The Economist On The Surcharge Proposal

March 27, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, China, Congress, Economic issues, Presidents, Richard Nixon, economy | 9 Comments 

The recent health-care bill that President Obama signed may have its similarities to the proposals President Nixon unsuccessfully presented to Congress in the early Seventies, but those are far from the only pages from the 37th Chief Executive’s playbook that are being re-examined now. In recent weeks, 130 members of Congress sent a letter to Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner urging that a surcharge – in other words, a tariff – be placed on Chinese imports. They are supported by liberal economist (and New York Times columnist) Paul Krugman. The Representatives and Krugman point to Nixon’s 10 percent surcharge imposed on imports in 1971 as a precedent.

The venerable British journal The Economist has a new article assessing the reasons for the Nixon surcharge (which was to a great degree the brainchild of then-Treasury Secretary John Connally) and showing why its purpose, and the effects it had on the world economy at the time, do not necessary show that a tariff on Chinese goods would benefit the American economy now:

China’s foreign-exchange reserves now total $2.4 trillion, of which about 70% are thought to be in dollars. In 1971 the central banks of America’s trading partners had amassed a rather smaller hoard, of about $40 billion. But that was enough to buy the gold in Fort Knox three times over, if America upheld its commitment to sell the metal at $35 an ounce. Britain’s request to exchange dollars for gold on August 13th 1971 was the last straw. “Although the US government attached no great importance to the gold as such, a run on this gold would have been a sorry spectacle,” wrote George Shultz and Kenneth Dam, two prominent economic officials in the Nixon administration, in their book “Economic Policy Beyond the Headlines”. On August 15th Nixon, in effect, announced that America was now unwilling to do what it would soon be incapable of doing—converting dollars into gold at the agreed exchange rate.

Messrs Shultz and Dam argue that the import surcharge was intended as “an attention-getter and a bargaining chip”. It allowed John Connally, Nixon’s treasury secretary and a Texan, to stride down the corridors of international finance “with both guns blazing”. In the face of this bravado America’s trading partners duly backed down. By December they agreed to let the dollar fall (by a trade-weighted average of 6.5%) and the surcharge was removed. Nixon was able to present the humbling of the dollar as a political victory. But were Barack Obama to emulate him, would he really enjoy the same result?

The obvious difference is that in 1971 America was locked into a system of fixed parities. By pegging to the dollar, a currency was automatically fixed to everything else. Since July 2008 China has pegged the yuan to the greenback. But over that period its currency has swung up and down against those of its trading partners and competitors. On a trade-weighted basis the yuan is back to where it was when the financial crisis started. Indeed, compared with China’s emerging-market competitors in its big export markets, the yuan is about 12% more expensive today than it was before the collapse of Lehman Brothers, according to a measure (the “third-country” effective exchange rate) calculated by the Hong Kong Monetary Authority. By this indicator China’s currency is about 25% above its level in 2005.

The second difference is related to the first. Because everybody was pegged to the dollar in 1971, everybody had to pay the surcharge. Nixon dismayed everyone but discriminated against no one. China’s critics today, on the other hand, urge Mr Obama to slap a tariff on Chinese goods alone. This will reduce the demand for Chinese imports, which constitute about 15% of America’s total. But there is no guarantee that customers will switch from Chinese goods to American ones instead. They are more likely to buy from China’s rivals in Asia. The surcharge may change the composition of America’s trade deficit, without necessarily changing its size.

Nickels, Noses, And The Nation

March 19, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, History, Politics, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

After several anxious days of waiting—watching out my office window for the faithful U. S. Postal truck—I finally received mine. Have you gotten yours? I sure hope so, because there isn’t much time—We The People—134 million households of us—have a deadline.

In fact, there is a very special day coming up. It’s called Census Day 2010. And, are you ready for this—it’s scheduled for April 1ST. That’s right, the moment we honor fools and play tricks on everybody is the official day to recognize, if not return, our Census forms. Census Day started out in 1790 as the first Monday in August. It was moved to June in 1830, then to April 15 in 1910, and by 1940 to the first day of April.

Obviously, most Americans are well aware of this decennial process of counting everyone. After all, we’ve been seeing all those very cool commercials. I saw one the other day, having made the mistake of watching a show that hadn’t been dvr’d, that mentioned how important it was to fill out the form and send it back. The spokesperson warned: “You won’t get your fair share, if you don’t send it back.”

Fair share? Fair share of what?

If I read my history correctly—and I do—the whole idea of a census from the beginning had to do with having our fair say. When the U.S. Constitution was ratified and became the ever-since law of the land, it specified in Article 1, Section 2, that a census, or “enumeration” should be scheduled within three years of the first meeting of the Congress, and then every ten years, thereafter. The first such census was conducted in 1790 and it has been repeated every decade since.

Even in its early days the idea of a national head count was not without controversy. There was something at least a little disconcerting about individuals ceding personal information to government, no matter how small or general that data might have been. The purpose of all of this had purely to do with the apportionment of representation in Congress, the various districts being determined by population.

That remains one purpose of the every-decade-nose-count in America, and it is a vitally important one. If an area has lost population, districts are redrawn and Congressional representation adjusted accordingly—and vice versa for growing areas. So the political stakes are real—and high.

But as government has grown over the course of our nation’s history, both in its size and scope, the Census has morphed into the basis for many other things having to do with government programs and federal dollars. And this is where that mention of “fair share” comes in. There are these days various federal initiatives funding programs in states and communities for education, infrastructure, and even health care. Of course, all the money comes from us in the first place. Around the time our nation was in the middle of its fourth census, Alexis De Tocqueville suggested, “The American Republic will endure, until politicians realize they can bribe the people with their own money.” Indeed.

Beyond this, Census data is used by the government in a variety of ways for “policy purposes”—economic and otherwise. This brings to mind another Census 2010 campaign mantra—in fact, it’s the official slogan this time around: “We can’t move forward until you mail it back?”

Forward to where? Forward to what?

I will fill mine out and send it in. I will answer every question truthfully and I won’t waste my time being clever or creative in my responses. But this doesn’t mean that I don’t wonder what all the fuss is about this year. After all, we get a package from the federal government around the first of January each year reminding us of incoming taxes. I never saw a funny commercial about that, largely because most Americans can figure out that this means we have to send something back or be in trouble.

Why then the song and dance about the Census?

Is it because those in charge these days have cool ideas (cool to them) about what they can make of America with new demographic tea leaves to examine? I don’t think one has to be a conspiracy theorist to wonder. Last year, a few eyebrows were raised when the administration announced that it wanted to, in effect, take the Census away from the to-do-list of the Commerce Department, signaling that they wanted command-central for the big count to be in the West Wing. Then there was the issue with ACORN being contracted to work on the big detail-dig. We all know how good they are with numbers, muscle, and the truth.

Questions were raised last year—reasonable ones, in my opinion—about the fact that nowhere on the Census form does it ask about the citizenship of residents. This suggests the possibility that some areas—with large blocs of non-U.S. citizens (legal or otherwise) would have their population and therefore congressional representation impacted by some who have do not have the full rights of American citizenship.

Personally, I am not concerned about getting my fair share based on the Census this year. I am solely concerned with continuing to have my fair say and that the voices heard in our country are those described by “We the People”—in other words, actual citizens.

Furthermore, I’d just as soon keep more of my fair share in the first place, thank you. And “move forward” by myself.

