The Missing Moon Rocks

March 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

The fortieth anniversary last year of the first moon landing by Apollo 11 stirred interest in the mineral artifacts brought back by that mission and the five others that reached the lunar surface. President Nixon, in the months after Apollo 11’s return, sent a number of moon rocks to governments abroad and gave a rock to each of the fifty states. After Apollo 17, the last mission, returned to Earth in December 1972, he arranged for moon rocks to be sent to the heads of state of 135 countries. At the time, no one knew that the rocks brought back would be the last ones to date.

Nearly 40 years later, it turns out that of the 135 rocks sent abroad, the whereabouts of only 25 can now be confirmed. Some of the others were stolen; others were lost by their recipients or by their descendants; and some simply vanished in political turmoil. (In other words, some may turn up on Ebay.)

To cite two such examples, General Francisco Franco of Spain received a moon rock; nowadays his granddaughter reports that her mother somehow misplaced it. And the moon rock sent to Afghanistan was stolen from the country’s national museum when it was looted in 1996, in the chaos between the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the savage rise of the Taliban.

In this country, the moon rocks have been more securely kept. But, as a graduate student tells us in this column from the Nashville Tennessean, while Georgia proudly displays its rock in a museum, the one in Tennessee has been the object of many theft attempts and so is hidden away under lock and key.

But Where’s The Silent E?

March 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Humor, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

“Behind every Watergate there’s a Milhous.”

- Words on a button, manufactured sixteen years before The Simpsons premiered, seen at the Watergate exhibit at the Newseum in Washington, DC.

C-SPAN’s Video Library

March 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

For a number of weeks C-SPAN, the venerable public-affairs cable channel founded by Brian Lamb, has had up a beta version of its video library, featuring many hours of its programming over the last 30-odd years. This week the site put up the full-scale version of the library, and now it’s possible for websurfers to select from over 160,000 hours of the channel’s programming.

And President Nixon is featured in several dozen different programs on the site, including excerpts from White House tapes; an interview conducted by Frank Gannon; a lengthy conversation with Lamb from 1992; footage of RN’s 1972 trip to China; and much else. Just put his name in the search box.

Nickels, Noses, And The Nation

March 19, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Politics, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

After several anxious days of waiting—watching out my office window for the faithful U. S. Postal truck—I finally received mine. Have you gotten yours? I sure hope so, because there isn’t much time—We The People—134 million households of us—have a deadline.

In fact, there is a very special day coming up. It’s called Census Day 2010. And, are you ready for this—it’s scheduled for April 1ST. That’s right, the moment we honor fools and play tricks on everybody is the official day to recognize, if not return, our Census forms. Census Day started out in 1790 as the first Monday in August. It was moved to June in 1830, then to April 15 in 1910, and by 1940 to the first day of April.

Obviously, most Americans are well aware of this decennial process of counting everyone. After all, we’ve been seeing all those very cool commercials. I saw one the other day, having made the mistake of watching a show that hadn’t been dvr’d, that mentioned how important it was to fill out the form and send it back. The spokesperson warned: “You won’t get your fair share, if you don’t send it back.”

Fair share? Fair share of what?

If I read my history correctly—and I do—the whole idea of a census from the beginning had to do with having our fair say. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified and became the ever-since law of the land, it specified in Article 1, Section 2, that a census, or “enumeration” should be scheduled within three years of the first meeting of the Congress, and then every ten years, thereafter. The first such census was conducted in 1790 and it has been repeated every decade since.

Even in its early days the idea of a national head count was not without controversy. There was something at least a little disconcerting about individuals ceding personal information to government, no matter how small or general that data might have been. The purpose of all of this had purely to do with the apportionment of representation in Congress, the various districts being determined by population.

That remains one purpose of the every-decade-nose-count in America, and it is a vitally important one. If an area has lost population, districts are redrawn and Congressional representation adjusted accordingly—and vice versa for growing areas. So the political stakes are real—and high.

But as government has grown over the course of our nation’s history, both in its size and scope, the Census has morphed into the basis for many other things having to do with government programs and federal dollars. And this is where that mention of “fair share” comes in. There are these days various federal initiatives funding programs in states and communities for education, infrastructure, and even health care. Of course, all the money comes from us in the first place. Around the time our nation was in the middle of its fourth census, Alexis De Tocqueville suggested, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” Indeed.

Beyond this, Census data is used by the government in a variety of ways for “policy purposes”—economic and otherwise. This brings to mind another Census 2010 campaign mantra—in fact, it’s the official slogan this time around: “We can’t move forward until you mail it back?”

Forward to where? Forward to what?

I will fill mine out and send it in. I will answer every question truthfully and I won’t waste my time being clever or creative in my responses. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder what all the fuss is about this year. After all, we get a package from the federal government around the first of January each year reminding us of incoming taxes. I never saw a funny commercial about that, largely because most Americans can figure out that this means we have to send something back or be in trouble.

Why then the song and dance about the Census?

Is it because those in charge these days have cool ideas (cool to them) about what they can make of America with new demographic tea leaves to examine? I don’t think one has to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder. Last year, a few eyebrows were raised when the administration announced that it wanted to, in effect, take the Census away from the to-do-list of the Commerce Department, signaling that they wanted command-central for the big count to be in the West Wing. Then there was the issue with ACORN being contracted to work on the big detail-dig. We all know how good they are with numbers, muscle, and the truth.

Questions were raised last year—reasonable ones, in my opinion—about the fact that nowhere on the Census form does it ask about the citizenship of residents. This suggests the possibility that some areas—with large blocs of non-U.S. citizens (legal or otherwise) would have their population and therefore congressional representation impacted by some who have do not have the full rights of American citizenship.

Personally, I am not concerned about getting my fair share based on the Census this year. I am solely concerned with continuing to have my fair say and that the voices heard in our country are those described by “We the People”—in other words, actual citizens.

Furthermore, I’d just as soon keep more of my fair share in the first place, thank you. And “move forward” by myself.

Pelosi-land

March 19, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

The Economist returns to a point that Frank Gannon made a couple of years ago:

WHEN Nancy Pelosi moved to San Francisco, she struggled to find somewhere to live. For months, and with four small children, she lodged with her mother-in-law. So she was relieved when she found a perfect home to rent: big, childproof and with swings in the garden. She was about to seal the deal when she discovered that the owner’s husband was heading east to join the Nixon administration. “We won’t be able to live here,” she said. “I could never live anyplace that was made available because of the election of Richard Nixon.”

If this story were told by a Republican, Lexington would dismiss it as apocryphal. It confirms too neatly the caricature of Mrs Pelosi as a petty and tribal partisan. But the source is Mrs Pelosi’s autobiography, “Know Your Power: a Message to America’s Daughters”. And in case you think it out of character, she adds that her daughter Alexandra “often says to me that she knows everything she needs to know about me by hearing that story.”

RN: The Law And Order Candidate

March 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

Daniel Henninger in today’s Wall Street Journal:

After the Supreme Court’s restrictive police-search decisions in the 1960s, Richard Nixon rode “law and order” into the White House in 1968. Liberals got into trouble during the law and order years because their views on crime seemed an abstraction, elegantly argued but oblivious to the lives of innocent people on the street.

How Could Biden Fix The Senate? Think VP Nixon

March 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

As the Democrats in Congress struggle to path health care reform, the American Prospect’s Bruce Ackerman writes that Vice President Biden should heed wisdom from Vice President Nixon, who used his constitutional power to make the U.S. Senate a more active governing body:

If Biden is willing to exercise the power granted him in the constitution, he could do more than pass health care. He could establish a precedent that would later help him limit the filibuster rules that threaten to deadlock our system of government. He would not be the first vice president to use his power for good in this way.

Consider the history: It now takes 60 Senators (three-fifths) to end a filibuster, but for most of the 20th century, a full two-thirds majority was necessary. Worse yet, unanimous consent was required by Senate rules to change this. The two-thirds provision seemed cemented into the system beyond repair.

Until Richard Nixon came along. When the Senate opened for business in 1957, he took the chair as vice president and urged the chamber to rethink the very foundations of its rules. The Senate traditionally considered itself a continuing body, which automatically inherited its old rules without any formal action.

This was a mistake, Nixon said. Since one-third of its membership is renewed every two years, the Senate should explicitly vote on its rules when it organized itself at the beginning the session. If a simple majority wanted to reduce the two-thirds rule, it was free to do so.

Nixon’s ruling was a bombshell. If his view were accepted by the Senate, 51 Senators could impose a strong civil-rights bill on the South.

This put Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in a tough spot. He was willing to join a broad effort for a weak civil-rights measure, but he was unprepared to sacrifice his Southern colleagues by campaigning against the filibuster. He refused to support Nixon’s pronouncement. Instead, he asked the Senate to table any vote on its rules and follow its traditional practice of simply inheriting the existing rule book in a passive fashion. When Johnson’s motion won the day, he frustrated Nixon’s effort to use the Senate presidency as an engine for filibuster reform.

St. Patrick’s Day 1969

March 17, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Holidays | Leave a Comment 

Gift exchange: Irish Ambassador to the United States William Fay pins a shamrock on RN’s lapel, while RN presents to Fay a Waterford Crystal Vase with an etching of the White House.

On St. Patrick’s Day 1969,  in a ceremony with Irish Ambassador to the United States William Fay, RN took a  look back at his Irish heritage:

“I should point out that in our family, Mrs. Nixon’s father was Irish, and on my side my mother was Irish,” he said in a ceremony in the Roosevelt Room with William P. Fay, then-Ireland’s Ambassador to the U.S.

Year after year, St. Patrick’s Day gives American and Irish leaders a chance to hail the longstanding friendship between their two countries and peoples.

Fox News: What Would Nixon Do On Health Care?

March 17, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | 3 Comments 

Fox News contributor Ellen Ratner at the Fox Forum:

No one thought that President Nixon was a liberal in fact I spent much of my youthful years demonizing him and remember exactly where I was the day he resigned. I was cheering.

However, like most of us humans, Nixon was a mixed bag. A crook perhaps but a brilliant one who had some very good legislation and visions for America.

One of these visions was his health care plan and if he were alive today he would be run out of the Republican party for being too liberal. Spoken like a liberal, President Richard Nixon said in February 1974, “Without adequate health care, no one can make full use of his or her talents and opportunities. It is thus just as important that economic, racial and social barriers not stand in the way of good health care as it is to eliminate those barriers to a good education and a good job.”

His Comprehensive Health Insurance plan was designed around several basic tenants:

1. Balanced, comprehensive range of health insurance benefits for every American.

2. The cost would be no more than an American could afford to pay.

3. Catastrophic Illness Would Be Addressed. He proposed a card with information available at the time such as blood type.

Even Ronald Reagan — not a fan of social programs — suggested in February 1987 that Medicare be expanded to offer catastrophic health insurance to people over 65 in hospitals. His administration also looked into requiring employers to offer catastrophic insurance with health insurance policies. He was roundly criticized by Congressman Claude Pepper for not offering catastrophic coverage more broadly and to cover those in nursing homes.

The numbers do not lie and anyone occupying the Oval Office understands that tackling health care is important to the well being of citizens and the overall health of the economy. It is amazing that the Republicans are fighting President Obama’s plan tooth and nail when so many of their party’s icons tried to get health coverage on the national agenda.

Given this history of Republicans wanting true reform of health care, this week when the heath care vote comes up in the House, I would recommend that the GOP, the party of NO, take a look at some of their previous Yes men — Nixon, and even Reagan, and vote YES.

3.17.1969

March 17, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Holidays | Leave a Comment 

RN’s St. Patrick’s Day message:

IT HAS been said that on Saint Patrick’s Day everyone is an Irishman. As one whose ancestors came to America from Ireland, I wish all the Irish–including those who are Irish for only today–a happy and memorable Saint Patrick’s Day.

The life of this national hero and great saint is filled with the power of love. Having been a slave for 6 years, he knew what it was to love liberty. He loved his country and its people. And he devoted his life to bringing God’s word to the Irish.

These three loves–of liberty, of country, and of God have been the heritage of the Irish people wherever they have been. This heritage has enriched the world, but it has particularly enriched the United States of America. In labor, in politics, in industry, in religion, in law, in military service, the Irish who have made this country their home have contributed greatly to the building of a strong and free nation.

Not to be forgotten is the great cleansing gift of Irish laughter, a gift needed today more than ever before. Recently Father Theodore Hesburgh, president of Notre Dame University, suggested that we in the United States should not be afraid to laugh at ourselves and at our troubles. The Irish have shown through the centuries that a people can be strengthened and sustained by the gift of laughter. They have shown the world that men can be serious without always being solemn.

Saint Patrick has long been recognized as representing the spirit of the Irish people. It is in this spirit, in the spirit of liberty and laughter and love of country and of God, I say to all Irishmen today, whatever their country, Eireann Go Bragh.

3.16.10

March 16, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under First Ladies, History, Nixon family, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Pat Nixon was born ninety-eight years ago today, on 16 March 1912.

