Air America: A Memory

January 21, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Media | 2 Comments 

The last 48 hours have been rough ones for Democrats and liberals, starting with Scott Brown’s victory in Massachusetts and concluding, this afternoon, with the news that the left-leaning radio network Air America had gone into Chapter 7 bankruptcy and would air its final broadcasts on Monday. At Gawker.com, some who posted about AA’s passing mourned it, while others were less sorrowful:

My wife often woke me up accidentally in the middle of the night with Air America — back when showing seated in-studio on-air blab shots of talk-radio hosts was the “in” thing on wee-hours cable — in an effort to get back to sleep. I always got hit in the face with Al Franken, and always at three o’clock in the [expletive deleted] morning. Sometimes I fell back asleep before Don Imus came on. Sometimes there was trouble.

Huh, no big loss.

1.20.1973

January 20, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

The Bay State Catches Up

January 19, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Congress, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

Alvin Felzenberg, writing at National Review:

Come fall, Nixon won 49 states. Massachusetts was the sole state McGovern carried, along with the District of Columbia. Tonight Massachusetts finally caught up with the rest of the country. How Obama reacts will determine the fate of his presidency, along with that of the country.

Above The Fray

January 19, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Syed Badrul Ahsan, a writer at Bangladesh’s The Daily Star, sees RN as a model pol his countrymen can learn from:

IN 1961, only months into his presidency, John Fitzgerald Kennedy saw his plans over the Bay of Pigs crumble in a heap all around him. The mercenaries sent to oust Fidel Castro from power were swiftly cut down by Cuban forces. Kennedy was unnerved enough not to provide the Cuban exiles with air cover and simply folded up the operation. Depressed, he asked Richard Nixon, his rival at the November 1960 election, to come over to the White House for a conversation. The two men talked. Nixon gave Kennedy some sage advice on policy making and implementation. The president was grateful.

It was politics operating at the bipartisan level. And politics comes best when its practitioners realise that national interests, sometimes global priorities, are served well when they rise above party, when they decide to talk between and among themselves in order to reach common ground on what needs to be done and how it can be done.

RN’s Transformative Civil Rights Record

January 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Civil rights, Richard Nixon | 9 Comments 

Activist and all around divisive figure Earl Ofari Hutchinson offers readers his latest tirade at the HuffPo:

On the campaign trail in 1968, Nixon lambasted his Democratic opponent, Vice President Hubert Humphrey, for the failed Great Society programs and big government spending. Nixon told reporters that he resented anyone who said that law and order was a code word for racism. The majority of Americans, he explained, were decent, hard working, law abiding citizens. They were sick of the lawlessness and violence in the cities. They were furious at the courts for the perceived cuddling of (black) lawbreakers. Nixon claimed he was the candidate who spoke for white ethnics and blue-collar workers.

He accurately gauged the mood of the “silent majority.” The urban riots convinced many whites in the south and the northern suburbs that the ghettos were out of control and that their lives and property were threatened by the menace of black violence. In speeches to northern suburban audiences, Nixon hammered on the twin themes of law and order, and Great Society permissiveness.

Hutchinson’s tone indicates that he is well short on the facts and that he hopes we rely on his translation of “code word” to fill the void for his inability to provide any cogency to his argument.

According to historian Joan Hoff in her book Nixon Reconsidered, RN had a stronger legacy on racial issues than his predecessors and the effects of his policies serve as the bedrock for his successors.

In 1969, RN instituted a revised version of President Johnson’s Philadelphia Plan, requiring federal contractors to hire minority workers for construction related jobs.

In 1972, he expanded the power of the EEOC (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission) under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Also in 1972, he signed an extension of the Voting Rights Act, legislation that effectively banned literacy tests and created a uniform protocol for residency requirements that ALL states had to abide by.

According to Hoff, African Americans also benefited from the administration’s small business initiatives which RN tailored for minorities so that they would have “a profitable role in our economic system.” The results: “56 of the top 100 black  firms” were started between 1969 and 1971.

And by the end of his first term, less than 12 percent of African American children attended segregated schools nationwide, down from 40 percent in 1968.

These are just the facts. Then again, we can always rely on Mr. Hutchinson’s interpretations.

Sending The News To China

January 17, 2010 by Jon Hoornstra | Filed Under China, Richard Nixon, White House | 7 Comments 

This article is Part II of a series on how RN received the news.

Few news summaries fell below 10 pages. In normal times, a short news summary ran perhaps 15, always single-spaced, and up to as many as 30 to 35 pages – in spite of constant efforts to keep them shorter. Even though some went long, we were reminded that the President actually read them and would use them as a day-to-day management tool, well beyond just keeping himself informed. Pages that carried notations by the President were copied and dispatched to the relevant Cabinet secretaries or agencies by the White House Staff Secretary with a request for a response. Occasionally a note was meant for our office, usually a compliment. Such notes reminded us that we had to get it right every day. Mort Allin explained the work ethic in place when I arrived.

