1.9.72

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

Thirty-eight years ago today, PN arrived back from a trip to Africa in time to help RN celebrate his fifty-ninth birthday.  She was the first First Lady to visit Africa; her eight-day 10,000 mile trip to Liberia, Ghana, and the Ivory Coast (where half a million people shouted Vive Madame Nixon) had begun on New Year’s Day.

PN in Accra: TIME magazine reported that “In West Africa in 1972 she was cheered by huge throngs, exotic tribal kings and bare-breasted dancers.”

Traveling with the unique title “Personal Representative of the President,” PN attended the inauguration of William Tolbert as President of Liberia.  She carried out a full schedule of the kinds of meetings and visits she had pioneered nineteen years before when the newly-elected President Eisenhower sent the Nixons as his representatives on a ten week trip to Asia.

The central purpose of the 1972 Africa trip was to represent the President at the Tolbert inauguration.  As Julie Nixon Eisenhower notes in her biography of her mother —Pat Nixon: The Untold Story— the temperature at the ceremonies had already reached one hundred degrees (PN noticed that the white dress uniform of her military aide —the ubiquitous Jack Brennan— was soaked through) even before the new chief executive began his forty minute inaugural address.

In addition to representing RN at the Tolbert inauguration, PN addressed the National Assembly in Accra, and exchanged toasts with her hosts —Prime Minister Busia  and President Houphouet-Boigny— at state dinners held in her honor there and in Abidjan.

She arrived back in Washington on 9 January in time to celebrate RN’s fifty-ninth birthday.  He led a welcoming delegation of administration officials and congressional leaders to Andrews Air Force base to welcome her home.

RN said:

Mr. Vice President, Congressman Ford, members of the Cabinet, and all of you who have been so very kind to come to the airport here today on this rainy night:

First, I want to thank you for wishing me a happy birthday, and I know that it was hard for you to come. But I think perhaps the best birthday present, and the greatest sacrifice, was made by Mrs. Nixon: She flew 4,000 miles for my birthday party tonight.

Now I am in a bit of an awkward position, because I have to welcome her back officially, and I also have to welcome her back personally. I asked our Chief of Protocol, Ambassador Mosbacher, how I should address her, and so he wrote me a memorandum. He said, “You could call her Mrs. Nixon, or you could call her Madam Ambassador.” But I guess I will just call her “Pat.” Welcome home, Pat. We are glad you are here.

He described the backstory of the trip:

Now, if I could just spend a moment to tell you how this trip came about, and why I think the choice that was made was a good one. My very dear and old friend, President Tolbert of Liberia, wrote me a personal note inviting me to his inauguration. We have very much in common. We both served as Vice Presidents during the same period of time, and he became President of his country, as I have had the honor of becoming President of the United States. And he is the President of the oldest republic in Africa and, of course, the United States is the oldest republic in the American Continent.

So I wanted to go, but I could not because of some of the demands of the schedule here at that time. So I wrote him back a personal note and said that while I could not come, I would try to send a very good substitute. Now, since the trip began, I have been reading the newspapers and, Mr. Vice President, also watching television, and as I watched the television and read the newspapers, of the welcomes that Mrs. Nixon received in Liberia and Ghana and Ivory Coast, I realized that the substitute was doing a much better job than the principal would have done.

And PN replied:

Before my husband grabs the microphone, I do want to thank all of you for coming out to the airport and welcoming me home.

I really had a wonderful journey. The people in the three countries I visited —Liberia, Ghana, and Ivory Coast— could not have been more friendly or more gracious or more hospitable. In fact, their hospitality was boundless and they all sent greetings, the leaders and the people in all walks of life, to you here in the United States.

They are proud of the partnership with the United States, and this partnership is built on equality, mutual respect, and friendship. I hope that it will always remain that way.

That night, in the Lincoln Sitting Room, RN recorded in his diary:

…too many times our trips abroad deal with hard problems and not enough of the far more important personal warmth and symbolism which means so much.  This is true in all of the underdeveloped countries and particularly true in Latin America, Asia, and also, I believe, in parts of Asia…

The amazing thing is that Pat came back looking just as fresh as a daisy despite an enormously difficult, taxing schedule.  She had press conferences in each country, had had conversations with the presidents and then carried it all off with unbelievable skill.  As Julie put it, what came through was love of the people of the countries she visited for her and, on her part, love for them.

On 1 January 1972, the night PN returned from Africa, RN recorded in his diary: “…what came through was love of the people of the countries she visited for her and, on her part, love for them.”

This was not PN’s first time in Africa, or in Liberia and Ghana.  In March 1957, RN became the first vice-president to visit Africa, and PN accompanied him —carrying out her usual grueling independent schedule— on the twenty-one day eight-nation tour.

