Nixon Center President In Time Magazine

October 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under News media, Nixon Center, Russia, The National Interest | Leave a Comment 

Nixon Center President Dmitri Simes has a new op-ed in Time Magazine, in which he argues that the Obama administration needs to make talking with Russia a priority in order to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions:

The U.S. needs to start taking Russia seriously if it wants Moscow’s help on Iran. The Administration insists that its “reset” of relations with Russia is a major priority. Unfortunately, as in many other policy areas, the President and his team try so hard to satisfy their critics that they appear unwilling to make critical choices, doing just enough to raise hopes but not enough to realize them. The Administration, for example, announced in mid-September that it was unilaterally dropping plans to base advanced missile-defense interceptors in Poland and the Czech Republic. Critics said Obama had given away the East European store to Russia in the vague hope of getting assistance on Iran. But a month later, literally on the same day that the U.S., Russia and others were negotiating with Iran in Vienna, Vice President Joe Biden was in Warsaw confirming plans to deploy Patriot ground-to-air missiles in Poland, and a U.S. official said in Tbilisi that “the process of Georgia’s deeper integration into NATO is very important.” No statement was likely to trouble Russia more.

The following weekend, when Obama called Medvedev to look for support on Iran, he received a polite but noncommittal reply. After the call, Russia’s top negotiator, Sergei Ryabkov, publicly urged “maximum patience” and “additional incentives” for Iran, neither of which is attractive to Washington. A senior official in Moscow told me that if the U.S. permanently stations Patriot batteries in Poland, Russia may proceed with deliveries — which had been suspended — of S-300 antiaircraft missiles to Iran. Such systems could significantly increase the cost of any air strikes. “Obama is beginning to repeat the Bush pattern,” the official said, “where deeds do not match words.”

Working with Russia to block Iran’s nuclear program will not be easy. Obama will have to do much better than he did when trying to win Russian support for Chicago’s Olympic bid: he called Putin two days before the crucial vote, when Moscow was already committed to Rio, and offered nothing in return to the rather unsentimental Russian Prime Minister. Sadly, this too little, too late approach to Moscow on Iran’s nuclear program may force the Administration to make precisely the decision it hopes to avoid: between a nuclear Iran and a new and dangerous war in a critical region.

The Last Of The Watergate Cubans Speaks

October 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Nixon Administration figures, U.S. History, Watergate | 3 Comments 

In June I wrote here of the death of Bernard L. Barker, one of the five men whose arrest at the Watergate complex on the evening of June 17, 1972, resulted in the unfolding of the scandal that claimed the Presidency of Richard Nixon. At that time I noted that of the five, only Eugenio Rolando Martinez, of the four Cuban-Americans arrested, and James W. McCord, who led the group into the offices of the Democratic National Committee, were still living.

Today, as a result of an English-language discussion at a left-wing website, I learned of an interview with Martinez, now 86, that appeared in July in the Spanish newspaper El Mundo. This is a fairly interesting article, not least because it seems to add a startling new fact to the existing accounts of what happened that night.

Martinez states that he and his fellow Cubans thought that the object of the Watergate break-in was to obtain information establishing that the regime of Cuba’s Fidel Castro was taking an active part in the campaign of Sen. George McGovern for the White House. This much is not new; the late Frank Sturgis and the other Cubans have said this.

What is interesting is Martinez’s emphatic statement that the operation was betrayed by McCord. He mentions something that has been the source of much discussion over the decades: that McCord, a security expert so pre-eminent in the field that he once was in charge of physical security for CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia, made the elementary mistake of taping the locks on the side of the doors leading into the DNC headquarters so that the tape was visible when the doors were closed, which was what tipped off Watergate security guard Frank Wills that someone was in the building without permission. (McCord, by titling his self-published book on Watergate A Piece Of Tape, subtly referred to this, though the book’s cover, showing audio tape reels, clouded the allusion.)

