College Park, Md. ? We knew that Richard Nixon was driven. We knew that he was coarse. We knew that he had contempt for George S. McGovern. We knew that he had a special venom for Jews. We knew that while his public rhetoric was often soaring, his private thinking was often sordid.

And so the latest release of Nixon tapes row upon row of smooth white cassette cases, laid out like a feast on a table in a research center outside of Washington provided some new anecdotes but few new insights about a man who had a brave public face but a weak private character, who craved the adulation of the masses but retreated into the seclusion of the White House, who spoke for the typical American but lacked the typical American attributes of openness and optimism.

But in many ways the tape excerpts that have drawn the most attention are the least reflective of the man. They speak of his defense of his ambassador to France, accused of groping flight attendants on a jetliner, and of his belief that McGovern, his opponent in the 1972 election, was “a damn socialist with a blind spot for communists.” But while these new tape excerpts show what he thought, they do not show how he thought. That’s why perhaps the most intriguing tape in 426 hours of the new Nixon collection isn’t the exchange with the Rev. Billy Graham about pornography or the president’s declaration that the Justice Department was “full of Jews,” but the conversations caught on Jan. 26, 1972.

The tapes for that day show the complete Nixon, not just the colorful, outrageous, infuriating Nixon that most accounts of the tapes emphasize. They show his anger and resentments, to be sure, but they also show the range of his thinking. They show how he worked and how he regarded the world around him. They show his insecurity in human affairs and his mastery in foreign affairs. They show the narrowness of his experience and the breadth of his vision. They show how small was his heart and how big were his dreams.

Much of that January day was consumed with preparations for the historic trips to the Soviet Union and China. But in this one day, which included the visit of Dutch Prime Minister Barend W. Biesheuvel to the White House, is displayed the man in full Nixon the resentful and Nixon the insightful, Nixon the master of the invective and Nixon the reflective.

During this day, Nixon displays his remarkable knowledge of foreign affairs, providing the Dutch leader with a tour d’horizon that includes the president’s views on the structure of the Common Market, the prospects for political development in Brazil, the Netherlands’ relations with Surinam, the history of colonial Indonesia, the challenges facing West Germany from the East and the growing pressures on Japan. The result is the ultimate Nixon tape:

l Nixon’s obloquy. In this tape, made after Vice President Spiro T. Agnew expressed skepticism of the administration’s Vietnam policy, Nixon refers to Agnew as “the son of a bitch,” adding, “Agnew drove me up a wall.”

l Nixon’s self-referential orientation and his reliance on sports metaphors. National Security Adviser Henry A. Kissinger baldly appeals to the president by laying out how Agnew should have handled his doubts (“Let him come to your office afterward and say, Mr. President, I have serious reservations …”). This launches Nixon on an account of how he comported himself as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president from 1953 to 1961:

“Me, I used to sit there and defend Eisenhower when he was wrong. That’s my point. I had to. He’s the president. I’m on the team. You know, it’s like a poor goddamn guy on a football team. The quarterback calls a play. (One of the teammates thinks the play is) no good at all, you’re going to get clobbered by the defensive left end. What do you do? Run the other way? Hell no.”

l Nixon’s dismissal of small states like Italy. “They’re going through one of those periods where they don’t have a government. They don’t need one.”

l Nixon’s contempt for Africa. “We can’t say this publicly,” he tells Biesheuvel, “but you know and I know it’s a tragedy to see (that) so many of these new countries in Africa … are totally not capable of running the show.” Later he says that Africa is “500 years away” from playing a powerful world role.

l Nixon on coexistence with communists. “It seems to us indeed that the key to our interest is to seek to try to live and let live with the great communist superpowers, China and Russia, recognizing that our philosophical differences are irreconcilable, though that doesn’t mean you have to fire upon ’em.”

l Nixon’s comparison of foreign affairs with marital affairs. “There’s a whole song, you know, that’s from one of our musical comedies, called ‘Getting to Know You,’ and there are many naive people who think if you just get to know people you won’t have any differences. My God, some of the worst differences are among married people who know each other too well.”

David Shribman is a columnist for The Boston Globe.