The trip was centered around the events celebrating Ghana’s independence from Britain — the first nation in black Africa to shed colonial rule.

Julie Eisenhower writes about the independence celebrations:

The high point of the trip, the Ghanian independence celebration, was a mixture of British formality and joyous exultation.  The new prime minister, Kwame Nkrumah, wept as he proclaimed alt the stroke of midnight on March 6: “The battle is ended.  Ghana, our belived country, is free forever.”  Coretta and Martin Luther King, Jr., attended the independence celebration at the invitation of Nkrumah.  By inviting King, the rime minister was giving world-wide recognition to the man who had protested segregation by leading the Montgomery, Alabama, bus boycott.  Thus, five thousand miles away from their own country, America’s Vice President and the civil rights pioneer met for the first time and made arrangements for another visit together once they returned home.

Peter Lisagor, the tough-minded and widely-respected reporter and columnist for the Chicago Daily News, wrote admiringly about PN’s charm —and no less about her stamina— in a piece about the trip:

She says she loves to meet people and she gives every evidence of it.  She has the rare knack of making people feel she has known them for a long time when she first meets them, usually by putting her arms around them casually in a friendly gesture.

The average woman on this routine would yield up to weariness by this time.  But not Pat Nixon.  She’s as dedicated as her husband on the goodwill circuit.  And from all the signs she is as indestructible.

In Ghana in 1957, PN carried out a busy independent schedule (above) in addition to attending official functions with RN (below).

Tom Wicker Talks About Nixon On C-SPAN3

January 8, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under News media, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

This weekend on C-SPAN3, there will be two reruns of a 90-minute program taped in 1995, in which former New York Times reporter and columnist Tom Wicker discusses the thirty-seventh President. (Wicker’s 1991 book One Of Us is, along with William Safire’s Before The Fall and C.L. Sulzberger’s volume about RN’s foreign policy, probably the most thoughtful and least prejudiced writing about Nixon by anyone associated with the journal still sometimes called America’s newspaper of record.) The program airs at 11:40 am tomorrow and again at 5:40 pm.

Buck Or Hot Potato?

January 8, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, History, Intelligence, International Affairs, Islam, National Security, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror, economy | 3 Comments 

In the old West, when the boys played poker at the saloon, or wherever, along with the cards, chips, money, and various beverages, the table was also adorned with a knife–one with a buckhorn handle. The knife was moved from place to place, depending on the person dealing. If a player didn’t feel like dealing the cards, he could pass the responsibility to the next guy, along with the knife.

It was called “passing the buck.”

The phrase is, of course, most commonly associated with President Harry Truman–in fact, his desk on display at the Truman Library in Independence, Missouri, has a famous sign bearing the words: “The Buck Stops Here.” One of his aides, Fred Canfil, had seen the phrase on a desk in El Reno, Oklahoma, and had the sign made for his boss. Interestingly, and largely lost to the legend according to biographer David McCullough, the 33rd President only kept the sign on his Oval Office desk for a short time while in the White House.

But the metaphor stuck.

It has been used by leaders–particularly presidents–ever since as the ultimate way of saying: “I’m in charge, it’s my responsibility.” Most recently, the phrase was brought out of White House mothballs and used by President Barack Obama in remarks about the Christmas Day 2009 foiled Islamist terrorist attack.

It remains to be seen whether or not the latest pronouncement about the proverbial buck will be remembered as Truman-esque, or more like the nervous stammer of Alexander Haig the day President Reagan was shot. I believe the President said the right things the other day–but will he and his administration really follow through, taking steps, making the tough calls, and keeping the issue of Islamist terror on their political radar screen?

A good indicator would be the willingness to call it what it is. We are not just fighting Al Qaeda as some kind of generic syndicate of bad guys, as with The Man From Uncle and “THRUSH” or Maxwell Smart’s “KAOS.” There is no way for us to win over an ideology, while being afraid or hesitant to call it what it is: Islamism.

To my mind, Mr. Obama is still not comfortable in his role as Commander-in-Chief, with its implied responsibilities of protecting the nation from “all enemies, foreign and domestic.” He is now saying many of the right things, but I wonder if his vocabulary and America’s dictionary are in sync? He forms phrases now like “we are at war” – but I can’t help but get the feeling that this is based more on manufactured energy than real passion. Does the President view what happened on Christmas and the whole megilla of security, intelligence, and such as important as, say, the economy, healthcare, and jobs?

In fairness, most presidents bring dreams to the job. Lyndon Johnson wanted to build a Great Society and Richard Nixon wanted to focus on foreign affairs, but both had to contend more than they would have liked with their less-favored part of the domestic-international presidential paradigm. Bill Clinton wanted it all to be about “the economy, stupid.” But the first priority of any president is to keep us safe so we can actually have an economy.