How Could Biden Fix The Senate? Think VP Nixon

March 18, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues | Leave a Comment 

As the Democrats in Congress struggle to path health care reform, the American Prospect’s Bruce Ackerman writes that Vice President Biden should heed wisdom from Vice President Nixon, who used his constitutional power to make the U.S. Senate a more active governing body:

If Biden is willing to exercise the power granted him in the constitution, he could do more than pass health care. He could establish a precedent that would later help him limit the filibuster rules that threaten to deadlock our system of government. He would not be the first vice president to use his power for good in this way.

Consider the history: It now takes 60 Senators (three-fifths) to end a filibuster, but for most of the 20th century, a full two-thirds majority was necessary. Worse yet, unanimous consent was required by Senate rules to change this. The two-thirds provision seemed cemented into the system beyond repair.

Until Richard Nixon came along. When the Senate opened for business in 1957, he took the chair as vice president and urged the chamber to rethink the very foundations of its rules. The Senate traditionally considered itself a continuing body, which automatically inherited its old rules without any formal action.

This was a mistake, Nixon said. Since one-third of its membership is renewed every two years, the Senate should explicitly vote on its rules when it organized itself at the beginning the session. If a simple majority wanted to reduce the two-thirds rule, it was free to do so.

Nixon’s ruling was a bombshell. If his view were accepted by the Senate, 51 Senators could impose a strong civil-rights bill on the South.

This put Majority Leader Lyndon Johnson in a tough spot. He was willing to join a broad effort for a weak civil-rights measure, but he was unprepared to sacrifice his Southern colleagues by campaigning against the filibuster. He refused to support Nixon’s pronouncement. Instead, he asked the Senate to table any vote on its rules and follow its traditional practice of simply inheriting the existing rule book in a passive fashion. When Johnson’s motion won the day, he frustrated Nixon’s effort to use the Senate presidency as an engine for filibuster reform.

A Race – And Candidate – To Watch

January 29, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, History, Nixon family, Nixon in the News, Pat Nixon, Politics, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | 3 Comments 

Nearly 65 years after his famous grandfather was first asked to run as a Republican candidate for the U.S. House of Representative from that state’s 12th district, 30-year old Christopher Cox has put his hat in the ring for the seat in New York’s first district on Long Island. Cox, the son of Edward and Tricia Cox, and grandson of the 37th President of the United States, Richard M. Nixon, is a fiscal conservative who champions limited government and lower taxes.

He also has politics in his blood.

And like his grandfather, who was swept into office as part of a Republican landslide in the 1946 off-year elections in the aftermath of World War II and too many years of “New” and “Fair” Democratic deals, he hopes to ride the current wave of discontent and frustration all the way to Capitol Hill. In doing so, he could make a little bit of history, as well. Cox graduated from Princeton and New York University Law School, and served as a John McCain delegate and was the New York State Executive Director of McCain’s 2008 Presidential run.

New York’s first district encompasses Suffolk County, the eastern part of Long Island, with its signature north and south forks and places such as Brookhaven, Smithtown, and the Hamptons. The region is picturesque—still pastoral in part. Richard Nixon loved it out there, even writing his 1968 Republican nomination acceptance speech at Gurney’s Inn in Montauk.

Edward Cox, Christopher’s father, is the current chairman of the New York Republican State Committee. His ancestors were well known in state and local politics, business, and jurisprudence—and his own political resume includes experience as an attorney in the Reagan administration.

Of course, those of us old enough to remember recall the images of a beautiful White House wedding back on June 12, 1971, as Ed took Tricia Nixon as his wife.

Should Christopher Cox get the GOP nomination, he’ll face an uphill race against the Democrat incumbent—Tim Bishop, who has held the seat since 2003. Interestingly, in spite of the fact that Bishop trounced his opponent in 2008 by 16 points, Barack Obama only garnered 51% of the district’s vote in 2008—a rare case that year of a local Democrat out polling the “Yes, We Can” national juggernaut. So to many observers, certainly Chris Cox among them, the seat is very much in play.

It’s been said that history doesn’t repeat itself, but it does rhyme. The year was 1945, and a young Naval officer was transferred that January to a post in Philadelphia after his tour in the South Pacific. He and his wife contemplated their post-war future. Richard and Pat Nixon also awaited the arrival of their first child.

In September of 1945, while still on the east coast, Richard Nixon received a letter from Herman Perry, a Whittier, California banker, inquiring: “Would you like to be a candidate for Congress on the Republican ticket in 1946? Jerry Voorhis expects to run. Registration is about fifty-fifty. The Republicans are gaining. Please air mail me your response if you are interested.”

The rest, as they say, is history—but none of it was a foregone conclusion.

The seat had been held since 1936 by Jerry Voorhis, a sometimes-New Deal—sometimes further left— Democrat, who had had long been covered by Franklin Roosevelt’s electoral coattails. He had made a career attacking insurance companies, oil companies, and banks—even going so far as to advocate the funneling of all profits from the Federal Reserve System into the Federal Government’s general revenues.

Nixon quickly sized up the situation and the offer and replied: “I feel very strongly that Jerry Voorhis can be beaten, and I’d welcome the opportunity to take a crack at him,” promising “an aggressive, vigorous campaign.”

In fact, Nixon made good on his word and took the fight to Voorhis in 1946. Facing a tough and effective speaker and campaigner, Voorhis was put on the defensive right from the start and never really figured out what to do. During debates with Nixon, one observer said that Voorhis, “pauses, breathes heavily, adjusts his glasses nervously with both hands, etc.,”—this was contrasted with Richard Nixon’s bold style and manner.

Of course, down through the years, the story of the 1946 campaign, as told by many Nixon detractors, has been that it was dirty and underhanded. But, as one biographer has written:

Politics is a rough occupation, and Voorhis had led a sheltered life. He should have seen Nixon coming and responded more effectively and promptly to his attacks… It was not an edifying example of clarity of political debate at its best, but it wasn’t the infamous prostitution of the political process that Nixon-haters have sold to a drooling posterity either.

On election night, Nixon basked in the glow of victory after winning 57% of the vote. He would regularly say over the remaining years of his life that every election win was special—but that first one always remained the most vivid and rewarding. He, Pat, and their nine-month old little baby girl, Tricia, were on their way to Washington, where they’d all (joined by little sister, Julie, less than two years later) live for 20 of the next 28 years.

In early 1947, as Richard Nixon began serving in Congress, he made his way to a debate in McKeesport, Pennsylvania. The subject was American labor, particularly the merits of the Taft-Hartley Bill. His opponent was also a former Naval officer, who had as well been elected in November of 1946—one of the few bright spots for the Democrats that otherwise discouraging night. His name was John F. Kennedy.

JFK would later concede that Nixon bested him that night. They left the stage, had dinner, and then shared a compartment on a train back to Washington talking into the morning hours about life, politics, the past, and the future. In fact, those two young men on a train, Nixon at 34 years of age, Kennedy not yet 30, would figure significantly in the future of the nation. They were young men in a hurry—part of a new generation of leaders.

These days we watch another class of young politicians testing the waters. John F. Kennedy, Jr. died tragically, long before we could ever see him run for office. His big sister, Caroline, made an awkward attempt to get Hillary Clinton’s vacated Senate seat, but never seemed to catch on—or up. Now the torch has been past to an even newer generation as Tricia’s son, Christopher, runs this year.

It will be very interesting to watch—and remember.