My mother was born near midnight on March 16^th, 1912, in a miner’s shack high in the mountains of eastern Nevada.  Although it was almost spring the nights in the copper boom town of Ely were frosty, and one of her brothers, Bill Ryan, remembers being awakened by cold air seeping into the cabin.  When he got out of bed, two-and-a-half-year-old Bill saw his father standing at the front door with a stranger.  The man pocketed five dollars and then he was gone.  Bill was round-eyed with questions.  “You have a little sister now,” his father, Will Ryan, explained.  “That money was to pay the doctor.”

At her mother’ s insistence the baby was called Thelma Catherine.  But thoroughly Irish Will Ryan, whose parents came from County Mayo, circumvented the Thelma.  His daughter was always “Babe” to him.  He decided too that they would observe her birthday on March 17^th, the birthday of Ireland’s patron saint.  When Bill once asked why his sister’s birthday was celebrated a day late, his father answered, “Well, she was there in the morning, my St. Patrick’s Babe in the morning.”

From:  Pat Nixon: The Untold Story by Julie Nixon Eisenhower

RN, in RN, describes how he prevailed on Duke Ellington to play something on the piano at the conclusion of the star-studded 70th birthday celebration the Nixons hosted for him in the East Room in April 1969:

The room was hushed as he sat quietly for a moment.  Then he said he would improvise a melody.  “I shall pick a name — gentle, graceful — something like Patricia,” he said.

And when he started to play it was lyrical, delicate, and beautiful — like Pat.

A quilt square of the Pat Nixon Rose, bred in 1972 by Marie-Louise Meilland.

New Report: Nixon Cancer Initiative Caused Decline In Mortality Rates

March 15, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

According to a report recent released from the American Cancer Society, there has been a precipitous decline since RN made cancer a national priority in 1971:

Cancer mortality has declined since initiation of the “war on cancer,” in 1971, an American Cancer Society study found.

American Cancer Society epidemiologist Ahmedin Jemal and colleagues used nationwide cancer mortality data for 1970-2006. They found for all cancers combined, death rates per 100,000 in men increased from 249.3 in 1970 to 279.8 in 1990, and then decreased to 221.1 in 2006, yielding a relative decline of 21 percent from 1990 — peak year — and a drop of 11 percent since 1970 — baseline year.

Similarly, the death rate from all cancers combined in women increased from 163.0 in 1970 to 175.3 in 1991, and then decreased to 153.7 in 2006, a relative decline of 12 percent and 6 percent from the 1991 and 1970 rates, respectively.

Some reports have cited limited improvement in death rates as evidence that the war on cancer, which was initiated in 1971, has failed. However, many of these analyses fail to account for the dominant and dramatic increase in cancer death rates due to tobacco-related cancers in the latter part of the 20th century, the study said.

“Contrary to the pessimistic news from the popular media, overall cancer death rates have decreased substantially in both men and women whether measured against baseline rates in 1970/71 when the National Cancer Act was signed by President Richard Nixon or when measured against the peak rates in 1990/91,” the researchers said.

“At The Age Of 9, I Decided I Was For Richard Nixon”

March 13, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Book Review | Leave a Comment 

The Wall Street Journal is running an excerpt of Karl Rove’s new book Courage and Consequence:

At the age of 9, I decided I was for Richard Nixon in the 1960 presidential election. I got my hands on a Nixon bumper sticker, slapped it on my bike’s wire basket, and rode up and down the block, as if that alone would get him a vote. Instead it drew the attention of a little girl who lived in the neighborhood. She had a few years and about 30 pounds on me and was enthusiastically for John F. Kennedy. She pulled me from my bicycle and beat the heck out of me, leaving me with a bloody nose and a tattered ego. I’ve never liked losing a political fight since.

Continue reading.

3.12.70

March 12, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

In 1968 RN appointed Roy Ash Chairman of the President’s Council on Executive Organization.  The Ash Council’s 1969 Report recommended the creation of a Domestic Council and an Office of Management and Budget.  Ash became OMB’s Director in 1972.

Forty years ago today, after fourteen months of study and refinement, RN unveiled his Reorganization Plan 2 of 1970, including  the Domestic Council and the Office of Management and Budget.

The Nixon Administration’s innovations regarding executive office management and efficiency and government reorganization have been among its most enduring legacies.  As the Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library examine the administration’s domestic legacy each month in the Nixon Legacy Forums, this March 12th Transmittal Message is the Ur-document outlining the organizational and operational structure that would help effect and enable President Nixon’s New American Revolution.

In his Transmittal Message to Congress,  RN described the problem before presenting his solution.

The past 30 years have seen enormous changes in the size, structure and functions of the Federal Government. The budget has grown from less than $10 bib lion to $200 billion. The number of civilian employees has risen from one million to more than two and a half million. Four new Cabinet departments have been created, along with more than a score of independent agencies. Domestic policy issues have become increasingly complex. The interrelationships among Government programs have become more intricate. Yet the organization of the President’s policy and management arms has not kept pace.

Over three decades, the Executive Office of the President has mushroomed but not by conscious design. In many areas it does not provide the kind of staff assistance and support the President needs in order to deal with the problems of Government in the 1970’s. We confront the 1970’s with a staff organization geared in large measure to the tasks of the 1940’s and 1950’s.

The lessons learned from Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s 1969 Urban Affairs Council, and the Cabinet Committee on the Environment and the Council for Rural Affairs,  were applied to the structuring of the more comprehensive Domestic Council:

Among the specific policy functions in which I intend the Domestic Council to take the lead are these:

• Assessing national needs, collecting information and developing forecasts, for the purpose of defining national goals and objectives.
• Identifying alternative ways of achieving these objectives, and recommending consistent, integrated sets of policy choices.
• Providing rapid response to Presidential needs for policy advice on pressing domestic issues.
• Coordinating the establishment of national priorities for the allocation of available resources.

RN and  Domestic Council Executive Director John Ehrlichman at the Western White House in San Clemente in February 1973.

The creation of the Office of Management and Budget represented the wrenching of the old Bureau of the Budget into the seventh decade of the twentieth century:

However, creation of the Office of Management and Budget represents far more than a mere change of name for the Bureau of the Budget. It represents a basic change in concept and emphasis, reflecting the broader management needs of the Office of the President.

The new Office will still perform the key function of assisting the President in the preparation of the annual Federal budget and overseeing its execution. It will draw upon the skills and experience of the extraordinarily able and dedicated career staff developed by the Bureau of the Budget. But preparation of the budget as such will no longer be its dominant, overriding concern.

While the budget function remains a vital tool of management, it will be strengthened by the greater emphasis the new office will place on fiscal analysis. The budget function is only one of several important management tools that the President must now have. He must also have a substantially enhanced institutional staff capability in other areas of executive management-particularly in program evaluation and coordination, improvement of Executive Branch organization, information and management systems, and development of executive talent. Under this plan, strengthened capability in these areas will be provided partly through internal reorganization, and it will also require additional staff resources.

The new Office of Management and Budget will place much greater emphasis on the evaluation of program performance: on assessing the extent to which programs are actually achieving their intended results, and delivering the intended services to the intended recipients. This is needed on a continuing basis, not as a one-time effort. Program evaluation will remain a function of the individual agencies as it is today. However, a single agency cannot fairly be expected to judge overall effectiveness in programs that cross agency lines–and the difference between agency and Presidential perspectives requires a capacity in the Executive Office to evaluate program performance whenever appropriate.

Nixon Foundation President Interviewed By Hugh Hewitt

March 11, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Foundation | Leave a Comment 

On Thursday, New York Times bestselling author and syndicated radio talk show host Hugh Hewitt aired his show live from the Nixon Library. The program included Congressman Mike Pence, James Lileks and an in-studio appearance by Nixon Foundation President Ron Walker. Hewitt also signed copies of his new book GOP 5.0: Republican Renewal Under President Obama.

Afterward, Hewitt joined Bennett, and fellow conservative talk show host Mike Gallagher for America Unplugged, a special forum presented by KRLA 870 on President Obama’s first year in office.

Watch video of Hewitt’s interview with Walker below:

The President’s Daily News Summary — Part IV

March 11, 2010 by Jon Hoornstra | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, White House | Leave a Comment 

The ‘Best’ Part of a News Summary

Newspaper readers have their favorite sections. Everyone sees the headlines, but readers scatter after that: some to the comics, others to sports and still others straight to the obituaries and the weather.

RN’s news summaries, however, offered a section unlike any other publication. It was the stand-alone page at the back that listed each story broadcast by the television networks and the amount of time allocated — to the minute and second. That time log served both as an “index” of stories as well as a measure of the importance the networks attached to each story. It was important for the White House to know what the networks thought was important because that was a key to public perception. The time log also compensated for a difference between print journalism and broadcast. Newspaper readers immediately see the importance assigned to a story by placement, headlines, and column inches. By contrast, the currency for broadcasters is time and story order. Time allocated to stories was also an indirect indicator of potential bias, though hardly conclusive by itself. Future researchers might find a number of uses for those time sheets. At a minimum they are quick reference to the stories of each day.

A complaint sometimes heard from journalists about news summaries was how the truncated style made them difficult to read, i.e., extensive use of abbreviations and a conscious decision to never tell the president what he already knew (e.g., “RN gave a speech on the economy today … “) or to repeat each newspaper or broadcaster’s introduction to each story. What was included was whatever was unique to each broadcast or print publication, i.e., how each characterized RN’s speech, from both anchors and reporters. Reactions from major political stakeholders were always included. The format and writing style would treat a hypothetical RN speech on the economy like this:

RN speech on the economy led
nets and front pages of most dailies.
ABC anchor Smith led into Jarriel’s
report from the WH by calling it
“a bold move.” NBC’s Chancellor called it
“a plan sure to invite criticism from Democrats”
as he went to Brokaw at the WH. At CBS,
Cronkite said it could be “an exercise in
futility,” an opinion promptly shared by Rather
in a standup from the North Lawn.

A primary goal was to make sure we got the quotes and attributions right.

Another characteristic new readers noticed was how senior administration officials were identified only by initials. The President was always RN, of course, Haldeman was HRH, Ehrlichman was JDE, Buchanan was PJB and Henry Kissinger was HAK. The most prominent person in the White House who was never initialized was the First Lady. Other significant White House personnel were usually referred by last name.

Building a House

News summaries were constructed like a new house, from the ground up. The foundation and “framing” were made up of AP and UPI wire copy put on an oversized work table, sorted by topic. In the late afternoon, editor Mort Allin took the stacks and sorted them into a sequence that he expected the television networks would follow (he was usually right). He stapled AP and UPI wire copy to sheets of yellow legal size paper, while striking out repetitive lines and words. Arrows indicated where the network summaries would be inserted. To confirm accuracy, the White House Communications Agency replayed requested reports over one of two closed-circuit television channels. As writers finished network summaries, Allin’s black pen (sometimes helped by scissors) integrated all the copy. The end result was a scary stack of marked up wire copy and TV summaries, patched together with staples, scotch tape and lots of marker pen arrows to lead the typists to the right place. From an artistic perspective, it was ugly. When someone once told Allin that artist Jackson Pollock would be right at home, Allin continued to work as he said, “I hear he’s a revered artist.”

A squad of typists worked late into the night and miraculously converted all of it into sensible typewritten copy. A game score might be added at the last minute to serve RN’s strong interest in sports. Once corrections were made, RN’s copy was placed in a blue binder sometime after midnight and delivered to a security guard in the West Wing.

The 1972 Reelection – then Watergate

Around sunset on election night Marine One landed on the South Lawn. RN had arrived a few hours before polls would close in the East. I was part of a group of staffers who formed a greeting line at the entrance to the Diplomatic Reception Room. To say we were excited would be an understatement.  We were about to witness a landslide reelection. As RN came under the canopy I said, “We’ve got it, sir.” With a measured smile he said, “We’ll see.” I’m sure there was a trace of doubt in his voice.

But it was a landslide. RN captured more than 47 million votes to George McGovern’s 29.1 million, a difference of nearly 18 million. Morale soared and all hands were ready to pursue second term goals.

That was 38 years ago. Then Watergate became more prominent, sometimes dominant in the news; it seemed to have no end. When researchers read news summaries from that time they will find that we faithfully recorded all the Watergate news and harsh editorial criticisms aimed at RN, including special reviews of headlines and editorials from newspapers across the U.S. As I watched and listened to colleagues, staff morale seemed to erode in slow motion. The purpose and energy I found at the White House in January 1972 was dissipating against a backdrop of investigations, firings and resignations.

One morning in 1973 I learned that Pat Buchanan didn’t get along well with machinery. He came into the office carrying a sheet of paper, turned upside down. He quietly handed it to me and asked if I would copy it for him. “Don’t read it, just bring it back to me,” he added. I have wondered from time to time if I would not have read it if he’d never told me not to read it. But the truth is I couldn’t determine if the copy was readable if I didn’t look at it. So I looked. It was a memo to Ehrlichman that was so short that I grasped the 3 or 4 lines in one glance. Buchanan wrote that he wouldn’t join a group to plan a Watergate strategy. “I believe this would be a waste of my time,” he wrote. I was amazed. “Wow,” I said aloud. It was “wow” because not many people could get away with a blunt “no” to Ehrlichman – and keep their job. Buchanan kept his job, but doesn’t recall it as a memo to Ehrlichman, but Haldeman.