A strong sense of national security is, in itself, a potent economic stimulus.

Only time will tell if the new-found-but-pretty-darn-late war-speak (better: war-whisper) will really be about the buck stopping with the President, or mere words.

After the Bay of Pigs fiasco, President Kennedy faced the press and talked about victory having many “fathers,” but defeat being an “orphan.” He also acknowledged that he was “the responsible officer” in the government. It was, as was Mr. Obama’s recent admission, a statement of the obvious.

But accepting responsibility as a leader does not abrogate systemic culpability.

The old 1970s sitcom, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, had a character named Lou Grant (played by Ed Asner)–an irascible man who ran a newsroom. Mary’s boss once said: “Leadership is the art of delegating blame.” Actually, good leadership is somewhere between taking full blame and delegating it all away. Where there are mistakes there is blame to be found. To miss this is to ignore a vital piece of the puzzle preventing something else bad from happening.

Frankly, what needs to happen throughout the government is for various leaders in key areas to think about letting the buck stay with them for a while. When a president has to say “The Buck Stops Here,” it is at least a tacit acknowledgement that the buck has been aggressively mobile.

I think the buck stops every bit as much with Attorney General Eric Holder, as it does with the President. After all, haven’t we been given the impression that the whole send-the-Gitmo-gangsters-to-New York idea is really his and the President is above it all? Or does that buck make its way to Mr. Obama’s desk, too?

And how about Dennis Blair, our Director of National Security (DNI–one of the dumbest ideas to come out of the Bush administration)? Following Mr. Obama’s speech on Thursday, he issued a statement saying, in part:

The Intelligence Community has made considerable progress in developing collection and analysis capabilities and improving collaboration, but we need to strengthen our ability to stop new tactics such as the efforts of individual suicide terrorists. The threat has evolved, and we need to anticipate new kinds of attacks and improve our ability to stay ahead of them and protect America.

We can and we must outthink, outwork and defeat the enemy’s new ideas. The Intelligence Community will do that as directed by the President, working closely with our nation’s entire national security team.

Really? What has the guy been working on up to now–health care reform?

One of two things has been happening, as clearly indicated by the foiled Christmas Day Islamist terror attack: either subordinates are keeping bad or inconvenient details from the President of the United States, or the information has not, until now, been marked or received with requisite urgency. Whatever the case, heads should roll. Blair’s words are akin to those uttered by an erudition-challenged player after a football game, “Well, we needed to score more points to win.” Duh.

There really is no buck to pass in the Obama administration when it comes to National Security, there is only a hot potato few want to deal with or even acknowledge. Attorney General Holder, Janet Napolitano, and so many others in key roles these days have regularly dismissed or minimized the danger of our times, while forging ahead with the even-more-now absurd sending of Gitmo detainees back to Yemen (6 on December 20th), and making sure that Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab (pronounced: Abdulmutallab) is told he has the right to remain silent and to the full protection of the American justice system, as opposed to being treated as he should be: as an enemy combatant.

Sure, the President of the United States made a speech and said many of the right things, but what we need to figure out is if what we are really bearing witness to is a dynamic described to reporters by Former Attorney John Mitchell, back in 1969: “Watch what we do, not what we say.”

Bud Krogh And Jerry Schilling

January 8, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Entertainment, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

The two recounted the 1970 meeting between the King and the President in Washington Wednesday night. Watch the video here.

They hadn’t seen each other since they both took part in one of the more bizarre meetings in White House history 39 years ago, but Wednesday night at the National Archives, President Richard Nixon’s aide Bud Krogh and Elvis Presley’s friend Jerry Schilling met again to recount that Oval Office meeting in December of 1970.Schilling accompanied Presley on a flight from California, not knowing what he was intending.

On the flight, Presley wrote a letter to Nixon on American Airlines stationary, asking that the president agree to a meeting, and appoint Presley a special federal agent to help in the war on drugs.Schilling and Presley dropped off the letter at the Northwest Gate of the White House even before the sun rose.

Sitting at his desk inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue later that morning, Krogh got a call from fellow aide Dwight Chapin.

“And he says, ‘Bud the King is here,’” recounts Krogh. “And I looked at the president’s schedule and I said what king? There aren’t any kings on our schedule. What are you talking about? And he says, ‘No, not any two-bit king, the King of Rock, Elvis Presley. He’s right here!’ And I said, ‘Dwight, come on! It’s going to be a long day, four days before Christmas.’”

Still thinking it’s a joke, Krogh is floored when Elvis walks into his office with Schilling and gets another surprise.

“That was one of the most lovely half hours I’ve had, talking to you all and hearing Elvis talk from the heart about his country and what it meant to him,” Krogh told Schilling.

