The Price We Pay

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

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

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

Bob Brown Remembers

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

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

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

When the others left, Nixon got down to business.

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

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

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

“He trusted my judgment,” Brown said.

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

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

Al Haig In Conversation

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

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

Running Against Hooverville–The Presidential Blame Game

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

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

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

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

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

And it goes way back.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But FDR was really running against Hoover one more time.

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

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

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

Dr. Kissinger’s Tribute to General Haig

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

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

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

Diane Sawyer Speaks About Richard Nixon

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

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

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

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

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

Nixon, Obama, and Health Insurance Price Controls

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bacevich: How About Some Nixonian Boldness

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

China Mourns The Passing Of Al Haig

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Your World On General Haig

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

Neil Cavuto on his Common Sense segment:

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

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

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

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

The general leaves a high mark.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Watch Nixon Legacy Forum Live on C-SPAN.org

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

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

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

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

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

President Obama, Secretary Clinton Praise Gen. Haig

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

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

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

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

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

A Moment In History

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

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

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

HAK: “He Lived For His Country”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Third Paragraph

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Alexander M. Haig, Jr.   1924 – 2010

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

Alexander Haig, RIP

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

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

Follow The Money–It’s Going To China

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

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

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

But what would Mr. Nixon think now?

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

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

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

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

In fact, we have.

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

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

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

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

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

Follow the money.

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

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

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

“The borrower is servant to the lender.”

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

Checkmate.

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

Follow the money.

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

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

Or worse.

Managing The Nixon Oval Office

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There Naftali Goes Again…

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

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

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

To the Editor:

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

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

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

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

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

Bob Bostock

The Effective Use Of The President’s Time

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

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

The Troops Rallied

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

WOW!

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

And from the Secretarial Support office: Terry Decker Goodsen

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________________________________

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

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

A President’s Time

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

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

On the cover page he wrote, in part:

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

_______________________________________________________

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

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

Article On Ron Walker In Orange County Register

February 13, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, China, Foundation News, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Nixon Library, Orange County, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House, Yorba Linda | 1 Comment 

During the Nixon Administration, Ron Walker headed the White House’s advance team, working on projects ranging in scale from the thirty-seventh President’s 1972 visit to the People’s Republic of China to his visits to Washington-area schools. The concepts developed by the team Ron headed form the basis for all the subsequent advance work of American presidencies.

Today, Ron Walker is president of the Richard Nixon Foundation, and the Orange County Register has just published an article about him by Jessica Terrell. who often covers Nixon-related personalities and events for the newspaper. It contains some remarkable facts: it turns out that Ron, at the time he joined the Nixon campaign in 1968, was a registered Democrat. He also describes his ambitious plans for the Foundation, which include doubling the size of its endowment, and organizing more events to make the public aware of the accomplishments of the Nixon era in both domestic and foreign affairs.

Nixon and Obesity

February 11, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Healthcare, Michelle Obama, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

As the First Lady wages a campaign against obesity, the Associated Press reminds us that the fight has been underway for more than half a century.  President Eisenhower created President’s Council on Physical Fitness and Sports, and tapped RN to head it.  In 1971, he looked back and pondered the issue:

In 1956, President Eisenhower called me into his office. You may recall this was the year after he had his heart attack. He had just read a very disturbing article with regard to the health of young Americans of high school age as compared with young people in Japan and European countries. And he said that it was essential that we develop a physical fitness program, one in which our young people would be more interested in physical fitness, more interested in it–recognize its importance to raise the standards.

I, as Vice President, was given the assignment of attempting to put some emphasis on this program. During the period that I was Vice President we made some progress in creating interest on the program…

[We} need to alert the people of this country, and particularly the young people of this country, that they can do something about their future to make them develop the health patterns which will avoid physical illness and very serious physical illness in the years ahead.

Richard Norton Smith On The Nixon Funeral

February 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon Library, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Yorba Linda | 3 Comments 

This week Public Affairs Press has reissued Who’s Buried In Grant’s Tomb?, a book edited by Brian Lamb and originally published in 2000 as a companion volume to the “American Presidents” series of programs that were, at that time, being first broadcast on C-SPAN. (In the decade since they’ve frequently been rerun, most often on C-SPAN3.)

The book, as you might guess from the title, concerns Presidential gravesites. Did you know that George Washington had such an intense fear of being buried alive that his will stipulated that he not be interred until at least three days after his death? Well, I didn’t either until I read this article about the book by Paul Bedard, the “Washington Whispers” columnist of US News magazine.

