Having served as Richard Nixon's White House counsel for a thousand days before the Watergate scandal forced the president's resignation, John Dean was perhaps the most well-spoken witness against the Nixon administration.
Dean forcefully testified before the Senate Watergate Committee about his seamy conversations with the president, describing them word-for-word. He then endured heavy criticism from skeptical observers who thought he was lying in order to malign a sitting president.
When it was discovered through Alexander Butterfield's testimony that all of Nixon's meetings and conversations had been recorded, Dean easily deflected the criticism. On one occasion, Dean testified, he had told Nixon there was "a cancer on the presidency," and the tapes proved that was exactly what he said.
"I have a highly visual memory," Dean said during a telephone interview from his California home. "It's not a soundtrack. I could not separate the conversations from one day to the next. But I remembered the gist of the conversations and some of the comments I had made. We remember pictures longer than we remember words."
Dean said he "had a hunch" he was being taped because of "Nixon's leading questions." After Butterfield's testimony, Sam Dash, the leading counsel for the Senate Democrats, asked Dean, "What would you say if I told you every conversation you had with the president was taped?" Dean replied that he would be "delighted" — because he knew his testimony was accurate and would be validated by the tapes.
Dean calls Watergate "a maturing experience that didn't do anybody any good. I didn't want to live a lie, so I testified."
How appropriate, then, that the principal witness to presidential corruption in the 1970s would write of presidential corruption in the 1920s. Dean's book, "Warren G. Harding," is a history of another president who is remembered principally for corruption.
Dean said he is acquainted with famed historian Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., the editor of a series of books on the presidency, and he expressed to Schlesinger his desire to write a volume on Harding. (Dean is a native of Marion, Ohio, as was Harding.)
According to Dean, Schlesinger unaccountably said, "He's yours! Go to it." Dean was pleased because, ever since his childhood, he has believed that Harding was "given an unfair shake in history." He took on the opportunity to portray Harding in a more balanced way. "Historians had said for years that the Harding papers had been destroyed, but they were not. I found a microfilm set of them at the University of California at Hayward, and I went over them, just trying to get it right."
Following his research, Dean, now 65, concluded that "reputable historians had written absolute crap about Harding. When you track down some of the material, it's really stunning what they did. They just ignored the important sources.
"When you look at his papers, you see he wrote a lot of his own stuff and cranked out editorials on countless subjects. During all those years that he ran the Marion Star, he watched trolleys, street lights, then the state, the nation — and finally, the world. It was an interesting self-education. You don't write that stuff off the top of your head."
Dean concedes that his small book is not likely to be the definitive work on the Harding years, but he hopes it will help to bring about a serious re-evaluation of Harding. He cites the recent work by respected historian Robert Farrell, and the older work of Robert Murray, both of whom used the Harding papers to give a much more positive interpretation of Harding than had ever been done before.
In Dean's opinion, "lawyers are more critical than historians — they are more careful about detail," an assertion that, if true, perhaps makes him an ideal candidate to study Harding's presidency.
Although Dean is acerbic about historians and what he thinks is their mistaken impression of Harding's corruption, he is equally critical of journalists, such as William Allen White, "who were looking for a quick buck off Harding."
Dean believes that Harding was always on the periphery of the corruption, that the amount of corruption was smaller than that of Watergate — and that Harding dealt severely with those he found had been corrupt prior to his unexpected death in 1923.
Rather than an ignorant politician who was baffled by the presidency, Dean sees Harding as astute. "He was always the biggest and the smartest kid, who grew up with self-confidence. He didn't need to beat his own drum. He has this manner, that he doesn't need to take credit for things. This is why others like him so well. He is as modest as you can be. He never flaunts what he can do." In fact, Dean compares "the hidden-hand presidency" attributed by Fred Greenstein to Dwight D. Eisenhower with that of Harding.
Dean also downplays the sexual improprieties Harding is alleged to have carried on. "He did have an affair with Carrie Phillips from Marion, but that was over before he went to the White House. We have DNA that could disprove the Nan Britton Case." Britton is alleged to have had, out of wedlock, a child who closely resembled Harding.
Harding wasn't "one of our greatest presidents," Dean said, "but he's not one of the worst either. He was not tainted. He had wealth. He didn't need money.
"I have problems with historians who 'rank the presidents.' Those who have been ranked as the greatest did the most to shred the Constitution. Certainly, Harding is one of the most misunderstood and most unfairly treated presidents in history."
E-MAIL: dennis@desnews.com