The White House chief of staff responded to the meeting request by writing, “You must be kidding.” But HR Halde gave the ok, and Elvis was ushered into the Oval Office by Krogh.

“He walked in the door and he looked at the eagles engraved in the ceiling and the eagles engraved in the carpets in the floor and I knew it sort of overwhelmed him. He’s wearing his cool glasses and his cape and his shirt. Nobody was ever dressed quite that way and the President has never seen anyone dressed like that,” Krogh said.

Presley made his request to get a federal badge, and Krogh surprised himself by what he then told the president.

“I said, ‘Mr. President, if you want to give him a badge we can get him a badge.’ So, at that point the president said, ‘Get him a badge. I want him to have one.’ Elvis is overcome and he steps forward and he grabs the president and he hugs him, which wasn’t the norm in that White House,” Krogh said to laughter.

1.6.1945

January 6, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Presidents, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

President and First Lady Bush were married 65 years ago today.

Today, President George H.W. Bush and First Lady Barbara Bush celebrate 65 years of  marriage.

The President is a World War II hero whose illustrious career spanned from Texas Congressman, RN’s Ambassador to the United Nations, Chairman of the Republican Party to Special Envoy to China, Director of the CIA and Vice President before being elected to the Oval Office in 1988

By his side all a long the way, the First lady raised their five children, moved the family 29 times, all while taking up the cause against poverty and being an advocate for the sick and elderly.

The Great Compromiser

January 6, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Economic issues, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

RN’s work mediating a steel workers strike was reported in the Los Angeles Times 50 years ago this week.

The quintessential Whig, legendary statesman, and long reigning House Speaker from Kentucky Henry Clay earned the title of “Great Compromiser” for his decades of bringing sparring parties to the table, but it can be said that RN achieved similar feats during his decades of public service, most notably his peace journey to China and the reduction of tensions with the Soviet Union in 1972.

But this Great Compromiser got started early on. As Larry Harnisch points out in the Los Angeles Times, while President Eisenhower was on a trip to South America in January 1960, Vice President Nixon was solving a nationwide steel strike,  a “Herculean chore” which the Times also called “the biggest domestic headache at that very moment.” Ever the pragmatist, RN was able to get big labor to assuage their work rule stand in return for a larger pay package from their employers:

Three Nixon-Related Events In Washington This Week

January 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Entertainment, International Affairs, Music, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Saturday marks the 97th birthday of President Nixon, and the day before that is the momentous 75th anniversary of the day that Elvis Aron Presley (and, briefly, his twin brother Jesse Garon) entered this world. At the end of the year, four days before Christmas, will come the 40th anniversary of the celebrated meeting of the two in the Oval Office.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) at 7 pm, at the William G. McGowan Theater of the National Archives at 700 Pennsylvania Avenue NW in Washington, Nixon Presidential Library director Timothy Naftali will host “We Were There When Nixon Met Elvis.” Egil “Bud” Krogh, who arranged the President’s meeting with the King in his capacity as White House liason with the Bureau of Narcotics and Dangerous Drugs (Elvis sought the meeting for the purpose of discussing what role he could play in the war on drugs) and Jerry Schilling, who was a member of Elvis’s inner circle (aka the Memphis Mafia) from the mid-1950s until Presley’s death, will talk about their eyewitness memories of that event, which produced a photograph reported to be, even now, the most frequently requested image in the history of the Archives.

Almost simultaneously, at 6:30 pm at the Busboys & Poets cafe at 2021 14th Street NW in Washington, Len Colodny (co-author of the bestselling Watergate expose Silent Coup) and Tom Shachtman will discuss their new history of American foreign policy in the Nixon, Reagan, and (both) Bush eras, The Forty Years War. But interested readers do not necessarily have to flip a coin; the next day, also at 6:30, Colodny and Shachtman will talk about their book in an event sponsored by the World Affairs Council at UCDC Washington Center at 1608 Rhode Island Avenue NW; this event is also being taped by C-SPAN for broadcast on Book TV. All three events are free and open to the public, although the World Affairs Council site advises obtaining reservations beforehand at this link.

50 Years Ago Today — RN Sets A New Record For Commercial Flight

January 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In the Daily Mirror section, the LA Times’ resident archivist Larry Harnisch takes a look at Vice President Nixon’s record setting flight aboard an American Airlines 707 from Los Angeles to Baltimore fifty years ago today. It took no longer than 3 hours and 39 minutes.

“All This Happened”

January 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under China, Richard Nixon, Russia, Vietnam | 3 Comments 

Conrad Black critiques President Obama’s first year with a blow-torch, and then says his agenda pales in comparison to past presidents, notably RN:

Richard Nixon entered office with a plan to open relations with China, extract the U.S. from Indochina without bringing down the non-Communist government in Saigon, and pursue better relations with the USSR, arms control, and a peace process in the Middle East. All this happened.