“If you make a mistake because of something I say, I’ll apologize and we’ll move on. If the President makes a mistake because of something we put in his news summary, what will we do?” His eyes made clear there was no good answer to that question. We weren’t going to make a mistake.

Getting all the broadcast network reporters’ stories right was made possible because of the elaborate video taping and two closed circuit channels run by the Army’s White House Signal Corps office. We made heavy use of their instant replay ability for the nightly newscasts from ABC, NBC, CBS networks as well as the weekly shows, including PBS.

But China was different. It was a full day and 13 hours ahead of Washington. When we began to see our network news broadcasts at 5:30 p.m., it was the next day at 4:30 a.m. in Beijing and, presumably, the President was within an hour or so of rising from a night’s sleep.

The more critical element, however, was the sheer technical capacity of communications equipment to handle a steady stream of information from the U.S. to Air Force One to make sure the Old Man had the information he needed. We shared an electronic pipeline with others, so we pared the news summaries down into 3 or 4 page documents to avoid choking the system. We focused on the stories coming out of China or originating here about the trip. The process of dispatching short summaries continued day and night until the presidential party departed China.

Nixon’s grasp of U.S. news broadcasts while standing on Chinese soil didn’t go unnoticed. While in Beijing the President attended a performance of Chinese gymnasts. We watched in Washington, of course, and duly reported in the next mini-news summary that NBC commentator Joe Garagiola had described the performance as “truly outstanding,” along with a few other words of high praise. Nixon mentioned that to a Chinese escort the next day while touring the Great Wall. Standing nearby, paying close attention, was our venerable Barbara Walters, then an NBC regular.

“Mr. President,” Walters implored, ”how do you know what Joe Garagiola said last night – he’s in New York!?”

Nixon didn’t answer. But the temptation I felt to bargain later for a free lunch from Walters in exchange for the answer was enormous.

Obama To Iran = Nixon To China? A Dissenting Opinion

January 15, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, International Affairs, Iran, Presidents | 7 Comments 

In the palmy days of a year ago, when, as every comics collector knows, President Obama was expected to personally assist Spiderman and other superheroes along with his usual duties, one of his superpowers, according to our best and brightest liberal pundits, was going to be the ability to straighten everything out with the Islamic Republic of Iran by some in-person diplomacy in the tradition of President Nixon’s trip to China in 1972. In the months since, as the mullahs and their government have effectively brushed off all the President’s overtures, this hope has faded, and now, at the website of Foreign Policy magazine, Michael Singh maintains that there is no point to pursuing a policy of Presidential diplomacy where Iran is concerned. The gist of his argument is in the following paragraphs:

Those who argue in favor of containment generally have in mind nuclear deterrence — that is, preventing Iran from actually using a nuclear weapon. And history suggests that they have a point — no nuclear power besides the United States has ever employed the bomb, and a combination of missile defenses and a declaratory policy promising retaliation could prove powerful deterrents to Iran doing so. While we should not count too heavily on the Iranian regime’s rationality — its officials have, after all, mused about destroying Israel — neither should we exaggerate the likelihood that Iran would initiate a nuclear conflict that would prove its own demise.

The possibility that it would use a nuclear weapon is, however, only the beginning of the dangers that a nuclear-armed Iran would pose. Of perhaps greater concern is that Iran would transfer its nuclear know-how to other countries or, far more alarming, to terrorist groups like Hezbollah and Hamas. This scenario is not far-fetched — nuclear powers have regularly transferred their technology to others, and Iran in particular has been generous in sharing advanced military hardware with its proxies, like the advanced rocketry employed by Hezbollah against Israel or IEDs used by Iraqi insurgents against American troops. Even if they were denied the ultimate weapons by Tehran, these groups would surely feel emboldened under its nuclear umbrella to step up their activities against Western and Arab interests.

Added to this danger is the likelihood that Iran’s acquisition of nuclear weapons would fundamentally change the security landscape in the Middle East. Iran’s neighbors would be faced with a grim choice — pursue a nuclear weapons capability of their own, or resign themselves to Iranian hegemony for the foreseeable future. Given their longstanding mistrust of Tehran, it is likely that those which could pursue the nuclear path would do so. Such a development would leave the United States not simply to contain a nuclear-armed Iran, but to manage a broadly nuclearized Middle East and its implications for the already-shaky global nonproliferation regime. These are threats against which even the most advanced missile defense or the strongest declaratory policy afford no protection.

The Shift In Massachusetts

January 15, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2012, Presidents, Public Opinion, Republican Party, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The catastrophe in Haiti has put all the other news in the shade to some degree, but one political story is starting to set off shockwaves nationwide. Ever since Election Day 2009, when the GOP prevailed in the gubernatorial contests in Virginia and New Jersey, political observers have wondered what 2010 might hold.

