Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics From Washington to Clinton.

• Author: Brinkley, Douglas
• Position: Review

Nixon's Piano: Presidents and Racial Politics From Washington to Clinton

Kenneth O'Reilly Free Press, $27

In Disney World's "Hall of Presidents," robotic incarnations of all 42 of our chief executives, from George Washington to Bill Clinton, gesture stiffly to turnstile tourists. It's among the theme park's most popular family attractions--millions of Americans each year leave the exhibit feeling proud of their star-spangled nation and bounce into Futureland humming the Battle Hymn of the Republic. But after reading Kenneth O'Reilly's Nixon's Piano, a devastating critique of the executive branch's institutionalized indifference to racism, any feelings of pride in our presidents will quickly dissipate.

O'Reilly's spotlight on our presidents exposes bigotry and racism from the whole distinguished lot. Only Abraham Lincoln and Lyndon Johnson escape with their integrity somewhat intact. O'Reilly, who teaches history at the University of Alaska, writes like a relentless prosecutor marshalling evidence against 42 defendants, collecting every racist slur or off-the-cuff innuendo. From studying forgotten memoirs, O'Reilly presents a convincing case against the American presidency.

O'Reilly's title comes from an anecdote, first told by civil rights activist Roger Wilkins in his 1982 autobiography A Man's Life, of an unforgettable evening in 1970, when President Richard Nixon and Vice President Spiro Agnew surprised the white elite at the Gridiron Club by performing a manic version of "Dixie." Nixon played the piano, and Agnew accompanied him in a "darky dialect," while the Washington Brahmins hooted and hollered them on. The Republican Party at that time had their "Southern strategy" in full swing: "a belief that presidential elections can be won only by following the doctrines and rituals of white over black." This story, well told by O'Reilly, is a perfect warning of the collective perversity the reader is about to encounter.

From 1866 to 1948, for example, approximately 5,000 African-Americans died at the hands of lynch mobs without a single president denouncing the atrocities. Most pre-Civil War presidents found slavery morally repugnant, but politically explosive, and therefore tried to find a host of watered-down compromises to postpone dealing with the oppressive issue. Almost every Northern presidential contender from 1787 to 1860 had a back-to-Africa trump card stored up his sleeve, including Lincoln, who spoke of sending blacks "to...