Nixonland

Turns out I have another commitment this Sunday afternoon, so I’m gonna have to reschedule this week’s book discussion (“The Sky’s the Limit”) to Monday evening, March 14, at 8pm EDT (Eastern Daylight-Savings Time).

The other alternative, since I know we’ll all be sleep-deprived and extra-cranky Monday, would be to set up a “placeholder” post to pop up at the usual time, and let you guys talk amongst yourself without me.

If you have strong opinions either way, please let me know in the comments.

NIXONLAND ReschedulePost + Comments (13)

And yet more evidence (as if it were necessary) that nothing in today’s news is new:

In October [1967] the formation of an anti-antiwar group was announced by WWII hero General Omar Bradley and former senator Paul Douglas.[…] [Members of the new Citizens’ Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam] included Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. They said they were speaking “for the great ‘silent center’ of American life.” Douglas said he’d come up with the idea himself and emphasized, “We are not supporters of a president or of an administration.”
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He lied. The committee had been invented by a White House aide, John Roche, who promised in an “EYES ONLY” memo to the president, “I will leave no tracks.”… The ruse succeeded. The media reported the group as spontaneous. Letters to the editor gushed, “The riff-raff have held center stage long enough and the performances grow more sickeningly disgusting with each added publictiy stunt… ” Maybe the letters had been manufactured at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Roche had promised the president “letter-writing squads.”

Shades of No Labels, as well as you-know-which-group(s)!

Not to mention poor dumb George Romney getting assailed by ‘mysterious pamphlets‘ asserting that “Supreme Court Declares Romney Not Qualified Under the Constitution” because he’d been born while his American parents were living in Mexico. Birtherism, a meme to be raised against whatever this election cycle’s variety of “exotic un-Americanism” might be…

What struck you about these ‘new paradigms’? What do you remember from those days?

(Tech note: You can edit your comment by right-clicking on the ‘Edit’ button to open a new tab/window and working from there. Another FYWP glitch… )

NIXONLAND, Week 6: “Cruise Ship” & “Fed-Up-Niks”Post + Comments (142)

By the beginning of 1967, the war in Vietnam had ended America’s ‘consensus’ for good.

Is there a word that means the opposite of nostalgia — something to describe the acrid taste at the back of one’s tongue when confronted with a vivid retelling of events recalled with loathing?

Although, since I was too young to notice pre-primary candidates outside my parents’ Democratic faith party, I never previously realized how much Willard “Mitt” Romney’s campaigning style owes to his wounded Franklinian vanity. Nixon’s willingness to crawl through whatever rancid sewers of innuendo and misdirection necessary to activate the collective lizard brains of the American voting public seem to have permanently marked young Willard.

(Tech note: You can edit your comment by right-clicking on the ‘Edit’ button to open a new tab/window and working from there. Another FYWP glitch… )

NIXONLAND, Week 5: “The Bombing” & “Summer of Love”Post + Comments (134)

The Times had sacralized a Nixon con job. The fuse had been lit. And now, the fireworks began.

Why there are book groups: It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep reading, because for all his multitudinous flaws, I’ve always had a soft spot for Lyndon Baines Johnson. We won’t see a dispassionate LBJ biography until after the men who still remember their draft lottery numbers are no longer in charge of the universities and the publishing houses, but if Harry Truman can be rehabilitated, I can still hope to live long enough to see the 20th century’s most underrated President re-evaluated as he deserves…

“Fooling the people has become the name-of-the-game for a good many Republicans in Congress,” Johnson said, craning out his neck. “They have no constructive programs to fight inflation. They have no program to ease racial tensions. They don’t know what to do about crime in the streets, or how to end the war in Vietnam. But they do know that if they can scare people, they may win a few votes!”

Swap out the relevant clauses for “crime on Wall Street”” and “end the war in Afghanistan“, and the only difference is that today’s Republicans have the marketing research to know exactly how win votes by scaring people. Speaking of depressing — 45 years and counting, and the Low Information Voters among us are still stampeding staunchly into the slaughterhouse through whichever chute the Republican flaggers spook them.

What do you think?

NIXONLAND, Week 4: “School Was in Session” & “Batting Average”Post + Comments (162)

Herewith Nixon takes great strides in assembling his retrograde cast of trolls, thugs, and shills — Pat Buchanan, Bill Safire, the Haldeman/Ehrlichman ‘twins’, Maurice Stans — the Merry CREEPSters who would do so much damage to our country for the next forty years and counting.

But I didn’t know that the smart money, or at least the large money, was going to the media-friendly figurehead and grinning sociopath now known as St. Ronnie as early as 1966:

Nixon… wanted Ronald Reagan to be in his debt should Reagan win the [California] statehouse. At the same time, conservatives were already talking about Reagan as a presidential prospect — so Nixon stood to benefit mightily if Reagan pledged before the national political press corps not to run in 1968…
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Reagan dashed off a note thanking Nixon for “your very good suggestions”, then jetted east. In Pittsburgh he was the guest of right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. In Gettysburg his host was General Eisenhower — who said “you can bet” Reagan would be a presidential prospect if he beat Pat Brown. (The bastard, Nixon had to be thinking, kicking Dick Nixon once more.)

If we didn’t know what horrors he’d be responsible for, you could almost feel sorry for Tricky Dick, once again out-maneuvered by a fellow Orthogonian with just enough pretty-package “charm” (and so little of Nixon’s prickly self-respect) to sell his favors to the hateful Franklins for all the plaudits denied to RMN no matter how hard he worked or how dirty he was willing to fight…

What say you all?

NIXONLAND III: “Reagan” & “Long Hot Summer”Post + Comments (184)