Next Tuesday comes the year’s first major opportunity to find out what voters are making of whatever Rep. Nancy Pelosi and Sen. Harry Reid have been doing on Capitol Hill. In Massachusetts, voters will select the replacement for the late Senator Edward M. Kennedy. The candidates are Democratic state attorney general Martha Coakley; Republican state senator Scott Brown; and Libertarian candidate Joseph L. Kennedy, who has constantly been explaining that he is no relation to those Kennedys. (This brings to mind the time in the 1950s when a John Kennedy, no kin to the future President, ran for office in Massachusetts – I forget if it was as a Democrat or a Republican – and got a solid percentage of support from presumably confused voters, though he did not win.)

As recently as last month, it was expected that Coakley would easily win. This is, after all, Massachusetts, the only state that voted for McGovern over Nixon in 1972. Where Ronald Reagan barely prevailed over Walter Mondale in his own 49-state sweep in 1984. Where President Obama prevailed over Sen. John McCain by 26 points in 2008. Where no Republican has been elected to the Senate since Edward Brooke’s re-election in 1972. Where no one from the GOP has been sent to Capital Hill since 1994 – ominously enough (if you’re a Democrat), the year the Republicans took control of Congress for the first time in forty years.

And the situation is, indeed, ominous for Democrats. The most recent poll, taken earlier this week, shows Brown ahead with 50%; Coakley with 46%; and the “other” Kennedy getting 4%. Among independent voters, Brown has overwhelming support, 65%. President Obama and former President Clinton have announced that they were appear in Massachusetts for Coakley over the weekend, and that is hardly a surprise, for they know the stakes. For the GOP to take the seat would spell the end of the (technically) filibuster-proof Democratic majority in Congress. It would require Reid and Pelosi to try to knock together a health-care bill that Obama can sign during the next two weeks if Brown wins, before he can take office (since the Democratic secretary of state in Massachusetts thinks he can stall certification that long). It would give the GOP a boost that it has not had at any time in the next decade, and, even this early, might raise the question of whether a re-election bid by Obama is as doomed in 2012 as Jimmy Carter’s was in 1980.

In fact, some liberal Massachusetts pundits are already starting to wonder what went wrong. Bernie Quigley at The Hill thinks it has to do with that elitist viewpoint that Democrats in the Bay State have cultivated for many a year:

[W]e, many of us, the most common of common people in all of America and possibly in all the world, developed a new contempt for the working class, classically seeing them as a threat and, as the old Southern planters did, scorning the “link heads” and the “white trash” and developed deep and sentimental affections instead for the meanest and lowliest of proletariat. You can see this with the “Car Talk” guys. We, the common working class of Massachusetts and now everywhere, desired to have the guys who fixed our cars have degrees from MIT. That is not what you want in a car guy. You want a picture of your mechanic in a photo-op at the Wilkesboro track with his arm proudly around the celestial No. 3, Dale Earnhardt.

The Case For Catastrophic Agnosticism

January 15, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Ethics, Faith, Lifestyle, Media, Religion | 14 Comments 

Here we go again. While the world watches unspeakable horror unfolding in the wake of the beyond-words tragedy in Haiti, and as millions of people sift through the rumble searching for their loved ones and lives, the predictable idiocy of self-anointed neo-prophets is ever present to tell us exactly why God “did” this. As a minister of the gospel (now in my 33rd year) I am deeply offended each and every time some big giant talking theological T.V. head weighs in and speaks for God as some kind of insider heavenly hedge fund trader.

Of course, you know what I am talking about, right? The other night, Televangelist Pat Robertson waxed un-eloquent about the earthquake in Haiti.

Something happened a long time ago in Haiti, and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French. You know, Napoleon III, or whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said, we will serve you if you’ll get us free from the French. True story. And so, the devil said, okay it’s a deal—ever since, they have been cursed by one thing after the other.

So, there we have it. From the mountain. True story (Pat said so). Take it to the bank. Because the Haitians wanted to get out from under “You know, Napoleon III, or whatever,” God sent a great earthquake to kill tens of thousands.

I have a suggestion for Mr. Robertson and others who seem to just wait for opportunities to step up to insert feet in mouth during moments of inexplicable tragedy. Stop and pray—pray a sort-of Serenity Prayer, one that says:

God, grant me the humility to not try to explain what I don’t know; the courage to bear witness to what I do know; and the wisdom to know the difference.

Personally, in such moments as these, I find myself saying, “I don’t know—I simply don’t know,” when asked by a congregant or man on the street about why things like the earthquake in Haiti happen. Sometimes that answer is met by a look that seems to say, “But I thought you were an expert on God?”

No one is an expert on God. That’s what makes him God and me, not.

It is, of course, understandable to want to know why bad things happen to people, but to try to apply anything other than general observations to specific troubles is an exercise in the worst kind of subjectivity. And when a member of the clergy speaks, doing so with the air of authority, it is a grievous sin to give absurd information. While it is never a good idea for the trumpet to give an uncertain sound, it can be just as bad to blare forth with a certainty unwarranted by facts, wisdom, or revelation.

The word “agnostic” literally means, “I don’t know,” and sometimes that’s the best we can do.

