The Bishop and the Butterfly: Murder, Politics, and the End of the Jazz Age
    cmaukonen's picture

    Remembering Nixon

    By cmaukonen on Sat, 06/09/2012 - 11:35pm |

    Bernstein and Woodward have a very good retrospective of Nixon and Watergate in the Washington Post. For most here - those much younger than I - the whole era is but a small chapter in history. However I believe it is good to reflect on how close the country came to not only a constitutional crisis but a total break down in our democratic form of government.

    The piece outlines quite well the atrocities committed by and proposed by Nixon himself in order to remain in power. We have not had anyone with the pure insanity and megalomania in the Whitehouse before and thank heaven since. Not even Reagan or Bush could compare and certainly no republican - despite the hubris spewed by some - can come close.

    Totally bent on destroying all and any who opposed him and his actions by what ever means available, legal or not.

    From kidnapping of protestors to break ins and burglary to even targeted killings. Some so insane that they were rejected not only by his own justice department but by his own supreme court appointed justices as well.

    Wishing to destroy the Democratic party and even the media. Enraged by the pentagon papers and Daniel Ellsberg. Furious when Dick Cavett had John Kerry on debating Vietnam with John O'Neill. And Kerry completely ripping the war to pieces. Conspiring with Ohio Governor Rhodes to put down the Kent State protests which eventually ended with the shooting deaths four of students and the wounding of nine others.

    Finally rejected by a large part of his own party in the Senate and The House.

    So when we focus on the abuses of power by Bush and Obama and Romney lets us bar in mind that they are not the aberration of the system but rather the very epitome of it. They are what our social/economic/political system produce.

    Comments

    I don't see how you can extrapolate what Nixon and his cronies did into an indictment of our entire social/economic/political system.   If you can, I'd like to see you expand your thoughts on why you believe that is so.  

    I do think, as Woodward and Bernstein assert, that Nixon was even worse than we imagined.  But, if you look closely at all the attempts to undermine democracy lately, isn't most of it being done by the exact same people; the old Nixon cronies or their political descendants?   I'm not naive, I don't think that Nixon was the only President who ever abused power, but I disagree with you when you say he is the rule rather than the exception.

    Perhaps I'm too much of an optimist, but to say that our social/economic/political system produces nothing but crooks and scoundrels seems a bit hyperbolic to me. 


    by MrSmith1 on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 12:33am

    I read the WP article by W & B and some things are revealed. I think a new analysis of the Tapes might reveal much more and I am sure that W & B are making money in this new joint venture.

    But Chris, I think, is attempting to remind us.

    Maybe at our age we need no reminding but I bet younger folks (my kids are younger folks but they never forgot my diatribes. hahahahah) have no idea what he is talking about.

    W bush took us way past the sins of tricky dicky. Of course Rove and Cheney and Rummy were all there to catalog the most evil features of the Nixon Administration and expand upon those evils without being caught.

     


    by Richard Day on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 2:32am

    I'm not sure - while the firing of Attorneys was political, as was the release of confidential info, no doubt every administration has crossed the line in these areas. Destroying evidence of wrongdoing in a torture / security coverup is still less politically sinful than destroying evidence in a purely re-election related act.

    For Nixon to be ordering break-ins, paying out hush money, destroying documents & tapes, installing moles in other campaigns or secret service details, blackmailing & destroying people - all with purely selfish or partisan motives - seems still much more extreme than Bush & Cheney.


    by Anonymous PP (not verified) on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 4:51am

    Nixon was a ham fisted, naive, dumb, and scheming, liberal Republican. The legends in the school history books (and articles like the one by Woodward above)  paint his resignation as a uniquely defining American victory for justice, liberals and democracy. Not the case. The right wing hated him and they were happy to send him on his way, and not for his illegal break ins or political chicanery which they have since refined and do much better than he could ever achieve.

    Why? The right wing hated his very long list of liberal policies (he formed the EPA, visited China and opened relations with the Communists, lost the Vietnam War, passed the Clean Water Act, signed the Occupational Safety and Health Administration into law, instituted wage and price controls, initiated the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Soviets - among other policy that was total anathema to the right.

    Republicans since have done far more damage to democracy and this country than Nixon.

    They have done deals with terrorists and sent banned missiles to Iran, run Central American wars off the books in Iran-Contra, impeached Clinton for BS, tried to stop investigation of 9/11, lied us into the Iraq fiasco, joined up with sleazy corporate swindlers like Ken Lay, and appointed a bunch of political hacks to the Supreme Court, where their guys stopped the vote counting in 2000 to appoint GWB President ( a much bigger blow to democracy than a hotel break-in).

    His Keystone Kops operation and Watergate let them toss Nixon to the liberal Democrats for punishment and disgrace, the GOP in the Senate could have saved Nixon from impeachment but they told him they wouldn't, so he resigned to become the poster boy for how America supposedly cleaned up DC politics and saved democracy.


    by NCD on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 11:53am

    Under the (media) bus.

    But really. No more or less liberal than Eisenhower.  But unlike Nixon, Eisenhower know which side his bread was buttered on and kept it to himself until he was out of office.


    by cmaukonen on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 12:43pm

    I think Nixon was pragmatically liberal, only because that's how the wind was blowing in the 60s.


    by Donal on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 12:46pm

    But you do bring up and interesting point. Nixon was able to get through things that a Democrat would have had a very hard time getting passed at that juncture simply because Nixon was a republican and the republicans in congress would vote for them for that reason alone.


    by cmaukonen on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 12:46pm

    Nixon was very much part of the new deal generation. He wanted to keep the country moving forward, but he left his personal demons get in the way. It may be hard for younger ones to imagine but the Republican party was not crazy extremists at the time. People like Roger Ailes and Buchanan were young little nobodies and water carriers for Nixon that became radicalized because of their experience working for Nixon. Those two blamed the witch hunt on media that just had to be full of evil leftist set out to destroy this country in order to take down such a fine Republican president. The things that were done was because rivers would catch on fire and acid rain was eating the paint off of everything and killing forest and the recognition chemicals caused deaths. Nixon unfortunately was a real piece of work.

    by trkingmomoe on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 7:04pm

    This is true. In fact everyone in Congress was of the new deal period.

     

    All gone now thow.


    by cmaukonen on Sun, 06/10/2012 - 7:25pm

    "You want me to get rid of those leftists?"

     

    "Uncovering The 'Truth' Behind Lennon's FBI Files"

    http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130401193

     

     


    by Resistance on Mon, 06/11/2012 - 7:17am