Tricky Dick & the Pink Lady: Richard Nixon vs. Helen Gahagan Douglas - Sexual Politics & the Red Scare, 1950

"Revisionist commentary of recent years has sought to rehabilitate the late President Richard M. Nixon. He is presented as a flawed but colossal statesman, whose RealPolitic genius led to the opening of China, among other foreign policy triumphs. His role in the Watergate scandal is portrayed as a series of peccadilloes, venial sins of his craft as master politician. Greg Mitchell would have us believe otherwise. He has filtered through long-lost records of the 1950 California Senatorial race in which Nixon faced Helen Gahagan Douglas, former actress, progressive Democrat and proto-feminist. Nixon, fresh from his victory in the Alger Hiss case, won the race by portraying Douglas as The Pink Lady, a left-leaning Communist sympathizer. Mitchell demonstrates the cold-blooded deceit Nixon employed in destroying Douglas politically and provides ample evidence that 'Tricky Dick,' the sobriquet she coined, would also serve as a fitting epitaph for the only president in American history forced to resign in disgrace." Reviewed by Daniel Weiss, Virginia Quarterly Review (Copyright 2006 Virginia Quarterly Review)