Martinez then goes on to say that McCord ordered his Cuban colleagues to turn off all their walkie-talkies before the arrival of the DC police, after Wills called them. This prevented Alfred Baldwin, who was monitoring the progress of the operation from the Howard Johnson’s hotel across the street, from alerting them that they were about to be apprehended. What’s significant here is that there were six walkie-talkies distributed by McCord to himself and the Cubans, while Baldwin had a radio apparatus in his HoJo’s room that could pick their transmissions up and send calls to them. Two of the six walkie-talkies had dead batteries. Bernard Barker acknowledged turning the third one off on hearing the approach of police outside the DNC offices because the apparatus was audibly crackling. Martinez’s statement, now, explains why the other three walkie-talkies were not available to pick up the call that Baldwin sent from the Ho-Jos, informing them of the arrival of the police outside the building – which might have enabled the intruders to leave before being arrested.

Though Martinez’s interview has gone unnoticed in the American press, it indicates that there’s still a lot of the Watergate story that remains unexplored.

He Came, He Saw, He Muddled The Facts

October 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Culture, News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Rocco Landesman, who was appointed chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts by President Obama last May (as a replacement for Dana Gioia, the eminent poet who was its leader during the Bush administration), comes from an affluent and remarkable – make that downright colorful – St. Louis family.

His uncle and aunt, Jay and Fran (Deitsch) Landesman, have for sixty years been familiar figures of, in turn, the New York, St. Louis, and London avant-garde scenes, crossing paths with everyone from Jack Kerouac to Barbra Streisand to the Beatles to the Sex Pistols; last year their son Cosmo told the story of their lives in his book Starstruck. (Here it’s worth mentioning that Fran Landesman co-wrote the jazz semi-standards “Spring Can Really Hang You Up The Most” and “Ballad Of The Sad Young Men” with the late Tommy Wolf, later to be the musical director of Donny and Marie Osmond’s variety show.)

Rocco has had a somewhat more conventional career. After graduating from (and teaching at) the Yale School of Drama, he ran an investment fund for a decade until joining Jujamcyn Theaters, which operates a handful of the most prestigious showplaces on Broadway. In this capacity he produced some very considerable hits, including the late Roger Miller’s Big River; Tony Kushner’s Pulitzer-winning Angels In America; and Mel Brooks’s blockbuster musical adaptation of his film The Producers. He’s also ventured, not quite as impressively, into horse racing and minor league baseball.

Last week, Landesman spoke before a group called Grantmakers In The Arts. He described what he sees as the vastly improved state of American culture since the inauguration of the forty-fourth President, in contrast to the cultural desert of much of the proceeding decade, then remarked:

“This is the first president that actually writes his own books since Teddy Roosevelt and arguably the first to write them really well since Lincoln. If you accept the premise, and I do, that the United States is the most powerful country in the world, then Barack Obama is the most powerful writer since Julius Caesar. That has to be good for American artists.”

Since these words were first reported, many bloggers and columnists have remarked on them. What is thoroughly apparent from reading them is that the NEA chairman’s knowledge of the literary achievements of American presidents – and world leaders, for that matter – is a bit on the sparse side.

For one thing, it is a well-documented fact that Herbert Hoover, before, during, and after his Presidency, wrote every word of his many books and countless speeches, in a public career that stretched for a half-century from the 1910s. And there has never been much dispute that Jimmy Carter has written all or most of the contents of the two dozen books that have poured from his pen since leaving office in 1981, including his ventures into children’s fiction, the novel, and poetry.

While some Presidents, like Franklin D. Roosevelt, wrote rather little on their own apart from letters, others have been more involved in the writing process. President Nixon made a point of crediting the editorial assistance of others with his books, but what he did not write unassisted as a first draft, he always revised and reshaped, and the really important parts of his books were, much more often than not, entirely his own work.