But sadly, too many people—especially some who should know better—decide to play the part of Job’s wacky “friends,” explaining it all, the whys and wherefores of trial and triumph. Having suggested a prayer for Pat Robertson, et al, I now have a text. It comes from that very Book of Job, near the end, when reality is starting to make sense to the suffering man.

Job answered: “I’m speechless, in awe—words fail me. I should never have opened my mouth! I’ve talked too much, way too much. I’m ready to shut up and listen.”
 Job 40:3-5 (“The Message”)

Some might wonder about the fact that there were cases back in Bible times, where calamity would come to a city or region as a clear indicator of God’s displeasure. He destroyed Sodom and Gomorrah, Nineveh, and even determined captivity in Babylon for the children of Israel. But what must be noticed is that these things never happened without ample warning—complete with undeniable specificity—and merciful opportunity to repent (change their ways).

In fact, in the case of Nineveh, he sent Jonah, a Jewish prophet, with the judgment message, one that included a timeline—in 40 days the city would perish. Jonah was a complicated man, who initially ran from the job. And no one was more surprised than he was when the city bathed itself in warning-driven waters of remission prompting the Lord to stay the city’s execution.

Of course, Jonah wasn’t a happy camper. He wanted the city to burn. The scenario that unfolded before his eyes—one of a faith-driven cultural renewal—didn’t please him at all. And when I hear those who profess faith purporting to explain why God “did it” when bad things happen, I also pick up a hint of Jonah: “They deserve what they got.”

But, some might counter, didn’t Jeremiah preach a message of judgment? Yes. And he wept all the while. There is a vast difference between weeping and the saying of “Amen!” (Which means “so be it” or “I agree” or, in some cases it seems, “see, I told you so!”). There is not a dime’s worth of difference between what Pat Robertson recently said and the ravings of the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Both preachers presumed to pronounce judgment; only the reasons and regions were different.

And both preachers crossed the line between fair and foul, wisdom and folly, truth and conjecture, and authentic witness and abusive demagoguery.

I have no direct line from God as to why bad things happen, nor does any other preacher today—liberal or conservative. When tragedy comes I don’t ask “why?” —I ask “what for?” And I try to help people through pain. And out of it. The Good Samaritan didn’t launch into a theological or philosophical journey to figure out how such a bad thing could happen to the man on the road, he simply poured in the oil and the wine.

That’s what all people of faith should be doing right now. We don’t know why it happened, but we know what we should do—find a way to help.

Reminiscing About RN and EP

January 14, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, Music, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

“Picture Of Nixon And Elvis Worth A Thousand Words,” reads the headline in this morning’s Los Angeles Times, and, sure enough, the article by Faye Fiore, the paper’s Washington reporter, that appears below it spends about a thousand words (or more) describing the circumstances that brought about the now-familiar image of the thirty-seventh President and the one and only King meeting in the Oval Office.

(Interestingly, the photo from that day most often seen, with Richard Nixon and Elvis Presley both looking at the camera, is passed over in favor of an image of the President facing the camera and Elvis looking at him.)

The article is based on the eyewitness accounts of the event given by former White House advisor Egil “Bud” Krogh and Jerry Schilling, Elvis’s close friend, when they appeared at the National Archives last week. Most of what they tell has appeared in many books about Elvis and/or Nixon, notably Krogh’s own volume The Day Nixon Met Elvis (which includes a foreword by RN penned just before his death), and Schilling’s book Me And A Guy Named Elvis.

But at the archives, some interesting sidelights were mentioned. Krogh remarked on the little-known fact that toward the end of his Presidency, when Nixon was being treated for phlebitis, Presley phoned to wish him a quick recovery. (And in 1975, when Elvis himself was hospitalized, the President phoned him from San Clemente.)

Krogh also pointed out one remarkable aspect of the 1970 meeting at the White House; despite Presley spenting several hours in the White House after the meeting, getting a tour and meeting several dozen thrilled White House staffers (and their wives), not one word leaked out about the King’s visit for more than a year, until columnist Jack Anderson, looking at an advance copy of John Finlator’s book The Drugged Nation, found a passage about it. (Finlator, the former deputy director of the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs, had helped arrange for Elvis to be presented with a BNDD special assistant’s badge.) It’s hard to imagine a megacelebrity’s visit to the Oval Office could be kept that much under wraps today.

Preparing President Nixon’s Daily News Summary

January 13, 2010 by Jon Hoornstra | Filed Under Richard Nixon, White House | 2 Comments 

This article is Part I of a series on how RN received the news.

I was a young man just a few months shy of my 30th birthday, the father of a 3-year-old girl, husband in a marriage struggling to stay intact, when a Staff Assistant to the President of the United States asked me if I would like to work at the White House preparing the President’s Daily News Summary, a document that by then had become an institution in its own right. To say the least, I was honored to be considered, indeed humbled to be hired.

