Jerry Brown, Bill Clinton, and RN

October 21, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under American Politics, California politics, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Forty-seven years after his own run for the office, RN is making a cameo in the race for California governor.  The Sacramento Bee reports:

More than a decade before Jerry Brown’s current incarnation as undeclared gubernatorial front-runner, he hit the airwaves of liberal Berkeley radio station KPFA five days a week to speak his mind. What he said then, as he interviewed poets, activists and the likes of leftist icon Noam Chomsky, promises to resurface this coming year as the 71-year-old former governor ponders running for a historic third gubernatorial term. During his three years on the air, Brown repeatedly blamed corporate malfeasance and political corruption for undermining American democracy and even causing deaths, according to edited excerpts of the radio broadcasts.

Brown regularly attacked President Bill Clinton as a lackey for business interests and in one excerpt stated, “I don’t believe Clinton is different from Richard Nixon.“

More excerpts here.

Of course, Brown’s observation was not original.  Many people saw similarities between Clinton and Nixon, including Nixon himself.

You know, he came from dirt and I came from dirt. He lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the Presidency, and I lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the Presidency. He overcame a scandal in his first campaign for national office and I overcame a scandal in my first national campaign. We both just gutted it out. He was an outsider from the South and I was an outsider from the West.

Obviously, though, Brown did not mean it as a compliment.  That is one reason why Clinton is campaigning for Brown’s primary opponent, Gavin Newsom.

Featured Articles — October 21, 2009

October 21, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

What Is Nancy Pelosi Doing? By Jonathan Crohn, The New Republic
Armed with favorable cost estimates from the Congressional Budget Office and emboldened, perhaps, by the self-destructive behavior of the health insurance lobby, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi plans to propose that her caucus unite behind a reform bill with a strong public insurance option.

The New Untouchables By Thomas Friedman, The New York Times
Last summer I attended a talk by Michelle Rhee, the dynamic chancellor of public schools in Washington.

America’s banana republic economy By James Pethokoukis, Reuters
Is the decline in the dollar merely a “return to normalcy” story, as many bulls contend, and not a harbinger of a coming currency crisis?

Nobody wins in the Afghan runoff election By Rajan Menon, The New Republic
No matter how the Nov. 7 vote turns out, it likely will impede the goal of creating an effective, independent government in Kabul.

Evening the Score in Afghanistan By Thane Rosenbaum, The Wall Street Journal
Revenge is a just motive for finishing a war they started.

The Muse of the Obama White House

October 20, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration | Leave a Comment 

In their attacks on Fox News and tea-party protesters, White House officials are cribbing from a speech given 40 years ago next month.

[W]e should ask what is the end value–to enlighten or to profit? What is the end result–to inform or to confuse? How does the ongoing exploration for more action, more excitement, more drama, serve our national search for internal peace and stability?

Normality has become the nemesis of the evening news. 

Gresham’s law seems to be operating in the network news.

Bad news drives out good news. The irrational is more controversial than the rational.  Concurrence can no longer compete with dissent…

What has this passionate pursuit of “controversy” done to the politics of progress through logical compromise, essential to the functioning of a democratic society?

The members of Congress who follow their principles and philosophy quietly in a spirit of compromise are unknown to many Americans–while the loudest and most extreme dissenters on every issue are known to every man in the street.

How many marches and demonstrations would we have if the marchers did not know that the ever-faithful TV cameras would be there to record their antics for the next news show?

Pat Buchanan wrote those remarks for Vice President Spiro T. Agnew, who delivered them on November 13, 1969.

RN, Sammy, And The Highlight Of The 1972 Convention

October 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Singer and performer Sammy Davis Jr. famously embraced RN at a youth rally at Marine Memorial Stadium. The structure, located in Key Biscayne, largely neglected by city officials, is at the center of a preservation effort.

The Associated Press is reporting that the World Monument’s Fund is working to save the dilapidated 6,566 seat Miami Marine Stadium (shut down since 1992 after Hurricane Andrew) in Key Biscayne, Florida because of “its historical and architectural significance:”

The marine stadium is unique because of its cantilevered, fold-plate roof and its construction of lightweight, poured-in-place concrete, which was popular in mid-century European and Latin American sports stadiums. The modernist design appears to float over the glimmering water of Biscyane Bay; when bands used to perform there, they would play atop a floating stage. Boats clustered in the water and fans packed the stands.