Bedard includes a lengthy excerpt from the new editions introduction by that pre-eminent Presidential historian Richard Norton Smith, who describes his work on the address delivered by then-Senator Bob Dole at President Nixon’s funeral at the Nixon Library in 1994:

“As one who had a hand in drafting Robert Dole’s eulogy for Nixon, delivered on April 27, 1994, I will go to my grave convinced that Richard Nixon hoped to influence the 1996 presidential race from his. In point of fact, Dole had been among the eulogists at Pat Nixon’s funeral the previous June, as was California governor Pete Wilson. Approximately 33 million Americans watched Nixon’s late afternoon burial in the lengthening shadow of his boyhood home. They saw a side of Bob Dole few would have predicted—except Nixon himself. For he knew that Dole’s feelings lay just below the surface, much closer than his hardboiled public image suggested. In designating him one of his Yorba Linda eulogists, Nixon anticipated the sob in Dole’s voice as he struggled to complete his tribute to the central figure in what the senator that day called the Age of Nixon. So authentic a display of grief was touching to all but the Nixon-haters in the vast audience. Moreover, by exhibiting his feelings so openly, Dole was, in effect, humanized in ways no other speech could have done. Which is exactly what Nixon intended, I believe, as he made his own funeral a showcase for his political heirs. Nixon was always a better campaign manager than candidate.”

Indeed, Dole’s eulogy was likely an important factor in reinforcing his status as a frontrunner in the 1996 election.

Len Colodny And Tom Shachtman Discuss “Forty Years’ War”

February 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, International Affairs | 1 Comment 

Recently Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman appeared at the World Affairs Council in Washington to talk about their new book focusing on the foreign policies of the Nixon, Reagan and George W. Bush Administrations, The Forty Years’ War. Above is C-SPAN’s video of this appearance.

The Effective Use Of RN’s Time: How One Time Problem Was Solved

February 9, 2010 by Jon Hoornstra | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Foundation, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Imagine the year is 1969 and it’s your lucky day when the telephone rings with a pollster from Gallup or Harris calling to get your opinion on just one critical question: How well informed on current events should the U.S. president be? Please choose one of the following:

(1) Well informed.

(2) As informed as the average American.

(3) No opinion.

It’s reasonable to speculate that nearly 100% of those surveyed would choose a “well informed” president. Surely an “average” level of awareness would not be good enough for the presidency, and having no opinion defies credulity – if not outright scary.

To be well informed, would they have had Richard Nixon to set aside 90 minutes every night to watch three networks’ news broadcasts? Or would just one network be enough? Which networks would be excluded? What about the weekly commentary on PBS?

To be well informed, would the public have wanted RN read just one or two newspapers? If just two, which major American cities would not be represented in the president’s newspaper stack? Would it be okay to exclude the newspapers from every city except, say, New York and Washington, D.C.? Which editorial perspective would be unnecessary? On the other hand, if the public deemed all of them “important,” how would the public react to a photo in their local newspaper of their president trying to work his way through a stack of 50-plus newspapers next to a bank of three television sets running the news broadcasts of Walter Cronkite, John Chancellor and Howard K. Smith?

The problem crystallizes quickly: the need to be well informed every day clashes with not having the time necessary to tackle the problem – one newspaper, one television news broadcast at time. And so the Daily News Summary was created to solve that dilemma for RN. It originated as a one-page look at the news just in time for the snowy New Hampshire primary of 1968. Former aide Patrick J. Buchanan edited the news summaries, which continued in the White House years under the editorship of the late Lyndon K. Allin. The Daily News Summary expanded well beyond the original brief document, with a resource of approximately 70 daily newspapers, 35 magazines and periodicals, plus each day’s network television news broadcasts. All of that was supplemented by special editions for major reviews of newspaper editorials.

Balancing our respect for the President’s time with his need to be well informed was a constant struggle.

_______________________________________________________

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

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

Survey Says: RN Actually Among LA’s Best

February 9, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under California politics, News media, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

In a cheap attempt to gin up its readership, the perpetually unsubscribed LA Times ran a blog article entitled “Who Are LA’s Worst People?,”

Steve Lopez, the author of the article, nominated an “all-star cast of bigots, crooked business barons and dirty politicians.”

Under “M” for Murder, we have Hall of Famers like the Hillside Strangler, the Night Stalker, the Freeway Killer and Mr. Helter Skelter himself.

But don’t let me influence your vote. Let local historian Joe Scott of the L.A. County district attorney’s office do that.