These include the lengthy opening section of Six Crises, describing the Alger Hiss case; at the time RN worked on it, in 1961, only seven or eight books had been published on the case (most being the work of Hiss apologists), and of these only Whittaker Chambers’s Witness was a truly first-hand account of the events. So it was up to RN to describe the incredible twists and turns of the story, as he had seen them unfold in 1948 and 1949.

Landesman’s notion that President Obama is the most powerful person to qualify as a writer since Julius Caesar is also mistaken – quite apart from the fact, pointed out by a number of writers already, that it’s curious for a member of the Obama administration to compare our Chief Executive to the man who destroyed the Roman Republic.

For example, in the second century AD Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius, a man who ruled a territory far larger than Caesar ever controlled, wrote his immortal Meditations in the downtime (as we’d call it now) of his campaigns against barbarian tribes. It’s true that Meditations was more in the way of a notebook than a carefully thought-out manuscript. But subsequent rulers have written full-scale books.

Henry VIII of England wrote a defense of Catholicism against Martin Luther, long before he led his nation out of the Church; for this he was given the title “Defender of the Faith” by the Pope, which the present Queen still uses. James I of England, around the time his subjects established the first permanent colony in Virginia, wrote a book warning of the baleful influence of witchcraft. In more recent times, Vladimir Lenin wrote a number of full-scale books and dozens of pamphlets while bringing the USSR into existence. Joseph Stalin, who fancied himself a literary and cultural critic, seemed always to be plugging away at a book, in the few moments he could spare from terrorizing his countrymen. And there was nothing Mao Zedong liked better than to pen some lines of poetry, when the mood struck him.

To mention a man far less powerful, Albanian dictator Enver Hoxha wrote many volumes of garrulous memoirs toward the end of his life, and kept novelist Ismail Kadare out of jail and writing so that he could personally edit his work – much as Russia’s Nicholas I once said to Alexander Pushkin, “it is I that will be your censor.”

Yesterday, Rocco Landesman offered a clarification (of sorts) of his remarks. In correcting his mistakes, he manages to make a few more. He says that Obama “wrote, on his own, the manuscript for his first book and went looking for a publisher.” This was not the case. Obama, when a student at Harvard Law School, was approached by literary agent Jane Dystel after the New York Times wrote about him. He contracted with Poseidon, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to write the book that became Dreams From My Father. Several years later, with Obama out of law school and back in Chicago, but with no book finished, S&S canceled the contract. Ms. Dystel then took the project to Random House’s Times Books imprint, which acquired it, and the future President then completed his MS and the book was published.

Landesman also acknowledges that while Abraham Lincoln “never wrote a whole book per se, his writings were collected in one.” Now, the most complete collections of Lincoln’s writings have been in a number of volumes; one book, even thin-paper and over a thousand pages, wouldn’t hold them all if the innumerable legal papers he drafted before 1861 are included.

Before drifting off into an account of his new friendship with National Council of the Arts member Lee Greenwood (of “God Bless The USA” fame), Landesman manages to make one misstep of sorts; when speaking of books with a presidential byline, he says that “one important one, it is generally accepted, was written by a ghostwriter without credit.”

Several bloggers have already wondered if this refers to John F. Kennedy’s Profiles In Courage and the reports that have circulated since shortly after the book won the Pulitzer Prize that Theodore Sorensen was responsible for at least most of the text. Though Sorensen acknowledged in his recent book Counselor that he did write the first draft of most of the chapters, which were then revised by the future President, the Kennedy family has always been very sensitive about any suggestion that Profiles was not, in the last analysis, JFK’s own work. But it may be that Landesman had another book in mind: Ronald Reagan’s post-presidential effort An American Life, which was widely reported at the time of its publication to be essentially the work of professional ghostwriter William Novak. In any event, Landesman’s sentence is a rather gauche one. And his performance as NEA Chairman, so far, makes one wish that the capable and eloquent Dana Gioia were still in that position.