Presumably the memo is in Buchanan’s papers scheduled to arrived in Yorba Linda this year.

Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned in April 1973. Archibald Cox was appointed a special prosecutor in May. And the Senate created a select committee on May 17 to investigate Watergate, the committee chaired by the colorful (and late) Sen. Sam Ervin (D.NC.). I made very few diary entries in those days, but that day was also my 30th birthday. My only entry was, “How long will this go on?”

Summers in Washington are hot and humid. The intensity of the Watergate stories grew during the summers of ’73 and ’74, often making those summers as miserable indoors as out. The mounting tension and emergence of Watergate as the dominant news week after week took a toll. One morning in May our secretary and I were alone when she suddenly slumped down into her chair and quietly wept. I put the AP wire down and sat next to her.

“Why are they doing this to him?” she asked. “When will this ever stop?”

I had no good answer. She pulled herself together and struggled through the day. A few minutes later I walked into Buchanan’s office with pretty much the same question.

“Is there no end to this, Pat?” He was as frustrated as anyone else. “What would you have me do?” he asked rhetorically. No one had answers.

The Last Days

The Senate Watergate Committee issued its final report in June 1974. The House Judiciary Committee voted three Articles of Impeachment in July and RN announced his resignation in a television broadcast on the night of August 8, 1974. Mort Allin, arguably one of the most dedicated and loyal members of RN’s staff, strode out of our offices and into the West Wing where he tracked down a gaggle of reporters (Peter Lisagor among them) clustered in a rear area of the press briefing room. Allin flipped a #2 pencil end-over-end at them, yelling, “Okay you bastards you finally got what you wanted. I hope you’re happy.” Allin returned to the office, grabbed a few things, then drove through the night to his family home in Wisconsin. He never returned to work at the White House, but had a great career at USIA including diplomatic posts in Lagos, Nigeria and Moscow.

With Allin gone, there would be no news summary the next morning, so I made the 20 minute walk to my Q St. apartment, fell into bed exhausted and numb from the trauma of witnessing the fall of a president. But there would be little sleep. At 2:00 a.m. the phone rang with the unmistakable voice of Diane Sawyer [now ABC News anchor], then an assistant to Press Secretary Ron Ziegler. Could I return to the office and prepare “just one more news summary for the President to take on the flight to San Clemente?” she asked. Of course I could. It’s amazing where energy comes from when asked to do something for the president. It was like magic, but I was definitely puzzled that RN would even want a news summary, given all that he had been endured. Perhaps it was just Sawyer who wanted to have a touch of normalcy for RN. I reminded her that the news summary was now a one-man office, but I would do as much as I could. The task was complicated because the networks dropped normal broadcast schedules for live news coverage virtually all day. There would be no obvious starting point. I’ve long forgotten what went into that last summary. I believe my review was limited to ABC and NBC (no CBS). I had to stop by 7:00 a.m. to allow time for the typists to prepare it and get it to the West Wing.

Later that morning, I sat in a chair in the East Room where the staff assembled to hear RN’s farewell. The emotional distress was palpable. I think I saw a tear or two on RN’s face; we all cried inside. It’s a memory I cannot forget. I was too exhausted to go the South Lawn to see RN and family board Marine 1 for the last time. I should have made myself do it.

A unexpected touch of irony came that morning from The Washington Post, one of two papers RN always read for himself. The irony was that the paper’s main account of the resignation was not written by Woodward or Bernstein, but by Carroll Kilpatrick with this lead:

“After two years of bitter public debate over the Watergate scandals, President Nixon bowed to pressures from the public and leaders of his party to become the first President in American history to resign.” Caroll Kilpatrick in the Washington Post, Aug. 9, 1974

Apparent Danger By David Stokes

March 10, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, History | 2 Comments 

In July of 1926, the pastor of America’s first megachurch shot an unarmed man to death in his church office. The preacher, who already had a well-deserved notorious reputation, was indicted for murder and faced death in the Texas electric chair.

It may be the most famous story you have never heard.

Using more than 6,000 pages of newspaper articles, court records, and a variety of other published works, I have written a book about it all, one that vividly recounts the story of the fundamentalist movement’s most colorful and controversial figure—J. Frank Norris.

The book is called, “Apparent Danger: The Pastor of America’s First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920s.”

From his pulpit at First Baptist Church in downtown Fort Worth, Texas, Norris waged war against a culture that was changing dramatically, while demonstrating remarkable skills as a showman, promoter, organizer, and orator. He became a composite personality, blending some Billy Sunday with a touch of P. T. Barnum, and a little William Randolph Hearst thrown in. He also had a Napoleon complex.

Not your typical man of the cloth!

Thousands flocked to his church. Multiplied thousands more listened to him on the radio (he was one of the first preachers to effectively build a large following via new medium). He even published his own tabloid newspaper distributed weekly around the country. When the Pulitzer Prize winning novelist Sinclair Lewis was doing the research for his character Elmer Gantry, he visited Norris’ church. Having for years kept a big file of news clippings about the preacher, Lewis was amazed at how many people went to hear Norris every Sunday.

A lot of people were.

They came in droves. In fact, by the summer of 1926, J. Frank Norris was poised to become America’s premier Protestant leader following the death of William Jennings Bryan. All of it, though, changed in a moment of violence one sweltering hot Saturday afternoon, when Dexter Elliot “D.E.” Chipps walked into J. Frank Norris’ office for the first and last time.

In Apparent Danger, we meet the Mayor of Fort Worth at the time, H. C. Meacham (the city’s municipal airport bears his name to this day), a wealthy department story owner. He had secrets the preacher learned about and exploited. And many other leading citizens of the day in the city on the Trinity River figure prominently in the story, including Amon Carter, the owner/publisher of the American south’s largest newspaper, the Fort Worth Star-Telegram. Carter also owned radio station WBAP. Carter and Meacham were friends of the slain man—even pallbearers at Mr. Chipps’ funeral.

The story of the killing of a Fort Worth business leader by one of its most famous citizens plays out against the backdrop of the 1920s; a turbulent time in the country. It was the age of flappers, Model Ts, Cal Coolidge, Jack Dempsey, Babe Ruth, new movie theaters, and A & P stores popping up everywhere, like Starbucks shops 75 years later. Apparent Danger is a story that weaves in the thrills and agonies of the great post-World War I oil boom in Texas—with Fort Worth as a center of activity. And the story explores how seemingly mundane city politics became a prescription for murder.

This book will be widely released in bookstores in the next few months, but is now being made available (limited release) at at www.apparentdanger.com. If you’d like to order a copy, please use the promo code: NIXON for a special 20% discount.

Issa on RN and President Obama

March 10, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

At National Review Online, Representative Darrell Issa (R-CA) observes that some commentators have favorably likened our current president to Richard Nixon.  He argues that there are key differences, too:

Regrettably, President Obama is failing where Richard Nixon succeeded. Nixon was ever-willing to meet at the negotiating table, but only as a tactic that complemented his overall strategy of engagement. Thus far, POTUS 44 almost exclusively prefers the policy of outstretched hands and summits, without the diplomatic finesse and appreciation for American power that can keep our enemies guessing. Nixon never showed all his cards, and somehow managed to convince the world that he was holding trumps. President Obama, like Carter before him, gives the endless impression that his strongest bet is always a bluff.

Leading The Headlines After A Big New Hampshire Victory

March 9, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under News media, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Larry Harnicsh, the archival writer for the The Los Angeles Times, dug up this March 9, 1960 lead story:

March 9, 1960: Sen. John F. Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Vice President Richard Nixon lead their parties in the New Hampshire primary.  The Associated Press story noted that although the Republican candidate usually runs a 2-1 ratio to the Democratic candidate in New Hampshire, the difference between Kennedy and Nixon was much closer, 53,111 to 38,012.

Also on the jump, jurors resume deliberations in the Finch case after listening to a nine-hour reading of Dr. R. Bernard Finch’s testimony.

The National Interest’s Man In Kurdistan

March 9, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iraq War, Nixon Center, The National Interest | Leave a Comment 

Joost Hiltermann — a Middle Expert at the International Crisis Group — reports for the Nixon Center’s National Interest on developments in the Kurdish north of Iraq, where voters just participated in national elections:

Iraq’s elections are still too early, and too close, to call, but here in Kurdistan enough is clear that one party is exultant and another distressed. The Patriotic Union of Kurdistan (PUK) of Iraqi President Jalal Talabani appears to have bounced back from the brink of political extinction following the rough beating it received from a group of former party cadres in Kurdistan’s regional parliamentary elections last July. Calling in particular for an end to corruption, these former party officials coalesced into a reform movement called Goran, or “change,” which walked away with 25 percent of the vote in those polls.

For now, however, the PUK can heave a sigh of relief as early returns show that the party held its own against Goran. The PUK ran in alliance with the Kurdistan Democratic Party (KDP) of regional President Masoud Barzani, while Goran ran alone. In Sulaimaniya governorate, the heartland of both the PUK and Goran (and where Goran trounced the PUK in July) the PUK appears to have won everywhere except in the city of Sulaimaniya itself. In the town of Koya, where Talabani was born, the PUK squeaked out a victory after its humiliating defeat there seven months ago. And Goran activists acknowledge that the PUK far outpaced them in the important governorate of Kirkuk.

Observers attributed Goran’s relatively poor showing to a number of factors. The main one may be that Kurdish voters like the idea of reform, and trust Goran deputies, who have stood up in the regional parliament and challenged the ruling parties with a zeal previously unknown in Kurdistan, to produce it. But that’s inside the Kurdistan region. In the federal parliament in Baghdad, they prefer their representatives to present a unified nationalist Kurdish front unspoiled by unruly Goran politicians seeking to distinguish themselves from their rivals and possibly even—gasp!—making separate deals with Arab parties on issues of Kurdish national interest.

Goran will therefore have to go back to the drawing board and start building a popular movement that reaches beyond its narrow base in the Suleimaniya urban professional class. Its next challenge will be provincial elections in the Kurdistan region at the end of October.

As for the PUK, it dodged a bullet. Long an equal to the KDP, the PUK has seen its influence wane over the past couple of years owing to internal dissension and a looming crisis over who will eventually succeed Talabani. Ever since an internecine conflict in the 1990s, its relationship with the KDP has been defined by a secret strategic agreement that provides for an equitable sharing of power and wealth. As the PUK began to falter, however, some in the KDP began to question this agreement’s utility and had spoken of cutting their partner loose. Such a move could have serious consequences for the region’s stability, which is far from assured. For now, the strategic agreement holds, but the succession crisis remains and Goran is waiting for the next opportunity to strike again.

Fifty Years Ago Today: The New Hampshire Primary

March 8, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Fifty years ago today, on March 8, 1960, Richard Nixon and John Kennedy won their parties’ New Hampshire presidential primaries.  The anniversary is an occasion to ponder how the presidential nomination process has changed.  In 1960, there were only 16 primaries.  In other states, as we can read in The Making of the President 1960, party organizations or leaders picked delegates.  In 2008, most states had primaries while the remainder had caucuses open to rank-and-file party voters.  Fifty years ago, the primaries were just starting in early March.  In 2008, most had already taken place, with New Hampshire voting on January 8.

Barack Obama–Administrator: A Story Of Tomorrow

March 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Healthcare, History, Political Philosophy, Politics, Presidents, Public Opinion, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Did you know that the word, “manufacture” is from the Latin and literally means: “to make by hand?” Of course, the term has long since been connected with things made by machines. The word no longer means what it meant.

Language—any language—is like that. “Brave” used to mean “cowardly.” Really. And “nice?” Well, it originally meant, “not to know,” or another way to say someone was ignorant.

Nice.

Etymologists—those who study word origins and meanings—tell us that words change for several reasons: generalization—specialization—degeneration, to name a few. Now, apparently, we must add politicization to the list of word-changers. Most of the time, such linguistic morphing is subtle and hardly noticed. But right now before our eyes, a very good word is becoming something quite unlike what it originally meant.

Reconciliation—a word rich in nuance, meaning, and historic impact; a term that has for centuries indicated the removal of barriers and the restoration of relationship—may be rendered virtually meaningless soon. What is now being planned for the whole health care fix in this country, all other avenues having failed those who just know they know better than the rest of us, will likely come to pass in some form via a political process now known famously as Reconciliation.

George Orwell would be proud. What once meant the end of hostility and all parties coming together in good will, soon will likely stand for the raw exercise of party and power politics. And in the process it will leave in its wake anything but the fruit of real reconciliation. In fact, all indications are that we are on the verge of entering a fierce period of vituperative political conflict—one even worse than what we have recently seen.

Yes, I understand that, in this case, the word is being used in an accounting sense. But when you “reconcile” your bank statement, isn’t that also called “balancing?” Where’s the balance in such a political maneuver?

Of course, the idea—and in fact, the practice—of reconciliation in matters of legislation has been around for more than 35 years. And the process was used in the past by Republicans, giving some credence to the charge of hypocrisy now being hurled by the Democrats. But a closer look at matters handled in the past via the Byrd-rule suggests that nothing prior even comes close to comparing to what is being suggested and orchestrated now—a takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

It’s all part of that “fundamental transformation of America” that was being talked about in 2008.