“Frank Shaw,” said Scott, nominating as most disreputable Angeleno the L.A. mayor who, in 1938, was recalled in the midst of scandals that fueled the imaginations of Raymond Chandler and James Ellroy.

Nobody beats former LAPD chief William Parker, said author and former Timesman Bill Boyarsky. “He was the most damaging Angeleno of all time” because of his “us-against-them, all-white, anti-minority attitude. That has done more lasting harm to the city than anything.”

Within that mix Lopez included President Nixon, a decision that seemingly backfired when he opened the comments section for readers to publish their own rankings:

Osborne: “Mission To China”

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

As we come upon the the thirty-eighth anniversary of RN’s historic trip to China later this month, The New Republic has digged into their archives for John Osborne’s report on the “week that changed the world.”

Nixon, Obama, and Ohio

February 7, 2010 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Democratic Party, Election 2012, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

According to Hotline, Democrats are seeking to build an electoral college fortress in Ohio.

An ODP [Ohio Democratic Party] document notes that the importance of the state to the Electoral College grows even more critical after this year’s census: “Projections suggest that Democratic stronghold states will lose as many as 8 electoral votes to growing Sunbelt-area states, giving the GOP nominee another Kentucky or a second South Carolina just from the reapportionment of the Electoral College.” It further predicts the party is unlikely to hold FL, IN, NC or VA in the next pres. cycle, and that Obama would have to carry nearly all of the remaining states he flipped in ‘08, if not Ohio, to win re-election, given these projections.

As in so many things, contemporary politicians are using RN’s playbook.  In Quest for the Presidency 1984, Peter Goldman and Tony Fuller recount Nixon’s September 1984 meeting with Ed Rollins and Lee Atwater.  The three discussed how to build Reagan’s own fortress.

Nixon warmed to the prospect and, as he often did in his consultations with Reagan’s men, took it one geopolitical giant step farther. Why not pick just one of Mondale’s big northern “must” states and carpet-bomb it — saturate it with mail, media, surrogates, and presidential visits as if Reagan were campaigning for governor instead of president? Mondale had to win everything in the industrial crescent along the Great Lakes. If they took a single high-yield state away from him, he was finished …. Ohio was twenty-three electoral votes, as Nixon knew without having to look it up. Ohio could be the ball game.

“Only Nixon” Reviewed

February 6, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Book Review, China, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The Pueblo (Colorado) Chieftain has just published this review of James C. Humes and Dr. Jarvis Ryals’s book Only Nixon, which recounts the President’s historic China trip as seen from the perspective of the Chinese who helped arrange for RN’s meetings with Zhou Enlai and Mao Zedong. (TNN previously has posted a video about this book.)

Salinger The Hero

February 6, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Culture, In Memoriam, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

It’s now been just over a week since word came of the death at age ninety-one of J.D. Salinger, the author of The Catcher In The Rye and Franny And Zooey. A lot has been written since then, much of it focusing on the comparative seclusion in which he spent fifty-eigh of his seventy – yes, seventy – years as a professional writer, and on the question of just what he was writing during the forty-five years since the appearance of his last published story.

Last year I wrote about an article which appeared in 1985 in the last print issue of Saturday Review, edited by TNN’s Frank Gannon, that discussed whether two very curious writings which appeared in the long-defunct little magazine The Phoenix in 1971 under the name “Giles Weaver” could have been Salinger’s work. The fact is (and this, for any Salinger fans out there, really is a little-known fact that isn’t in any of the many books about the writer) that the very last previously unpublished words that Salinger permitted in print under his own name appeared during the Nixon Administration. They are in the biography George M. Cohan: The Man Who Invented Broadway by the late John McCabe, which was published by Doubleday in 1973, and are two quotations from letters Salinger wrote to McCabe. In one, he reminisces about seeing Cohan in Eugene O’Neill’s only comedy, Ah Wilderness! in 1933. (Eight years later, Salinger would romance O’Neill’s daughter Oona for several months, until she went off to Hollywood and married Charlie Chaplin.) In the other, he compares Cohan’s acting style to that of Noel Coward.

One of the more perceptive articles about Salinger since his death is this one by F.X. Feeney of LA Weekly. It stresses something often forgotten about Salinger – that although his fiction almost never deals with World War II or the Holocaust (except for the famous story “For Esme – With Love And Squalor” and the less well-known “A Girl I Knew”) and even then rather indirectly, these events formed his life and writing profoundly. He was drafted into the Army soon after Pearl Harbor – as a 1-B, to his disgust, since he was a graduate of Valley Forge Military Academy – and, after serving in several units in several bases, ultimately was transferred to the Counter-Intelligence Corps, thanks to his knowledge of German. (He had worked in his father’s meat and cheese importing business in Vienna for several months just before the Anschluss, and then in Bydgoscz, Poland, not long before the Blitzkrieg.)