That happened in January 1972. And that was the year that our 37th president, Richard M. Nixon, choreographed a historical paradigm shift in global power relationships that put unique levers of influence in the hands of the U.S. at the hub of the global steering wheel with his trips to the Peoples Republic of China and the USSR.

The Staff Assistant who hired me was Lyndon K. Allin, known in the White House with affection and respect as “Mort”.  Allin was a a former Wisconsin high school teacher who had directed the 1968 election campaign’s youth operations and was hired to be editor of the News Summary by Pat Buchanan.

Like Allin I also went to the White House from Wisconsin, but well versed only in the struggle of a state Republican party trying to get traction in the left and far-left politics peculiar to Milwaukee and Dane counties, especially in the capital city of Madison. But well versed in Wisconsin isn’t a strong argument for national savvy.  All politics may be local, but what I learned in Wisconsin was meager preparation for Washington. The capital was another universe with its own cast of characters, its own history. The learning curve would be steep.

My first assignment was to get through as many newspapers each day as I could to find articles and editorials that would add value to the President’s news summary. Allin, a consummate teacher, drove home the gold standard to satisfy: Does the President of the United States need to known this? Does it add value?  The challenge of becoming familiar with the byline columnists and editorial history of so many newspapers (most not seen in my quaint Wisconsin universe) was formidable. We had at least 75 dailies to get through, papers that covered an extraordinary editorial spectrum (Manchester Union Leader -vs- The San Francisco Chronicle), as well as geographical. There was strong Latin, leisure industry and senior citizen reporting from the Miami Herald, cultural conservatism from The Arizona Republic, midwest liberalism in the Minneapolis Tribune or Chicago Sun Times; and urban sentiments from major cities like Baltimore, Detroit; and the influences of our traditional Old South from Atlanta and New Orleans or Richmond.  And we incorporated agricultural reporting from Des Moines and Lincoln, Nebraska. Oil and cattle were covered by our Houston and Dallas papers. Of course Los Angeles and Seattle were included, and others one might not expect, papers from St. Paul and Indianapolis. With a smile on his face, Mort once scolded me not to waste time reading our home town newspaper, the Wisconsin State Journal, “except in your spare time.” There was no spare time, needless to say.

For those who value finer points in history, the news summary staff took up three offices in the Old Executive Building, rooms 125, 127 and 129. Directly across the hall were some of the luminaries of the time, Bill Safire, Pat Buchanan, Dave Gergen – even one-time ABC reporter John Scali – and countless others.

And there was an extraordinary pool of talent down every hallway. It was the only place I ever worked where there were Ph.D’s around every corner and secretaries with masters degrees.  It was all a part of the mix to the background noise as the AP and UPI wire service printers clattered six feet from my desk. Staffers walked in and out, people like Ben Stein, Noel Koch, Ken Khachigian, to see if stories they had worked on had yet rolled on the wire services.

Seeing the differences between what the President said or did to what the press printed and broadcast was an education in its own right.

The mechanical process of putting a news summary together was both art and science, engineered by its editor, Mort Allin. With his remarkable memory to remember dates and page numbers where articles had appeared, above the fold or below, Mort Allin was arguably the most ideal person for that job. He could recall if NBC’s Tom Brokaw had used the same language as Bob Pierpoint on CBS and could recall most of what was said by the late Admiral Elmo Zumwalt in his infamous Playboy magazine interview [Yes, we had every issue because, again, we could not let the President be caught off guard - even by the Navy’s top admiral.]

Soon after my contributions to the news summaries began, the usual format and routine underwent an abrupt change for the historic trip to China.

RN’s Domestic Council Stops By Yorba Linda

January 13, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Pictured left to right: The program featured Geoff Shepard on government re-organization, James Cavanaugh on health care reform, John Whitaker on environmental protection and Ambassador Richard Fairbanks on energy conservation.

In the first of year long series of Richard Nixon Legacy Forums, four distinguished members of RN’s Domestic Council were at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library on Friday, January 8th to discuss the President’s innovations on far reaching issues including health care reform, environmental protection, energy conservation and government organization.

Moderating the panel was Domestic Council Associate Geoff Shepard who spoke about government organization and the origins of the Domestic Council.

Shepard explained that the Domestic Council started in the Nixon White House as a counterpart to the National Security Council to provide the President with information and analysis before he implemented policy.

“The staff was housed in the Executive Office of the President and became professional assurors of a fair and balanced memo,” Shepard explained. Their “job was to review and prepare for the President the context of the issue.”

Discussing healthcare policy was Dr. James Cavanaugh, who served as the chief principal on RN’s proposal for healthcare overhaul in the early Seventies.

“That program if enacted would have fixed the problem.” Cavanaugh said. “The President was quite serious in his instruction he gave to Cap (Health, Education and Welfare Secretary Caspar Weinberger) and to me. What he wanted was a program that would meet the test – be public and private – cover the people that needed coverage, yes provide a mandate,” “but he wanted to do it in such a way that would pass the Congress.”