In the past, the opposite of reconciliation—in fact, a key reason for the term’s existence in language—was alienation. Now, however, reconciliation will not be healing alienation, rather it will be exacerbating it. And what is striking and enduringly frustrating about the whole thing is that at every turn Americans have been sending not-so-subtle signals to those breathing the rarified air inside the Beltway. The message has been consistent and persistent: Read our lips—no new Health Care. The things that are weak in our current system can be fixed, not by moving away from market-based economics, but by creating incentives for the market to fix itself.

One particular thing that makes my skin crawl every time I hear it is this idea that under Obamacare all Americans who are happy with their current health care can keep things as they are. While theoretically (i.e., outside the actual real world) this may sound reasonable and reassuring, the facts speak otherwise.

Most Americans did not choose their current coverage—their employers did—or, at least, some entity within the business, corporation, or union organizational structure. That means that decisions about future coverage will not be in the hands of employees, but rather such decision makers. And if a business owner or CEO sees a better deal, or feels pressure to alter the plan—does anyone really think a mere employee has much of a say?

Why, then, the big push in the face of overwhelming political ill will? The only reasonable answer is that those pushing the Obamacare agenda have made up their minds that they know best and that those opposing the measures are simply ignorant. In other words—it’s arrogance.

And when political arrogance meets perceived public ignorance, it can only mean one thing: The spirit of Woodrow Wilson is back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Like the professor who knew better way back then, Mr. Obama and company honestly feel that if this thing can be passed, even by the thinnest of razor margins, Americans will ultimately like enough of the plan once implemented that they’ll tend to embarrassingly forget what all the fuss was about. They are also banking on the fact that once a generation grows accustomed to a certain entitlement, it is almost impossible to reverse it.

But Woodrow Wilson learned a thing or two the hard way about the folly of political arrogance. Self-assurance, crusader-zeal, and personal charisma can only carry a politician so far. History shows that leaders who rely on such traits long-term are eventually devoured by them. One day the cheering actually does stop.

Interestingly, such arrogance also smacks of something out of a work of fiction that flew close to the flame of fact nearly 100 years ago. Published anonymously in 1912, the year Mr. Wilson was elected as the 28th President of the United States, was the novel “Philip Dru—Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935.” The author was actually Edward House (he was referred to by the purely honorific “Colonel” House), a man who became Woodrow Wilson’s alter ego—he was the Rahm Emanuel of the day, only much better at it.

The book tells the story of a man, Philip Dru, who becomes the dictator of America—but as a despot he was of the benevolent sort (I told you it was fiction). He was a leader who took unprecedented power, only doing so for the good of the people. Father knows best. In the book’s dedication, House wrote:

“This book is dedicated to the unhappy many who have lived and died lacking opportunity, because, in the starting, the world-wide social structure was wrongly begun.”

One gets the feeling that the ghosts of Philip Dru, Edward House, not to mention Woodrow Wilson are not merely haunting the halls of the White House these days.

In fact, they’re part of the team.

A Warrior And A Statesman Laid To Rest

March 4, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under In Memoriam, Military, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

On Tuesday morning at the Basilica of the Immaculate Conception, on the campus of Catholic University in Washington, about 800 mourners attended a funeral Mass for Gen. Alexander Haig. Among the priests conducting the liturgy was his brother, Father Francis Haig. The mourners included two of Gen. Haig’s fellow former Secretaries of State, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger and Gen. Colin Powell; Secretary of Defense Robert Gates; Sen. Joseph Lieberman; former National Security Advisor Robert “Bud” McFarlane; former US Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton; former HEW Secretary Joseph Califano; comedian Mort Sahl; and many who have served or are serving in America’s armed forces.

During the Mass, Dr. Kissinger (as reported by Richard Szczepanowski of Catholic News Service) spoke about the service Gen. Haig rendered to the nation in helping to arrange the transition from one Presidency to another at a time of national tumult:

“He served as chief of staff in a diseased presidency,” Kissinger said. “He did not want the job, but he did not turn it down out of the reverence he had for the institution of the presidency.”

“At the end, Al was essential in helping this country through its greatest crisis since the Civil War,” Kissinger said. “Americans will remember Al with a special gratitude.”

Following the Mass, Gen. Haig was interred at Arlington National Cemetary, where his brother gave a blessing as his remains were lowered into the soil where so many fellow patriots and heroes rest. Here is a short article about the burial, accompanied by a two-minute video of the burial service. The American Spectator’s Quin Hillyer has written this account of the Basilica service. And here is the U.S. Army News Service’s press release about the burial.

Nixon-In-China Takes Center-Stage In Vancouver

March 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under China, Culture, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

A giant pillar is prepared for the set of Nixon In China, which will kick off the 2010 season of the Sydney Opera House.

John Adams’s opera will inaugurate in the backdrop of the 2010 Winter Olympics and the golden anniversary of the Vancouver Opera House, a perfect tribute to city at this time, opera house General Manager James Wright says, because of its themes of “internationalism” and “cultures moving closer together.”

Opera is known for being larger than life, but set designer Erhard Rom has never had to make a Boeing 707 land on-stage before.

In the opening scene of Nixon in China, he’ll do just that. A replica of the Spirit of ’76, the presidential jet that carried Richard Nixon on his 1972 diplomatic mission to Beijing, will touch down on a giant runway with its nose pointed toward the audience.

“I feel the landing of the 707 has to feel like an absolutely stunning moment,” says the artist, who’s helping design the new production for its Canadian premiere by the Vancouver Opera, which runs this Saturday (March 13) to March 20 at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre. Speaking from his New Jersey home, Rom explains that he worked from actual plans of the airplane—and then enlarged it a bit “so it feels like the Titanic arriving”. “What struck me,” says Rom, “is that, in some ways, the piece is almost Wagnerian in scale—almost epic.”

The opera he’s speaking about, composed by John Adams to a libretto by poet Alice Goodman, is often described as a minimalist masterpiece. But there is nothing minimalist about Vancouver Opera’s mounting to mark both its golden anniversary season and the Vancouver 2010 Cultural Olympiad.

Vancouver Opera general manager James Wright admits it’s a big investment to commission a new production—not to mention one that has a chorus of 40. But Nixon in China, he says, seemed perfect for this city at this time, with the world gathered here.

“It’s about internationalism; it’s about cultures moving closer together,” says Wright, whose team is hosting an entire speaker series around the opera and Canada-China relations in the weeks before opening. “Then there is the fact that Beijing had hosted the 2008 Olympics, and the fact that Vancouver is seen as the North American centre for Asia.”

Michael Cavanagh, the acclaimed Toronto-based director Wright brought in to create the major new production, could not agree more. In fact, sitting in the rehearsal hall at the downtown Holy Rosary Cathedral, where right outside the doors people are decked out in flag gear and heading to a hockey game, he can’t help but make direct parallels with the Olympic Games.

“The show is a psychological examination of people involved in momentous events and how those can overwhelm and overtake them. And then how we need to wait and step back for history to tell us what it all meant,” Cavanagh says. “These couple of weeks in Vancouver are all about huge moments. This is one of the biggest events in this city’s history. But how is it going to be remembered?”

The show, he stresses, is much more than a dry chronicling of the historic visit between Nixon and Mao Zedong (sung by baritone Robert Orth and heldentenor Alan Woodrow, respectively) and the opening of the Far East. Yes, the opera depicts actual events: the arrival of Nixon and his cortege, the first uncomfortable meeting in Mao’s study and the huge banquet that followed it, as well as Pat Nixon’s tour of rural China. But it is just as much about the personalities and personal histories of the main players, not just Richard and Pat Nixon and Mao and his wife Chiang Ch’ing, but their advisers Henry Kissinger and Zhou Enlai.

The result defies the one-note image of Nixon as the Watergate crook, or even as the aloof apologist of the recent film Frost/Nixon. “This piece definitely does not treat him like a villain,” Cavanagh says. “This opera is a fantastic opportunity for us to get to know the giddy Nixon, the playful Nixon, the contemplative Nixon, the jokester, and the romantic. And it’s the same with Mao: at the time of the visit, Mao was kind of doddering.…But the opera gives us a chance to see Mao as a young man, doing a silly little jig at one point; he’s also romantically involved, even sexually involved—because he was a sensualist as well as a great thinker. They were complex—we’re all complex people.”

Just as the events go beyond the literal, delving into the psychologies of the characters, the design is stylized—beyond that initial jet landing, that is. The perspective and scale are exaggerated, with the characters lined up in front of huge triangular pillars painted with their portraits by the third act. The colour palette is a bold red, white, and blue. “We visit locations in a literal way, but the scope of the piece is so large, we wanted to go more abstract,” says Rom, who used architecture and news photos, among other things, in designing the production. “And then by the third act, you’re really into abstraction, because now we’re really all the way into the land of these people’s minds.”

Throughout the opera, a TV film crew captures the action on-stage, with the video replayed at key moments. “The great unblinking eye and the reductive power of television was something that Richard Nixon was all too aware of,” Cavanagh comments

The Patron Saints of Spontaneity

March 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

In the Guardian, Alan Shroeder — nostalgic of the first televised Presidential debate — argues that the groundwork for the British Prime Ministerial debates is beneficial to the candidates, but bad for democracy:

How paranoid is this document? An entire section is devoted to reaction shots, one of the most terror-inducing of all production details for TV debaters. This fear of cutaways dates all the way back to the patron saints of televised debates, John F Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and their contrasting visages in 1960. The current document shifts this concern to the live audience and the possibility of unflattering cutaway shots of individuals while a candidate is speaking, as though a single misbegotten grimace on the part of a random citizen could turn the entire election.

Although the goal of having British voters pose the questions is laudable, the positioning of the three debaters behind lecterns creates a needless visual obstacle. The entire point of a town hall format is to encourage interaction between politicians and their constituents. The debates are hampered not only by the physical barrier of lecterns, but also the process of determining which of the audience’s questions will merit inclusion. Requiring the participants to submit questions in advance sucks a lot of oxygen out of the debate, underscoring the degree to which politicians fear the unknown.

Pat Nixon’s Goodwill Mission to Comfort a Nation

March 2, 2010 by Jimmy Byron | Filed Under International Affairs, Pat Nixon, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

PN climbs through rubble in the town of Yungar during her goodwill mission to Earthquake devastated Peru in May 1970.

As most know, a massive 8.8 magnitude earthquake struck the South American coastal nation of Chile last week. Thanks to moderately-strict building codes, many of the towns were not as affected as towns in Haiti had been just over a month ago. Still, the death toll in Chile has reached over 700 and continues to rise.

The Chile earthquake brings to mind the 1970 earthquake in Peru, north of the Chilean quake’s epicenter. To this day, the 7.9 magnitude disaster is known as the Great Peruvian Earthquake. Populated towns as well as remote mountain villages were literally obliterated, only to be covered in tons of rock. The death toll reached over 70,000 and thousands more were critically injured.

First Lady Patricia Nixon read about the disaster in Peru and told her husband, the President of the United States, “I just wish there were something I could do to help.” The President suggested that she fly to Peru to personally deliver relief supplies – and that she did. She coordinated efforts with volunteer organizations to gather food and other supplies to aid the suffering people.
Mrs. Nixon lifted off aboard a presidential jet from El Toro Marine Base, Orange County, with a C-135 cargo plane in tow, carrying nine tons of relief supplies. Upon her arrival at the Lima airport, she was greeted by over 3,000 cheering Peruvians. The First Lady remarked at the airport, “The United States would like you to know … that we will continue to assist you as you complete your reconstruction.”

Mrs. Nixon was joined by Peruvian First Lady Consuelo Velasco as she flew in a small cargo plane deep into the Andes Mountains to witness the destruction and personally deliver supplies to the people. After climbing over rubble to reach the suffering citizens, Mrs. Nixon said, “The destruction was much more incredible than I had read. It is all so saddening. The people are so brave. We are going to try harder to help them.” She distributed blankets and care packages, and comforted hundreds of the over 500,000 displaced refugees in the affected towns. When prompted to rest and relax, she remarked, “I didn’t come here to sit.” Mrs. Velasco commented that Mrs. Nixon “brought a new spirit to the people who have received her with much happiness.”

Never before had a First Lady undertaken a mercy mission that resulted in such diplomatic side effects. Peruvian President Juan Velasco had been leaning toward anti-American, pro-Soviet foreign policies, but his press secretary remarked that the President was “very touched by the gesture of President Nixon in sending his wife. If he could have sent the whole U.S. Air Force, it would not have meant as much as sending his wife.” One Peruvian newspaper, La Prensa, noted that Peru could never forget the “messenger of material aid and support” who was Pat Nixon. It continued: “In her human warmth and identification with the suffering of the Peruvian people, she has gone beyond the norms of international courtesy and has endured fatigue in an example of solidarity and self denial.”

Mrs. Nixon was awarded the Grand Cross of the Order of the Sun by the Peruvian President, the highest Peruvian honor and the oldest official decoration in the Western Hemisphere.

