A Newsman in the Nixon White House

Herbert Klein and the Enduring Conflict between Journalistic Truth and Presidential Image

Wafa Unus

Herbert G. Klein was a significant figure in both journalism and political history during the mid- to late Twentieth Century. Klein is best known as longtime advisor to Richard Nixon, and was with Nixon at peak moments in his career, including the Checkers Speech and Nixon’s 1960 and 1962 campaigns. Upon Nixon’s election as President, Klein became the White House Director of Communications, a new position Klein was tasked with designing. For four years, Klein was known as one of Nixon’s chief advisors. But then, for reasons historians have never fully explored, he disappears from Nixon’s political landscape as well as from scholarly and public prominence.

This book establishes Herbert G. Klein as a formative figure in the Richard Nixon White House, whose contributions to Nixon’s press strategies, their subsequent impact on the president’s actions, attitudes, and eventual fall, have been largely overshadowed in scholarly literature. It explores the then-emerging, and now enduring, conflict between journalistic truth and presidential image. The work draws from previously unexplored materials on Klein in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. The account is notable for the first examination of Klein’s only known oral history, lessening a gap in the existing literature on Nixon’s aides and his relationship with the media.

Lexington Books

Pages: 276 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-4985-8135-6 • Hardback • November 2018 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-8136-3 • eBook • November 2018 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Series: Lexington Studies in Political Communication

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies

A Newsman in the Nixon White House

Herbert Klein and the Enduring Conflict between Journalistic Truth and Presidential Image

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Herbert G. Klein was a significant figure in both journalism and political history during the mid- to late Twentieth Century. Klein is best known as longtime advisor to Richard Nixon, and was with Nixon at peak moments in his career, including the Checkers Speech and Nixon’s 1960 and 1962 campaigns. Upon Nixon’s election as President, Klein became the White House Director of Communications, a new position Klein was tasked with designing. For four years, Klein was known as one of Nixon’s chief advisors. But then, for reasons historians have never fully explored, he disappears from Nixon’s political landscape as well as from scholarly and public prominence.

This book establishes Herbert G. Klein as a formative figure in the Richard Nixon White House, whose contributions to Nixon’s press strategies, their subsequent impact on the president’s actions, attitudes, and eventual fall, have been largely overshadowed in scholarly literature. It explores the then-emerging, and now enduring, conflict between journalistic truth and presidential image. The work draws from previously unexplored materials on Klein in the Richard Nixon Presidential Library. The account is notable for the first examination of Klein’s only known oral history, lessening a gap in the existing literature on Nixon’s aides and his relationship with the media.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 276 • Trim: 6½ x 9

978-1-4985-8135-6 • Hardback • November 2018 • $105.00 • (£81.00)

978-1-4985-8136-3 • eBook • November 2018 • $99.50 • (£77.00)

Series: Lexington Studies in Political Communication

Subjects: Language Arts & Disciplines / Communication Studies

Author

Wafa Unus is assistant professor of journalism at Fitchburg State University.

Table of Contents

Chapter 1: Though Klein Struggled, the Press Ultimately Prevailed

Chapter 2: 1946 – 1968: Klein and the Campaign Years

Chapter 3: Launching the White House Communications Office

Chapter 4: Media and the Vietnam Quagmire

Chapter 5: Media and the Prelude of Watergate

Chapter 6: Klein in Context

Reviews

Professor Unus has found one of the untold tales of the Nixon presidency in her portrait of Herb Klein—a “newsman” and “journalist” in the best meaning of those words. In fact, if Nixon had listened to Herb, rather than merely exploiting his considerable skills and good standing with his professional peers to spread Nixon’s image-building messages from the White House, history could have been very different. This book is not merely excellent scholarship, it is a good read and a story well told.
— John W. Dean, Former Nixon White House Counsel