The New Nixon

January 28, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Congress, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Like his grandfather, Christopher Nixon Cox, is challenging a five term Democratic member of the House of Representatives. Report courtesy of Eric Shawn from Fox News:

Related Stories:

Richard Nixon’s grandson will run for Congress By Eugene Kiely, USA Today

Richard Nixon’s Grandson, Chris Cox, Running for Congress By Christopher Weber, Politics Daily

Chris Cox: Nixon Grandson Running for Congress By Eric Shawn, Fox News

RN’s 1972 State of the Union Address

January 28, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Congress, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Lee Huebner On The State Of The Union Addresses

January 23, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

The Washington Post has an article in which White House speechwriters, going back four decades, talk about the way in which Presidents have approached the annual State Of The Union address before Congress. In it, Lee Huebner of George Washington University’s School of Media and Public Affairs, who was deputy director of the White House speechwriting staff during President Nixon’s administration, points out that the speech was not always a high-visibility event, in terms of a nationwide audience:

it’s a state occasion — it’s become a great ceremony. I think this happened mainly when Lyndon Johnson decided to move it from noon until evening . . . in 1965. And suddenly, instead of the kind of speech for the well-informed people who follow government closely, it became a speech for the general public. Presidents have felt the demand to make it an uplifting, ceremonial, rhetorical success, and these two objectives, I think, clash.

1.22.70

January 22, 2010 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Environmental issues, Nixon Administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

Forty years ago today —on 22 January 1970— RN delivered his first State of the Union Message to a Joint Session of Congress.  The year before, the outgoing, diminished LBJ had delivered an elegiac, wistful SOTU describing what might have been and how he hoped he would be remembered.

RN had used 1969 to organize and consolidate, and his 1970 SOTU —which is my favorite among the several notable speeches he gave as POTUS— concisely conveys the sense of confidence, energy, enthusiasm, innovation, and equanimity that characterized his first term, and particularly its approach to domestic issues.  The speech was beautifully written, and the delivery combined equal parts of buoyancy and gravitas as RN simply but eloquently sketched his vision of a new America for a new decade — and challenged Americans to join him in making that vision real.

Although the Congress had failed to act on any of his legislative proposals to date, the speech to “my colleagues in the Congress” was marked by the tone of respect, conciliation, and cooperation that characterized the beginning of his administration.

To address a joint session of the Congress in this great chamber in which I was once privileged to serve is an honor for which I am deeply grateful.

After the bitter divisiveness of the 1960s, the new President held out the possibility of turning a corner together:

The State of the Union address is traditionally an occasion for a lengthy and detailed account by the President of what he has accomplished in the past, what he wants the Congress to do in the future, and, in an election year, to lay the basis for the political issues which might be decisive in the fall.

Occasionally there comes a time when profound and far-reaching events command a break with tradition. This is such a time.

I say this not only because 1970 marks the beginning of a new decade in which America will celebrate its 200th birthday. I say it because new knowledge and hard experience argue persuasively that both our programs and our institutions in America need to be reformed.

The moment has arrived to harness the vast energies and abundance of this land to the creation of a new American experience, an experience richer and deeper and more truly a reflection of the goodness and grace of the human spirit.

The ’70s will be a time of new beginnings, a time of exploring both on the earth and in the heavens, a time of discovery. But the time has also come for emphasis on developing better ways of managing what we have and of completing what man’s genius has begun but left unfinished.

Our land, this land that is ours together, is a great and a good land. It is also an unfinished land, and the challenge of perfecting it is the summons of the ’70s.

RN said that the first and most important national priority was peace and an end to the war in Vietnam.  At this point, the new President was still confident that his determination to negotiate an equitable settlement would end the war this year.  His undiminished optimism is reflected in his words; he had not yet accepted that the enemy wasn’t interested in negotiating anything; that their non-negotiable terms involved a unilateral US withdrawal combined with an overthrow of the Thieu government.

He outlined the basic points of the Nixon Doctrine he had announced at Guam in July ’69 — that America would continue to provide military aid and supplies to our allies, but that they would be expected to provide the manpower for their own defense that it expected its allies to assume responsibility for providing the manpower for their own defense— and said that foreign policy would be the subject of a separate paper.

Moving on to the domestic front —the State of the Union— RN discussed the economic imbalances that had been created by several years of unrestrained spending.  The solution for such problems was clear: restrain spending and balance budgets.

But in this speech, RN was thinking far more broadly and boldly.

I now turn to a subject which, next to our desire for peace, may well become the major concern of the American people in the decade of the seventies.

In the next 10 years we shall increase our wealth by 50 percent. The profound question is: Does this mean we will be 50 percent richer in a real sense, 50 percent better off, 50 percent happier?

Or does it mean that in the year 1980 the President standing in this place will look back on a decade in which 70 percent of our people lived in metropolitan areas choked by traffic, suffocated by smog, poisoned by water, deafened by noise, and terrorized by crime?

These are not the great questions that concern world leaders at summit conferences. But people do not live at the summit. They live in the foothills of everyday experience, and it is time for all of us to concern ourselves with the way real people live in real life.

The great question of the seventies is, shall we surrender to our surroundings, or shall we make our peace with nature and begin to make reparations for the damage we have done to our air, to our land, and to our water?

Restoring nature to its natural state is a cause beyond party and beyond factions. It has become a common cause of all the people of this country. It is a cause of particular concern to young Americans, because they more than we will reap the grim consequences of our failure to act on programs which are needed now if we are to prevent disaster later.

Clean air, clean water, open spaces—these should once again be the birthright of every American. If we act now, they can be.

We still think of air as free. But clean air is not free, and neither is clean water. The price tag on pollution control is high. Through our years of past carelessness we incurred a debt to nature, and now that debt is being called.

The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America’s history.

It is not a program for just one year. A year’s plan in this field is no plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but five years or 10 years—whatever time is required to do the job.

Thus RN put his mark on the emerging issue of the environment — and challenged the Congress (the same Congress he had already gently chastised for inaction at different points during the speech) to join him on a decade-long commitment to reclaiming America’s natural heritage.

The program I shall propose to Congress will be the most comprehensive and costly program in this field in America’s history.

It is not a program for just one year. A year’s plan in this field is no plan at all. This is a time to look ahead not a year, but 5 years or 10 years–whatever time is required to do the job.

I shall propose to this Congress a $10 billion nationwide clean waters program to put modern municipal waste treatment plants in every place in America where they are needed to make our waters clean again, and do it now. We have the industrial capacity, if we begin now, to build them all within 5 years. This program will get them built within 5 years.

As our cities and suburbs relentlessly expand, those priceless open spaces needed for recreation areas accessible to their people are swallowed up–often forever. Unless we preserve these spaces while they are still available, we will have none to preserve. Therefore, I shall propose new financing methods for purchasing open space and parklands now, before they are lost to us.

The automobile is our worst polluter of the air. Adequate control requires further advances in engine design and fuel composition. We shall intensify our research, set increasingly strict standards, and strengthen enforcement procedures-and we shall do it now.

We can no longer afford to consider air and water common property, free to be abused by anyone without regard to the consequences. Instead, we should begin now to treat them as scarce resources, which we are no more free to contaminate than we are free to throw garbage into our neighbor’s yard.

This requires comprehensive new regulations. It also requires that, to the extent possible, the price of goods should be made to include the costs of producing and disposing of them without damage to the environment.

Now, I realize that the argument is often made that there is a fundamental contradiction between economic growth and the quality of life, so that to have one we must forsake the other.

The answer is not to abandon growth, but to redirect it. For example, we should turn toward ending congestion and eliminating smog the same reservoir of inventive genius that created them in the first place.