Upon her return, she worked closely with the Taft Commission for Peruvian Relief and briefed the Peru Earthquake Voluntary Assistance Group in Washington on her encounters and the needs of the Peruvian people. Her mission of goodwill gained widespread recognition.

As President and Mrs. Nixon did, let us help the victims of the Chilean disaster.

The Price We Pay

February 28, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Writing at Psychology Today, Ira Rosofsky — a Connecticut psychologist — says that RN’s plan for health reform would have saved the American people $1 trillion per year:

And the Commonwealth Fund points to the price we are currently paying for not enacting comprehensive health care in the past. Richard Nixon had a plan for health care in the 1970s, and Bill Clinton in the 1990s. If we had enacted the Nixon plan-based on a cost reduction of 1.5 annually in costs-we could be spending $1 trillion less a year. Clinton’s plan would have saved us $500 billion annually.

Bob Brown Remembers

February 28, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Civil rights, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

Today concludes Black History Month 2010, and the Greensboro (North Carolina) News & Record marks it with an interview with Bob Brown, who was the White House aide in charge of minority affairs in President Nixon’s first term. He recalls:

When Brown [after Election Day 1968] entered the room where Nixon was holding court, the president-elect introduced him to everyone as, “One of my new assistants.”

When the others left, Nixon got down to business.

“He said, ‘I know you weren’t looking for a job. I need you. There will be no impediments to our relationship … you will have access and in Washington everything is built around access.’ He said if you want to get anything done, you’ve got to go to Washington. He said if you want to get done all those notes you sent me, you’ve got to come to Washington with me.”

And from his office in the White House complex — with four secretaries and three assistants — Brown went about fulfilling some of those promises, and other needs he saw firsthand, such as finding a funding tap for financially struggling black colleges trying to educate future leaders[...]

Nixon, who Brown said got little recognition for efforts to improve race relations, always backed him up.

“He trusted my judgment,” Brown said.

Brown wouldn’t change a thing about his time on staff with Nixon.

“It was four years and two months of incredible,” he said.

Al Haig In Conversation

February 27, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Cold War, International Affairs, Middle East, Military, News media, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

In 2000, James Rosen of Fox News interviewed Gen. Alexander Haig for his biography of John Mitchell. That book, The Strong Man, was published eight years later. But it turns out that, in the course of the three-hour conversation, the General talked of many other things besides Watergate, with his customary verve and forcefulness, and in tomorrow’s Washington Post, there’s an article by Rosen in which Gen. Haig ranges from Vietnam to America’s policy toward Lebanon to the first Gulf War. Also worth reading is the comment on the article by Ken Hughes of the Miller Presidential Center at the University of Virginia.

Running Against Hooverville–The Presidential Blame Game

February 26, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Election 2012, George W. Bush, History, Obama administration, Politics, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 20 Comments 

In the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation accepting the total blame for what had happened. He referred to an old saying about victory having a thousand fathers, but defeat being an orphan, and identified himself as the responsible officer in the government. Even though the whole initiative had been first devised and planned by the Eisenhower administration.

JFK’s poll numbers moved dramatically—up. There is something refreshing—though sadly rare—about a political leader saying “My bad.”

In the 19th century, a British politician stood in Parliament and remarked that trying to get his particular point across was akin to flogging a dead horse to make it pull a load. We call this beating a dead horse today. And every time President Obama or a member of his administration plays the blame Bush card, he is beating that proverbial dead horse. It is also getting really old.

Everyone on Facebook has an information page and there is an entry labeled “relationship status.” Some mark “married” or “in a relationship,” others say “single.” Then there are those who put: “It’s complicated.” When it comes to Presidents and those who come before or after, it’s really complicated. Some chief executives have managed to rise above the propensity for personal paltriness—others, not so much.

And it goes way back.

Thomas Jefferson, who ran a particularly aggressive campaign against former-and-would-be-again-much-later friend, John Adams, in the 1800 race, continued the attack on his predecessor well into his own presidency. He regularly smeared Mr. Adams for maladministration of presidential powers, though apparently willing to benefit from things Adams had done that he had opposed at the time. The anti-military, anti-big government Jefferson, had no qualms about using navy Adams had built (opposed by TJ) to deal with the Barbary Pirates; nor did he hesitate to use broad executive powers in the whole matter of the Louisiana Purchase—the kind of action candidate Jefferson would have likely decried as tyrannical.

Democrat Andrew Jackson wouldn’t even pay a courtesy call on outgoing President John Quincy Adams. Mr. Adams then refused to attend his successor’s inauguration. Jackson spent significant time in office tearing down his predecessor—blaming Adams and the whole fierce campaign for his wife’s death after the election. That one was very complicated.

Speaking of Presidents and courtesy calls, Dwight Eisenhower and his wife, Mamie, sat famously in the car under the White House portico, snubbing the Trumans. But when it came to blaming his predecessor for the mess he inherited, he chose the path of just ignoring and dismissing Mr. Truman like the junior military officer he saw him to be.

Abraham Lincoln had great reasons and resonant issues to use to place blame for the country on the verge of disintegration he inherited in 1861 because his predecessor, James Buchanan, did virtually nothing to deal with the brewing national disaster. But Mr. Lincoln seemed to have a capacity to rise above cheap politics—dealings with his own Cabinet-made-of-would-be-rivals also demonstrated the 16th President’s ego tempering skills.

Of course, many times Presidents have succeeded men from the same party and, though they might have wanted to really make the guy before look bad, they realized that it was political suicide. Martin Van Buren could certainly have blamed the panic of 1837 on Andrew Jackson, who destroyed the National Bank, but party realities forbade it.

Warren Harding didn’t spend a lot of time or energy blaming Woodrow Wilson for the nation’s woes in the early 1920s. Ronald Reagan used Jimmy Carter as a punching bag for a short while, but quickly moved on. Even Richard Nixon didn’t waste time passing the buck back to LBJ. In fact, their relationship was remarkably good, considering their history.

Now, Franklin Roosevelt—well that’s another story. He used predecessor Herbert Hoover as his whipping boy for at least a decade—and one wonders if this example is the one that resonates with the current administration.

FDR ran a skillful campaign against Hoover in 1932, allied with the forces of economics and history in play at the time. Hoover was an unpopular president as a result of the onset of the Great Depression. Once hailed for his genius at organization and engineering, his name was even part of the vocabulary signifying good economy, as in the popular 1920 Valentine’s Day card:

“I’ll Hooverize on dinner,
On fuel and tires too,
But I’ll never learn to Hooverize
When it comes to loving you.”

By 1932, however, his star had fallen and shantytowns across America were dubbed, “Hoovervilles.” However, today’s prevalent narrative that Hoover was a do-nothing president and then the great activist Roosevelt rode to the White House on a white horse, is at best an apocryphal exaggeration—at worst, it’s a lie.

In fact, Mr. Roosevelt, famous smile and all, was simply an effective and cynical politician who knew how to practice demagoguery with the best of them. He was also a very petty man. One example is in the naming—better, renaming—of the Hoover Dam on the Colorado River. It had been named for Herbert Hoover in 1931 not just because he was the President at the time (there were already dams named for Calvin Coolidge and Theodore Roosevelt extant), but also because he had been a major driving force in the project since the early 1920s during his highly successful tenure as Secretary of Commerce. He, being an engineer by training and trade, even played a crucial role in how it would work and be constructed—effectuating something called the Hoover Compromise allowing the project to go forward at a critical juncture.

After his humiliating defeat by the Roosevelt juggernaut in November of 1932, Mr. Hoover stopped at the construction site of the dam and remarked for the press:

“It does give me extraordinary pleasure to see the great dream I have so long held taking form in actual reality of stone and cement. It is now ten years since I became chairman of the Colorado River Commission—This dam is the greatest engineering work of its character ever attempted by the hand of man—I hope to be present at its final completion as a bystander. Even so, I shall feel a special personal satisfaction.”

But by the time the project was completed in 1936, it had been renamed by the Roosevelt administration as the Boulder Dam and Hoover was never invited to be part of any festivities. Of course, by that time Mr. Roosevelt was running for reelection against Republican nominee Alf Landon of Kansas.

But FDR was really running against Hoover one more time.

The other day, during that good-for-nothing White House meeting on health care, there was a telling exchange between President Obama and Senator John McCain. He told McCain that the campaign was over. He meant their campaign.

The battle against all things George W. Bush, however, still rages. And most likely this will continue through the 2012 campaign. After all, if you can’t run on a record of accomplishment—find a dead horse to beat and hope the people are dumb enough not to notice the abuse and absurdity.

The big question is: Will George W. Bush be as durable a whipping boy as was Herbert Hoover—or better yet—is Barack Obama as arrogant, cynically petty, or politically cunning as was Franklin D. Roosevelt?

Dr. Kissinger’s Tribute to General Haig

February 25, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under In Memoriam, Nixon Administration figures, U.S. History, Vietnam | 2 Comments 

At Time’s site today, Dr. Henry A. Kissinger writes about Gen. Alexander Haig’s passing:

Societies become rich through ingenuity and hard work. But they become great because they produce men and women who lift them beyond the moment. Alexander Haig, who served his country during turbulent times, was such a person. I recruited him for the National Security Council staff as my deputy. One of his principal tasks was to help end a war that President Richard Nixon had inherited and in which Al had fought. It proved a heartrending journey, especially for a soldier. But with typical skill and dedication, Al carried out the many vital missions entrusted to him, including the dual tasks of extricating America from war while preserving the nation’s honor.

Diane Sawyer Speaks About Richard Nixon

February 25, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under News media, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

As many of TNN’s readers know, Diane Sawyer, the veteran newswoman who now anchors ABC’s World News Tonight, spent the 1970s working in Richard Nixon’s White House, then, after his resignation from the Presidency, in San Clemente as his assistant for his Memoirs.

In her thirty years on network television, Ms. Sawyer’s occasionally been asked, on the air and in newspaper and magazine interviews, about her years with RN. But I don’t recall any interview that’s focused completely on her work for him – until now.

Today, Parade magazine published a somewhat short but still highly interesting Q-and-A in which Ms. Sawyer speaks about her impressions of RN, and especially how he viewed journalists. Here’s a representative quote:

“I think he thought that, institutionally, journalists – and I think you can argue with some cause – were not going to be on his side, for a number of reasons, not just political ones. He just didn’t have the easily accessed charm that journalists love so. If you read his diaries, he writes at one point about John Kennedy and what it must have been like to be John Kennedy and walk into a room and take it over. He was much more of an interior person who had to will himself in some ways to be a public person. I don’t think it was about my having gone to join the dark side or the enemy. I think it was more than anything I was someone he knew and understood who could bring him word back about this other craft was like.”

Nixon, Obama, and Health Insurance Price Controls

February 25, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Healthcare, History, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Steve Chapman writes of the president’s proposal to control health insurance premiums:

Barack Obama has often modeled his policies on Franklin Roosevelt. Lately, though, he’s been coming across more as Richard Nixon Lite.

In 1971, fed up with the steady rise of wages and prices, Nixon had a big idea: Attack inflation by imposing strict controls on wages and prices. A federal board was created to establish guidelines and enforce compliance, on the assumption that government officials were wise enough to decide the correct price for millions of products and the right wage for millions of workers.

This analogy is not encouraging.  As mentioned here last year, RN  cknowledged in his memoirs that price controls had been a mistake:

What did America reap from its brief fling with economic controls?  The August 15, 1971 decision to impose them was politically necessary and immensely popular in the short run.  But in the long run I believe that it was wrong.  The piper must always be paid, and there was an unquestionably high price for tampering with the orthodox economic mechanisms.

Bacevich: How About Some Nixonian Boldness

February 24, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under International Affairs, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Scholar and retired soldier, Andrew Bacevich, wants U.S. leaders to be bold and abandon designs for redefining NATO’s mission:

When Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s famous assessment of the situation in Afghanistan leaked to the media last year, most observers focused on his call for additional U.S. troops. Yet the report was also a scathing demand for change in NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF). “ISAF will change its operating culture…. ISAF will change the way it does business,” he wrote. “ISAF’s subordinate headquarters must stop fighting separate campaigns.” The U.S. general found just about nothing in ISAF’s performance to commend.

But McChrystal’s prospects for fixing ISAF run headlong into two stubborn facts. First, European governments prioritize social welfare over all other considerations — including funding their armed forces. Second, European governments have an exceedingly limited appetite for casualties. So the tepid, condition-laden European response to McChrystal’s call for reinforcements — a couple of battalions here, a few dozen trainers there, some creative bookkeeping to count units that deployed months ago as fresh arrivals — is hardly surprising.

This doesn’t mean that NATO is without value. It does suggest that relying on the alliance to sustain a protracted counterinsurgency aimed at dragging Afghans kicking and screaming into modernity makes about as much sense as expecting the “war on drugs” to curb the world’s appetite for various banned substances. It’s not going to happen.

If NATO has a future, it will find that future back where the alliance began: in Europe. NATO’s founding mission of guaranteeing the security of European democracies has lost none of its relevance. Although the Soviet threat has vanished, Russia remains. And Russia, even if no longer a military superpower, does not exactly qualify as a status quo country. The Kremlin nurses grudges and complaints, not least of them stemming from NATO’s own steady expansion eastward.