The New Nixon Healthcare Plan?

January 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Healthcare, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

At the Arkansas Time, Ernest Dumas says that the House and Senate healthcare bills strike a strong resemblance to what RN and his cabinet were trying to accomplish in 1971 and 1974:

Sen. Edward M. Kennedy scuttled the Nixon plan because his own health-insurance bill was going nowhere, the fellow continued, and though he was pretty liberal himself he had never forgiven the senator. He exhibited so much feeling and just enough knowledge of the events — Kennedy did help kill the Nixon initiative, alongside the insurance companies, the medical establishment and the business community — that I was inclined to believe that he had indeed been present at the birthing. Maybe his formative role in Woody Allen’s career was not imaginary either.

But he might have given Nixon, and, yes, his real or imaginary self, more credit for the solution that seems now likely to emerge as law. Both the Senate and House bills, especially the Senate’s, are close imitations of Nixon’s plan in their broad outlines. (Actually, there were two Nixon plans, in 1971 and a second one in 1974 when he tried to change the subject from Watergate to avoid impeachment.) The first one mandated the purchase of a minimum-benefit policy for all workers through their employers, a system of government subsidies for employers, an insurance exchange (pool was the word then) for small employers, expanded Medicaid or an alternative for the unemployed and others not eligible for employer coverage, and some restrictions on medical underwriting. It would be financed by payroll taxes and general revenues. That is pretty much the Harry Reid plan the Senate approved Christmas Eve.

Kennedy insisted in 1971 on a single-payer system, Medicare for all, which the United Auto Workers and the AFL-CIO said was the only way to treat American workers fairly. But in 1974 he and our own Rep. Wilbur D. Mills of Kensett agreed to work with Nixon and his health and human services secretary, Caspar Weinberger (later Ronald Reagan’s defense secretary), on universal employment-based insurance. They never reached full agreement. Kennedy and Mills wanted a compulsory plan, Nixon thought by then that it should be mostly voluntary, but they agreed that employers should pay three-fourths of the premiums and workers a fourth. Mills began hearings in April 1974 on the Nixon plan and the Mills-Kennedy plan. National health insurance seemed a certainty by the year’s end.

and:

Kennedy in a few years would regret that he had not seized the chance and reached an agreement around the Nixon plan. Even by 1974 he had given up on the ideal of a single-payer system because the insurance industry was already too powerful and the medical establishment even after Medicare’s fantastic popularity was still resistant.

So we are about to get the Nixon-Cap Weinberger plan (let’s credit my friend at the Tivoli with a dubious assist) with one further perfection that seems to have been anticipated by at least some of the big players in 1974: the end of the insurance industry’s role as medical underwriters — evaluating the risks of people of different ages and health conditions and fixing premiums accordingly or else denying coverage. That essentially is an insurer’s only differential role. Otherwise, its function is supplemental to the government’s. It pays the bills and takes a profit.

The current bills embroider on the Nixon plan by telling insurance companies they cannot cut people off for getting sick or having pre-existing ailments and they can’t charge people different premiums for their health conditions — the one aspect of the plan that nearly all the Republicans embrace, too. Insurance companies will be able to set different premiums based only on age, region of the country and whether people smoke.

The Next Castro?

January 3, 2010 by Jim Gallen | Filed Under Afghanistan, Annals of the Obama Administration, Cuba | 1 Comment 

With the coming of a New Year we are again reminded that on January 1, 1959, now 51 years ago, Fidel Castro and his band of rebels rolled into Havana and established a Communist government in the Western Hemisphere.  Castro is now enjoying his senior status as a thorn in the side of his eleventh American Administration.  Originally regaled as the “Robin Hood of the Caribbean” and the “George Washington of Cuba”, the gradual realization that Castro was a Communist became an embarrassment to President Eisenhower and may have hurt Vice-President Nixon in the 1960 election.  The Bay of Pigs fiasco, intended to oust Castro, weakened the credibility of the new Kennedy Administration.  Claims of Castro’s involvement in the Kennedy assassination have never been completely silenced.  Castro backed insurgencies throughout Latin America presented shifting challenges to the Johnson and Nixon Administrations.  Intervention in Angola would attract the attention of President Ford and contribute to the impression of a bungling President Carter leading the U.S. into a period of decline.  Castro’s support for the Sandinistas in Nicaragua would lead President Reagan into aiding the Contras, which spawned the greatest scandal of his administration.  With the fall of his Soviet sponsors, Castro faded into the role of a minor irritant whose major influence on the U.S. was to drive the Cuban community in Florida, with its growing influence, into the arms of politicians seen as “tough on Castro.”  With the rise of his soul-mate, Hugo Chavez, Castro became a cult hero whose comments were given enhanced attention.  Despite decades of attempts by Exiles and the CIA to achieve regime change or assassination, Castro, protected by his status as a Head of State and Soviet missiles, has lived to peacefully transfer power to his brother and slide into the role of an elder revolutionary.  Absent unforeseen turmoil, Fidel will probably pass on quietly of natural causes.