It’s also the first structure in Miami built by a Cuban exile architect.

“It’s quintessentially Miami,” said Becky Roper Matkov, the CEO of Dade Heritage Trust, a local historic preservation group. “With the water and the sky and how it’s open to the air.”

Jorge Hernandez is a Miami architect and, along with Candela, is the co-founder of Friends of Marine Stadium, a group dedicated to bringing the venue back to its rockin’ heyday.

Hernandez, who saw a Boston Pops concert, a Fourth of July celebration and attended an Easter sunrise celebration at the stadium as a child, said that even though the structure is relatively new, it needs to be saved because of it’s importance in the modern architecture milieu.

“We’re just starting to understand the importance of preserving our recent modern past,” he said.

Miami Marine Stadium was also the site of a youth rally at the 1972 Republican convention, where singer and performer Sammy Davis Jr. famously hugged President Nixon. RN in his own words on the memorable moment:

I flew to Miami on Tuesday afternoon, August 22. That night I made an unscheduled appearance at the open-air youth rally, and the reception I received overwhelmed me. Pam Powell, the daughter of Dick Powell and June Allyson, escorted me onto the stage. Hands above their heads, four fingers outstretched, the thousands of young people took up a chant that I was hearing for the first time: “Four more years! Four more years! It was deafening. It was music. This was a new king of Republican youth: they weren’t square, but they weren’t ashamed of being positive and proud.

The picture that is probably most remembered from the 1972 convention is of Sammy Davis Jr., impulsively hugging me on the stage at the youth rally. When the crowd finally quieted down, I described my first meeting with him at the White House reception a few weeks earlier. We had both talked about our backgrounds and about how we both came from rather poor families. “I know Sammy is a member of the other party,’ I said. “I didn’t know when I talked to him what he would be doing in this election campaign. But I do know this. I want to make this pledge to Sammy, I want to make it to everybody here, whether you happen to be black or white, or young or old, and all of those who are listening. I believe in the American dream. Sammy Davis believed in it. We believe in it because we have seen it come true in our own lives.” For me – and, I think for many others – the youth rally was the highlight of the convention.

According to RN, Sammy Davis, Jr. was invited back to White House in March 1973 for an evening concert, where he suggested that RN hold “a gala entertainment honoring the POWs.”

On May 24 of the same year more than 1,000 POWs and their wives were invited to the White House for a formal dinner and afterward delighted in entertainment from Bob Hope , John Wayne, and other “famous pop and country singers, comedians, and motion picture personalities.” Sammy Davis Jr., was given a “place of honor” at the end of program:

He sang and danced and, with tears in his eyes, had special praise for the women whose prayers had “brought you cats home.”

Sammy Davis, Jr pictured in the Yellow Oval Room with RN in March 1973.

“Let Me Be (Imperfectly?) Clear”

October 20, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

No American presidency is complete without the emergence of one, or two, or more catchphrases as thoroughly associated with the incumbent as “Would you believe?” or “You really know how to hurt a guy” are with the late Don Adams. John F. Kennedy, in the early years of his presidency, was fond of saying “Let me say this about…” whatever topic was on his mind; after Vaughn Meader and a host of lesser impersonators milked it for endless laughs, he cut back on its use.

And, as Nixon impressionists from Dan Aykroyd to Alec Baldwin to David Frye (wherever he may be now) can tell you, no imitation of the thirty-seventh President would be complete without a full-throated rendition of “Let me make one thing perfectly clear” – a phrase so thoroughly associated with RN that its last two words appear as part of the title in perhaps a half-dozen of the many books written about him.

As 2009 has progressed, it’s become more and more evident that President Obama has used a variation of RN’s catchphrase far more often than RN did himself. As far back as August 1, Andie Collier at Politico pointed out that Obama had uttered “Let me be clear” countless times before intoning some statement of policy and opinion to which he wanted particular attention paid. But it has been in the last week, after Obama used the phrase in his remarks after learning he’d received the Nobel Peace Prize, that one major media website and newspaper after another has posted and published articles discussing the Presidential passion for clarity; here’s one of them, by Ben Feller of the Associated Press.