After meeting with union leaders, Senator Kennedy later stopped the plan in its tracks believing that he could attain a better deal for the Democratic Party, a decision he would later come to regret.

For Cavanaugh, the centerpiece of RN’s legacy in healthcare was the National Cancer Act of 1971, which the President of the National Cancer Society called a “wonderful Christmas present for the 52 million people who will develop cancer” and “probably the greatest thing ever been done by the United States.”

“I think for people who follow health issues, who follow health policy, who follow the history of healthcare programs in this country,” RN’s legacy “will be fairly good.” Cavanaugh said. “People who realistically look at what his program had look at it favorably.”

Discussing environmental protection was longtime RN associate and trained geologist Dr.  John Whitaker. In addition to serving on RN’s Domestic Council, Whitaker went on to become Undersecretary of the Interior in both the Nixon and Ford Administrations.

While Whitaker had the environmental portfolio on the Domestic Council, the environmental movement proclaimed the first observance of Earth Day. “He (RN) and Theodore Roosevelt were the two most famous presidents to deal with the environment. I would put him strictly in Roosevelt’s class if not ahead of him.” Whitaker said. “Nixon “institutionalized the environment,” if the “government comes out with a program that’s not pro environment it spikes right away again.”

Whitaker also helped spearhead RN’s Legacy of Parks program, an initiative that lead to the conversion of over 80,000 acres of government property to parks open to all Americans.

“He used to talk about how the poor kids in his neighborhood couldn’t get in the family car and drive to Yosemite or up to Yellowstone and how parks ‘needed to be near a people,’ Whitaker said, “the final result of what we did was to make many of the government agencies shed a lot of the land that they owned and make it into parks. “He created 600 and some parks that way including the Gateway to the East and West in New York City and San Francisco, two of the largest parks in the country.”

The final speaker in the panel was Ambassador Richard Fairbanks, who served in the Nixon White House as the Associate Director for energy, environmental and natural resources policy on the Domestic Council.

According to Fairbanks, before RN the words “energy policy” had never been spoken by a United States President, also marking the first time the issue had been talked about in a “cohesive manner” in terms of both its ‘domestic and international implications.”

Fairbanks – who went on to serve as the lead negotiator for Middle East peace during the Reagan Administration — also contends that RN’s policy as articulated in 1973 was groundbreaking in terms of its environmental understanding and its cost effectiveness, early thinking that lead to the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency, the Council on Environmental Quality and the Office of Energy Policy which later became the Department of Energy.

“We put the bedrock in,” Fairbanks said. “The bedrock has stayed and people haven’t even thought of changing those bedrock ideas.”

Orange County’s Own

January 11, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Orange County, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

From an OC Register reader via staff writer Jessica Tyrell:

There is no denying that Richard M. Nixon was one of Orange County’s own. Born in a small, wood-frame house in Yorba Linda, alumnus of Fullerton Union High School. He was a regular American kid, working where he could to make a buck.

My father, Robert L. Torres, loves to tell the story of how he was working at the vast Murphy Ranch in Whittier one summer, picking oranges alongside his father, Rosario Torres, and a large group of other pickers from El Modena.

Late in the day, a large flatbed truck was inching its way through the orchard, loading the day’s harvest. (Nothing was easy about harvesting oranges, neither picking nor loading the heavy, fruit-laden boxes on the trucks.) This day, the trucker (also called swamper) was running late, so he asked my father, “Hey, kid, would you please give me a hand loading these boxes of fruit?”

Dad agreed and helped get the truck loaded, so that the trucker could race down to the local packing house to unload his bounty.

Slightly winded, the trucker said to my dad, “Thanks, kid, I really appreciate your help. By the way, what’s your name?” Dad responded, “Torres, Bobby Torres.” The trucker replied, “Nice to meet you, Bobby, my name is Nixon, Dick Nixon.”

Lo and behold, a decade and a half later, that former swamper was vice-president of the United States of America, and my dad could say, “Hey, I used to know that guy!”

RN’s Son-In-Law Gives Annual Legacy Lecture

January 11, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon family, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Edward F. Cox, the son-in-law of Richard Nixon and newly elected Chairman of the New York Republican party gave this year’s Nixon Legacy lecture in the East Room at the Nixon Library.

RN’s son-in-law and the newly elected Chairman of the New York Republican Party, Edward F. Cox, gave the annual Nixon legacy Lecture in the East Room Saturday.

Introduced by his son Christopher, Cox described the astute leadership and the complexity of President Nixon.

“He had a great and active intellect.” Cox said.  “But he was also a man of action.”

Cox further discussed how these attributes translated into a unique strategic vision and an uncanny ability to follow through on it.

Recalling a time he went to the Nixon home to pick Tricia up for a date, Cox asked RN how he was going to end the Vietnam War. RN told him first he was going to go to China and then to Moscow to bring the Russians to the peace table.

He had a vision to change the world, Cox explained.  “In 1972 he went to China. It was the week that changed the world.”