Continued vigorous economic growth provides us with the means to enrich life itself and to enhance our planet as a place hospitable to man.

The speech’s peroration and conclusion deserve quotation in full:

Two hundred years ago this was a new nation of 3 million people, weak militarily, poor economically. But America meant something to the world then which could not be measured in dollars, something far more important than military might.

Listen to President Thomas Jefferson in 1802: We act not “for ourselves alone, but for the whole human race.”

We had a spiritual quality then which caught the imagination of millions of people in the world.

Today, when we are the richest and strongest nation in the world, let it not be recorded that we lack the moral and spiritual idealism which made us the hope of the world at the time of our birth.

The demands of us in 1976 are even greater than in 1776.

It is no longer enough to live and let live. Now we must live and help live.

We need a fresh climate in America, one in which a person can breathe freely and breathe in freedom.

Our recognition of the truth that wealth and happiness are not the same thing requires us to measure success or failure by new criteria.

Even more than the programs I have described today, what this Nation needs is an example from its elected leaders in providing the spiritual and moral leadership which no programs for material progress can satisfy.

Above all, let us inspire young Americans with a sense of excitement, a sense of destiny, a sense of involvement, in meeting the challenges we face in this great period of our history. Only then are they going to have any sense of satisfaction in their lives.

The greatest privilege an individual can have is to serve in a cause bigger than himself. We have such a cause.

How we seize the opportunities I have described today will determine not only our future, but the future of peace and freedom in this world in the last third of the century.

May God give us the wisdom, the strength and, above all, the idealism to be worthy of that challenge, so that America can fulfill its destiny of being the world’s best hope for liberty, for opportunity, for progress and peace for all peoples.

It has become conventional wisdom that RN actually had little interest in the environment, and that his proposals were principally intended to outflank his political opponents on their left.  Whether this is true or not —or whatever elements of truth it may contain— it is an easy copout to hold harmless the  many,  in Congress and the media and the academy, who were more interested in having the environment as a stick with which to beat the President than as a legislative program that could begin to address the problem.  If RN is to be criticized for bluffing, there should be no less criticism for those who failed to call his bluff.

In fact, the Nixon administration’s environmental record —which started from scratch— has lately been acknowledged as impressive and important.  RN established the Environmental Protection Agency and signed the landmark Clean Air Act.  He signed the Coastal Zone Management Act; the Ocean Dumping Act; the Marine Mammal Protection Act; the Federal Insecticide, Fungide, Rodenticide Act; and the Toxic Substances Control Act.   In his 1971 SOTU speech he proposed his Legacy of Parks program.  At the end of 1973 he signed the Endangered Species act; and he supported the Safe Drinking Water Act that was signed by President Ford at the end of 1974.

RN’s first term was one of the most efficient, innovative, and effective periods of presidential leadership — four years when everything seemed possible and many things were accomplished.   The 1970 SOTU is a memory and a microcosm of the spirit that animated the the Nixon administration 1969-1972.  It commands respect.  It deserves attention.

You can see and hear RN deliver this seminal 1970 SOTU message here.

The Bay State Catches Up

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

Alvin Felzenberg, writing at National Review:

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

The Shift In Massachusetts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Echo of 1970?

November 1, 2009 by Jim Gallen | Filed Under Congress, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

The upcoming special election in the New York Twenty-third Congressional brings to mind an earlier three way election in the Empire State.

The 2009 special election features Democrat Bill Owens, Republican Dierdre Scozzafava and Conservative Doug Hoffman. Identifying the players in New York politics is like finding the ends in a bowl of spaghetti, but a few ground rules are discernable. Democrats and Republicans nominate their own candidates. The next level of parties, the Liberals and Conservatives, then consider the major party candidates and, if one is to their liking, offer their party’s nomination to one of the major party candidates. Frequently, this results in the Democratic candidate also running on the Liberal Party line and the Republican also running on the Conservative Party line. If either the Liberals or Conservatives find neither major party candidate to be satisfactory, they can nominate their own candidate. Endorsements from minor parties can confuse things further.

In this election, the Working Families’ Party has given its nomination to Owens while the Independence Party has endorsed Scozzafava. The Liberals seem to be sitting this one out. The Conservative Party has chosen its own candidate, Doug Hoffman. This posed a problem for Republicans who had to choose between their official candidate, who is regarded by many as too liberal for their tastes, and the Conservative, who challenges party unity but whose positions are generally more to their liking. Scozzfava garnered endorsements from the Log Cabin Republicans, the National Rifle Association, local Republican leaders as well as some national figures including House Republican leader John Boehner, Sen. Susan Collins and former Speaker Newt Gingrich. Hoffman drew endorsements from prominent Republicans such as Sarah Palin, Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty, former N.Y. Gov. George Pataki, former Senators Fred Thompson and Rick Santourm, former House Majority Leader Dick Armey, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity and many others. As of this writing, Diedre Scozzafava has withdrawn from the race and many of her supporters are transferring to Hoffman.

So what past election does this bring to mind? Think back to 1970. Rep. Charles Goodell had been appointed by Gov. Rockefeller to replace the late Sen. Robert F. Kennedy. Although a mainstream Republican in the house, Goodell sought to enhance his statewide appeal by adopting liberal domestic policies and criticizing the conduct of the Vietnam War. These positions earned Goodell the nomination of the Liberal Party in addition to that of the Republican Party, but also ensured the opposition of many within the Republican Party and within the Nixon Administration. The Conservative challenge came from James L. Buckley who, like Hoffman 39 years later, gained endorsements from many prominent Republicans, most notably Vice-President Spiro Agnew. The field was rounded out by Democratic Rep. Richard Ottinger. During the campaign the Administration both aided Buckley and turned its guns on Goodell. The high point of the attack occurred when Vice-President Agnew called Goodell “The Christine Jorgenson of the Republican Party.” At that time Christine Jorgenson was the only well known person to have undergone a sex change operation.

In 1970 the administration efforts were successful as Buckley managed a narrow victory over Ottinger while Goodell lagged far behind. Similarly, the Conservative challenge to Scozzafava has been successful in driving her out of the race. In a few days we will know if, as in 1970, with support from conservative Republicans, the Conservative Party will be successful in electing one of its own in another three way New York race.

Fings Ain’t Wot They Used T’Be

September 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, News media | Leave a Comment 

Rule of Thumb #1 for President Obama:  When Howard Fineman starts looking fondly back to the Reagan administration, you know you’re in trouble.

Members of Obama’s own party know who Obama is not; they still sometimes wonder who he really is. In Washington, the appearance of uncertainty is taken as weakness—especially on Capitol Hill, where a president is only as revered as he is feared. Being the cool, convivial late-night-guest in chief won’t cut it with Congress, an institution impervious to charm (especially the charm of a president with wavering poll numbers). Members of both parties are taking Obama’s measure with their defiant and sometimes hostile response to his desires on health care. Never much of a legislator (and not long a senator), Obama underestimated the complexity of enacting a major “reform” bill. Letting Congress try to write it on its own was an awful idea. As a balkanized land of microfiefdoms, each loyal to its own lobbyists and consultants, Congress is incapable of being led by its “leadership.” It’s not like Chicago, where you call a guy who calls a guy who calls Daley, who makes the call. The president himself must make his wishes clear—along with the consequences for those who fail to grant them.