So let NATO attend to this new (or residual) Russian problem. Present-day Europeans — even Europeans with a pronounced aversion to war — are fully capable of mounting the defenses necessary to deflect a much reduced Eastern threat. So why not have the citizens of France and Germany guarantee the territorial integrity of Poland and Lithuania, instead of fruitlessly demanding that Europeans take on responsibilities on the other side of the world that they can’t and won’t?

Like Nixon setting out for Beijing, like Sadat flying to Jerusalem, like Reagan deciding that Gorbachev was cut from a different cloth, the United States should dare to do the unthinkable: allow NATO to devolve into a European organization, directed by Europeans to serve European needs, upholding the safety and well-being of a Europe that is whole and free — and more than able to manage its own affairs.

As with Nixon and Sadat and Reagan, once the deed is done everyone will ask: Why didn’t we think of that sooner?

China Mourns The Passing Of Al Haig

February 23, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under China, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Just one day before the thirty-eight anniversary of RN’s historic trip to China, Gen. Alexander Haig passed away. Today the Chinese are remembering him for his work in strengthening Sino-American relations:

BEIJING: China on Monday expressed “deep condolence” over the death of former US Secretary of State Alexander Haig for his “positive contribution” to the China-US relationship.

“We deeply mourn over General Haig’s death and express sincere condolences to his family,” Foreign Ministry spokesman Qin Gang said Monday.

“General Haig has always endeavored to promote the China-US friendship, and has made positive contribution for the development of the bilateral relations,” Qin said.

The veteran politician passed away at 85 on February 20 at Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, Maryland, from complications associated with an infection.

Haig, who was born in December, 1924, is a retired Army four-star general and served as the State Secretary under President Ronald Reagan form January 22, 1981 to July 5, 1982. He also has served as a top adviser to former presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford.

On January 1972, Haig paid his first China visit to make preparation for Nixon’s historic visit to China.

In 2009 when China and the United States commemorated the 30th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations, Haig reportedly said he had visited China for more than 50 times since 1972 and would like to be a supporter of the development of China-US relations.

Your World On General Haig

February 22, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Neil Cavuto on his Common Sense segment:

By now, you’ve no doubt heard the news that America lost a hero this past weekend. Alexander Haig has died.

You’ve heard how this four-star general and former NATO commander served three presidents. How he shepherded Richard Nixon and us through that resignation. And prematurely told the world he was in charge right after Ronald Reagan’s near assassination.

All the stuff of history. For me, Haig was the stuff of fun interviews: engaging, humorous and unabashedly frank. And over the years, they just got better – they don’t get much better than that.

A shout-out this day to all interviewees – try to top that

The general leaves a high mark.

Richard Nixon On Health Care in ‘74, ‘94, And Today

February 22, 2010 by Daniel Suhr | Filed Under Domestic issues, Healthcare, New Media, Richard Nixon | 23 Comments 

Looking to secure a veneer of bipartisanship for their health care plans, Democrats have reached into the grave, exhuming the alleged endorsement of Richard Nixon. They claim that the health care legislation he proposed in 1971 and 1974 is a model for their own proposals today.

For instance, the Atlantic’s Andrew Sullivan wrote last month that President Obama’s plan “remains more moderate than those once proposed by Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton.” A St. Louis Post Dispatch editorial at the end of January makes the same point, saying that the Obama plan relies more on free market mechanisms than Nixon’s proposal.

“Missing Richard Nixon” blared the headline atop an August 2009 Paul Krugman column in the New York Times. His pen pines for the good old days under Nixon: “As many people have pointed out, Nixon’s proposal for health care reform looks a lot like Democratic proposals today. . . . So what happened to the days when a Republican president could sound so nonideological, and offer such a reasonable proposal?” In fact, positive comparisons between the Democrats’ plans and those of Nixon were made even before Obama took office!

Thus far, no one has made reference to President Nixon’s staunch opposition to President Bill Clinton’s health care proposal in the early 1990s. In his tenth and final book Beyond Peace, which may have reflected a stronger commitment to limited government than at other points in his public life, Nixon issued a stinging critique of the Clinton plan. He began, “The 1994 debate over health care will be a crucial testing ground for our faith in freedom, which, if it means anything, must mean free markets and free choice.” Certainly, we face the same test today.

He continued, “The Clinton plan, all 1,342 impenetrable pages of it, is less a prescription for better health care than a blueprint for the takeover by the federal government of one seventh of our nation’s economy. If enacted, it would represent the ultimate revenge of the 1960s generation. The plan epitomizes the discredited notion that taking action against a problem requires introducing a massive network of new compulsions, bureaucracies, and government controls.” Elsewhere in the essay, he wrote, “For a thousand years, whenever price controls have been tried, they have failed.” Particularly when we speak of the public option and the House bill, we could say all the same things, only today it would mean nationalizing one sixth, not one seventh, of our nation’s economy.

President Nixon not only argued against the bureaucratic statism inherent in the Clinton plan – he also articulated a patient-centered vision similar to the one delivered by Sen. Tom Coburn and Rep. Paul Ryan in recent days. “Any sensible reform of the nation’s health care system must start with the patient, not with the government. The most powerful force inflating health care costs has been a system of insurance that removes the patient’s own incentive to shop for value.” In other words, Nixon today would be much more likely to support health savings accounts than a public option. He also called for tort reform, a great emphasis on wellness and preventative care, and greater competition among insurance providers, all key elements of Republican alternatives.

Nixon sought to repudiate the suggestion, floating then as well, that his plans from the 1970s inspired the Democrats plan at present. Rebutting those who implied his support for the Clinton scheme from his time in office, Nixon wrote, “I most emphatically did not, and would not, endorse a wholesale federal takeover of the nation’s health care system.” Those equating the Obama plan with the Nixon plan are missing the fundamental difference between the two, something Nixon himself noted in his opposition to the 1994 plan: “Employers would have been required to help pay only for their own employees, not for all the indigent in the entire community.” He concluded that the Clinton plan “focuses less on improving health care delivery than it does on centralizing health care control. Our program was about health. The Clinton program gives every indication of being about power.” Could we not deliver the same indictment today against the Obama plan?

President Nixon spent his entire life fighting against the central planning and nationalized industries of the Soviets. Though not all his domestic policies reflected the same distrust of centralized bureaucracies, Republicans should not allow liberals to claim Nixon’s imprimatur on their health care scheme.

Daniel R. Suhr is an attorney in Washington, D.C., and a Washington Fellow of the National Review Institute.

Watch Nixon Legacy Forum Live on C-SPAN.org

February 21, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Update (2/22/2010, 7:28am PST): The Effective Use of the President’s Time is now available on demand:

The second Nixon Legacy forum, The Effective Use of the President’s Time is now streaming live on C-SPAN.org.Watch as four West Wing staff discuss how they scheduled, briefed and moved President Nixon in the White House and around the world.

Their work in the Executive office of the President was groundbreaking in the development of the modern Presidency.

It will air again today at 4pm and 10pm PST and again on Monday morning at 1am PST.

President Obama, Secretary Clinton Praise Gen. Haig

February 20, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under In Memoriam | 1 Comment 

President Obama issued a Statement from the White House on the death of General Haig:

Today we mourn the loss of Alexander Haig, a great American who served our country with distinction.  General Haig exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service.  He enjoyed a remarkable and decorated career, rising to become a four-star general and serving as Supreme Allied Commander of Europe before also serving as Secretary of State.  Our thoughts and prayers are with his family.

At Foggy Bottom, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton issued this statement:

I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of former Secretary of State Alexander Haig. He served his country in many capacities for many years, earning honor on the battlefield, the confidence of Presidents and Prime Ministers, and the thanks of a grateful nation. On behalf of the men and women of the State Department, I extend my sincerest condolences to Secretary Haig’s family and friends. Our thoughts and prayers are with all of them today.

A Moment In History

February 20, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, National Security, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | 4 Comments 

On 13 June 1971, General Alexander Haig, then Deputy Assistant to the President for Military Affairs, was the first to discuss with RN The New York Times‘ publication —that Sunday morning— of the first installment of the study that became known as the Pentagon Papers.

RN refers to Mel Laird, who was Secretary of Defense, and General Haig refers to the McGovern-Hatfield Amendment that required complete withdrawal of all American troops from Vietnam by 31 December 1971.  Although it had been defeated in the Senate in October 1970, it remained the subject of discussion and controversy through 1971.  He also mentions Clark Clifford, the ubiquitous Democrat who was one of the legendary Wise Men as well as one of Wasington’s most famous  fixers.  He  had succeeded Robert McNamara as LBJ’s Secretary of Defense.  After initially  deciding to support Johnson’s policies in Vietnam, he turned against the war.

HAK: “He Lived For His Country”

February 20, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, In Memoriam, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, U.S. History | 7 Comments 

The following are excerpts of an interview by CBS Radio correspondent Abby Regier of former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger about Alexander Haig, who passed away this morning at the age of 85:

“We worked together for many years, for eight years in the Nixon and Ford administrations, and he remained a good friend for the rest of his life.

“When I was made National Security Advisor, the Vietnam War was still going on, and I believed that I needed on my staff an officer who had had combat experience, and who could help me understand the military and strategic problems. So Alexander Haig, who at that time was an instructor at West Point and who had had distinguished and decorated service in Vietnam, was brought to my attention.

“I hired him first as a military adviser and then he became my deputy. He performed extraordinary services for our country, in helping steer the country through the Vietnam War and the Watergate crisis, and for many decades after that as a devoted citizen.

“Al Haig believed in this country, and he believed that this country had a central role to play in the defense of freedom. And service to his country was the motive of his life. I’m proud of him as an American, and grateful to him for the service that he had rendered.”

On Watergate, Kissinger said, “He was my chief of staff in an extremely difficult period, and the international position of America does not end because it has a domestic crisis. And it was a delicate period of holding things together and advising a president. He, Alexander Haig, carried that out with distinction, with tact, and the country owes him a great deal.”

Kissinger also described Haig as “a great family man, extremely devoted to his family, very close to his family. He was a man of very emphatic convictions, personally intelligent . . . But he was a man of a service; he lived for his country.”

When asked about the occasion of the assassination attempt on Ronald Reagan, where he said “I’m in charge here,” Kissinger said, “First of all, when you are in a crisis situation you cannot ask your public relations adviser ‘What is the best form of language [to use]?’ The situation as I understand it was as follows: President Reagan had been shot, Vice President Bush was on an airplane coming back [to Washington]. There was confusion as to who was responsible in the White House when the President was in the operating room and the Vice President was in the air.

“So he wanted to convey that somebody, that there was not a breakdown of the command structure, but that there was somebody in charge. It was something that was meant to be conveyed for the one-hour gap until Vice President Bush could land and be briefed.

“Was it the ideal statement to have made? Would you have done it differently with public relations advice? Probably. It was intended to serve that purpose, and it was totally distorted.

“He wasn’t referring to the Vice President; He was trying to say that there was a chain of command in place. I think the technical line of command, of succession would have been to the Speaker of the House, but for the management of the crisis he was the highest-ranking person in the White House at that point.”

When asked if the fallout from his remarks caused him personal embarrassment or hurt him, Kissinger said, “I have never heard him complain. I guess he thought it like was a wound of war. . . . He thought he was doing his duty. I don’t know what anyone else would have done in that situation when the president’s on the operating table and the Vice President is flying and you need to convey that government is functioning until the Vice President gets here. That’s all he was trying to do.

“The thing to remember is that he was a great American performing great services for several administrations. And he was a natural resource on which the president could always call.”

He added, “He was a good friend, and both Nancy and I miss him.”

The Third Paragraph

February 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, In Memoriam, Military, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

In 2003, Gerald S. Strober and Deborah Hart Strober published an oral history of the Ronald Reagan presidency, the third in a series of such books. (The others concerned the presidencies of John F. Kennedy and Richard Nixon, and the reign of Elizabeth II.) One section of the book concerned John Hinckley’s attempted assassination of the fortieth President in 1981, and the press briefing held shortly after it in which Gen. Alexander M. Haig, the Secretary of State, said: “I am in control here at the White House, pending the return of the vice-president.”

Referring to Gen. Haig’s briefing, veteran Republican strategist Lyn Nofziger told the Strobers: “That will be the third paragraph of his obituary.”

Nofziger died in 2006, so this morning, when Gen. Haig passed away, he was not around to see his prediction be fulfilled on a number of websites. The New York Times was first – or tried to be first. The initial version of Tim Weiner’s obituary there mentioned Nofziger’s statement and said he had predicted the third graf (to use the old-time newspaper lingo) “would detail” the briefing – which he doesn’t say, at least in the Strober book. The obit’s third paragraph then mentioned the briefing, and the fourth described it in detail. Some wag at the paper pointed out this discrepancy and within an hour or so the article was reformatted so that the details were given in the third paragraph.

During the rest of the day, one obit after another told the story of the 1981 briefing in the third paragraph. Some of these, like the obits at Politics Daily, the BBC website and the Associated Press, didn’t refer to Nofziger’s prediction. Others, such as the one in the Times of London, did.