While Fidel’s influence and irritation coefficients have been declining, those of Osama Bin Laden have been rising.  Slated for capture or death by President Clinton and the target of cruise missiles in 1998 because of his role in attacks on U.S. Embassies in eastern Africa, Bin Laden became Public Enemy # 1 after the September 11 attacks.  Despite President Bush’s proclamation that he was “Wanted: Dead or Alive” and over eight years of manhunts, Bin Laden remains at liberty to fire periodic audio or video messages of threats or suggestions to the Western public and their leaders.  Speaking of the Tora Bora Battle of December 2001, John Kerry said:  “When Bush had an opportunity to capture or kill bin Laden, he took his focus off of him, outsourced the job to Afghan warlords and bin Laden escaped.” He would later claim that Bin Laden’s last minute tape cost him the 2004 election and, as recently as last month, wrote:  “If we had captured or killed Bin Laden, the world would look very different today. His death or imprisonment would not have eliminated the worldwide extremist threat, but our failure to finish the job represents a lost opportunity that altered the course of the conflict in Afghanistan and the future of international terrorism. It left the American people more vulnerable, and it inflamed the strife that now threatens to engulf Pakistan and Afghanistan.”  Now President Obama is entangled in the War in Afghanistan which was begun to deprive Bin Laden and Al Qaeda of sanctuaries from which to launch further attacks against the West.  Through all this, Bin Laden, protected by his band of tribal militants, roams the mountains of Pakistan and Afghanistan.  For how long will this outlaw avoid justice?  For how long will Western politics be influenced by his tapes and even his continued life?  For how many presidents will the capture or death of Bin Laden be an elusive goal?  Will he, in the end, be the next Castro, who will continue to avoid the long arm of the U.S. until, full of days, riches and, in the eyes of some, honors, he will die, perhaps at a time and place unknown to his pursuers?  The story develops.

RN In ‘70 — Launching The Decade of the Environment

January 1, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Environmental issues, History, Nixon Administration, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

I have become…convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.
—President Nixon’s Signing Statement for the National Environmental Policy Act,             1 January 1970

One of the most important, forward-thinking, and lasting achievements of the Nixon administration has been its environmental legacy.  RN, typically, took a serious, practical, and comprehensive approach to this emerging issue.

That is why he chose to sign the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 on 1 January 1970, at the beginning of a new decade and the start of the second year of his presidency.  The bill was largely the work of Democratic Senator Henry M. (Scoop) Jackson of Washington State; RN embraced it and, before very long, greatly expanded on it.

In fact, he felt so strongly about the environment as a landmark issue that he had wanted to sign the bill at midnight on 31 December — but Bob Haldeman pointed out that an early morning ceremony would make more sense in terms of the reporters’ and staff’s plans for New Year’s Eve.

So the signing was at 10 am on New Year’s Day in the President’s office at the Western White House in San Clemente.

And RN emphasized its importance to him by prefacing the signing with some remarks.  He was at ease —he even joked a bit with the reporters— but there was no mistaking how seriously he took the legislation and the occasion:

As you know, the bill we are signing today is the environmental bill. There is one line in there that I am particularly stimulated by, when I said we had to work on the environment because it is now or never.

If you look ahead 10 years, you project population growth, car growth, and that means, of course, smog growth, water pollution, and the rest.

An area like this will be unfit for living; New York will be, Philadelphia, and, of course, 75 percent of the people will be living in areas like this.

So unless we start moving on it now-there is a lead time–unless we move on it now, believe me, we will not have an opportunity to do it later, because then when people have millions more automobiles, and, of course, the waters and so forth developing in the way that they do without plants for purification, once the damage is done, it is much harder to turn it around. It is going to be hard as it is.

That is why I indicate here that a major goal, when you talk about New Year’s resolutions, I wouldn’t say for the next year but for the next 10 years–and I don’t mean that I intend to run for a third term–for the next 10 years for this country must be to restore the cleanliness of the air, the water, and that, of course, means moving also on the broader problems of population congestion, transport, and the like.

A Signing Statement was also issued on 1 January, and it was equally eloquent and no less urgent.  RN graciously credited the sponsors of the bill, but he also served notice that now his administration intended to do something about the issue — not just to talk about doing something.

It is particularly fitting that my first official act in this new decade is to approve the National Environmental Policy Act.

The past year has seen the creation of a President’s Cabinet committee on environmental quality, and we have devoted many hours to the pressing problems of pollution control, airport location, wilderness preservation, highway construction, and population trends.