Ted Sorensen’s Alternate History

October 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cuba, International Affairs, Interviews, National Security, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

This week Theodore “Ted” Sorensen, who was John F. Kennedy’s closest aide from 1953 until the president’s assassination a decade later, appeared at Canada’s University of Western Ontario in London to speak about his career and to promote his recently published autobiography Counselor. While there, he was interviewed by Ian Gillespie of the London Free Press. Naturally, the 81-year-old Sorensen is asked what his most vivid memory is of the Thousand Days, and just as naturally, he replies that it was the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962. He speaks of the enormous weight he felt, as a “34-year-old kid,” when drafting JFK’s letter to Soviet leader Nikita Khruschchev – a document which, he knew, might make the difference between peace and nuclear annihilation. The article continues:

Sorensen says things might have turned out quite differently if Richard Nixon had defeated Kennedy in the presidential election campaign of 1960.

“In that same fall of 1962, when Kennedy showed the kind of patience, discipline and wisdom that I mentioned (in the book) and resolved the Cuban missile crisis without firing a shot, Nixon was having a self-destructive campaign for governor of California,” he says. “Imagine if he had been in the White House and faced with the challenge that faced Kennedy?”

Well, as tens of millions of TV viewers know, last month Seth MacFarlane had no trouble imagining what would have happened; in the season-premiere episode of his Family Guy series, precocious infant Stewie Griffin and his canine sidekick Brian, with the help of an alternate-realities machine Stewie’s invented, visit several worlds differing from our own. With a push of the button, the baby and dog find themselves in the twisted, crumbling ruins of their hometown, Quahog, Rhode Island. “What happened?” Brian asked. Stewie consults the machine and replies, with his authoritative British accent: “This is what would have happened if Nixon had been president in the Cuban Missile Crisis.”

In-deed, as Dr. Zachary Smith used to say long ago. Last year, I read the transcript of an interview, as yet unpublished, which had just been conducted with a pundit whose words often appear in the columns and on the airwaves of the US and UK.

The pundit was asked about the most tragic events in the career of President Nixon. In his reply, he emphatically said that RN’s defeat by JFK in 1960 was one of the most tragic events in American history. Asked to explain, the journalist (whose identify might surprise the reader, but who will remain unnamed, since the interview has yet to be published) expressed the view that, had RN assumed the Presidency in January 1961:

a) the Bay of Pigs operation would have received full air support, thus resulting in the overthrow of Fidel Castro’s regime;

b) as a consequence, there would have been no Soviet missiles in Cuba in 1962, and thus no Cuban Missile Crisis;

c) the resulting setback in Soviet power and prestige would have forced Khruschchev to agree to detente a decade before Dr. Henry Kissinger’s diplomacy set it in motion and thus might have hastened the end of the Cold War as early as the 1970s.

As for Sorensen’s (and Macfarlane’s) suggestion that having Richard Nixon in the White House in October 1962 would have produced disaster, it’s worth noting that the President handled himself very well when faced with unexpected and dangerously escalating events during the Arab-Israeli war of October 1973.

In The Wee Small Hours Of The Morning…

October 31, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam, White House | 1 Comment 

There has been quite a lot of coverage this week of President Obama’s early-morning journey on Thursday to Dover Air Force Base to witness the arrival of the remains of eighteen American servicemen killed in Afghanistan, and to meet with their families. At her blog at the New Yorker’s website, Amy Davidson draws a comparison to another President’s journey out of the White House after midnight: Richard Nixon’s trip at 4 am on the morning of May 9, 1970, to the Lincoln Memorial, where he met with demonstrators who were in town to protest the Vietnam War, the Cambodian incursion, and the shootings at Kent State University:

Obama’s trip to Dover lacked the spontaneity that made Nixon’s walk so strange and compelling and also a little heartrending. (One is allowed to have one’s heart rended by Nixon, as long as it doesn’t become a habit.) Obama was surrounded by the dead, and Nixon by the living—but although he famously spoke to the students at the Lincoln Memorial about football, they also talked about dying, and what he and they would die for. A few hours later, the students joined a hundred thousand others in a march about Vietnam in which they shouted that he was a murderer. Obama is not there yet. What both Obama and Nixon had in common was that a war kept them awake.