Featured Articles — October 20, 2009

October 20, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

At rescued banks, perks keep rolling By Tomoeh Murakami Tse, The Washington Post
Fringe compensation rose 4 percent last year.

As the Commander in Chief Deliberates, Frustration Builds Within the Ranks By Elisabeth Bullimer, The New York Times
Only nine months ago, the Pentagon pronounced itself reassured by the early steps of a new commander in chief. President Obama was moving slowly on an American withdrawal from Iraq, had retained former President George W. Bush’s defense secretary and, in a gesture much noticed, had executed his first military salute with crisp precision.

The Generals Aren’t Necessarily Right By Thomas E. Ricks, The Daily Beast
As Obama postpones a decision on Afghanistan, he should remember FDR’s lessons: bring the country along. Rushing has downsides. And dithering costs troops more than you know.

Why Wait To Disarm Iran? By Christopher Hitchens, Slate
There’s no possible advantage in waiting until Tehran has nukes.

Does Obama Believe in Human Rights? By Bret Stephens, The Wall Street Journal
Human rights “interfere” with President Obama’s campaign against climate change.

Winning The War Through Confrontation

October 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Afghanistan, Presidents, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

Bob Woodward and Gordon Goldstein (whose new book Lessons in Disaster: McGeorge Bundy and the Path to War in Vietnam. is now being read by President Obama) have also posted an op-ed, this one at the Washington Post, in which they discuss lessons learned within the LBJ administration and the politics of war time decisions:

Robert McNamara, the former secretary of defense and an architect of the Vietnam War, said it all could have been different if McGeorge Bundy, President Lyndon Johnson’s national security adviser, had not resigned from the White House in early 1966.

“I believe if McGeorge Bundy had stayed in the government . . . he and I together could have prevented what happened in Vietnam,” McNamara said in August 2007, less than two years before his death. “He and I together could have done what I couldn’t do alone, which was force the president to an open debate on these critical issues.”

In their final interviews, McNamara and Bundy dissected America’s failures in managing the Vietnam War. In haunting, mournful tones, they blamed not only Johnson and senior military leaders for a dysfunctional decision-making process, but also themselves. The interviews provide a singular look into what went wrong — as the two men saw it decades later, with the benefits and burdens of hindsight — at a time when President Obama and his national security team engage in intense deliberations over another complex, distant conflict, this time in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

For a wartime president and his top advisers, “there ought to be anguish,” McNamara concluded, because there “are no easy answers.”

H/T: Courtesy of historian and TNN reader Maarja Krusten.

Winning Afghanistan By Thinking About Vietnam

October 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Afpak, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

Lewis Sorley, author of A Better War: The Unexamined Victories and Final Tragedy of America’s Last Years in Vietnam, the book now circulating around the Pentagon, has a new op-ed in The New York Times that provides a comprehensive approach to winning the peace in Afghanistan based on the lessons learned from Vietnam:

AS President Obama and his advisers contemplate a new course for Afghanistan, many commentators are suggesting analogies with earlier conflicts, particularly the war in Vietnam. Such comparisons can be useful, but only if the characterizations of earlier wars are accurate and lessons are appropriately applied.

Vietnam is particularly tricky. While avoiding the missteps made there is of course a priority, few seem aware of the many successful changes in strategy undertaken in the later years of the conflict. The credit for those accomplishments goes in large part to three men: Ellsworth Bunker, who became the American ambassador to South Vietnam in 1967; William Colby, the C.I.A. officer in charge of rural “pacification” efforts; and Gen. Creighton Abrams, who became the top American commander there in 1968.

A closer look at key aspects of how these men rethought their war may prove instructive to those considering our options in Afghanistan today.

Continue reading at The New York Times.

Featured Articles — October 19, 2009

October 19, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

Small Businesses to NYC: Get Off Our Backs! By Steven Malanga, City Journal
The city’s crushing burden on job-creating entrepreneurs is getting even heavier.

