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Blind ambition
by John W Dean
Product Group: Book
Publisher: Simon & Schuster (1975)
ISBN: B000722OTG
Unknown Binding: 415 pages
SKU: 18342
Condition: Collectable Very Goo
Comments: Schuster, 1996. Hardcover w/gilt lettering, Dust cover and pages are in FINE condition, clean & tight. Super rapid shipping. Air mail.
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Customer Reviews
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In The Spirit of Forgiveness.
Rating  (5)
Date: 2005-02-03
``Blind Ambition'' is White House counsel John Dean's riveting account of the Watergate scandal that crushed the Nixon presidency. I was captivated by the exactness of the dialog. Dean must have a good memory.
For those few still not aware, the book shows there is one law for the president of the United States and one or more for the rest of us. According to Dean, President Nixon didn't know of the break-in before it occurred but learned of it shortly after. Nixon was in on the cover-up practically from day one although most of the details were left to aides.
Dean is kind toward his co-conspirators. His empathy for John Mitchell, the ill-fated attorney general who was a mentor to Dean during their Justice Department days, is particularly touching. Dean's attitude can be traced to his moral reawakening coupled with the religious conversion of Charles Colson. At the White House, Dean and Colson were toadies vying with each other for Nixon's attention and praise. But, at Holabird prison, the two become fast friends, quietly spurring each other on to a better way.
``Blind Ambition'' shows us the banality of power-seeking. Here's a conversation from page 386 of the hardcover edition --
Watergate staff lawyer Larry Iason: ``So you rode in on the crime issue?''
Dean: ``Right. In those days, only one thing was important. Getting ahead.''
Iason: ``Why?''
Dean: ``I don't know.''
Dean's reasons for breaking ranks are complex. In addition to his personal anguish, Dean's rationale is a combination of a helpless feeling that the cover-up could only be kept going by perjury after perjury and his concern that a ``cancer'' was eating away at the presidency.
The author doesn't have harsh words with the president or about him even though Nixon is shown to be a habitual liar who tried to make Dean the fall guy. Dean says at one point Nixon could have salvaged his presidency if only he could have truthfully admitted errors and wrongdoing. Nixon's longtime distrust of the ``liberal'' media and Washington establishment made that impossible.
``Blind Ambition'' is ultimately a hopeful book with a happy ending. Its final pages have the author starting a new life on a higher moral plane. Looking back on Watergate, in a spirit of letting go, Dean cites Somerset Maugham's ``The Summing Up,'' a book he was reading at the time. ``...We are shocked when we discover that great men were weak and petty, dishonest or selfish, sexually vicious, vain or intemperate; and people think it disgraceful to disclose to the public its heroes' failings. There is not much to choose between men. They are all a hopscotch of greatness and littleness, of virtue and vice, of nobility and baseness. Some have more strength of character, or more opportunity, so in one direction or another give their instincts freer play, but potentially they are the same.''
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