But several newspapers bucked the trend. The London Telegraph devoted the third paragraph of its obit to Gen. Haig’s effort to mediate the dispute between the UK and Argentina over the Falkland Islands – probably a lesser chapter of his career, but obviously of interest to British readers.

And James Hohmann’s obit at the Washington Post also did not get on the briefing bandwagon. Instead, the third paragraph in the first online version discussed Gen. Haig’s efforts to keep the Nixon Administration on an even keel in the darkest days of Watergate. And, happily, this was replaced by what I think Gen. Haig would truly have been delighted to read as the third paragraph of his obituary:

In a statement, President Obama said Gen. Haig “exemplified our finest warrior-diplomat tradition of those who dedicate their lives to public service.”

That said, the General had a prodigious sense of humor – it was no accident that he counted iconoclastic comedian Mort Sahl among his friends – so he probably would have been amused at the striving of so many media outlets to fulfil Nofziger’s prophecy.

(Another article worth reading is the AP’s account of reactions to Gen. Haig’s death, including a quote from the Post’s Bob Woodward in which he points out that the General was almost the only individual whom he made a point of ruling out as being “Deep Throat” before he identified Mark Felt as DT in 2005.)

Alexander M. Haig, Jr.   1924 – 2010

February 20, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under History, In Memoriam, Nixon Administration figures, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Alexander Haig, RIP

February 20, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

Alexander Haig, who served as RN’s chief of staff and later as Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state, has passed away at the age of 85.  Fox has more.

Follow The Money–It’s Going To China

February 19, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Asia, Barack Obama, China, Cold War, Economic issues, George W. Bush, History, International Affairs, Middle East, Money, National Security, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The other day, President Barack Obama met with the Tibetan Dali Lama in the White House—doing so in the Map Room as opposed to the Oval Office in an apparent attempt to mute any “official” aura for the meeting. It was sort of like trying to kowtow to one audience while powwowing with another. Likely the nuance was lost on the government in Beijing. Of course, past presidents have received the Tibetan leader—a man who has become a symbol for freedom and a persistent reminder of the oppression of his people at the hands of the Chinese regime.

It was 38 years ago this week that President Richard Nixon played the historic China Card—a geopolitical masterstroke during the Cold War. It was all part of a strategic view of the world and effectuated from a position of strength. We were powerful; they were backward—technologically, culturally, and with obvious political deficiencies. That moment remains a high water mark in Nixon’s presidency—a moment in time that even the most determined critics concede positively to his legacy.

But what would Mr. Nixon think now?

These days, admittedly, the whole issue of U.S.-China relations is a sticky one for our current President. It is one of many examples of how different things are when you are governing as opposed to campaigning for office—although it is hard to tell which is which in Washington these days. Mario Cuomo famously talked years ago about politics being “poetry” and governing “prose.”

Dealing with potential adversaries—and even some friends—is always best when you do so from a position of strength. It’s true in military and national defense (“peace through strength”) and it’s true in economics, as well. The scriptures remind us, “The borrower is servant to the lender.” And when one party is deep in financial debt to another a certain measure of leverage is ceded to the lender.

How this dynamic will play out in the immediate future is anyone’s guess, but owing nearly $800 billion to the Chinese should raise a flag—a red one. And it should come as no surprise if and when those to whom we owe such copious amounts of money begin to squeeze us on the international stage.

President Obama has been making great pains to try to change our image before the world, one that he believes George W. Bush perpetuated and that has led to our virtual “blackball” by many nations. But in fact, what he really should be concerned about is not “blackball,” but rather “blackmail.” The Chinese dumped $45 billion of T-bills a couple of months ago—wave of the future? And why shouldn’t one nation operating out of its own interests use such leverage? We would.

In fact, we have.

In 1956, there were two hot spots with the potential of blowing up into World War III, a revolution in Hungary—and a crisis in the Middle East involving the Suez Canal. Seen now in hindsight against the backdrop of the Cold War and as the moment when the last vestiges of old world colonialism gave wave to complete bi-polar hegemony pitting the United States against the Soviets, the Suez Crisis was as much about the exercise of economic clout as it was a diplomatic-military affair.

Gamal Abdel Nassar had emerged as a leader in Egypt as part of a 1952 coup overthrowing King Farouk and by 1954 he was firmly in place as that nation’s maximum leader. He immediately undertook a complete transformation of his country with massive public works and the progressive nationalization of industry. He was enamored of the Soviet system and soon it became clear that his nation would be taking that side in the Cold War. One project near and dear to his heart was the building of the Aswan Dam, which America at first agreed to help fund. But when Nassar sold arms to Soviet satellite Czechoslovakia and then recognized the People’s Republic of China, U.S. Secretary of State John Foster Dulles withdrew our dam dollars.

In reaction to this, Nassar announced on July 26, 1956 a Nationalization Law freezing all the assets of the Suez Canal—in effect, a seizure of that vital passageway.

Opened in 1869, this 119-mile long man-made waterway connects the Mediterranean and Red Seas. Originally financed by the Egyptians and French, Britain became a major stakeholder and stockholder in 1875, and eventually the canal became part of the United Kingdom’s imperial portfolio in the region. Following World War II, and with the decline of the U.K.’s empire, the canal gradually became a diplomatic football—not to mention thorn. And the creation of the nation of Israel in 1948 caused tensions about the vital waterway to further increase.

In the aftermath of Nassar’s July 26 speech, Britain—led by Prime Minister Anthony Eden—and France, represented by Eden’s counterpart, Guy Mollet, began to plot how to ensure their access to the Suez Canal. Eventually, and in an alliance with Israel (a nation with the most to lose if the canal was closed to them), military action was planned and initiated.

Follow the money.

Meanwhile, the American President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, in the midst of a reelection bid, had already had a rough year in 1956—physically and politically. And shortly following election to a second term in the White House, he played some power politics of his own. Now, I should state here that I am not of the number in agreement with what he did in the Suez matter, anymore than I am about how we abandoned the freedom fighters in Budapest earlier that summer. I am simply using this story to describe a reality in all of life and politics—like it or not.

There is a golden rule in geo-politics: He who has the gold makes the rule.

Mr. Eisenhower did not want Britain, France, and Israel—all stated allies of the United States—creating a situation that might not play well with the Soviets and that had the potential to instigate a larger war. Here was the hero of Normandy putting the pressure on British Prime Minister Eden—a man who had worked closely with Ike while serving in Churchill’s War Cabinet.

“The borrower is servant to the lender.”

To apply pressure on Eden’s government to cease and desist, Eisenhower instructed U.S. Treasury Secretary, George M. Humphrey, to begin to sell off some of our government’s British bonds. Some of these bonds were holdovers from the U.K.’s World War II debt; others had been sold to us to help that nation’s economy rebound after the war. Eden’s Chancellor of the Exchequer, future P.M. Harold Macmillan, told him that the results would be devastating to the British economy.

Checkmate.

Anthony Eden was a broken man. He fled to a vacation-exile in Jamaica, spending time at Ian Fleming’s (of James Bond literary fame) estate there, but his health quickly deteriorated. He was taking amphetamines—had been for years under doctor’s orders after a botched gall bladder operation—and the drugs magnified his problems with insomnia and unraveling mental health. Soon, Mr. Macmillan took over at 10 Downing Street, but by then the Suez episode had hastened the sunset on the British Empire—and the Cold War morphed from a multi-national tag-team match into a virtual two-nation standoff.

Follow the money.

We are potentially in big trouble as a nation. Our security is threatened not only by Islamist terrorism—but also by some who have a lien on our title deed. Certainly, throughout our history we have dealt with nations and regimes in pragmatic and realpolitik ways, even having to hold our collective noses because of the stench of tyranny and oppression on the part of some of our momentary allies in a larger cause. But we have managed, for the most part, to deal with it—ugliness and all—because of the ability to approach everything from a position of strength: morally, militarily, and economically.

Now though, we not only depend on others for much of our energy, but we also owe an astronomical amount of money (the interest alone is unfathomable) to powerful entities. We should not be surprised that other nations no longer dance on cue—nor should we ever be surprised if and when some big bills come due with humiliating strings attached.

Or worse.

Managing The Nixon Oval Office

February 19, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Nixon family, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Presidential libraries, Richard Nixon, Yorba Linda | 4 Comments 

On Presidents’ Day 2010, more than five thousand packed the Nixon Library and were welcomed with cherry pie and appearances by Presidents Washington, Jefferson, Lincoln, and Teddy Roosevelt. Then at 1:30 pm, RN’s Oval Office Team presented the second Nixon Legacy Forum, The Effective Use Of the President’s Time, a look at RN Chief of Staff H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, how the Office of the President operated and why it became the model for successive administrations.

Twenty-two members of the Haldeman family were in the audience including widow Jo Haldeman, their son Hank, daughters Anne and Susan, and their grandchildren. Dwight Chapin, former Deputy Assistant to President Nixon, moderated the panel of key staff including Larry Higby (Special Assistant to the President and Assistant White House Chief of Staff), Steve Bull (Special Assistant to the President) and Ron Walker (Special Assistant to the President and Director of the Office of Presidential Advance). Chapin’s service to RN started as a young field man in the 1962 California gubernatorial race. After the former Vice President’s defeat, he went to work for Haldeman at the J. Walter Thompson advertising company. It was during this time that Haldeman – who served as Campaign Manager in 1962 and Director of Advance in the 1960 Presidential campaign – spearheaded the organization of RN’s comeback.

“These weren’t the wilderness years.” Chapin explained. “These were the strategic planning years.”

As an example, Chapin pointed to a memo that illustrated a new and innovative strategy for winning in 1968. Outlining the need for more effective time management, Haldeman told RN that he could reach more voters through the use of television in one or two key events with substantive messages, buying much needed time for him to rest, reflect and write.

This was a radical concept that totally changed the way campaigns went thereafter.” Larry Higby added. “It became the style for how we started to communicate as a White House.”

Higby, the youngest of the staff, also began his career working for Haldeman on the 1968 campaign while in graduate school at UCLA. At twenty-three years old, he became Assistant White House Chief of Staff.

“My first job was to find a book on how the presidency worked.” We had just ninety days to build a corporation from scratch.”

The Nixon organizational model would be groundbreaking. Previous White Houses implemented the cabinet form of government where decision-making was delegated to cabinet officials. John F. Kennedy, Higby explained, worked freestyle, forming coalitions and committees for the most important policy issues. While President Johnson managed like a legislator and focused heavily on his domestic agenda, a reflection on his over 20 years on Capitol Hill.

By contrast, RN managed like an executive.   “H.R. Haldeman was his Chief Operating Officer,” explained Steve Bull. “While Dr. Kissinger was the Vice President of International Affairs and John Erlichman was the President of Domestic Affairs.” It was the Cabinet officers’ job to ultimately execute the positions from the White House.

A retired Marine, Bull’s path to White House was trailed after returning from Vietnam in 1966. He hardly recognized his country as rising crime, social upheaval, and protests against the war were dividing the country. He saw RN as the leader who could bring the country together.

After working on the successful 1968 campaign, Bull joined the White House team as the President’s Special Assistant, managing his day-to-day schedule and moving officials in and out of meetings.

“I was not a confidant.” Bull said.  “It was a senior to subordinate position. My job was to run the Oval Office. I was kept around because I was trustworthy. Trust was important.”

Managing RN’s work environment was also important. Bull explained that RN was a private person. He didn’t like meeting with large groups or numerous advisers. He was a contemplative man whose best course was to rely on his own instincts. He needed time to shape his agenda and map out the long term.

He essentially “shaved two days into one,” Chapin said.  RN started his day early by reading the daily news summary and meeting with Kissinger, Haldeman, and other White House senior advisers and cabinet officials.  During the afternoon, RN would take a short 40 minute “power” nap, change and retreat to his private study in the Executive Office Building, where he would “write out long thoughts, shape his agenda, and constantly be looking ahead,” Higby explained.

As Director of the first Office of Presidential Advance, it was Ron Walker’s job to constantly look ahead. Now the President of the Richard Nixon Foundation, Walker prepared hundreds of foreign and domestic trips for RN including the historic trips to China and Russia in 1972.

After working as a volunteer advanceman during the 1968 Campaign, Walker worked on the transition and the first inaugural. Following inauguration, Chapin invited him to construct the first Office of Presidential Advance.

Not only did Walker create the office, but he also perfected the art first pioneered by Haldeman.

“We wanted to be the mantel of the Presidency,” Walker explained. “When I went into the White House to work for Dwight and Bob, the first thing I thought was important was that I write an advance manual.”

The manual took six months and amounted to 397 pages, constituting what Haldeman initially developed for political campaigns and refining it to advance the President of the United States.

The Nixon White House had “all of those elements necessary to move the President of the United States outside the White House,” Walker said. “We had advance men who knew how to run airport arrivals, how to put motorcades together, how to do press conferences, how to handle the press,” and who were able to effectively “work with Secret Service,” and “the White House Communications Agency.”

On the last day of the 1972 campaign, Walker advanced President Nixon to Greensboro and Spartanburg, South Carolina at midday, flew to a sunset rally in Albuquerque, New Mexico and landed in Ontario, California for a torch light parade of fifty thousand with appearances by John Wayne and the Carpenters.