Russia Worries About the Price of Oil, Not a Nuclear Iran By Gary Kasparov, The Wall Street Journal
The Obama administration’s foreign-policy goodwill has yet to be repaid in kind.

Wall Street’s Shame By David Paul Kuhn, RealClearPolitics
Something’s amiss when Michael Moore and Larry Kudlow see the same problem.

The Front By Peter Bergen, The New Republic
The Taliban-Al Qaeda merger.

How Obama’s Secret Iran Talks Set Stage for a Nuclear Deal By Massimo Calabresi, Time
President Barack Obama has a personal stake in the outcome of Monday’s meeting in Vienna between Western and Iranian nuclear experts on the future of Iran’s stockpile of low-enriched uranium.

The Soundtrack Of Our Lives

October 18, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Soundtrack Of Our Lives | Leave a Comment 

The Soundtracker is on a rainy weekend road trip checking out the homes of four of Virginia’s eight presidents: Madison’s Montpelier, Monroe’s Highland, Wilson’s Manse, and, of course, Monticello.

The Soundtrack will return next week.  In the meantime, here’s a 1969 placeholder: Jay and the Americans’ cover of Doc Pomus’ 1960 hit “This Magic Moment.”

Featured Articles — October 18, 2009

October 18, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

The Battle Between the White House and Fox News By David Carr, The New York Times
The Obama administration, which would seem to have its hands full with a two-front war in Iraq and Afghanistan, opened up a third front last week, this time with Fox News.

Stimulating Incumbency By George Will, The Washington Post
As Harvard’s president, Larry Summers, economist and former Treasury secretary, was a lion in a den of Daniels. The faculty Daniels, their tender feelings hurt by his occasional testiness, cowered together and declared him a meanie. Facing a faculty vote of no confidence, he resigned.

The Nobel-Hollywood Complex Implodes By Noemie Emery, The Weekly Standard
Polanski, Letterman, and the Norwegians make conservatives’ day.

The Deal to Disarm Iran By Michael Adler, The Daily Beast
Tomorrow the U.S. will meet with Iran to seal the deal that could take the country’s uranium away. Michael Adler on why the moment is the ultimate test of Obama’s engagement policy.

Nixon (Masks) In The News

October 17, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Presidents, Richard Nixon, Sports | Leave a Comment 

Last week, as the Los Angeles Angels entered the American League playoffs, I wrote about the team’s first foray into the postseason thirty years ago, when former President Nixon was a regular at what was then Anaheim Stadium, and spectators were not allowed to wear Nixon masks at the games.

Now the Angels are locked in mortal battle with the New York Yankees for the AL pennant. It’s hard to say whether the high visibility of RN’s favorite team has been a factor, but, with two weeks yet to go before Halloween, masks featuring his face are showing up again in the news.

Around 2 am on October 1, a student leaving the University of New Mexico library in Albuquerque was confronted by someone wielding a knife and wearing a Nixon mask. The student struck his assailant, then passed out, and when he awoke found he was on the ground, the knife next to him, and the assailant gone. His wallet and other valuables were untouched.

Then last Wednesday in Ridgeland, Wisconsin, a man with a Nixon mask robbed a bank of $1000. Hopefully, the next time my readers hear of the famed mask, it will be on the face of a neighborhood ten-year-old and the only thing being demanded will be candy.

“Seeing The Writing On The Wall”

October 17, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under China, Healthcare, Nixon family, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Tony Panaccio at postchronicle.com has an article about Ed Nixon, the last of the five brothers that included the 37th President. and author of The Nixons: A Family Portrait. In the article Ed speaks of RN’s visionary health-care plan:

“My brother’s offer to address healthcare was genuine, and it stemmed from his feeling that we needed tighter regulation on the insurance industry [...] He knew back then what was on the horizon, seeing the writing on the wall three decades before the storm.”

Ed also points out that the concerns of the People’s Republic of China concerning the increased Soviet military presence in the Pacific helped make possible his brother’s groundbreaking trip to the PRC in 1972:

“While President Reagan is largely credited for ending the Cold War, the seeds were planted during the Nixon administration. This issue was of significant strategic interest to both China and the U.S. at the time, and working together to keep the Soviets in check was a key element that led to the fall of the Soviet republic. If they couldn’t expand, they would not have the economic base to support their massive military budget. When their expansion ceased, it helped hasten their fate.”

