Little appetite for knowing our leaders' lives

Surely the answer is that we do not treat ourselves or our country, let alone our politicians, with the same earnest – sometimes sententious – high-mindedness that Americans bring to theirs. Here, stakes are not as high, prizes not as glittering, publicity not as consuming. Few of our leaders even kept a diary.

Putting aside our modesty, we can still learn today from the ways in which American institutions stand up, and stand up for themselves, in crisis. Take two relatively recent illustrations, the presidencies of Richard Nixon and Jimmy Carter, as refracted through two jumbo biographies, 1736 pages between them: John Farrell's Richard Nixon: The Life (Scribe Publications, October 2017) and President Carter: The White House Years, by Stuart Eizenstat (Thomas Dunne Books, April 2018).

Nixon's term (1969-74) might seem an unredeemed nightmare, during which the president continued war in Vietnam, extended conflict to Cambodia, corrupted the office he held, endangered the republic and covered up dirty tricks during an election when he gained 61 per cent of the vote anyway. His was the Nixonland of "expletive deleted", executive privilege and "unindicted co-conspirator", a realm an opponent in 1956 presciently derided as "a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win". Fittingly, the author of that critique was dismissed by Nixon, in a slur that blended homophobic gossip with anti-intellectualism, as "Side Saddle Adlai".

Nixon's revealed appraisals of the world around him bear comparison with Donald Trump's tweets, although Nixon fought doggedly to prevent his private rants from reaching the public. To be fair, Nixon was also far more experienced, subtle and self-critical than Trump has been. His musings on tapes or yellow legal pads could not readily be summarised into 140 characters. Nixon craved time and room to think and brood. By contrast, Trump appears to expostulate without brakes or filters. Self-importance is plainly the enemy of self-improvement, and of self-discipline, too. Unlike Nixon, Trump would never make time to remove the middle initial from his signature in order to save himself a couple of seconds each time he wrote his name.

Calculated by vulgarity or brutality, however, the two presidents might be closer to par. Consider Nixon's judgment that Mexican immigrants "don't live like a bunch of dogs, which the Negroes do live like". Examine his warning that "I don't even want to shake hands with anyone from San Francisco". Review his consistent opinion that the press "are waiting to destroy us". Wonder at his thoughts on party donors: "they're rich and fat and dumb and drunk". Measure his disdain for "the whole warmth business" or for "dilettante intellectuals ... who bite us like sandflies". Consider the knowing cynicism in his remark that "we're just managing the chaos a little better".

Nonetheless, the Nixon tale bears a different telling. Nixon tried to suborn the CIA, which studiously kept records on his malfeasance. He tried to intimidate the FBI, but one of its staff leaked the sequence of his crimes. He bullied the Justice Department, whose two most senior officers resigned in protest. Nixon sought to bypass the joint chiefs, who sent their own agent to retrieve secrets withheld from them out of Henry Kissinger's burn bags. Although he tried to cower Congress, it finally held him to account. The president considered defying the Supreme Court, all of whose justices – including three he had appointed – then ruled against him.

This version of Rafferty's rules might not quite vindicate the American promise that "ours is a government of laws and not of men". A few good and decent men were the true heroes, after all. Robert Mueller may have studied their examples. He may also have observed that irrefutable evidence, a collapse in party support, public disgust, cheating on his taxes and repeated criminal behaviour were required for America to tell Nixon: "You're fired."

As for Carter, imagine Trump claiming to install "a government as good as its people" or promising that "I will never lie to you". Eizenstat tries hard, probably too hard, to redeem a president who drowned himself in memoranda and background papers, correcting typographical errors and grammatical mistakes as he went. He detects virtue in a stubborn, self-righteous scold of a president, one who failed to set priorities, to nurture friendships, to learn how Washington worked, and to appreciate that a leader must mix politics with policies. When Carter was elected, only one of his senior staff had ever lived in Washington, set foot in the White House, or appreciated much about Congress.

Eizenstat reveals a president doubling as the little engine that could, possessing "supreme confidence (bordering on hubris) in his own intelligence". The Camp David agreements, the Panama Canal treaty, Alaskan lands legislation and energy initiatives may pay tribute to that approach, but they do not offset chronic failure and structural flaws. Three years into his term, Carter confessed he had become "irrelevant": "the people don't listen to us". Lesser men would give up then.

Two years into Trump's term, no one enjoys the option of not listening. Only a deaf hermit could block out Trump's insistently raucous white noise. If he could concentrate for 1736 pages, what might Trump learn from these books? They are not The Art of the Deal, but both demonstrate that politics done well is a true art, involving more cross-cutting, contentious, awkward deals than real estate ever requires. Perhaps Trump might happen across one quote only, the rebuke that ended Joe McCarthy's bullying and smears: "have you no decency, sir, at long last?" If not, we might reduce the lessons in the biographies to half of one tweet: intelligence and intuition do matter, but integrity can never be bought nor sold.

Mark Thomas is a Canberra-based writer.