergate, Mr. Black said it was a “shabby” incident, but Nixon was made the scapegoat for the politics of the age, including for the dark side of the Kennedys. Nixon, though, was involved in those egregious political activities when they were shut down. He was often isolated in the White House. At times, he gave foolish orders that were ignored. He was also very loyal to his aides, a lifetime trait with respect to his friends regardless of their poltical affiliation, until things went seriously awry, which the media pounced on. His paranoia grew while in the White House.

With regard to the “smoking gun,” Mr. Black avers that "it wasn't much of one." All Nixon did was okay veering off the FBI from a Watergate investigation, an okaying that was ignored. (A more doubtful age could chalk it up to Nixon dabbling in a bit of, stipulatedly corrupt, 'constituency work' for an important unknown.) That tape snippet didn’t directly implicate him in a crime, but it was the “straw that broke the camel’s back” at the time. He couldn’t risk an impeachment trial, because he had too little political credibility as of then. He chalked up his resignation to “mistakes,” and never admitted to a crime - correctly, in Mr. Black's opinion.

His legacy is, as of now, a seemingly eternal object of fascination to the American people. He was “seminal” in foreign policy and “prophetic” in certain aspects of domestic policy.


With regard to the trial, Mr. Black described the charges he's facing as “outrageous,” and expects to be vindicated. In Mr. Black's estimation, the chances of he being convicted are “less than zero.” This belief gives a “confidence” to him that keeps him going. Neverthless, it has been very stressful. He himself doesn’t read or watch the media reports on it, unless they are screened by counsel first. He’s saving and recording the reports, to be watched once it's over.

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(I have one comment regarding all of these interviews for his book, both in the recent past and in the near future: Conrad Black is well aware that he himself is being compared to Richard Nixon, and has adjusted for it to the point that any such analysis is likely to give misinformation. In the above interview, he expressed a subtle but definite contempt for amateur psychoanalyzing of public figures. If he gets amused enough to play around with that comparison, then such comparison attempt will yield disinformation.)


A later interview with Seamus O'Reagan, aired on CTV NewsNet between 7:35 and 7:50 AM, included Conrad Black explicitly distancing himself from Richard Nixon in two ways: one, Mr. Black's own hands are cleaner than Mr. Nixon's were at the time of Watergate; two, Mr. Black's own world-historical role is far more "mundane" than Mr. Nixon's was. He did, though include a critique of the use of plea bargains near the end of his book, saying in the interview that they lead to "terrible abuses" of the criminal justice system. He also said that writing the book, a chore that could be done any time he had free time, kept his mind away from the trial.

There have been two media reports on this interview, one from Canadian Press and another from CTV News itself.