Pat Nixon And America’s White House

October 17, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Pat Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Under the leadership of First Lady Pat Nixon, a record number of guests visited the White House.

According to the Associated Press, tens of thousands are expected to visit the White House this weekend to tour the estate’s gardens and experience a rare glimpse of the “fragrant roses, blue salvias and towering, decades-old trees that beautify the president’s back yard.” The tour includes the Jacqueline Kennedy Garden, the Rose Garden, the South Lawn, and the Children’s Garden — where visitors can see the handprints and footprints of Presidential grandchildren from Lyndon Baines Johnson to George H.W. Bush.

This semi-annual tradition was started by Pat Nixon in 1973:

Then-first lady Patricia Nixon started the tours in 1973. They are held twice a year, in spring (April) and fall (October).

The first few years saw between 10,000 and 12,000 guests. The White House expects double that number this weekend.

“They’ve been a success ever since,” Dale Haney, superintendent of the White House grounds, said of the tours. He has helped care for the grounds for more than 30 years and was present for the first garden and grounds tour.

It’s comes to no surprise that Mrs. Nixon was behind the White House Garden tours.

In his memoirs, RN said that Pat “stepped into the role of First Lady without breaking a stride,”  was generous with visitors and “thought of imaginative ways to bring young people to the White House:”

Each of us loved the White House and looked for ways to share its history and beauty with others, but it was Pat who made it happen.

She had loudspeakers set up near the fence on the South Grounds so that while they were waiting people standing in line for the tour could hear about the history of the rooms they were about to see. She arranged special tours for the blind that allowed them for the first time to touch the historic objects in the different rooms. Pat also recorded an introduction for the first “talking history of the White House so that those who could not see it would nevertheless have a sense of sharing and belonging when they were there.

As Jimmy Bryon noted last week, under the leadership of the First Lady, the White House was restored to its “golden age.”

“She left us all breathless,” RN Said, “By our second year in the White House we had set a record of 50,000 guests.”

The White House Rose Garden is open to visitors in the Spring and Fall each year, a tradition started by First Lady Pat Nixon.

TNN Weekly Weekend Reward

October 17, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Weekly Weekend Reward | 1 Comment 

Mercedes Sosa died on 4 October at the age of 74.  Her life was adventurous and eventful.    Her career spanned several decades and included more than forty recorded albums.   Her personality and voice were forces of nature.  The Argentinian singer and activist was known as “La Negra” because of her striking looks and jet black hair. She performed in venues ranging from underground cafes and banned rallies to Carnegie Hall, the Sistine Chapel, and the Coliseum.

As The Economist commented on 8 October:

To many Latin Americans in the later stages of middle age, to hear the voice of Mercedes Sosa…is to be instantly transported back to the turbulent times when left-wing radicals seeking justice and revolution battled and suffered at the hands of military dictatorships. It was a voice so sonorously deep, yet so delicately controlled, that it seemed to issue forth from the Pachamama herself, the earth goddess of the Quechua-speaking people of the Inca empire from whom Ms Sosa partially descended.

One of her most famous songs was Violetta Parra’s “Gracias a la Vida.” Parra was a Chilean folklorist who launched the “Nueva Cancion” New Song movement that revolutionized —literally and figuratively— Latin and South American music in the 1960s. The new singers and songwriters mined traditional musical idioms and instruments —like Sosa’s signature bombo drum— and put them in the service of the political movements that married the emerging struggle for human rights with left wing sentiments and  communist agitation.

“Gracis a la Vida,” which may be the most widely covered of all the New Songs, was written in 1966, the year before Parra’s suicide at the age of 49.  It was played on Argentine television during the broadcast of Sosa’s funeral services.  Her body lay in state in the National Congress Building, and a procession accompanied it to the cemetery.