As Ms. Davidson says, President Nixon’s decision to go to the Memorial in that early-morning hour was a spontaneous one. Her post links to the passage concerning this event in Richard Reeves’s book President Nixon.

Reeves describes the series of phone calls that the President made after midnight to several people, one of them Nancy Dickerson, the mother of Slate’s John Dickerson. He then writes about the President leaving the White House, accompanied only by his valet Manolo Sanchez, White House aide Egil “Bud” Krogh, and a handful of Secret Service agents, and proceeding to the Memorial, where he emerged from his car, walked up to a group of sleepless students, and began talking.

This is still one of the more remarkable moments of the American Presidency, and not just because it’s quite inconceivable to think of anything similar happening today. Lyndon Johnson, a President far more comfortable mingling with crowds than Nixon was, did nothing similar when antiwar marchers assembled at the Pentagon in 1967. The reports coming in from Vietnam would often leave LBJ sleepless, but he would remain, as some pundits liked to say in those days, “the prisoner in the White House.”

Nixon’s trip to the Memorial was also unusual because, despite its taking place in one of the most thoroughly public places in the nation, it had none of the nature of a public event. All the reporters covering the demonstration were either asleep or huddled over a thermos somewhere else in the throng. None of the White House photographers went with the President. One of the students with whom Nixon spoke did have a camera, and he took some photographs – but almost forty years later, unless jpgs can be seen on some unheralded corner of the internet, these images have yet to surface, at least as far as I know.

By contrast, although the press contingent with President Obama was much smaller than usual, his visit to Dover was filmed, and on Thursday night America saw him in the role of wartime leader. President Nixon’s trip to the Memorial, however, was the act of a leader of the American people as well as the American armed forces, seeking to understand what the youth of his nation thought about the conflict he had to contend with, seeking to build lines of communication to them (and not, as some of the more glib articles about the event had it at the time, to talk college football with them). It’s quite noteworthy that RN’s meeting with the demonstrators still resonates now as strongly as it did then.

The New Nixon Podcast Is Up And Running

October 31, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Advertising, Foundation News, Interviews, Media, New Media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Center, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Podcast, Popular Culture, Richard Nixon, Social Networking, Technology, The National Interest, The New Nixon | Leave a Comment 

During a recent visit to the Nixon Library, I had a discussion with several people about the potential for a podcast, something designed to highlight the events at the library, as well as the larger work of the Nixon Foundation.

We determined to use the recent visit of Sonny West and his talk about the day Elvis came to see President Nixon in the Oval Office for the premier production of the podcast.

This podcast is being registered with I-Tunes and will be available through them by the end of today. This, of course, makes the podcast portable. It can be downloaded to I-Pods and other such devices. In the meantime, here is a link to the first episode of what we hope will be a regular feature.

A couple of provisos: First, the theme music is from “VICTORY AT SEA” at the recommendation of Sandy Quinn. He told me how much Mr. Nixon enjoyed it – so it was an obvious choice. Second, some of the audio during Sonny’s remarks is a little difficult to hear and I suspect he pulled a Fran Tarkenton and scrambled out of the pocket, straying from the microphone, at times. These technical difficulties will be addressed and corrected for future events and podcasts.

But even with a few “glitches” – this podcast will be, I think, a welcome edition to the wonderful media expressions of the Nixon Foundation.

It is my privilege to host and produce this and I look forward to working on new editions about once a month – so, stay tuned! My special thanks to Philip Bassham, on my staff in Fairfax, for his vital help with this project.