The model is a man whose political effectiveness Obama repeatedly says he admires: Ronald Reagan. There was never doubt about what he wanted. The Gipper made his simple, dramatic tax cuts the centerpiece not only of his campaign but also of the entire first year of his presidency.

Millions For Defense. And Now Also For Tribute.

September 25, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, Senate | 2 Comments 

As reported by Bryan Bender in today’s Boston Globe:

WASHINGTON – A large military spending bill moving through Congress contains a little-noticed outlay for Boston that has nothing to do with national defense: $20 million for an educational institute honoring late Senator Edward M. Kennedy of Massachusetts.

The earmark, tucked into the defense bill at the request of Senator John F. Kerry of Massachusetts, requires US taxpayers to help the Edward M. Kennedy Institute for the United States Senate realize its goal of building a repository for Kennedy’s papers and an accompanying civic learning center on the University of Massachusetts at Boston campus in Dorchester, next to the John F. Kennedy Library and Museum.

Kerry strongly defended the insertion of the $20 million earmark yesterday. He requested that it be included in the $360 billion defense budget, he said, to recognize Kennedy’s long tenure on the Senate Armed Services Committee.

The institute will serve as a focal point for the late Massachusetts senator’s legacy, much as presidential libraries do. It will house Kennedy’s official papers and oral histories from the nearly half-century he served in the Senate. With a museum and exhibit space, it also will be dedicated to educating the general public, students, teachers, new US senators, and Senate staff about the role and importance of the Senate in American political life. The institute plans to host an annual “Summer Senate’’ for high school students from across the nation.

The $20 million earmark would cover as much as 40 percent of the institute’s initial fund-raising goal.

Beyond raising questions about the practice of slipping earmarks into bills in Congress, the provision also presents a potential ethical question for Paul Kirk, the longtime Kennedy aide Governor Deval Patrick appointed to fill the late senator’s seat yesterday.

Kirk, who stepped down yesterday as chairman of the JFK Library Foundation, has also served as a member of the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board and has played a key role in helping plan and raise funds for the new center. If he casts a vote in favor of the defense bill, he also will be voting in favor of an institute to which he has had close personal and professional connections.

A spokeswoman for Kirk, Stephanie Cutter, said yesterday that he does not see his roles as conflicting.

“Mr. Kirk expects to vote on every issue important to the people of Massachusetts. He resigned from the Edward M. Kennedy Institute board at 8 a.m. this morning, so we don’t expect a conflict to exist, but of course he’ll comply fully with the ethics rules of the Senate,’’ Cutter said in an e-mailed statement. She did not respond to a question about what role, if any, he played in securing the $20 million earmark.

Kirk is not running in the January special election for a new senator to fill out the remainder of Kennedy’s term. He has not yet said whether he intends to return to the JFK Library Foundation once his interim Senate appointment expires.

At Kerry’s request, Senator Daniel Inouye, a Hawaii Democrat who chairs the Senate Appropriations Committee, added the $20 million earmark to the defense bill, congressional aides said. The funding would come on top of $5 million secured with Kerry’s help earlier this year in a Labor Department spending bill, which provided money for the institute’s planning and design.

The center had raised an additional $20 million in private donations earlier this year, and more money has been contributed by members of the public since Kennedy’s death last month from brain cancer, said Joe Ganley, an institute spokesman. Ultimately, Ganley said, the majority of the center’s funding will come from private donors, not taxpayers. He said many of Boston’s most influential civic leaders, including businessman Jack Connors, are helping to raise funds.

The institute’s president, and it’s only staff member so far, is Peter Meade, a former Blue Cross-Blue Shield executive who also serves on the board of the JFK Library Foundation. Meade was unavailable for comment yesterday, Ganley said.

Using the national defense budget for such earmarks is considered a particular affront by those advocating for fiscal discipline in the midst of two wars that are straining Pentagon coffers. Overall, the Senate version of the bill includes 778 earmarks worth $2.65 billion, including a number that have little or nothing to do with military matters.

A major concern is what gets cut from the Pentagon budget to make room for things like the Kennedy institute, said Winslow Wheeler, director of the Strauss Military Reform Project at the left-leaning Center for Defense Information in Washington.

“The committee did not add money to the bill to pay for its billions of dollars in pork,’’ Wheeler said.

A spokesman for Inouye declined to explain why the Kennedy institute earmark was inserted into the Pentagon budget, rather than into an education bill or other piece of legislation. In a statement released by his office, Inouye said, “It is my sincere hope that many of these students will be inspired to seek a life of public service, with the same spirit of patriotism and love of country that I saw each and every day from Senator Kennedy.’’

While Kerry said using the defense budget to fund Kennedy’s institute was a tribute to his “leadership on military technology, weapons systems, and safety equipment for our troops,’’ Wheeler said he believes there is a more practical reason.

“It’s a natural for Kerry to go to Inouye on this,’’ Wheeler said. “If it’s in the defense bill it must be a good idea. And the defense bill is sure to pass. He wanted a fast vehicle to get it enacted.’’

Bob Greene, Richard Nixon, Civility, And Mystique

September 21, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Healthcare, Hillary Clinton, Interviews, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon in the News, Obama administration, Presidents, Public Opinion, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, TV News, U.S. History, Vietnam | 3 Comments 

Yesterday, Bob Greene – the veteran journalist, not Oprah’s trainer – wrote a column for CNN.com about the nation’s winter of partisan discontent. (Well, yes, it is September, but the air did get perceptively colder this morning.)

For decades, Greene’s column at the Chicago Sun-Times, then the Chicago Tribune, was syndicated across the country, and many of his two dozen books were bestsellers. Seven years ago this week, a scandalous incident from 1988 involving a female high-school reporter surfaced and resulted in Greene’s dismissal from the Tribune. Since then he has maintained a much lower profile, but from time to time he still has unexpected and fairly perceptive things to say.

Sunday’s column opens with a reference to high-school “chicken” races. As longtime readers of Greene know, the days of his adolescence in the early 1960s, and his childhood memories of the 1950s, are never far away from his mind, so the allusion to Rebel Without A Cause is not unexpected. Then he draws a comparison between teenagers frantically racing toward a collision, and the intensity of the current debate over health care and “big government.” Greene expresses the view that when compared to the feelings generated in the last few months, even the arguments surrounding the 2008 election seem to evoke a vanishing atmosphere of civility.

To prove this point, he tells of traveling the country last fall, asking various ordinary Joes (plumbers or not) and Janes whether they planned to vote for then-Senator Barack Obama or Senator John McCain – and then asking them what they found to admire in the man they did not plan to vote for. He quotes an Obama voter who, not unexpectedly, admired McCain’s fortitude as a POW in Vietnam, and a McCain voter who observed that Obama was energetic, charismatic, intelligent. “People seemed to welcome this exercise,” says Greene, but then he glumly muses: “Somehow, it feels that a similar experiment would be doomed to failure now,” and that “it feels like we’re all in one of those old hot-rod movies[....], speeding straight toward each other’s headlights.” And then he wonders what can be done about it:

One answer may be found in an unlikely place — in words spoken by the most divisive political figure of his era.

Richard Nixon, in his first inaugural address during a time of widespread public rage in the United States, talked about “reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth.”

Nixon’s presidency would end in shambles. But on its first day, here is what he said about how to soothe the anger that was consuming the nation:

“To find that answer, we need only look within ourselves. … To lower our voices would be a simple thing.”

Some people’s feelings about Nixon undoubtedly cloud their opinion of everything he ever did. Yet what he said as he took office in a time of nonstop partisan conflict is worth considering as we pass through similar days:

“In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

“We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another — until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices.”

