| Abstract |
"Richard Nixon is remembered today largely for his foreign policy and Watergate, as well as the way his electoral campaign and presidency coincided with the rise of a new conservative Republicanism. But behind these very public and controversial aspects of the Nixon legacy, there is the less well-known and much more liberal side to Nixon that appears in his domestic policy. John Roy Price tells the story as only he can-as someone who worked for three years in the Nixon administration, initially as Counsel to Daniel Patrick Moynihan and later succeeding Moynihan as Executive Secretary of the presidentially chaired Council for Urban Affairs, a cabinet level group. The Last Liberal Republican not only tells a revisionist and insider story of the Nixon administration, but as a memoir it also tells the story of Price's own life as a moderate or liberal Republican who became part of Nixon's senior White House staff. Price recounts the struggle for the soul of the Republican Party in the disruptive decade of the 1960s, as politicians and strategists grappled with the victories of Kennedy and Johnson and looked for a way to steer the party away from the direction of Barry Goldwater. In addition to giving us an up-close-and-personal account of Moynihan, Price pulls back the curtain on the policy meetings and conversations that led to such domestic policies as the food stamp program, the Family Assistance Plan, and Nixon's health care proposals. Nixon was even the first to propose what we would now call universal basic income. Price shows in detail that Nixon's brand of Republicanism was a far cry from Ronald Reagan's mantra that "government is the problem." The Last Liberal Republican presents an intimate and often surprising portrait of Nixon, an insider's perspective on Washington politics, and an insightful personal memoir-but most of all it reminds people of a path no longer taken in the Republican Party"-- Provided by publisher. |