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Download on iTunes

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

October 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | Leave a Comment 

“My Baby Just Cares for Me” was written by composer Walter Donaldson (“My Blue Heaven,” “Carolina in the Morning,” “Yes Sir, That’s My Baby”)  and lyricist Gus Kahn (“Ill See You in My Dreams,” “It Had To Be You,” “Dream a Little Dream of Me,” “Side by Side”) for the 1928 Ziegfeld musical Whoopee! (in which Eddie Cantor introduced “Makin’ Whoopee” and Ruth Etting introduced “Love Me, Or Leave Me.”).

Spellbinder: The cover art for Nina Simone’s 1958 debut LP.  The record label wanted an uptempo song amidst the otherwise quirkly introspective material, and she chose the then relatively obscure 1928 song “My Baby Just Cares For Me.”

Among the singers and dancers in Whoopee!’s chorus was the young Buddy Ebsen.  More than four decades later in San Clemente, RN and PN enjoyed watching late afternoon reruns of Ebsen’s show Barnaby Jones.  RN was a surprise guest at the star’s 77th birthday in 1985.  As The New York Times reported:

The members of the Barnaby Jones Luncheon Club had been waiting four years to meet the man who played their silver-haired hero on television.  The other day, Buddy Ebsen finally came to lunch.

The 77-year-old actor was upstaged a bit in the beginning when one of his biggest fans and a fellow political conservative —former president Richard M. Nixon— dropped by for a glass of iced coffee.

Nixon arrived carrying a shopping bag containing a wedding present —drinking glasses with the presidential seal— for Ebsen and his third wife, the former Dorothy Knott, who were just back from a honeymoon in Hawaii.

“I don’t look at much entertainment television,” Nixon said, “but I like Barnaby Jones.  It was a good mystery where you knew the good guys from the bad guys.  I’ve known Buddy Ebsen for 35 years.  He has been a personal friend of mine and Mrs. Nixon and a personal supporter.”

Nina Simone covered “My Baby Just Cares For Me” on her first LP —1958’s Little Girl Blue— where it remained a relatively obscure track of a relatively obscure song.  In the 1980s, when Simone was living in France and immensely popular there, the song was used as the soundtrack for a Chanel No. 5 TV ad.    In the UK a single was released which reached —appropriately— No. 5 on the pop charts.

Aardman Animations (a British Oscar-winning studio widely known for its work with Wallace & Gromit) released a wittily noirish claymation video.  Director Peter Lord captured the essence of Simone’s seductive vocal and no less seductive piano playing.

10.31.60

October 31, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Featured Articles — October 31, 2009

October 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

Obama makes Bush his blame czar By Mark Steyn, OC Register
It’s now Obama’s war, his jobless rate, his debt, etc.

McChrystal Lite By Tom Donnelly and Tim Sullivan, The Weekly Standard
How to lose a war by splitting the difference.

A Reaganite Or Jacksonian Wave? By Ronald Brownstein, National Journal
The parties have formulated inimical assessments of what Americans want from Washington.

Iran’s Nuclear Response Creates a Quandary for Obama By Andrew Lee Butters, Time
If the Obama Administration had hoped to get the bulk of Iran’s current stockpile of enriched uranium out of the country under a new agreement for reprocessing abroad, those hopes are fading fast.

Taking on the Taliban By Adnan Khan, Macleans
Is Pakistan’s new strategy to push its Taliban into Afghanistan?

Sonny West: Still Taking Care Of Business

October 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Music, Nixon Foundation, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Elvis’s loyal friend and bodyguard, Sonny West, spoke at the Nixon Foundation earlier this week and signed copies of his new book Elvis: Still Taking Care of Business a memoir about his life with “one of the most revered figures of all time.”

Foundation Vice President Sandy Quinn conducted an interview with West, where they talked about  — among other things — the day that “the King” made a surprise trip to the White House to meet President Nixon:

Arnold’s Acrostic

October 30, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under California politics, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

RN sometimes used bad language in private, but what Governor Schwarzenegger did recently was much worse. To get back at a legislator who had taunted him, he inserted an obscene acrostic into a veto message for one of the legislator’s bills.  This act was not a sudden outburst behind closed doors: it was a deliberate and methodical effort to put a dirty word into the permanent public record. And just when we expect the governor and his staff to spend all their time thinking of ways to ease the state’s fiscal crisis, he had an aide take time out to carry out his “prank.”  More here.