On June 6, 1944, his unit landed at Utah Beach. (In a sad indication of the current state of American journalism, the first version of his obituary put up on the New York Times’s site noted this fact but got the date wrong.) His unit fought its way across Normandy to Paris, where it paused just long enough for Salinger to enjoy what would be a huge thrill for any writer of his generation – an evening drinking with Ernest Hemingway, who had read and admired his stories in magazines.

Then Salinger’s unit fought on, through the Bulge, through Hurtgen Forest, and he did his duty, mainly interrogating captured German soldiers, trying to determine the next danger awaiting himself and his comrades. To borrow the title of the novel about this campaign by Richard Matheson, who fought in it, it was a group of “beardless warriors,” soldiers barely out of their teens or still in them, who were doing most of the fighting, since much of America’s older, better-trained servicemen were being kept in reserve for the much more daunting job of invading Japan. (At the time the atom bomb was top secret, and those who did know about it could not know if it could be finished before that invasion.) Salinger was one of the oldest soldiers in his unit and he saw most of the men in it killed or wounded by the time V-E Day came. His last days in combat were spent helping to liberate at least one death camp. Then he had a nervous breakdown and was hospitalized for a time, which inspired “Esme,” maybe his single most powerful and moving work published to date.

And, as I mentioned above, even before that, in Vienna, he saw a whole vibrant Jewish community that, in a few years, would be almost completely wiped out. Indeed, the family with which he stayed in his months there was killed – this is what “A Girl I Knew” is about. And later, in Bydgoscz, he saw many, many Jews who, just over a year later, would be made the test subjects of one of the earliest Nazi experiments in mass deportation.

This sets Salinger apart in a substantial way from other Jewish American writers of his generation – forget, for the moment, that his mother was a gentile of Irish or Scottish descent (the accounts vary). Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Joseph Heller, and nearly all the others were products of the Depression, growing up too poor to visit Europe, and almost none of these writers had relatives rich enough to visit America before the war. It would have been a rare thing for them to have met anyone who later died in the camps.

But Salinger had been over there, had seen firsthand “the vanished world,” as Roman Vishniac called it in his books of photographs made in Poland before 1939. And later, he gave his utmost to stop those who made it vanish. Like nearly all who were in that Greatest Generation he was reluctant to talk about what had happened after the war – or to write about it, so far we know. In the coming months, or years, or decades, maybe we will find out whether he had anything to say beyond what has so far been published. But what matters now is that a hero, as well as a gifted and important writer, is gone.

The President’s Daily News Summary — Part III

February 6, 2010 by Jon Hoornstra | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

Print media often referred to the Daily News Summary as the most exclusive newspaper in the world. It was a fair description because they were written to please just one person, RN himself.  They began during the 1968 primaries by Pat Buchanan, who chose articles “the old man would need to see.” He turned them over to a crew consisting of Rose Woods, Marje Acker and Shelley Buchanan to clip them out of the papers and make them presentable to RN.

The readership in 1969 began with just a handful of senior staff, but had nearly 100 “customers” when I arrived in early January of 1972. Distribution had expanded to include the Cabinet and various agencies in the executive branch. Because the president read it, we had a pretty large captive audience for our readership.

The senior staff used news summaries to stay informed, but perhaps more importantly hoped to stay a half step ahead of the president. The staff quickly learned that RN used the news summaries as a management tool. RN’s annotations in the margins generated memoranda directed to officials throughout the executive branch, memoranda that were monitored by the Staff Secretary to ensure RN got answers.

Captive audience or not, the White House staff regarded the news summaries as a great resource and time saver.  Ben Stein, then a lawyer-speechwriter, recalled his view of the news summaries in an email last week:

“The Daily News Summaries were an amazing feat. News and opinion were collected from a wide variety of print and broadcast sources nationwide. They were presented in many pages of typescript, the reading of which made a young speechwriter or any other White house or administration official incredibly well informed. I particularly recall the dry wit with which some of the stories were presented. There was a real human intelligence and sense of humor involved even in the darkest days. To think that these were done in a  matter of hours is testament to extreme brilliance, devotion, and mordant wit.  They were astonishingly great works of journalism and art.”