Bob Greene has thought about RN’s life, and the lessons to be learned from it, for a long time. Indeed, in his mid-twenties he covered the 1972 campaign and wrote a book about it, Running. a decade later, he scored a one-on-one interview with the ex-President, which stretched over several of his columns and is included in his 1985 book Cheeseburgers, and extensively excerpted in his 2004 book Fraternity: A Journey In Search Of Five Presidents.

In that interview, Nixon reflected at some length about how a President should be perceived by the public. He told Greene: “A president must not be one of the crowd. He must maintain a certain figure. People want him to be that way. They don’t want him to be down there saying, `Look, I’m the same as you.’ . . .In all the years I was in the White House, I never recall running around in a sport shirt, let alone a T-shirt. Or sneakers and the rest.”

When RN said this, he had in mind leaders he greatly admired like Charles De Gaulle of France, Konrad Adenauer of West Germany, or Lee Kuan Yew of Singapore – men whose rather austere and remote personal style nonetheless commanded enormous respect and admiration from their countrymen (or, as would be said now, countrypersons). While this sort of political style has generally been less admired by American voters, as the careers of John Quincy Adams – or Richard Nixon – demonstrate, there’s no doubt that most Americans do want their Presidents not to be too folksy or too accessible to the public. Dwight Eisenhower certainly struck the right balance. He was from middle-class, heartland America – but he was not “the same as” the ordinary voter. Ronald Reagan, as “down-home” as he could be, was always meticulous about keeping a certain mystique around his personality.

In the case of Barack Obama, the mystique has started to fall away, in a rapid and, for many of his followers, disillusioning manner. Twelve days ago he delivered a speech before Congress on health care which, in itself, was a good effort at rallying the nation to his cause, though far from a grand slam or a home run – more like a double. Then the Congressional leadership became preoccupied with punishing Rep. Joe Wilson for shouting “You lie!” during the address, and forced a vote on the matter which seemed to many Americans like an exercise in pointless overkill. Obama’s latter-day Brain Trust seemed aware of this, but no one in the Capitol Hill Democratic leadership was bothering to take heed of their concerns.

Today, Newsweek.com has a blogpost about the latest poll data. It turns out that most of the surveys do find an increase in Obama’s favorability ratings following the speech – but by one or two or, in CNN.com’s survey, five points, from 53 to 58. Compare this to the polls following Richard Nixon’s November 3, 1969 speech on Vietnam, when 77 percent of Americans expressed support for his policies – a spectacular rise from the President’s numbers before the speech. Even Jimmy Carter’s notorious “malaise” speech in 1979 temporarily lifted his approval rating from 25 to 37 percent, before the Iranian hostage crisis lowered it for good.

Last weekend President Obama, evidently wishing to build on what small momentum his speech generated, took the unprecedented step – for a President, anyway – of appearing on five Sunday-morning talk shows on the same day: NBC’s Meet The Press, CBS’s Face The Nation, ABC’s This Week, CNN’s State Of The Union (formerly Late Edition) and Univision’s Al Punto.

This garnered the President the distinction of having achieved something approaching what media folk call a “full Ginsburg.” Back in 1998, in the first frenzied Sunday after the Monica Lewinsky scandal broke, that ex-intern’s attorney, William Ginsburg, appeared on the first four of the aforementioned shows as well as Fox News Sunday. This achievement remained unique for about five years, then Vice President Cheney duplicated it, to be followed by then-Senator John Edwards (during his weeks as Sen. John Kerry’s running-mate) and then-DHS Secretary Michael Chertoff. The last to manage it was then-Senator Hillary Clinton in the fall of 2007 when she was still the Democratic presidential nominee-apparent (and, in the minds of many in the media, virtually the President-elect).

But it’s one thing for even a Vice-President to undertake such a feat – and another for a President to think he has to make the rounds of the talking-heads programs. (Or, for that matter, the talk shows – if the Chief Executive feels he needs to make his case on The Late Show With David Letterman as I write this, can Carson Daly or Chelsea Handler be that far behind?) When that President pointedly declines to appear on Fox News Sunday, apparently because the network decided not to broadcast his speech to Congress, the semblance of a mystique certainly diminishes, and some, like Dwight Schwab of examiner.com, are even ready to compare Obama’s quarrel with Fox to Nixon’s difficult relationship with the networks. (For me, another analogy comes more readily to mind – former Minnesota Governor Jesse Ventura’s honeymoon with the media in 1998 that so rapidly turned sour. But that’s a subject for another post.)

So it makes sense for President Obama to try to follow in the path RN outlined in that first inaugural – a path RN himself found difficult to follow, because of the polarization that he inherited – and also to maintain an image befitting a President instead of a Sunday-morning regular. The right approach for him is not to start thinking about going on Olbermann, Matthews, King and Maddow – or Conan, Colin, and the two Jimmies – on the same night, but instead to focus on the effectiveness of getting his message across on the stage that only a President can command.

Change You Can Believe In Only Too Well

September 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Healthcare | Leave a Comment 

Manu Raju reports in Politico on the “Revolving door for health care aides”:

Some of the most influential aides in the closed-door Senate Finance Committee negotiations over health care reform have ties to interests that would be directly affected by the legislation.

Before she was hired last year as senior counsel to Finance Committee Chairman  Max Baucus (D-Mont.), Liz Fowler worked as a highly paid public policy adviser for WellPoint Inc., the nation’s largest publicly traded health benefits company.

Mark Hayes, health policy director and chief health counsel for Finance Committee ranking member Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), is married to a registered lobbyist for a firm that represents drug companies and hospital groups, although the couple says she doesn’t lobby Grassley’s office.

Frederick Isasi, a health policy adviser to Sen. Jeff Bingaman (D-N.M.), was a registered lobbyist at Powell Goldstein, where his clients included public hospitals and the American Stroke Association.

Kate Spaziani, senior health policy aide to Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.), was also a registered lobbyist at Powell Goldstein, although Conrad’s office says she worked as a lawyer — not as a lobbyist — for public hospitals on Medicare issues.

There’s no evidence that the aides’ ties have shaped the bill that Baucus hopes to release Tuesday, and the ultimate decisions over its provisions rest with the senators themselves. But critics say the involvement of such well-connected insiders could lead to dangerous conflicts.

“It raises the concerns about the revolving door that have always been present,” said Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Center for Responsive Politics, a group that tracks influence in politics. “This just brings it into the fore because it’s such a far-reaching bill.”

The revolving door swings both ways in the health care debate — and the Finance Committee isn’t the only place where it stops.

All across Capitol Hill, a number of former lobbyists, consultants and advisers for firms that represent consumers, patients, hospitals, insurers, pharmaceutical companies and medical device makers are now in key positions in the House and Senate, according to a review of public records.

Dumbing Decorum Down

September 15, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress | 1 Comment 

Over at Politico, Glenn Thrush highlights a new ukase from House of Representatives Rules Commitee Chairwoman Louise Slaughter.

Talk about breaking a butterfly on a wheel…..   Instead of allowing his own sense of shame and/or his colleagues’ contumely to deal with one Congressman’s recent unacceptable outburst in the House Chamber during the President’s admittedly tendentious and partisanly provocative health care speech, the Rules Committee has just released a mind numbingly intricately parsed summary of the “approved guidelines for all members to follow during floor debates.”