The next morning at the White House, the President thanked the advance team for their hard work and told them if it not for what they had accomplished he wouldn’t have earned a second term.

To give a sense of their efficiency, RN later told Walker that his team could have took the beaches at Normandy.

Nearly forty years later at the President’s Library in Yorba Linda, the Oval Office Team also performed with masterful efficiency, finishing two minutes ahead of schedule. “The program was to run from 1:30 to 3:30, this program ended at 3:28,” Walker concluded, “that’s called a good advance.”

There Naftali Goes Again…

February 16, 2010 by Bob Bostock | Filed Under Foundation News, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | 18 Comments 

I loved the OC Register article about Ron Walker, who by all accounts is doing an outstanding job as president of the Nixon Foundation. Well, everything except for the typically ungracious and inaccurate remarks made by Tim Naftali.

Here’s the text of a letter to the editor I sent to the Register to try to correct the record:

To the Editor:

The assertion by Tim Naftali, the National Archives director of the Nixon Library [“He’s still Nixon’s advance man,” February 12, 2010], that the Library’s original exhibit on Vietnam did not indicate that National Guardsmen shot the four students killed at Kent State is pure fantasy.

As the author of that exhibit 20 years ago, here is the text of the concluding paragraph of a sidebar to the Vietnam exhibit entitled: Cambodia and Kent State, taken directly from my files:

At Kent State University in Ohio, the Governor had to call in the National Guard after some demonstrators burned the Army ROTC building to the ground. The guardsmen, many the same age as the students, were pelted with rocks and chunks of concrete. Tragically, in the ensuing panic, shots rang out. Four students lay dead. The President later referred to the days following Kent State as among the darkest of his presidency.

It is obvious to anyone (except perhaps Naftali, who seems to possess a very jaundiced and biased eye toward all things Nixon) that the students were shot by the National Guardsmen. Does he really think that Library visitors are either so stupid or so ignorant as to conclude that the students were shot by other students or by unknown assailants?

Naftali’s anti-Nixon bias is apparently so deeply ingrained in his psyche that he cannot distinguish the truth from the dark fantasy he has created in his own mind about the Nixon Library. Isn’t there an Alger Hiss Library somewhere he would like to be director of?

Bob Bostock

The Effective Use Of The President’s Time

February 16, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Presidential libraries, Richard Nixon, White House | 1 Comment 

In a Special Presidents’ Day Panel, RN’s Oval Office Team discussed how they created the model for White House management. The Oval Office Team (left to right): Dwight Chapin, Steve Bull, Larry Higby and Ron Walker.

The Troops Rallied

February 14, 2010 by Anne Walker | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

WOW!

It is quite heartwarming and amazing to see what is happening here in Yorba Linda, California. Those of you who have been reading my blog for awhile may remember the one I wrote about our trip to “Rally the Troops.” That was back in September, 2009. Well, the troops rallied. Big Time. President’s Day will be the scene of the second Nixon Legacy Panels. A special panel will discuss the “Effective Use of the President’s Time.”

The panelists are Dwight Chapin, Steve Bull, Larry Higby and Ron Walker. In my mind it is really going to be the “Bob Haldeman Panel.” Bob was the genius behind the efficient way the Nixon White House operated on a daily basis. He believed the key word in his title was STAFF. Chief of STAFF to the President of the United States! You didn’t see him on the Sunday talk shows, because he didn’t consider TV appearances to be part of his job description. It is exciting that this part of history will be discussed by four men who worked for Bob Haldeman, and recorded by C-span. Because of this panel, future generations of presidential scholars will have more information with which to judge the Nixon Administration.

Some of you will be interested to read the names of those who heard the call to rally, and have made plans to be here on President’s Day. Most notable will be twenty-two members of the Haldeman family. Jo Haldeman will be leading the pack of children, grand children and Bob’s brother’s family. Ron and I will be hosting a dinner here at “Coyote Base” and as of this moment, it looks like it will be a reunion and a happening.

From the military: Jack Brennan, the Marine aide to President Nixon and Gene Boyer, the pilot of Marine One will both be here along with Carl Burhannan, the first black presidential helicopter pilot. It is because of Colonel Boyer’s hard work and persistence that the Library has the Presidential Helicopter on the grounds. It is a favorite exhibit of many of our visitors.

An old friend to many, Herb Kalmbach, will be here.

From the Domestic Council: Geoff Shepard, who did such a great job moderating the first Nixon Legacy panel, and panelist James Cavanaugh are coming. Also, John Brown, former Staff Secretary and his wife Noelle who worked for Gordon Strachan and later the Committee to Re-elect the President. (I refuse to refer to it as CREEP)

Special counselor, Frank Gannon will be on hand. Actually, we wish he could be here every day, but he’s got another life on the Eastern Shore, helping some of our old pals write their very important stories of what happened and why.

From the White House Advance Office: Jon Foust and Doug Blaser, along with volunteer advance men, John Pitchess, Peter Murphy, Larry Eastland and Wayne Whitehill.

From the Press Office: Bruce Whelihan, and Tim Elbourne’s, widow, Inge will be here. She recently married Bob Frohn and theirs is a wonderful story. The Elbourne’s and the Frohn’s were across-the-street neighbors for many years in Anaheim Hills, California. Both Inge and Bob suffered the loss of children, and then spouses. When Bob heard that Tim had died and Inge had moved to San Luis Opisbo, he decided to drive up and offer his condolences. It was no quick trip. It was a four hour drive. He arrived with a large bouquet of roses. They spent time together. They cried together. They comforted each other. Bob made the trip often, and always arrived with an armload of roses. A couple of weeks ago, they got married. Inge is getting ready to move into the house across the street from where she used to live. Those of you who know Inge will be smiling at this moment. Especially if you had not heard the news.

From the Television office: The late Bill Carruthers two sons will be here.

And from the Secretarial Support office: Terry Decker Goodsen

Ron and I are especially excited that his sister Kaye Walker Ingerson and brother-in-law Mike Ingerson will be with us, joining our daughters Marja Walker and Lisa Walker Hart and Marcia Howard Schoenbaum and her husband Steve. Long-time aide to Governor Pete Wilson, Bob White, will also be on hand.

Those of you who are interested, be watching for it on C-SPAN.

I plan on doing another blog about the President’s Day festivities, but I can’t sign off without singing the praises of our amazing and hard working folks here at the RN Foundation. First, there is the incredible Sandy Quinn, who knows everybody that is anybody in the State, and probably on Planet Earth. Sandy makes the library run, something he has done from the day the place opened. All of the “out in front” folks plus the people who move tables and chairs constantly as events happen and the people who make the Museum Store vibrate with excitement every single day are a great bunch of hard workers.

Keep in mind, that President’s Day will be a free day. “George Washington” will be on hand giving out cherry pies. All this excitement means the Museum Store will be a hot bed of constant activity. And as I’ve told you before, our Docents will be on hand and making the day extra special for all who come.

The Anaheim White House Restaurant will be doing our dinner here at Coyote Base. How could a Presidential Library ask for a caterer with a better name?. They are worthy of the title and great to work with. We’ll raise a toast, “To The President.” 

_______________________________________________________

Editor’s Note: On Presidents’ day, February 15, from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, the Nixon Library will hold its second Nixon Legacy Forum, “The Effective Use of the President’s Time.” Watch on Youtube starting February 16 as the Nixon Oval Office Team discusses how President Nixon was briefed, scheduled and moved through events and around the world.

The forum will also feature a Q&A. Submit your questions online on the Foundation’s Facebook page, via Twitter @nixonfoundation, or by email at jonathan@nixonfoundation.org.

A President’s Time

February 13, 2010 by Bob Bostock | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Library events, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 2 Comments 

On the day he was inaugurated to his second term, President Nixon gave members of the White House staff a desk diary covering the four years of that term. Each day indicated how many days were remaining before his “Four More Years” came to a close.

On the cover page he wrote, in part:

Every moment of history is a fleeting time, precious and unique. The Presidential term which begins today consists of 1461 days – no more and no less. Each can be a day of strengthening and renewal for America; each can add depth and dimension to the American experience.

The 1461 days which lie ahead are but a short interval in the flowing stream of history. Let us live them to the hilt, working each day to achieve these goals.

This fairly modest gift richly captures the importance President Nixon placed on using his time – and the time given his administration – to achieve the great purposes to which he devoted his presidency.

There is no single, succinct definition of what constitutes the best use of a president’s time. As head of state, chief executive of the federal government, commander-in-chief of the armed forces, and head of his political party, a president wears many hats – often simultaneously. Each president must find a way to juggle the demands these different roles place upon him so that he can focus on those matters that only the president can handle.

When President Nixon took office in January 1969 he established a staff structure that remains largely intact today, seven presidencies later. While each president has tinkered with it, none has entirely replaced it. And those that have strayed too far from its central tenet – that a president’s time is his most valuable resource – have seen their decision-making and their effectiveness diminished.

In the Nixon White House, large, lengthy meetings involving the president were held to a minimum. Requests to see the president were vetted through his chief of staff, who rigorously guarded the president’s time. Policy proposals needing a presidential decision were frequently presented in writing. Presidential travel was meticulously planned to make the most of every minute on the road. Most important, the president’s schedule included “open time” for him to think through issues and strategies.

President Nixon valued and guarded that open time. It gave him the opportunity to reason things through, to consider the various consequences of a decision, and to construct an effective strategy for advancing his vision. As John Mitchell told Time magazine, “[The President] is a man who does his homework, and that becomes quite time-consuming.” Of course, President Nixon only had the time to “do his homework” because his staff was so effective at managing the other demands on his schedule.

This structure, of course, had its detractors. Cabinet officers grumbled that the cabinet didn’t meet enough and complained that they lacked unfettered access to the Oval Office. Members of Congress and White House staff members would have liked more “face time” with the president to advocate for a policy or just to collect that valued Washington currency: the ability to say, “When I was meeting with the president the other day….” The media claimed that the president was being isolated behind a “Berlin Wall” constructed by Haldeman, Ehrlichman, and Kissinger.

Much of the criticism centered on the canard that President Nixon didn’t much like being around people. His critics saw his preference for written memos over face-to-face meetings, for example, as proof of his supposedly misanthropic nature. A fairer reading of the practice, especially taken in the context of his respect for the limited time given any president to accomplish his great goals, leads one to a different conclusion.

If done right, a carefully thought out, well-written memo is almost always a better way to present a proposal. The author of a memo is forced to construct the most cogent, concise presentation for the president’s consideration. That, in turn, provides the president with the information he needs in an efficient format – and if it doesn’t, he will ask for more (or will find someone else who can do it right the first time).

When I was working in President Nixon’s Woodcliff Lake, New Jersey office in the spring of 1990 writing the exhibit text for the Nixon Library, we followed this procedure. As I was preparing to begin writing an exhibit, he would dictate a memo to me (of usually just a page or two) outlining his goals for the exhibit and suggesting tone, content, and direction.

I used that memo as a starting point and would write a draft for his consideration. It would come back marked up in varying degrees. I would incorporate the changes and send back a revised draft. That would continue until he was satisfied with the final product.

This process saved us an enormous amount of time and effort, which was important because we were on a tight schedule. But it also was important because it forced the President to consider what he wanted in an exhibit and because it gave me what I needed to meet his expectations. It only worked, however, because he was willing to take the time to think things through.

My experience is, of course, in no way analogous with the experiences of those who worked in the Nixon White House. On their easiest days they faced pressures, complexities, and challenges of exponentially greater magnitude than anything I tackled during my most difficult. But that’s what made the Nixon White House’s process for managing the president’s time so much more important. It allowed the President to focus on the big picture – and the big picture is ultimately what being president is all about.

For his 13th birthday, Richard Nixon’s grandmother Milhous gave him a framed picture of Lincoln, which she inscribed with a stanza from Longfellow’s Psalm of Life. The inscription read:

Lives of great men oft remind us/We can make our lives sublime,/And, departing, leave behind us/Footsteps on the sands of time.

The future president hung that picture over his bed, and years later still regarded it among his fondest possession.

Over the course of his long career, President Nixon left many footsteps on the sands of time. His ability to do so was made possible, in no small part, because he knew how to use the time given him most efficiently and effectively.

Exactly how he did so will be the topic of what promises to be a fascinating program at the Nixon Library on Monday. Ron Walker, Dwight Chapin, Larry Higby, and Steve Bull – four men uniquely qualified, both by experience and expertise to illuminate this issue – will talk about the work they did in the Nixon White House to help the President make the best use of his time. I cannot think of a better way to mark President’s Day – or to spend your time.

_______________________________________________________

Editor’s Note: On Presidents’ day, February 15, from 1:30 pm to 3:30 pm, the Nixon Library will hold its second Nixon Legacy Forum, “The Effective Use of the President’s Time.” Watch on Youtube starting February 16 as the Nixon Oval Office Team discusses how President Nixon was briefed, scheduled and moved through events and around the world.

The forum will also feature a Q&A. Submit your questions online on the Foundation’s Facebook page, via Twitter @nixonfoundation, or by email at jonathan@nixonfoundation.org.

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