From a member of Henry Kissinger’s NSC staff, Kathy Troia (now McFarland), came these reflections:

“The NSC staff was more focused on reading the classified cables and the DOD early bird news summaries.  For us the earthquakes were when something that should have stayed in the classified channel ended up in the news summaries. At that point, no summaries would do – we needed to look through the entire article word by word for clues.”

The Washington press corps, however, had suspicions about RN’s exposure to news, skepticism that seemed to peak during the long months of Watergate investigations in 1973 and 1974.  Was the president getting the ‘unvarnished’ truth? wondered UPI’s Helen Thomas, a question often echoed by pundits such as the late Peter Lisagor, PBS commentator and columnist for the Chicago Sun Times. It was a curious phenomenon inasmuch as  Buchanan and Allin had allowed numerous White House reporters to come into the news summary offices to see how they were prepared, as well as make their own selection of summaries to review, page-by-page.  Among those who came through during my time (1972 – ’74)  were Aldo Beckman of the Chicago Tribune, Courtney Sheldon of the Christian Science Monitor, Dom Bonafede of the National Journal and perhaps a dozen others. Even syndicated columnist Jack Anderson took several editions of news summaries for detailed review.  And Pulitzer Prize winner Theodore White came through in 1972, pausing briefly to look at my stack of papers and ask, “Do you actually read all those?” White was doing his homework for what would be the last book in his series on four presidential elections that began with 1960 and ended with “The Making of the President 1972.”

When the trip to China concluded, each member of the news summary received a unique memento that hangs my wall to this day. It was a photograph of a television screen at the moment Chou En Lai greeted RN on the tarmac in Beijing. It perfectly symbolizes how the news summary staff saw much of RN’s presidency during those years.

RN wasn’t finished, however.  Barely two months later he ordered the U.S. Navy to mine North Vietnam’s Haiphong harbor on May 8th, then went to Moscow for a summit 14 days later. The days immediately after the harbor was mined, however, the scheduled summit in Moscow was all but pronounced dead by some of the prominent talking heads of the day. “Surely the Soviets will not stand for this,” CBS’ Eric Sevareid intoned, which White House reporter Dan Rather supported with his view that “this certainly puts any summit in doubt.”

Of course history records that the Moscow summit did indeed take place and resulted in a historic strategic nuclear arms limitation agreement, commonly known as SALT I. I confess I later took advantage of how the two summits of 1972 unfolded. The national press association dropped its usual single-speaker format after the Moscow summit to gather a dozen or so members of the press who had gone to Moscow. Dan Rather was among them. It was only by chance (honestly) that I was an invited guest to have lunch there on that day.  And I couldn’t believe my good fortune when I saw that Dan Rather was there to answers questions. The custom at that time was for members and guests to write out a brief question to be read by the moderator to the guest speaker. I took my chances, wrote out my question, and added it to the stack that found it’s way to the front table.  I had marked my question for Rather was read by the moderator. By chance, question was picked.

“For Dan Rather,” the moderator began, “ ‘why, after President Nixon trapped Soviet ships in Haiphong Harbor when he ordered it mined on May 8, didn’t the Russians cancel this summit?’ “

“I must admit,” Rather replied, “I really don’t know.”  I knew what the answer had to be, but I wasn’t sure Rather could actually bring himself to utter those words. The experience brought a smile on my face that lasted until the end of the year.

All of 1972 was filled with a sense of purpose, mission and high morale.  As the campaign season approached, there was an early clue that people around the Oval Office were feeling good. The upbeat mood was signaled when chief of staff H.R. Haldeman approved the entire news summary staff as part of the White House staff contingent to the Republican National Convention in Miami. Although we continued to publish a news summary every day, there was a little time in the mornings to explore. A memorable moment happened when I walked into a virtually empty convention hall – except for a lone figure near the stage. I slowly walked in that direction, but it wasn’t until I was a few feet away that I could identify the man quietly seated on a steel chair. It was Jimmy Stewart. I introduced myself and asked if there was anything I could do for him. “No, I’m fine,” he said calmly in that special voice everyone knows.  “I’m just waiting for some technicians to get here for a ‘mike check’.”  A real gentleman, a guy next door, a real pro. I couldn’t bring myself to take advantage of this chance encounter with a true giant of the entertainment industry. I thought that those moments of quiet just might be among the few he’ll get.