Featured Articles — October 30, 2009

October 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

Obama’s Bush Blame Game By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post
Old Soviet joke: Moscow, 1953. Stalin calls in Khrushchev. “Niki, I’m dying. Don’t have much to leave you. Just three envelopes. Open them, one at a time, when you get into big trouble.”

We’re Governed by Callous Children By Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
Americans feel increasingly disheartened, and our leaders don’t even notice.

Regarding Harry By Kimberley Strassel, The Wall Street Journal
The public option diverts attention from the legislation’s real faults.

On the War’s Frontlines By David Ignatius, The Washington Post
Here’s what you would see if you traveled this week to Kandahar and Helmand provinces, the two big battlegrounds of the Afghanistan War: This is a conflict that is balanced tenuously between success and failure. The U.S. has deployed enough troops to disrupt the Taliban insurgency and draw increasing fire, but not enough to secure the major population centers. That’s not a viable position.

America’s Next Unwinnable War By Theodore Sorensen, The Daily Beast
John F. Kennedy’s closest adviser, says Afghanistan isn’t threatening to become another Vietnam. It already is.

Troubling Signals On Free Speech By Stuart Taylor Jr., The
In his eagerness to please international opinion, President Obama has taken a small but significant step toward censoring free speech.

Bipartisanship

October 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

RN giving his third State of the Union Address on January 22, 1972:

Ed Nixon On The Record

October 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon family, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The President’s  youngest brother and author of the new book The Nixons: A Family Portait, Ed Nixon, is featured in the Examiner.

Featured Articles — October 29, 2009

October 29, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

Iran: Can Obama play hardball? By Robert Kagan, The Washington Post
Watching the Obama administration launch its “new era of engagement” over the past 10 months, most seasoned observers have pondered two questions: First, if engagement fails, will the Obama team ever acknowledge that it has failed? And what then?

Barack Obama must face down the ghost of Vietnam By Ben Macintyre, Times UK
As the President ponders sending more troops to Afghanistan, he is haunted by the conflict that scarred the US psyche.

The Generals’ Revolt By Robert Dreyfuss, Rolling Stone
As Obama rethinks America’s failed strategy in Afghanistan, he faces two insurgencies: the Taliban and the Pentagon.

How We Did It By David Plouffe, Time
In a new memoir, The Audacity to Win, David Plouffe, who managed Barack Obama’s 2008 race for the White House, provides a behind-the-scenes glimpse inside the campaign. Here’s an excerpt.

Truman and the Principles of U.S. Foreign Policy, By Victor Davis Hanson, The Wall Street Journal
Jimmy Carter rejected the postwar consensus. President Obama appears to be following a similar path.

Bringing Hope

October 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Here is an excerpt of the ‘68 campaign from a comprehensive documentary on RN’s political career:

How RN Brought Order To Social Security

October 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Economic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The New York Times‘ David Leonardt points out that President Nixon provided a win-win situation for seniors:

The first Social Security check was mailed in 1940 to Ida May Fuller, a retired legal secretary in Ludlow, Vt. It was for $22.54. Every month for the next 10 years, Ms. Fuller received a check for that same amount.

The original Social Security legislation had not included an inflation adjustment, which meant benefits did not keep up with the cost of living. A decade later, Ms. Fuller’s checks were worth about 40 percent less in real terms than when she started receiving them.

Congress finally increased benefits in 1950 and then continued to do so in fits and starts, sometimes faster than inflation, sometimes slower and usually in an election year. President Richard M. Nixon and a Democratic Congress brought some order to this process in 1972, by automatically tying benefits to the movement of an inflation index in the previous year.