By my participation in these efforts I have become further convinced that the 1970’s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debt to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its waters, and our living environment. It is literally now or never.

I, therefore, commend the Congress and particularly the sponsors of this bill, Senators Stevens and Jackson and Representative Dingell, for this clear legislative policy declaration. Under the provisions of this law a three-member council of environmental advisers will be appointed. I anticipate that they will occupy the same close advisory relation to the President that the Council of Economic Advisers does in fiscal and monetary matters. The environmental advisers will be assisted by a compact staff in keeping me thoroughly posted on current problems and advising me on how the Federal Government can act to solve them.

In the near future I will forward to the Senate names of highly qualified individuals to help both the Cabinet and me in the critical decisions that will affect the quality of life in the United States for years to come. I will then take the necessary executive action to reconstitute the Cabinet committee and its staff to avoid duplication of function.

On the latter point, I know that the Congress has before it a proposal to establish yet another staff organization to deal with environmental problems in the Executive Office of the President. I believe this would be a mistake.

No matter how pressing the problem, to over-organize, to over-staff, or to compound the levels of review and advice seldom brings earlier or better results.

We are most interested in results. The act I have signed gives us an adequate organization and a good statement of direction. We are determined that the decade of the seventies will be known as the time when this country regained a productive harmony between man and nature.

Later in January, RN devoted a considerable portion of his State of the Union Message to his proposed environmental legislation.

In February, he submitted to Congress the most comprehensive message on the environment ever proposed by a President of the United States.

In March he upgraded the Environmental Quality Council to the status of a Cabinet Committee on the Environment.

In July he created the EPA.

And —as a fitting bookend to 1970— on 31 December, he signed the Clean Air Act, which has been called one of the most signifiant pieces of environmental legislation ever passed.

All these —and the other environmental landmarks throughout 1970 will be considered chronologically here at TNN throughout 2010.

One of the speakers at the first Nixon Legacy Forum — to be held in the East Room of the Library in Yorba Linda next Friday (8 January, from 1.30-3.30 PM)— will be the Hon. John C Whitaker.   John, who was one of RN’s closest friends and advisers from the early 1960s, was a scientist and engineer by training.  He concentrated on environmental issues and policies as Associate Director of the Domestic Council (1969-1972) and as Undersecretary of the Interior (1973-1975).  He is the author of Striking a Balance: Environment and Natural Resource Policy in the Nixon-Ford Administrations.  At the Legacy Forum he will discuss RN’s environmental record.

The Nixon Legacy Forums are jointly sponsored by the Richard Nixon Foundation and the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum, and are free and open to the public.

Nixon, Now More Than Ever

January 1, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under History, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

At the Huffington Post, Ray Brescia writes of the phrase “Now, More Than Ever,” or NMTE:

Interestingly, it was not George W. Bush who introduced the phrase to the political discourse. In fact, it was another Republican President, Richard Nixon, who used the NMTE phrase in his re-election effort in1972. In that campaign, Nixon played on people’s fears and used the phrase to reassure the voting public that he was a steady and trustworthy hand at the rudder during turbulent times. And we all know how that turned out.

Actually, the phrase had been in political use for more than a century.  For instance, the 1860 GOP platform said that the causes calling the party into existence “are permanent in their nature, and now, more than ever before, demand its peaceful and constitutional triumph.”  

Neither was it novel for an incumbent to stress his own experience while raising doubts about the opposition. Accepting the Democratic nomination for a third term, FDR said:

The Government of the United States for the past seven years has had the courage openly to oppose by every peaceful means the spread of the dictator form of Government. If our Government should pass to other hands next January-untried hands, inexperienced hands—we can merely hope and pray that they will not substitute appeasement and compromise with those who seek to destroy all democracies everywhere, including here.

As for stirring fear, nothing that RN said during the 1972 campaign could have topped FDR’s assault against the GOP in the waning days of the 1940 race:

Something evil is happening in this country when a full page advertisement against this Administration, paid for by Republican supporters, appears—where, of all places?— in the Daily Worker, the newspaper of the Communist Party.

Something evil is happening in this country when vast quantities of Republican campaign literature are distributed by organizations that make no secret of their admiration for the dictatorship form of government.

Those forces hate democracy and Christianity as two phases of the same civilization. They oppose democracy because it is Christian. They oppose Christianity because it preaches democracy.

Wake Up Calls And Snooze Buttons

January 1, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, History, Intelligence, International Affairs, Islam and the West, National Security, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 2 Comments 

On December 7, 1941, United States Senator Gerald Nye looked over his notes for a speech he was about to deliver to a packed house in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Nye was a Republican, but part of a progressive element in the GOP and he was no-doubt influenced by the politics of the late Robert M. La Follette. In other words, he was a fiscal liberal in domestic matters and a fierce isolationist when it came to foreign entanglements.