Miami ended with RN’s expected renomination – and our quick return to Washington. But we took some lasting memories. Some of the senior staff, for example,  had been invited for cocktails aboard W. Clement Stone’s yacht. Not unusual, except for the part gift guests received: an oversized bronze coin embossed with Stone’s image. As fun as that must have been, I think the Jimmy Stewart memory is the better of the two.

Back at the White House we knew there would be a lot of work ahead, but the press would quiet down a little while RN took some “down time” either in Key Biscayne or San Clemente.  That meant the White House itself was a little more relaxed and offered chances to take friends though the West Wing and places where guided tours simply don’t go – including a long look at the Oval itself.

———————–

The next part in this series will be the last. It will be about Watergate, its impact on morale, and what happened to the news summary in the early days of the Ford Administration.

John Waters And His Nixon Connection

February 5, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Energy, Entertainment, Environmental issues, Movies, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Pat Nixon, Presidents, Richard Nixon | 1 Comment 

This week the Australian newspapers the Melbourne Age features an interview with director, writer and raconteur John Waters, who will be traveling to Down Under in March to present his one-man show in several of that nation’s cities. In the article, Waters mentions that he was interested to see one of his childhood favorites, Patty McCormack of The Bad Seed fame, playing Patricia Nixon in Ron Howard’s film Frost/Nixon, which leads to the surprising fact that:

Waters has a Nixon connection himself. His uncle, John C. Whitaker, was undersecretary of the interior during the Nixon years. It got a bit awkward, Waters says, “during the ’60s when I was at riots and things outside the White House but now we get along great”. Whitaker, he adds, “was never part of anything like Watergate and his son, when he was 15, worked as a craft services kid on Hairspray and went on to become a big producer with Imagine Films, producing things like Eminem’s film 8 Mile.”

As previously mentioned at TNN, Mr. Whitaker, who appeared at the Nixon Library last month, was a major figure, during the early 1970s, in the shaping of the most far-ranging and farsighted environmental policies of any Presidency since Theodore Roosevelt’s, and in the initiatives in energy policy that have become especially relevant in recent years.

It’s also worth noting that his son Jim Whitaker, who Waters mentions, was a producer of another Ron Howard film, Cinderella Man. And it was Waters’s grandmother Stella Whitaker who gave him, for his sixteenth birthday, the camera which he used to shoot his earliest films. Over forty years later, he’s at work on his next feature, Fruitcake, although, as he points out to the Age’s reporter, it’s now rather difficult for even the creator of Hairspray to get backing for any feature with a budget above $1 million and below $100 million.

A Vital Political Question For 2010

February 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Intelligence, International Affairs, Iran, Islam, National Security, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Terrorism, War on Terror | 1 Comment 

In the waning days of the 1980 presidential campaign, Republican nominee Ronald Reagan used his allotted time in the closing moments of his only debate with President Jimmy Carter to ask a question. It was one of the most effective rhetorical devices in American history.

“Are you better off today than you were four years ago?”

Because most Americans answered a resounding “No” that night, Mr. Reagan was able to pull the line out again four years later, this time as President and against Walter Mondale, who ran a quixotic campaign to oust him. And Americans answered by electing Reagan to a second term.

Over the years, the question about being “better off” has been used to great affect by many politicians, including later aspirants to the White House. It became, in effect, a rhetorical trump card.

Now there is another question in the room—one that was asked, in a manner of speaking, during several recent special elections and will be commonplace this November as all of us go to the polls in the “off-year” ritual. The question is: “Are you safer than you were four years ago?”

It is hard to find anything about President Barack Obama’s first term—at least anything of substance—that can be realistically characterized as successful. And by successful, I mean accomplishing one’s stated goals. Whether it was the healthcare bridge too far, cap-and-trade, or dramatically improving the economy, this administration has simply not delivered on what it promised. Of course, in the area of national security they have tried to make good on pledges, but have found the resistance to every move to be surprising strong.

And one gets the feeling that not only did they not see failure coming in the euphoria of those early halcyon days in charge—but they really don’t have a clue as to where to go from here. Nowhere is this more apparent than in the area of national security and dealing with the very real threat of Islamist terror. And nowhere are the stakes any higher.

The other day, Leon Panetta, Director of CIA, in concert with other leaders in the national security community, told Congress that a terror attack (the indication being that this would be an attempt of significant magnitude) is likely during the next three to six months. It was also suggested that this warning is based, at least in part, on information gleaned from the man who tried to blow up an American airplane en route to Detroit on Christmas Day, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Presumably, this so-called “underwear-bomber” has been cooperating with authorities lately, following the intervention of some of his family from Nigeria, such intervention being prompted by FBI visits to that country.