The changes were part of the transformation, during the middle decades of the 20th century, in how this country treated the elderly. In the 1930s, they had little safety net and frequently struggled to meet their basic needs. Four decades later, they were the only group of Americans with guaranteed health care and a guaranteed income. All in all, it was certainly for the good.

But by the 1970s, you could start to see the early signs of excess. In their bill, Mr. Nixon and Congress included a little bonus: Social Security payments could never decline, even if prices did. If prices went up, benefits matched the increase. If prices went down, benefits would be held constant – and their purchasing power would actually grow. Heads, it’s a tie; tails, Social Security recipients win.

This year, the coin finally came up tails.

With oil prices plunging and other prices falling, last year’s high inflation (which led to the 5.8 percent increase in Social Security payments) has turned into deflation. Overall prices have dropped 2.1 percent in the last year, according to the relevant price index.

On Reforming Russia

October 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon Center, Russia, The National Interest | Leave a Comment 

Nixon Center President Dimitri Simes and Executive Director Paul Saunders argue that Russia’s fragility is predicated on its corruption, which starts at the top:

Corruption and insider dealing can have tragic consequences in Russia, as they did in an August explosion at the Sayano-Shushenskaya dam in Siberia, when over seventy people were killed due to inadequate maintenance. Putin himself described as “irresponsible and criminal” an apparent maintenance contract with a fraudulent firm set up by top managers. Beyond limiting investments in safety and maintenance, however, irresponsibility and corruption have also strongly discouraged investment in other key areas. Russian firms happily squeeze out foreign investors but don’t themselves put money into new equipment, training, or research and development. Despite recent increases, state investments in education, health, and science and technology are also inadequate for sustainable economic growth and to diversify beyond energy exports.

Here it is useful to compare Russia to China. China is less free than Russia according to Freedom House, and has a number of similar problems, but is considerably more attractive to foreign investors. The huge scale of China’s market is a major inducement, but Beijing’s greater willingness to accept international rules and its much more strategic approach to cultivating foreign investors—whose presence China’s leaders view as essential to meeting their development goals but energy-rich Moscow has seen as easily replaceable—also make a big difference.

Featured Articles — October 28, 2009

October 28, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | 1 Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

Obama Says No Rush on Afghanistan. There Should Be. By Iain Martin, The Wall Street Journal
It was the worst day for American forces in Afghanistan in four years yesterday, with 14 lives lost, all in helicopter crashes.

Don’t Build Up By Thomas Friedman, The New York Times
The U.S. does not have the Afghan partners, the allies, the domestic support or the financial resources to justify a nation-building effort in Afghanistan.

Democrats Divided Over Reid Proposal for Public Option By David Hersenzohrn and Robert Pear, The New York Times
Senate Democrats disagreed over a government insurance plan, suggesting that the decision by Harry Reid to include it in legislation had failed to unite his caucus.

‘Jobs Created or Saved’ Is White House Fantasy By Caroline Baum, Bloomberg
Heresy, thy name is Christina Romer.

Washington’s Suicide Mission By Holman Jenkins, The Wall Street Journal
The real problem is Washington’s riverboat gamble on saving the economy with free money.

Is Obama The New ‘72 Nixon?

October 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Barack Obama, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

In response to Bill Kristol’s hopeful column in the Washington Post today,  liberal “Reaction” blog editor Mustang Bobby argues that Republicans are instead misfiring against Obama, just as Democrats did against a popular President in 1972:

This kind of wishful reassurance isn’t new; the Democrats thought they had it in the bag in 1972 when they decided that after four years of Richard Nixon what the country really wanted to do was to go left; they mistook the growing anti-war sentiment in the country to be anti-Nixon, and they thought the time was ripe for a populist uprising against the establishment. George McGovern was no Glenn Beck or even Sarah Palin — he was a war veteran and a senator with considerable experience — and he still lost 48 states. The next time around, they went with a moderate — Jimmy Carter — and won. (Of course, given the state of the GOP after Watergate, the Democrats could have run Teddy the Wonder Lizard and won.)

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