The dynamic between an American president and his vice president always seems mysterious, mostly because the latter's role is so loosely defined by the Constitution that it gets reimagined with each administration. Perhaps no such duo in modern history, though, has been quite as odd as the team of Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon. In Ike and Dick, Jeffrey Frank (The Columnist) explains how the affable and beloved Eisenhower held the brooding and bristly Nixon at bay for decades like a distant father--and how the need for both affirmation from his ostensible mentor as well as a desire to escape Ike's massive shadow shaped Nixon's troubling political destiny.
Based in large part on the personal correspondence and histories of the two men and those who knew them, Ike and Dick describes how Eisenhower reluctantly chose the rising-star Nixon for a running mate in 1952 and then made no secret that he considered dumping him during the reelection campaign--and spent the rest of his life vacillating between support and indifference for his former veep. Assuming that Eisenhower's ambivalence must have stoked the younger man's inherent bitterness and paranoia, it's hard not to wonder if Watergate would have happened had Ike treated Dick differently--and it's ultimately to Frank's credit that one comes away sympathizing for Nixon's plight as the red-headed stepchild of the Eisenhower administration. --Cherie Ann Parker, freelance journalist and book critic