With its too-sad-to-be-farcical “you-could-have-had-me-at-enemy-combatant” Miranda prolonged delay, this episode is in a real sense a window into the thinking—some would say, lack thereof—of the Obama administration on the whole issue of terror, Islamism, “detainees,” and national security. It seems that there is this naïve insistence on seeing and framing the issues as something nuanced—an almost “shirts versus skins” game—instead of a very grave matter of life and death.

A President is sworn to protect and defend the Constitution and by extension, therefore, those under its cover. The founders and framers did not fashion a document for global governance, nor did they seek to extend its protection beyond “we the people.” But these days we are witnessing the most ambitious attempt ever to broadly interpret its provisions.

On the domestic side, “we” the people is giving way to “for” the people, as those wiser-than-the-rest-of-us seek to “fundamentally transform” (to use Mr. Obama’s words) America. And when it comes to foreign policy and international issues, apparently now this new-improved understanding of our Constitution—one that makes Franklin Roosevelt look like a paleo-conservative in comparison—reads, “they” the people. It covers not only illegal aliens, but also non-U.S. citizen enemy combatants, giving them more rights than any of us would ever receive in some Islamist majority country.

“Are you safer than you were four years ago?”

Iran moves arrogantly and confidently forward to develop the materials and technology to soon become a nuclear power. Just the other day, its President, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, talked of delivering a blow to “global arrogance” as that nation marks the anniversary of the 1979 Islamic Revolution on February 11.

Sure we protest, but words from a teleprompter don’t make much impact on a man who thinks he gets his ideas directly from Allah. And at any rate—the whole first year of Mr. Obama’s administration and its mea culpa “we like you” overtures to the Islamic world, notwithstanding—there is no evidence that anyone who hated us when George W. Bush was in town, hates us any less now.

In fact, someone in the White House should take a look at something else the mahdaviatist President of Iran said the other day in that same speech:

“If the Islamic Revolution had not occurred, liberalism and Marxism would have crushed all human dignity in their power-seeking and money-grubbing claws. Nothing would have remained of human and spiritual principles.”

Did you see that? The enemy is “liberalism and Marxism.” So as the current administration tries to pursue some kind of rapprochement with Iran and other Islamist nations, while at the same time trying orchestrate a decidedly more liberal agenda domestically—one that smacks of “Marxist” thinking at many turns—something ironic is happening. The new “good guys” who tell us that America is now going be loved more around the world because bad old George Bush and the cranky conservatives are gone, have missed a key plot-point: Islamists hate democratic liberalism—with its socialist vision—even more than they hate militaristic neo-conservatism.

Oops.

Of course, I hope and pray that we are spared any such terror attack this, or any, year. And I pray that there remains a sufficient remnant of discerning men and women in key areas of expertise and responsibility across the land, people who have not bowed the knee to the Baal of liberal statism and diplomatic naïveté, in place to forestall such a disaster.

But I must admit, there seems to be an inexplicable zeitgeist, combining lackadaisical apathy with arrogance that makes me feel anything but safe.

Someone talked to me recently about how, if we are attacked, people will rally around our new president like they did George W. Bush in 2001. I countered that I wasn’t so sure. That was a different time—before we really knew what terrorism meant on these shores. Post game analysis back then revealed so many areas of weakness leading to that dreadful day of terror on Sept. 11.

If such a thing, or anything similar, were to happen these days, I am not sure that those in charge now would get the kind of good will that translates into a political pass—or future.

HAK: Don’t Take Iraq Off The Table

February 4, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Iran, Iraq War, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

In the Washington Post, RN’s National Security Adviser and Secretary of State writes that the Obama administration should keep Iraq at the forefront of its policy discussions as the fledgling democracy will be a key factor in how the United States approaches Iran:

Before the war, the equilibrium between Iraq and Iran was a principal geopolitical reality within the region. At that time, the government in Baghdad was a Sunni-run dictatorship. The Shiite-dominated, partly democratic structure that has emerged from the war has not yet found the appropriate balance among its Sunni, Shiite and Kurdish components. Nor is its long-term relationship to Iran settled. If radicals prevail in the Shiite part, and the Shiite part comes to dominate the Sunni and Kurdish regions, and if it then lines up with Tehran, we will witness — and will have partially contributed to — a fundamental shift in the balance of the region.

The outcome in Iraq will have profound consequences, above all, in Saudi Arabia, the key country in the Persian Gulf, as well as in the other Gulf states and in Lebanon, where Hezbollah, financed by Iran, is already a Shiite state within the state. The United States therefore has an important stake in a moderate evolution of Iraq’s domestic and foreign policies.