Her repertoire included Atuhalpa Yupanqui’s  ”Duerme Negrito”:

In her last years, while physically beset, her voice and spirit remained undiminished.  Her recent duet, with Shakira, of Cuban nueva trovo composer Silvio Rodrigruez’ “La Maza” was a hit.   In the moving performance video below, from the Alas Foundation concert in Buenos Aires in May 2008, the sincerity of Shakira’s introduction needs no translation.   The song begins at 1.35; the audio of the studio version is here.   In a statement issued   Shakira said, ”She had the greatest voice, and she had the greatest heart for understanding suffering. She was the voice of her brothers on Earth who lifted up the music of suffering, and of justice.”

Mercedes Sosa’s extensive catalog is all in print and supplemented by many compilation and “best of” albums.  Her Amazon store is a good place to start.

Mourners at Mercedes Sosa’s funeral in Buenos Aires on 5 October.

Featured Articles — October 17, 2009

October 17, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

The Race Card, Football and Me By Rush Limbaugh, The Wall Street Journal
My critics would have you believe no conservative meets NFL ’standards.’

Taking On the ‘Democrat-Media Complex’ By James Taranto, The Wall Street Journal
The conservative Internet entrepreneur on bringing down Acorn, Hollywood liberals, and embarrassing the mainstream media.

Ignore Fox By Jacob Weisberg, Slate
Obama’s right. It’s time to stop taking the network’s skewed news seriously.

Hillary Reborn By John Heilemann, New York Magazine
At State, as in the Senate, she often talks softly—but that doesn’t mean she doesn’t carry a big stick.

The U.N. Human Rights Council By Jeffrey Goldberg, The Atlantic
The U.N. Human Rights Council, which includes such countries as Saudi Arabia, Cuba and Nigeria, has endorsed the Goldstone report, which argues that Israel committed war crimes in Gaza. This is a disaster not just for Israel, but for the West. Here’s a story that indirectly explains why.

A Fair Plan For Honduras By James Baker, The Wall Street Journal
A Lesson from Nicaragua Could Solve This Crisis.

Russians Reject Our Reset Button In Favor Of Theirs

October 16, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, Cold War, History, U.S. History, Vice President Biden | 2 Comments 

U. S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton got a lesson in geopolitics this past week. It may be best described by comparing the now-all-rage reset button metaphor to that gizmo put out by office supply giant, Staples – yes, that red button that when pushed says, “That was easy!”

From the moment the use of the term “reset” as a synonym for do-over, start-over, or make-over, entered the political vocabulary – inserted by none other than that wonderful wordsmith, Vice President Joe Biden – it has been applied foremost to our relationship with Russia. But as a recent, likely very reluctantly chosen, headline in the Washington Post indicated, a reset button can often create an error message.

“Russia Not Budging on Iran Sanctions: Clinton Unable to Sway Counterpart,” was how the largely pro-administration paper put it.

This past week, while my wife and I were enjoying a few days in Maine, she went shopping for things for the grandkids and I, as is my very predictable pattern, gravitated toward the local bookstore, this one a newly constructed establishment in Kennebunkport. Among my catch for the day was an interesting and well-written work by Nicholas Thompson, who has, in fact, written for the Washington Post, about two men who greatly influenced U.S. policy during The Cold War – George Kennan and Paul Nitze. The author is actually the grandson of the latter. The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War, is a great read describing two giants who maintained an uneasy friendship, while usually working on opposite sides of the foreign affairs street.

Early in the book, there is a passage about a memo written by George Kennan in May of 1945. The diplomat was living and working in Moscow when the war in Europe ended. Most Cold War buffs, such as myself, know very well of Kennan’s memo writing skills. His February 1946 “long telegram” is considered to be one of the seminal documents of the period, in which he described the Soviet Union’s “neurotic view of world affairs” and the “instinctive Russian sense of insecurity,” not to mention their, “secretiveness and conspiracy.”

But the memo written roughly 10 months earlier, though largely overlooked at the time due to his relatively insignificant role as “nothing more than a highly competent clerk,” is one that all the reset button aficionados in the State Department and elsewhere should revisit right about now.

Kennan began with the quaint, “Peace, like spring, has finally come to Russia,” but the reader is quickly confronted with the fact that the change of seasons was “far more noticeable on the Moscow scene.” And in language similar to what he would use in 1946, he bluntly acknowledged that Joseph Stalin knew just what buttons to push to get the United States to do his bidding. The Russians were already manipulating reality and events and had been all along. Kennan wrote: “They observe with gratification that in this way a great people can be led, like an ever-hopeful suitor, to perform one act of ingratiation after the other without ever reaching the goal which would satisfy its ardor and allay its generosity.”

