The sad and sometimes chilling story of Chapin’s relationship with the cast-iron H.R. Haldeman ... Chapin offers the reader sympathetic and defensive glimpses of Nixon, depicting him as 'a very sensitive man' ... His overall estimation of Nixon remains high but confused ... Chapin’s biggest achievement involved setting up Nixon’s trips, in 1972, to China and the Soviet Union. Understandably, given all the lows that would follow, he oversells the former ... Chapin makes a handful of fair revisionist points ... But when in his acknowledgments he starts climbing onto the grassy-knoll version of Watergate...a reader can only sigh. Before this, Chapin offers some bits of Watergate trivia that may be news to readers ... The President’s Man is an amiable if sometimes lurching and repetitive reminiscence. There is no real spark to most of the prose.
Reveals new facts and insights into the very consequential presidency of Richard Nixon ... Fascinating and page-turning ... The most interesting and revealing chapters of the book deal with Chapin’s involvement in planning and executing Nixon’s trips to China to establish formal relations with the communist regime ... Chapin persuasively contends that he did nothing criminal and was swept up in the mostly political and media-driven prosecutions ... This is also a very introspective book.
His account of the cultural barriers he encountered can provoke laughter ... Chapin’s autobiography offers some entertaining anecdotes about many who passed through his office and will appeal to Nixonians and to those looking for yet another very personal perspective on Watergate.
Unconvincing ... Chapin provides an insider’s perspective ... His revisionist take on the scandal that led to Nixon’s resignation, however, is troublesome ... To further erode his credibility, he evades responsibility for his own crimes, while admitting that he lied in a letter to a federal judge seeking an earlier release from prison ... There’s no shortage of books about the Nixon presidency, and this one brings little new to the table.
While Chapin allows that Nixon could be impenetrable and always played his cards close to his chest, he remains a true believer, so much so that he largely pins the Watergate mess on John Dean ... The account is of value for a few small matters, his protestations of innocence not among them—everyone is innocent, by his account ... Foremost among the book’s virtues is Chapin’s fly-on-the-wall look at the inner workings of the Nixon White House, with a president given to self-isolation and paranoia ... Frequently self-serving ... Contains a few useful insights but of tertiary interest to students of the Nixon presidency.