I suppose that, since the Congressfolks have by now genteelly gerrymandered themselves into what amount to self-perpetuating incumbencies, the logical next step is to squelch criticism by neutering speech.  But aside from the “l” word, or the use of constitutionally freighted phrases like “giving aid and comfort to the enemy,” or crying “fire” in a crowded House, I can’t think of any words —however inappropriate or ugly or over the top— that a democratic legislative body actually bans at anything less than its own peril.

Here is the text of the Chairwoman’s womanslaughter of the English language and the give and take of parliamentary debate:

Decorum in the House and in Committees

Under clause 1(a)(1) of Rule XI, the rules of the House are the rules of its committees as far as applicable. Consequently, Members should comport themselves with the rules of decorum and debate in the House and in Committees specifically with regard to references to the President of the United States as stated in Section 370 of the House Rules and Manual.

As stated in Cannon’s Precedents, on January 27, 1909, the House adopted a report in response to improper references in debate to the President. That report read in part as follows:

“It is… the duty of the House to require its Members in speech or debate to preserve that proper restraint which will permit the House to conduct its business in an orderly manner and without unnecessarily and unduly exciting animosity among its Members or antagonism from those other branches of the Government with which the House is correlated.”

As a guide for debate, it is permissible in debate to challenge the President on matters of policy. The difference is one between political criticism and personally offensive criticism. For example, a Member may assert in debate that an incumbent President is not worthy of re-election, but in doing so should not allude to personal misconduct. By extension, a Member may assert in debate that the House should conduct an inquiry, or that a President should not remain in office.

Under section 370 of the House Rules and Manual it has been held that a Member could:

• refer to the government as “something hated, something oppressive.”
• refer to the President as “using legislative or judicial pork.”
• refer to a Presidential message as a “disgrace to the country.”
• refer to unnamed officials as “our half-baked nitwits handling foreign affairs.”

Likewise, it has been held that a member could not:

• call the President a “liar.”
• call the President a “hypocrite.”
• describe the President’s veto of a bill as “cowardly.”
• charge that the President has been “intellectually dishonest.”
• refer to the President as “giving aid and comfort to the enemy.”
• refer to alleged “sexual misconduct on the President’s part.”

However, the Senate rules on decorum and debate do not prohibit personal references to the President. Senate Rule XIX governing decorum and debate is applied only to fellow Senators and “does not extend to the President, the Vice President, or Administration officials and a Senator cannot be called to order under rule XIX for comments or remarks about them…” (Senate Procedure, p. 741). The Senate rules also provide that Jefferson’s Manual is not part of the Senate rules (Ibid, p.754).

By contrast, the rules of the House specifically provide that Jefferson’s Manual does govern the proceedings of the House where applicable (Clause 1 of Rule XXVIII). Section 370 of Jefferson’s Manual states that the rule in Parliament prohibiting Members from “speak{ing} irreverently or seditiously against the King” has been interpreted to prohibit personal references against the President. In addition, Speakers of the House have consistently reiterated, and the House has voted, to support the proposition that it is not in order in debate to engage in personalities toward the President. The Chair enforces this rule of decorum on his own initiative.

On this morning’s Washington Journal on CSPAN, one of the guests was Jonathan Karp, the editor of Senator Edward Kennedy’s just posthumously published memoir True Compass.  Mr. Karp referred to Senator Kennedy’s sorrow over the lack of civility in the Senate.

A combination of short memories and guilty consciences have led a generation of Democratic politicians and media pundits, bemoaning the loss of congressional civility, to point the finger at Republicans, and to place the date around 1994 when the GOP had the audacity to upset the natural order of things by winning control of both houses of Congress for the first time in donkey’s years.

But, lest we forget, the end of the traditional congressional civility actually occurred several years earlier —on 23 June 1987— when Senator Edward M. Kennedy rose and, after referring to Judge Robert Bork’s “neanderthal views,” expressed his opposition to the Judge’s nomination to the Supreme Court in these memorably uncivil words:

Robert Bork’s America is a land in which women would be forced into back-alley abortions, blacks would sit at segregated lunch counters, rogue police could break down citizens’ doors in midnight raids, schoolchildren could not be taught about evolution, writers and artists would be censored at the whim of government, and the doors of the federal courts would be shut on the fingers of millions of citizens for whom the judiciary is often the only protector of the individual rights that are the heart of our democracy.

This Shrum-penned screed was in the ad hominem tradition of John Kenneth Galbraith’s words written for Adlai Stevenson in the 1952 presidential campaign.  (Stevenson had written to Galbraith at Harvard:  “I want you to write speeches against Nixon.  You have no tendency to be fair.”)

Our nation stands at a fork in the political road.  In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, showing; the land of smash and grab and anything to win.  This is Nixonland.  America is something different.

Of course when liberal lions or admired eggheads make these kinds of memorably bitter personal attacks, they’re given a pass because, after all, it’s only campaign rhetoric; or even praised for making fearless statements of principle.

But words have consequences just as crows have roosts.  And it’s important to remember how things really started.

Is It Something In The Okra?

September 9, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Congress, Healthcare, Presidents, Senate, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Many were shocked tonight when Rep. Joe Wilson, a Republican from South Carolina, shouted “you lie” at President Obama during the latter’s speech on health care before Congress. Wilson promptly apologized. But it certainly is the case that the demeanor of Congressmen from South Carolina, when their ire is provoked, has improved substantially over the years. Below, an excerpt from the Wikipedia entry for Preston Brooks, a (Democratic) Representative from the Palmetto State in the years before the Civil War:

On May 22, 1856, Brooks beat Senator Charles Sumner [of Massachusetts] with his gutta-percha wood walking cane in the Senate chamber because of a speech Sumner had made three days earlier, criticizing President Franklin Pierce and Southerners who sympathized with the pro-slavery violence in Kansas (“Bleeding Kansas”). In particular, Sumner lambasted Brooks’ kinsman, Senator Andrew Butler, who was not in attendance when the speech was read, describing slavery as a harlot, comparing Butler with Don Quixote for embracing it, and mocking Butler for a physical handicap. Senator Stephen Douglas of Illinois, who was also a subject of abuse during the speech, suggested to a colleague while Sumner was orating that “this damn fool [Sumner] is going to get himself shot by some other damn fool.”

At first intending to challenge Sumner to a duel, Brooks consulted with fellow South Carolina Rep. Laurence M. Keitt on dueling etiquette. Keitt instructed him that dueling was for gentlemen of equal social standing, and suggested that Sumner occupied a lower social status comparable to a drunkard due to the supposedly coarse language he had used during his speech. Brooks thus decided to attack Sumner with a cane.

Two days after the speech, on the afternoon of May 22, Brooks confronted Sumner as he sat writing at his desk in the almost empty Senate chamber. Brooks was accompanied by Keitt and Henry A. Edmundson of Virginia. Brooks said, “Mr. Sumner, I have read your speech twice over carefully. It is a libel on South Carolina, and Mr. Butler, who is a relative of mine.” As Sumner began to stand up, Brooks began beating Sumner on the head with his thick gutta-percha cane with a gold head. Sumner was trapped under the heavy desk (which was bolted to the floor), but Brooks continued to bash Sumner until he ripped the desk from the floor. By this time, Sumner was blinded by his own blood, and he staggered up the aisle and collapsed, lapsing into unconsciousness. Brooks continued to beat Sumner until he broke his cane, then quietly left the chamber. Several other senators attempted to help Sumner, but were blocked by Keitt who was holding a pistol and shouting “Let them be!” (Keitt would be censured for his actions and later died of wounds in 1864 during the US Civil War.)

