Dick at his trickiest

In the more than 40 years since Richard Nixon resigned as president — disgraced as much by his inveterate lying as by his actual crimes related to Watergate — history has been relatively kind to him. Compared with Ronald Reagan, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush, Nixon in retrospect can seem statesmanlike, thoughtful and liberal-minded. He established diplomatic relations with communist China, took the US off the gold standard, negotiated the wind-down of the Vietnam war, and created the Environmental Protection Agency — accomplishments that generally prompt even Nixon-haters to pause before they condemn Tricky Dick to perdition.

But now comes Joan Brady with a bracing reminder of what indeed was so hateful, so villainous about Nixon and his political ascent. For her outraged new book about his persecution of the internationalist lawyer and New Deal diplomat Alger Hiss is as much a reindictment of Nixon as it is an attempt, once and for all, to clear Hiss of the accusation that he betrayed his country in the service of Soviet Russia.