Leadership Secrets of Richard Nixon (II)

Brad DeLong, in another overgenerous but penetrating explication of my book, gets at something very important, again, more clearly than I have.

He reprints a long excerpt on Nixon ending thus:

This was an ego finely tuned to believe that it was nothing unless it was everything: one for which winning wasn’t everything, it was the only thing—but which even victory could never fully satisfy...

and Brad then concludes:

For the first time, I think I understand how Nixon could win so much and yet wind up such a loser: his entire strategy was to win by making himself the oppressed loser and the spokesman for all the other oppressed losers—which meant that the more he won, the more he saw himself as and became a loser, until in the end he lost absolutely everything.

And made the Republican Party the world's biggest loser as well.

How does this relate to today's Republicans? Your thoughts welcome in the comments.

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