Sumner was unable to return to his Senate duties for more than three years while he recovered.

As for Brooks, he died of “the croup” seven months after the attack.

DSPQ

August 28, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Democratic Party, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient | Leave a Comment 

In the past I have cast a lenient —almost affectionate— eye on Chairman Charles Rangel.

The natty gravel-voiced Purple Heart winning long-time Congressman has represented his constituency diligently and mastered both the arcanae of tax codes and the even more arcane ways of surviving and thriving on Capitol Hill.

And Chairman Rangel, in addition to his almost unlimited charm and all but unlimited power, is a Democrat.  Which means that he has been able to run the Kennedy-Clinton-Dodd-Conrad-etc.-etc. play book that has worked before and will work again: If you ignore something long enough, no matter how devastating or demeaning or downright horrific it may be, it will either go away or people will forget about it, or both.

So, for going on a year now, Chairman Rangel has blithely sailed above such pesky pinpricks as the  media’s isolated and timidly expressed outrage, or his many colleagues’ calls for him to resign or at least step down as the head of his Committee, much less an Ethics Committee investigation.

But, holy Toledo, surely at some point enough has to become enough.

My bad: New information reveals that House tax czar Chairman Charles Rangel forgot to mention, among many other things,  this $1 million home on any of his disclosure forms.

Today’s New York Post reports what may be (or, see above, may not be) the coup de grace for a long and not totally undistinguished career:

Rep. Charles Rangel failed to report as much as $1.3 million in outside income — including up to $1 million for a Harlem building sale — on financial-disclosure forms he filed between 2002 and 2006, according to newly amended records.

The documents also show the embattled chairman of the Ways and Means Committee — who is being probed by the House Ethics Committee — failed to reveal a staggering $3 million in various business transactions over the same period.

This week, Rangel filed drastically revised financial-disclosure forms reflecting new, higher amounts of outside income and numerous additional business deals that had not been reported when the reports were originally filed.

In 2004, for instance, Rangel reported earning between $4,000 and $10,000 in outside earnings on top of his $158,100 congressional salary.

But the amended filings show that after the sale of a property on West 132nd Street, his outside income that year was somewhere between $118,000 and $1.04 million.

The forms filed by House members provide for a range of value on such transactions, so the precise number isn’t publicly known.

Rangel also lowballed his income by as much as $70,000 in 2002, $46,000 in 2003 and $117,000 in 2006, records show.

Only in 2005 did Rangel reveal his total outside income.

Members of Congress are required to disclose all their assets and outside income in an effort to expose possible undue influences.

Rangel’s office insists the Harlem Democrat did not conceal any outside income from the IRS and is paid up on his taxes.

The Post revealed yesterday that Rangel is in arrears on New Jersey property taxes — for property that for more than 15 years he failed to disclose to Congress and the public.

Another area of wide discrepancy in his financial-disclosure forms is where he’s required to list financial transactions.

Every year between 2002 and 2007, Rangel failed to include all his deals for the year, according to records.

On his 2002 and 2003 financial-disclosure statements, Rangel did not include any transactions whatsoever, according to papers on file with the House clerk.

But the amended records filed this month show as much as $310,000 in business deals in 2002 and up to $80,000 in transactions in 2003.

In 2004, Rangel left off his disclosure form as much as $430,000 in stock transactions, amended records show. One of those deals he did include as a transaction on his original disclosure was the sale of the brownstone on West 132nd Street.

But in the same report, Rangel failed to include proceeds from that sale as outside income. That has been revised in the amended report.

Despite the reported sale, city records still show Rangel is the owner of that property.

Change We Can Believe In

August 24, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Obama administration | 1 Comment 

From a profile of uber lobbyist Heather Podesta (“the Insider’s Insider”) by Manuel Roig-Franzia in today’s WaPo:

In a glum economy, the lobbying business feels kind of bubbly. Every new Obama proposal comes with acres of fine print for corporate powers, interests groups and lobbyists to haggle over, profitably. Three gargantuan legislative challenges — health care, the environment, the economy — crisscrossing at once on Capitol Hill. Major health-care interests alone are spending $1.4 million this year lobbying Congress . . . per day, according to Common Cause, a government watchdog group. A lobbyist’s delight created, ironically, by the let’s-solve-all-our-problems-RIGHT-NOW approach of a president who pooh-poohed the excesses of lobbyists.

“This is a very good time to be a Democratic lobbyist . . . it’s incredibly exciting to be able to engage with Democrats and really see things happen,” Podesta says one afternoon at her office in one of those cool, restored red-brick buildings on E Street. “It’s always a good time to be Heather Podesta.”

There are more than 12,500 registered lobbyists — about 23 for every member of Congress, according to the Center for Responsive Politics — and some are getting richer while others stagnate or even dip a bit because of all of this pesky recession talk. But those who operate at the confluence of this summer’s big three legislative streams are happiest of all.

All The Way The LBJ Way

August 22, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Congress, Domestic issues, Healthcare, Presidents, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

Up close and very, very personal: newly nominated Supreme Court Justice Abe Fortas receives the “LBJ Treatment” in July 1965 in this classic photo by Yoichi Okamoto.

Over at the Daily Beast, former LBJ aide Tom Johnson addresses WWLBJD? —  how the 36th POTUS would have approached getting health care reform accomplished.

Mr. Johnson was a White House Fellow during the Johnson administration; after that he served as president and publisher of the Los Angeles Times and president of CNN.

One of Lyndon B. Johnson’s closest aides explains how the whatever-it-takes Texan would have gotten a health care reform bill passed through sheer will. LBJ would:

• Have a list of every member of Congress on his desk.
• He would be on the telephone with members and their key staffers constantly: “Your president really needs your vote on this bill.”
• He would have a list of every special request every member wanted, from White House tours to appointments to federal jobs and commissions.
• He would make phone calls or have an in-person visit with every member individually or in a group — charts, graphs, coffee. They would get the Johnson Treatment as nobody else could give it.
• He would express a willingness to horse-trade with every member.
• He would keep a list of people who support each member financially. He would make a call to each to tell them to get the vote of that representative. (Arthur Krim, Lew Wasserman)
• He would have Billy Graham calling Baptists, Cardinal Cushing calling Catholics, Dr. King calling blacks, [Texas Congressman] Henry Gonzales calling Hispanics, Henry Ford and David Rockefeller calling Republicans.
• He would get Jack Valenti to call the Pope if it would help.
• He would have speeches written for members for the Congressional Record and hometown newspapers.
• He would use up the White House liquor having nightcaps with the leaders and key votes of BOTH parties.
• Each of them would take home cufflinks, watches, signed photos, and perhaps even a pledge to come raise money for their next reelection
• He would send gifts to children and grandchildren of members.
• He would walk around the South Lawn with reporters telling them why this was important to their own families.
• He would send every aide in the White House to see every member of the House and Senate. He would send me to see Senator Richard Russell and Rep. Carl Vinson because I am a Georgian.
• He would call Kay Graham, [CBS president] Frank Stanton, [NBC president] Robert Kintner, and the heads of every network.
• He would do newspaper, radio, and TV interviews. Especially with Merriman Smith, Hugh Sidey, Sid Davis, Forrest Boyd, Ray Scherer, Helen Thomas, Marianne Means, Walter Cronkite, Phil Potter, Bob Novak.
• He would go to pray at six different churches.

He would threaten, cajole, flirt, flatter, hug, and get the bill passed.

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