Introduction: Richard Nixon and Public Memory

Year 2017, Issue: 47, 5 - 9, 01.10.2017

Roger Chapman

Abstract

The Canadian singer-songwriter Neil Young, with obvious ironical intent, once offered a lyric that maintains “Even Richard Nixon has got soul.” The significance of Young’s song is its demonstration of how over the years Nixon has been othered. At the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC, a collection of “official paintings” of the American presidents are on display, among them the Norman Rockwell painting of Nixon.

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