Blind Ambition: The White House Years

I remember Watergate from when it happened. I did not know a lot about it except what I read back then. This is great narrative of all the events that happened. It was very readable and interesting. John Dean writes in a style that keeps your attention. I enjoyed the book.

Most of Dean’s story is riveting as well as fascinating. Got bogged down part way in and stopped reading for a few days. But when I picked it up again, the pace of Dean’s narrative also picked up. It made good, informative reading. Some of it quite intense. I do recall watching some of his testimony during the Watergate hearings.

Could not put it down! A must read!

Blind Ambition is a satisfying tale of wrong put to right. It also is a dark coming of age story. Dean was 32 when he was hired as White House Counsel - counsel to the President. Lofty stuff! He drove a Porsche, had a dream job, and appeared to be a Golden Boy with a lustrous career ahead of him. Except.Except that his boss, President Nixon, was a crook and had hired two talented thugs Haldeman and Ehrlichman to be his right hand men. It became clear to Dean from his first assignment - to dog down the Democratic opposition in some petty fashion - that the Dream Job was going to be, despite the trappings of the White House, a sordid one.Very quickly, Dean got caught up in not just borderline, sordid, petty political machinations, but illegal ones that added up to the Watergate scandal. To the outside world, Dean was a huge winner. In reality, he was sweating bullets, fearing jail, and hitting the bottle hard to cope with the extreme stress and anxiety of his “dream job.” Nixon, Haldeman, and Ehrlichman, it turned out, utilized a loathsome pair of criminals - G. Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt, to carry out illegal acts that Nixon believed would ensure his re-election and help him crush his political opponents.The 1970’s, when all this was transpiring, were times of greater moral clarity for the American public and their elected representatives. As Nixon’s wrongdoing came to light, the vast majority of the public and the leaders of his own party, as well as of the Democratic party, of course, called for his resignation. Nixon was forced to resign.In subsequent years, as more and more evidence came to light, it became crystal clear how toxic Nixon and his crew were. Dean’s book, written so soon after the events, remains a testament to an America capable of self-correction and renewal, a process that played out in Dean’s life as well. The book is a treasure, and so is Mr. Dean. I wish him well.

Blind Ambition is the most interesting and well written book I have read in a long time. Mr. Dean made me feel like I was a witness to one of the most horrible period of history. I am so glad he and his wife were able to be reunited and move on with their life.

Interesting

It may seem strange that just after ordering a new copy of "Blind Ambition" by John Dean, today, that I am writing a review.Actually, I have the paperback edition and have read it several times. I wanted the hardback for the larger print size.This is an excellent book, not just for taking the reader behind the scenes of Watergate, but for displaying the true personality of Richard Nixon.The description that Dean gives of Nixon throughout the book corroborates the statements by Bob Haldeman and John Erlichman.Blind Ambition is a tale of a President obsessed with only one goal - to make sure he got re-elected.Richard Nixon was a man of insecurity and self-doubt, and these traits were strongly reinforced when Nixon lost the 1962 California governorship to incumbent Edmund G. "Pat" Brown.It was Lawrence O'Brien, who was responsible for leaking about the Howard Hughes loan to Nixon's brother, Donald, that played a part in the 1962 loss of election to Governor.Now, O'Brien was National Chairman of the Democratic National Party. Nixon worried about what "goods" O'Brien had on him now. Thus, the DNC Headquarters at the Watergate Complex were broken into; a third-rate burglary was turned into a major cover-up along with other crimes and White House horrors.The discouraging remark to add to the above is, after you read this excellent book, you should try to see the TV-made movie, based on the book. The movie was well done, with Rip Torn playing Nixon, and doing the best job of anyone I have seen.Unfortunately, no commercial version of the movie was released. It was a 4-part miniseries. Once-and-awhile,the channels of STARZ shows it. You should record it, if it is shown again, as it is a very good presentation, faithful to the book, and almost non-existant.Two other outstanding Watergate books, in addition to "Blind Ambition" highly recommened are "Watergate-the corruption of American Politics and the Fall of Richard Nixon" by Fred Emery (a mini-series was also done on that) and "784 Days That Changed America" by Barry Sussman (with another rare television production shown only once by Nancy Dickenson and Television Broadcasting Corp.

Assuming you take the portrayal at face value, allowing for a small admixture of self-service and exageration, this book is a must-read. You will learn a ton about the workings of the Nixon White House in general; and in particular, the cover up in response to the Warergate scandal. There's nothing like an insider's perspective to portray the (not very attractive) human element in such large historical processes. After I stumbled across a claim that Dean testified that most of the book is grossly inaccurate, I read a few other hostile critiques. Most of them are written by people with an axe to grind. My common sense tells me that the book is mostly plausible. I mean, Dean sets out to draw himself as a weakling, lacking in integrity and a sycophantic coward. Not sure why he would take this angle unless he just wanted to make a clean breast of things. He'd already been convicted of obstruction of justice and sent to prison. What would he have to gain by distorting events at such a late date? Anyways read it and decide for yourself.

This is an engrossing account of John Dean's central role in Watergate, how he was involved through his intelligence role as Counsel to the President before the break-in and afterwards covering the crime up. It's insightful, dramatic and less self-serving as other Watergate accounts. It's an engrossing and easy read.

Fantastic Inside Account Of What Really Happened. But not why, andb not revealed till Halderman's diary was publshed after his death.

The incredible inside story of the actors involved in the Watergate Cover-Up fiasco, and how the lives of the winners and the losers changed as a result of the struggles to get and keep the powers that only the very select few people in the White House could ever possibly experience leaving the rest to only dream what the White House experience would be like. After reading the book, you will feel like you were involved in the drama and have a much better understanding of what working for the President of the USA in the White House Administration must really be like and leave you wondering if you would be up to all the challenges

There was much that should have been learned from Watergate that wasn't. John Dean's account has much to say about an out of control White House. Memories should be refreshed and this is a good place to start.

Given the current state of affairs in the White House, I was inspired to read John Dean's account of the Watergate era, when I was a young adult. The atmosphere of anxiety and paranoia that Mr. Dean describes as being present in the WH in the Nixon years makes me guess that the current WH must surely be worse, by comparison. Highly recommended!