So speaking before a group known informally as the “America Firsters” (sponsored by the America First Committee, of which he was a member) was a piece of cake for him and he knew the lines that would draw the biggest applause. He only wished his hero could be there: Charles A. Lindbergh.

These men were part of a highly popular movement in those days, this success being reflected in Gallup Polls showing that less than a quarter of Americans favored entering the fires of war then engulfing much of the world. This group was largely anti-Semitic (and therefore, pro-German), and was joined by other luminaries of the day, including: flying ace Eddie Rickenbacker and movie actress, Lillian Gish.

During the first days of the last month of that tense year, their present preoccupation was the potential of war with Japan. To them, this was merely an excuse to enter the war in Europe through a back door. Therefore, the headline of their then-very-popular tabloid, the America First Bulletin, on December 6, 1941 was: “BLAME FOR RIFT WITH JAPAN RESTS ON ADMINISTRATION.”

After a glowing introduction, followed by furious applause, Nye, the Senator from North Dakota, plunged into his theme. But before he had gotten very far, he noticed someone in his peripheral vision approaching him from the stage wing bearing a piece of paper. He paused and read the note, which informed him of the breaking news about a Japanese attack on our fleet at Pearl Harbor.

Buzz kill.

After fumbling and hemming and hawing for a moment he mumbled: “I can’t somehow believe this…” – and then proceeded to finish his speech. Telling the crowd about what the note said, the Senator ventured his own take, which included the predictable: “We have been maneuvered into this by the President,” and the old reliable: “This was just what Britain had planned for us.”

A few days later, on December 11th, members of the America First Committee met in Chicago and decided to disband. Lindbergh didn’t attend, but sent a telegram begging them not to go out of business. He was now isolated himself, though – by his own ignorant bias.

Pearl Harbor was many things: an infamous attack, an example of unspeakable treachery, a telling moment of vulnerable denial, but ultimately it was the one thing the Japanese had not counted on – a wake-up call.

Literally overnight, opinions changed and so did the course of history, because in moments of great peril, it is foolish, immoral, and ignorant to hit the snooze button when the alarm rings.

September 11, 2001 was a wake-up call, one that kept us vigilant for a period of time roughly equivalent to the length of our involvement in World War II. We had been attacked, we knew who the enemy was, and we were resolved to find and annihilate him.

But that was then.

Some understandably suggest these days that we are in a “pre-Sept. 11” mindset. This is, of course, somewhat true, but the cliché doesn’t tell the whole story. Because before that dreadful day when the world changed forever – or as so many of us thought – there had been other ominous moments and indications of terror to come. The bombing of the USS Cole and attacks on our embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, for example. However, these obvious acts of war were preceded by one on our very soil – the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. And the very mistakes we made following that attack (and those that followed before Sept. 11, 2001) we seem to be determined to make again.

History rhymes one more time.

The day after – September 12, 2001 – Daniel Pipes, director of The Middle East Forum, wrote passionately about how, though the moral blame for what happened fell upon those who planned and carried out the attacks, the tactical blame actually fell on the U.S. government, “which has grievously failed in its topmost duty to protect American citizens from harm.” His list of mistakes back then included:

• Seeing terrorism as a crime
• Relying too much on electronic intelligence
• Not understanding the hate-America mentality
• Ignoring the terrorist infrastructure in this country

Can anyone with a brain possible grade our efforts in these areas, now more than eight years later, as anything higher than, say, a D+? Bear in mind that self-given marks don’t count and in matters of life and death there is no grading on a curve.  It’s the same principle that says “almost” only works in horseshoes or hand grenades.

We are not really just in a “Pre-Sept.11th” mindset, we are actually approaching current Islamism-driven horror in ways reminiscent of how we did things in the 1990s.

How’s that working for you?

37’s Resolutions for ‘69 and ‘70

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

RN 1970: A photograph by portraitist Merrett Smith.

Compassionate, Bold, Courageous,… Zest for the job (not lonely but

awesome).  Goals — reorganized govt.  Idea magnet….

Open Channels for Dissent…. Progress — Participation

Trustworthy, Open-minded.

Most powerful office. Each day a chance to do something memorable for someone.

Need to be good to do good….

The nation must be better in spirit at the end of the term.  Need for joy, serenity, confidence, inspiration.

Add element of lift to each appearance… Hard work — Imagination –

Compassion — Leadership — Understanding young –

Intellectual expansion…

Cool — Strong — Organized — Temperate — Exciting …

Excitement — Joy in Life — Sharing.  Lift spirit of people –

Pithy, memorable phrases.

1.1.10

January 1, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Holidays | 1 Comment 

« Previous Page