The Obama administration is stalemated in negotiations with Iran to contain the proliferation of nuclear weapons. Whether the nuclear issue is settled by diplomacy or other evolutions, the stability of the region will be crucially affected by the ability to bring about a political and strategic equilibrium between Iran and Iraq. Without such an arrangement, the region runs the risk of living indefinitely on top of a heap of explosives toward which a smoldering fuse is burning.

A Gift To The American People

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

The Canadian Press reports that two giant pandas from the National Zoo in Washington are returning to their native origins as apart of a new breeding program for endangered species.

The first pandas came to Washington as a state gift from China after RN’s historic trip in 1972:

Pandas have a long, symbolic history in Washington. The first panda couple, Ling-Ling and Hsing-Hsing, arrived in 1972 as a gift to the American people from China after President Richard Nixon’s historic visit.

The pair lived more than 20 years at the zoo and produced five cubs – but none survived.

That is partly why Tai Shan, the first cub to grow up in the U.S. capital, is so adored.

“All the other pandas we’ve borrowed from China, but he’s ours,” said Amanda Parson, 30, who left home at 6:15 a.m. Wednesday to visit the zoo in the snow with Williston for Tai Shan’s last day on view.

The zoo’s two remaining pandas, mother Mei Xiang and father Tian Tian, are on a 10-year, $10 million loan until December.

Chris Cox On Running For The House

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

For Christopher Nixon Cox, advantages come from the wisdom of his grandfather:

As for Nixon’s grandson, Mr. LaValle said he would not receive deferential treatment because his father was state chairman. “The cachet Chris Cox brings is not because his father is state chair. It is his lineage, his heritage. He’s extremely intelligent and knowledgeable on the issues. He has the full package of tools necessary to be an efficient leader and representative.”

For his part, Mr. Cox said on “Fox and Friends” that the name recognition came with pluses and minuses. He said he is often asked what his grandfather would have done today. His response was that he would not have endorsed President Obama’s policy of talking to people “who don’t like us.” In that interview, he also said Mr. Bishop had voted with Nancy Pelosi, the speaker of the House, 97 percent of the time. Mr. Cox said he would not be a “rubber stamp” for his party’s agenda.

Jackie Gleason For RN

February 3, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

From the 1968 campaign:

The Great Conservationists

February 2, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Domestic issues, Environmental issues, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

A Time Magazine story dated the first week of February 1969 illustrates how RN set the tone for his administration’s environmental agenda very early on:

After his embroilment in the Nixon Administration’s only serious appointment hassle, Walter Hickel was doubly confirmed: both in his new job as Secretary of the Interior and in his new respect for the power of disgruntled conservationists. Last week, in his first important action, Hickel named as his undersecretary a man who may well set the tone for his department. He is Russell E. Train, chairman of Nixon’s pre-inaugural task force on resources and environment, and an internationally esteemed conservationist. The appointment drew praise from nearly every quarter, including the old Administration. Said Stewart Udall, Hickel’s predecessor: “I don’t think there’s anyone in the conservation movement with greater dedication or insight. He’s supported all the right causes.”

For Udall, the most important right cause is Train’s commitment to “the environmental impact of what we’re doing.” Train believes that the Federal Government must assign top priority to preserving open space and protecting wildlife—two of Interior’s traditional functions. He insists that the Government also study the wise use of all of the nation’s vulnerable natural resources, and specifically a campaign against such blights as pollution, overcrowding and planned uglification. Train, 48, an Eisenhower appointee to a tax court judgeship, first became interested in conservation as a big-game hunter. In 1961, he founded the African Wildlife Leadership Foundation to help assure that Africa’s new governments would do a better job of preserving game than their colonial predecessors had. For the past four years he has headed the nonprofit Conservation Foundation, which, under his leadership, addressed its educational and research programs to increasingly broader fields (waste disposal, the danger of pesticides, hunger).

Train’s impending appointment became open knowledge in Washington early last month after Nixon aides leaked the news in hope of offsetting Hickel’s extremely maladroit comments on utilizing natural resources rather than preserving them. In discussing Train’s Senate hearing for confirmation this week, Hickel said wryly: “I don’t think the hearings will last as long for him as they did for me.”

“Standing Between Goldwater And Rockefeller”

February 2, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Lord Conrad Black’s lecture on President Nixon for students at Toronto’s McGill University is well worth listening to.