After RN resigned from office in 1974, Cox described how he went on to write a series of books, advise future Presidents, and travel the world as the country’s elder statesman.

“In 1986, he made the cover of Newsweek with a title that read HE’S BACK.” Cox said. “And he was back.”

Longest Serving POW Honored By Nixon Foundation

January 10, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Military, Richard Nixon, Vietnam | 1 Comment 

The longest serving POW in Vietnam, Commander Everett Alvarez, Jr., was honored with the Nixon Foundation’s Great American Hero Award by President Nixon’s daughter Tricia Nixon Cox. From left to right:  Christopher Nixon Cox, the President’s grandson; Commander Alvarez; Tricia Nixon Cox; Edward F. Cox, the President’s son-in-law and newly elected Chairman of the Republican Party of New York; and Ronald H. Walker, the new President of the Richard Nixon Foundation.

Commander Everett Alvarez, Jr., among the longest captive prisoners of war in American history was at the Nixon Library on the occasion of the President’s 97th Birthday. For his service, RN’s daughter Tricia Nixon Cox presented him with the Richard Nixon Foundation’s first ever Great American Hero Award.

Commander Alvarez was shot down over the skies of Vietnam in 1964 and was held captive over eight years in the Hanoi Hilton and other Vietnamese prisons.

Daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower had these words to say about Commander Alvarez’s honor:

My father had a special place in his heart for the POWS —as I know they had for him.  He was aware of them —and their plight and their pain— every day they were held captive.  But he knew that they would understand the necessity to end the war in a way that reflected America’s values and honored America’s obligations.

The American Hero Award has been created to honor men and women whose exceptional character and extraordinary courage make them able to rise above personal concerns and act in the kinds of noble and selfless ways that inspire all the rest of us.

When John Wayne was introduced to Commander Alvarez at the POW dinner at the White House, the tough movie star broke down and said, “I only play a hero — you are a hero.”

David and I wish we could be with you today in Yorba Linda to celebrate Everett Alverez’ inspiring record of faithful service, exceptional bravery, extraordinary courage, and exemplary honor.  He truly is an American Hero.

On Saturday, he also sat down with Nixon White House Fellow and Special Assistant Frank Gannon to discuss his experiences in captivity and his encounters with President Nixon:

Celebrating RN’s 97th Birthday

January 10, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

President and First Lady Nixon’s daughter Tricia Nixon Cox was joined by Navy Rear Admiral Mike Shatynski (right) and Commander Everett Alvarez, Jr. (left), the longest serving POW in Vietnam, for the Presidential Wreath laying at the memorial site of her parents.

Hundreds celebrated RN’s 97^th birthday at the Nixon Library on Saturday, where events started with a Presidential wreath laying by daughter Tricia Nixon Cox. In an acknowledgment of the President’s Naval service World War II, Mrs. Cox was escorted by Navy Rear Admiral Mike Shatynski and Commander Everett Alvarez, Jr., who after being shot down over the skies of Vietnam remains among the longest captive POWs in American history. Later Saturday, Commander Alvarez was honored with the Foundation’s Great American Hero Award.

The ceremony also included a special invocation for RN by Chaplain Robert Thomas, remarks by Admiral Shatynski, a presentation of the colors by Sea Cadets from the Troy High School JROTC, and a solemn performance of “Taps” by a Navy bugler. Robbie Britt gave a riveting performance of “God Bless America.”

Courtesy of docent J.R. Davis, below is video of yesterday’s wreath laying ceremony:

First Duffer

January 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Sports, U.S. History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

America learned early about President Obama’s love affair with basketball, a romance so intense that during the 2008 campaign reports kept leaking out of his camp that if elected, he planned to convert the one-lane bowling alley installed by President Nixon in the White House basement into an indoor court – a notion quickly kiboshed when it became clear that many devotees of the ball-and-pins might vote for Sen. John McCain rather than let this happen.

But although Obama has been known to dribble and dunk whenever his schedule allows, it was a foregone conclusion that sooner or later he had to come to grips with the real sport of Presidents, and so over the holidays reports came out of his Hawaii hideaway that he had been seen on the local links, was taking golf lessons, and dutifully attempting to find out just how huge his handicap is going to be.

The 44th President undertakes the sport with a distinct disadvantage: he is the first President since, perhaps, William Howard Taft who never had the chance to play with Bob Hope. And so it is that Peter Corrigan of the London Independent devotes a column to discussing Obama’s taking up golf and his place in the Presidential traditions connected with tees, hooks, and double eagles. (Not to mention the Vice-Presidential tradition, established by Spiro Agnew and so often mentioned by Hope and Johnny Carson, of beaned spectators.)