In case some haven’t noticed, all this talk about the United States pushing the reset button is meaningless because the Russians have long since pushed theirs. And it took them back about 65 years.

Jesus told some of his disciples of the need to be at times “wise as serpents and harmless as doves.” This kind of clear-headed approach balances good intentions with a realistic view of the fact that others may not be operating from similar motives. You can almost see the image of Gorbachev rolling his eyes about now, as he stood next to Ronald Reagan again and again and heard that phrase, “Trust, but verify.”

By the way, is it just me or has anyone else actually tried to reboot a computer to fix a problem only to have the error right there again on the screen when the machine came back on?

Political reset buttons are, of course, pure contrivance. What some are really longing for is to erase the past eight years – or the past 50. Let’s all go back to August of 2001, or December of 1989, or July of 1941 – wouldn’t that be cool? Sure. It also, though – and please get this – can’t happen. To even try to do so is like trying to glean public policy philosophy from the script of Napoleon Dynamite:

Uncle Rico: Kip, I reckon… you know a lot about… cyberspace? You ever come across anything… like time travel?
Kip: Easy, I’ve already looked into it for myself.
Uncle Rico: Right on… right on.

Many these days are betting the future on the fact that the leaders of Russia, Iran, North Korea, and Venezuela will approach global politics with the same level wisdom as those serving on the Nobel Peace Prize committee (did they meet in Amsterdam this year?). Good luck with that. Go ahead and press all the reset buttons you can find or create. But in the end, let’s hope that someone, somewhere has kept a paper copy of the map back to reality, because it will certainly be needed.

An aging and seriously ill Franklin Roosevelt gave the store away to Mr. Stalin and company at Yalta. His inexperienced successor, Mr. Truman, didn’t do much better at Potsdam. But of course, they were dealing with a Soviet dictator and we are dealing with Vladimir Putin. Putin is nothing like Stalin, right?

Of course he’s not. Putin is taller and looks better without his shirt (possibly channeling his inner-Mussolini). Anyone knows that.

Actually, Mr. Putin has more in common with the pock-faced “man of steel” than most people care to notice. He is driven by power and operates as his own Lavrentiy Beria. The guy is one dangerous dude.

It took a glorified clerk and a recently-rebooted-out-of-office politician to remind the world that danger was the default human experience. Kennan wrote his telegrams, read by insiders, and a man named Winston Churchill gave a speech about “the sinews of peace” and that ominous “iron curtain,” heard by the world.

Let’s hope that there are clerks somewhere in our camp writing about reality and that their warnings will be noticed. Let’s also pray that there will be voices crying in a wilderness disguised as never-never land, voices that will refuse to be silenced. The message of danger is never a comfortable one to deliver or receive, but without it we may find ourselves with no real comfort zone at all.

I say let’s forget about this whole reset button nonsense. Frankly, what some in Washington should actually be concerned about is an eject button. It is shaped like a lever and every voting booth in the country will be equipped with one over the next few Novembers.

Featured Articles — October 16, 2009

October 16, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

An Honor Roll of One By Ben Stein, American Spectator
As you are reading this, the high school I attended, Montgomery Blair, in Silver Spring, Maryland, is having its 75th anniversary celebration. We are honoring some famous grads, including Goldie Hawn, the actress, Connie Chung, the TV journalist, Carl Bernstein, famous investigative reporter, Sonny Jackson, ace baseball player, and several others. The one who counts is named Tom Norris.

Debacle in Moscow By Charles Krauthammer, The Washington Post
About the only thing more comical than Barack Obama’s Nobel Peace Prize was the reaction of those who deemed the award “premature,” as if the brilliance of Obama’s foreign policy is so self-evident and its success so assured that if only the Norway Five had waited a few years, his Nobel worthiness would have been universally acknowledged.

There Is No New Frontier By Peggy Noonan, The Wall Street Journal
We are a nation fully settled by government. The terrain ahead is both crowded and costly.