Nearly every golfer under the age of ninety can quote Lacey Davenport’s line from Caddyshack, “Nixon plays golf” – in a film made, as it happens, a year after RN broke 80 on a California course and then gave up the game for good. Quite a bit could be written about Nixon’s quarter-century on the greens, off and on, before that happened, but Corrigan focuses on the time in the early 1970s when Arnold Palmer was invited to San Clemente and there found the President and, perhaps inevitably, Bob Hope. The journalist continues:

[Palmer] was asked his opinion about how the US should end the Vietnam war. He muttered something about not pussyfooting about and “going for the green”. I’m not sure if they bombed Cambodia as a result, but as valuable as a pro’s advice is when it comes to your swing it shouldn’t carry weight in real life.

Collinson’s account is not quite true to the record. It’s hard to picture the forthright Artie “muttering” any advice, and the account that Palmer gave in the 2000 book (as quoted from his own website) is as follows:

Perhaps Palmer’s best memory of the [Bob Hope] tournament has nothing to do with what happened on the course. It was at the Hope in the early 1970s that Palmer was summoned to a mini-summit with President Richard M. Nixon. A U.S. Marine helicopter picked up Bob Hope, Palmer and their spouses and flew them over the mountains to Nixon’s Western White House at San Clemente north of San Diego.

On hand with Nixon was Vice President Gerald Ford, foreign policy adviser Henry Kissinger and a host of top level national security officials. “It seemed the president wanted to pick our brains, of all things, about how to end the war in Vietnam,” Palmer told author James Dodson in the Palmer biography, A Golfer’s Life. When Palmer’s turn came to express his opinion, Palmer sheepishly told the Commander-in-Chief to “get this thing over as quickly as possible, for everyone’s sake. I mean, why not go for the green?”

The golf pro’s advice got a round of laughs from people who were unaccustomed to the levity.

Levity aside, at the end of 1972, when it looked like North Vietnam would balk at signing the Paris peace accords, President Nixon went ahead and sent bombers to Hanoi, in that sense “going for the green.” And that brought Le Duc Tho’s negotiators back to the table, and thus the war ended for the United States. Palmer’s meeting with the President also happened well after the Cambodia bombing. The lesson here is that it pays, especially in this age of Google and Books.Google, to check the sources.

Thomas Mallon Looks At “The Pink Lady”

January 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Presidents, Richard Nixon, Senate, U.S. History, Watergate | Leave a Comment 

In November, TNN’s Frank Gannon wrote about the appearance in Tina Brown’s Daily Beast of an excerpt from The Pink Lady, the new biography by Sally Denton of Helen Gahagan Douglas, the actress-turned-Congressperson who was defeated by then-Rep. Richard Nixon for the U.S. Senate in 1950.

Denton’s book is now in the stores, and is reviewed in the current issue of the New York Times Book Review by Thomas Mallon, the eminent historical novelist and critic. He criticizes the biography for many of the same faults (sketchy research, questionable assumptions) that Frank found in the excerpt.

What really grabbed my attention, however, is the notice at the review’s conclusion that Mallon is now at work on a novel about Watergate. His 2007 novel Fellow Travelers is an expert study of Washington during the McCarthy era, with RN as a supporting character, so I am very keen to see how he’ll write about the days of ‘72 and ‘73.

(Here, it’s worth mentioning that longtime Washington journalist Roy Hoopes died a few weeks ago at the age of 87. His best-known books are Our Man In Washington, a mystery story starring H. L. Mencken, and the definitive biography of novelist James M. Cain, but his last book, A Watergate Tape, is also the most recent novel that I know of about that affair.)

Whittaker Chambers’s House Damaged By Fire

January 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

From Westminster, Maryland, came the news on Wednesday that an electrical fire had occured at the farm of Whittaker Chambers, the onetime Communist and journalist whose testimony in 1948, and “pumpkin papers” evidence, led to the conviction of former State Department official Alger Hiss on perjury charges, in the case which propelled Richard Nixon to national prominence. According to Chambers’s son John, the farmhouse in which his father wrote his classic account of the case, Witness, was damaged, but plans are already underway to repair it. The farm is now a National Historic Landmark.

1.9.1913 — 97 Years Ago Today

January 9, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

I was born in a house my father built.  My birth on the night of January 9, 1913, coincided with a record-breaking cold snap in our town of Yorba Linda, California.  Yorba Linda was a farming community of 200 people about thirty miles from Los Angeles, surrounded by avocado and citrus groves and barley, alfalfa, and bean fields.

For a child the setting was idyllic.  In the spirng the air was heavy with the rich scent of orange blossoms.  And there was much to excite a child’s imagination: glimpses of the Pacific Ocean to the west, the San Bernadino Mountains to the north, a “haunted house” in the nearby foothills to be viewed with awe and approached with caution — and a railroad line that ran about a mile from our house.

In the daytime I could see the smoke from the steam engines.  Sometimes at night I was awakened by the whistle of a train, and then I dreamed of the far-off places I wanted to visit someday.  My brothers and I played railroad games, taking the parts of engineers and conductors.  I remember the thrill of talking to Everett Barnum, the Santa Fe Railroad engineer who lived in our town.  All through grade school my ambition was to become a railroad engineer.

—–The opening of RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978).

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