America The Rebranded By Bill Schneider, The National Journal
The Peace Prize was awarded for Obama’s ‘values and attitudes.’ Now the president has to show that they work.

New Nato troops will not make up for Karzai II By Max Hastings, Financial Times
Gordon Brown’s announcement of the conditional dispatch of a further 500 British troops to Afghanistan represents a sop to the Atlantic alliance, rather than a change of heart in Downing Street. The prime minister and his advisers are deeply sceptical – as is President Barack Obama – about whether a reinforced combat effort will change much in an increasingly unpopular war.

The Coming Surge in Afghanistan By Bruce Henderson, The New Ledger
Yesterday the Washington Post disclosed that the Obama administration has authorized the deployment of 13,000 military personnel, well beyond the previously forecast numbers in Afghanistan. Based on the time of year, and the nature of the units being deployed, this buildup represents the pre-positioning of support infrastructure, the sort put in place to support a larger number of combat brigades. While additional forces engaged in Afghanistan will be welcome news to most, the tactics they will use and their rules of engagement will ultimately support or inhibit their success.

RN, The Majesty Of Parks, And Our National Heritage

October 15, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Environmental issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Last August, Frank Gannon wrote that it was significant that the new President of the Nixon Foundation — Ronald H. Walker — was also appointed to lead the National Parks Service in 1973.

Significant because a prominent part of RN’s legislative agenda included environmental protection and conservation.

In 1973, he signed the Endangered Species Act, protecting species and their habitats from extinction.

His first commitment to the people, he established the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to help insure that Americans could breathe clean air and drink clean water.

The same year, RN signed the General Authorities Act which required the whole national park system to be administered by the National Park Service — rather than by its constituent parts — effectively uniting the parks to reflect “a single national heritage” and to therefore “derive increased national dignity and recognition of their superb environmental quality through their inclusion jointly with each other in one national park system preserved and managed for the benefit and inspiration of all people of the United States.”

As Gannon also noted, in August 1971 RN announced that more than 5,000 acres would be turned over for a “full range of outdoor experiences” for its “dynamic” people.

Acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns’ newest PBS masterpiece, The National Parks: America’s Best Idea, is full of exquisite footage of America’s preserved majesty — from Yellowstone to the Grand Tetons — and its dynamic people’s tribute to their national heritage.

Featured Articles — October 15, 2009

October 15, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Featured Articles | Leave a Comment 

Interesting takes from home and abroad:

Stanley McChrystal’s Long War By Dexter Filkins, The New York Times
Gen. Stanley A. McChrystal stepped off the whirring Black Hawk and headed straight into town. He had come to Garmsir, a dusty outpost along the Helmand River in southern Afghanistan, to size up the war that President Obama has asked him to save. McChrystal pulled off his flak jacket and helmet. His face, skeletal and austere, seemed a piece of the desert itself.

Obama Hasn’t Closed the Health-Care Sale By Karl Rove, The Wall Street Journal
Wait until the voters figure out how Congress is proposing to pay for reform.

Wall Street’s Bonus Hypocrisy By Charlie Gasparino, The Daily Beast
Firms like Goldman Sachs are about to announce billions in year-end bonuses. Charlie Gasparino on how banks are rewarding themselves while still gambling with America’s money.

The Rush Limbaugh media lynch mob By Toby Harnden, The Daily Telegraph
Which public figure can be quoted as having said something bigoted and disgusting and it doesn’t matter whether he did or not because he might have? Who can Big Media brand a racist without checking the facts? Who has to prove he did not say something racist, rather than the accuser proving he did?

Obama’s Difficult Afghanistan Decision By David Ignatius, The Washington Post
Afghanistan could be the most important decision of Barack Obama’s presidency. Maybe that’s why he is, in effect, making it twice.

Hezbollah Isn’t a Model for Afghanistan By Michael J. Totten, Commentary
According to the Washington Post, some White House foreign-policy hands may be willing to call it a day in Afghanistan if the U.S. military can beat the Taliban down into something that resembles Hezbollah. I suppose I can see why this appeals to those who know just enough about the Taliban to think it’s possible, and just enough about Hezbollah to think it’s desirable.

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