Another President With “Game”?

May 14, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Nixon family, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Sports | 1 Comment 

Many articles about President Obama have suggested that he is the first President to display any considerable skill as a basketball player. (Herbert Hoover used to toss a six-pound medicine ball over a volleyball net, but Hooverball’s another game altogether.)

But such may not be the case, as recounted in Alex Pappas’s article about President Nixon’s grandson, GOP congressional candidate Chris Cox. Recalling the time he spent with his grandfather, he says:

“I remember we went to lots of baseball games together and played basketball together. I tell you, he had a mean shot from the top of the key.”

And from a story by the Associated Press:

The aspiring politician says his grandfather, who mostly talked with him about the Mets and Giants before his death in 1994, when Cox was 15, did provide advice that may come in handy between now and November.

“What he would tell me is the only way you lose is if you stay on the floor,” Cox said. “You’re going to get knocked down time and time again, but keep coming back. And keep trying. The only time you lose is when you stop trying.”

Tom Shachtman Writes About Barack Obama (Sr.)

May 11, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Barack Obama, News media, Presidents, U.S. History | 6 Comments 

There has been considerable discussion in TNN about The Forty Years’ War, Len Colodny and Tom Shachtman’s book about foreign policy in the Nixon, Reagan, and both Bush eras. But it was not the only book Tom Shachtman published last year. St. Martin’s Press also published his Airlift To America, which tells the story of how Kenyan labor and independence leader, Tom Mboya, arranged with the help of American friends to sent many young East Africans to study in the United States between 1959 and 1963.

Most of the students came over on aircraft chartered by the African American Students Foundation, a group organized by Mboya and William X. Scheinman, with the help of both white and black sponsors, including Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte and Jackie Robinson. Although the late Barack Obama Sr., father of the forty-fourth President, did not travel to Hawaii on one of these flights (he came to Honolulu on a commercial flight, financed by two American teachers he’d met in Kenya), his stay in the Aloha State, where he met and married Stanley Dunham and fathered the future President, was made possible in large degree by scholarships from the AASF (at the recommendation of his mentor Mboya).

David Remnick’s recent bestselling biography of President Obama, The Bridge, has stirred up interest in this program again, and Shactman has a short article at the New York Times’s website discussing it. (See also this letter to the Times Book Review by Cora Weiss, who was executive director of the AASF.)

Camelot And Sacred Cow–Tipping

May 7, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Entertainment, History, Media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, TV, U.S. History, UK Politics | 2 Comments 

Whatever his obvious faults and flaws, it is somewhat understandable that Richard Nixon would ruminate about how Jack Kennedy got away with a lot during his assassination-shortened presidency. And there is no doubt that the 37th President of the United States saw all of the “Camelot” hype as mythology born of cynical public relations. While Nixon was being criticized for conducting a purported “Imperial” presidency by the likes of Arthur Schlessinger (a pro-Kennedy historian), he no-doubt resented the cult of personality that survived his old rival’s violent death.

RN would be 97 today—JFK would be 93 in a couple of weeks. It’s hard to envision the forever-young Kennedy as an old man, though we saw Nixon live into his 80s. They were friends at first, with Nixon the early-on transcendent figure. Then came the rivalry marked by increased and enduring bitterness. But it was always more complicated than that.

Americans too young to remember either man have been taught the party line that Kennedy was a great man and Nixon was a bad man. JFK was the hero of the Cuban Missile Crisis—Nixon was the villain of Watergate. JFK had charisma; Nixon had no charm—and so it goes.

The truth is actually quite different.

The History Channel is moving forward with production of an eight-part mini-series scheduled to air next year called, The Kennedys. Greg Kinnear (Little Miss Sunshine) will play JFK and Katie Holmes will play Jacqueline. The producer is a man named Joel Surnow, who is the creator of the highly successful and soon to expire series, 24.

Surnow is also reputed to have politically conservative tendencies (Gasp! Horrors!). Reportedly, the upcoming dramatic portrayal of the years of the New Frontier will include material about some of Kennedy’s flaws—and the guardians of his image are mobilized to “stop the smears.”

I say it’s about time that popular culture is exposed to the truth about the man behind the Camelot myth—before fact is fossilized.

The John F. Kennedy who will be portrayed in the new series will, reportedly, be a real life character—warts and all. And some of those warts had the potential to morph into cancer. In fact, there is a credible case to be made that had Kennedy lived beyond that fateful fall day in 1963, and managed to be reelected in 1964, he may not have survived a second term, legally and politically. That’s right. As Hugh Sidey suggested before his death in 2005—the same Hugh Sidey, who as an editor at Time Magazine during the Kennedy years, was also a Camelot insider—JFK’s various and sundry moral, ethical, and judgmental, pecadillos might very well have led to his actual impeachment.

Was the Kennedy administration a Watergate waiting to happen?

Possibly this new mini-series will popularize information that has long lain dormant in histories that are hardly read anymore. All the pieces of the puzzle are long established matters in the public domain—hiding in plain sight, but obscured by the powerful rays of cultish brilliance. But finally, those pieces are being assembled in a way that may accurately characterize a man who was likely guilty of actions much worse than what brought Mr. Nixon down in 1974.

From the improper use of the FBI in matters of surveillance and investigation in matters not at all related to national security, to misuse of the Secret Service, to his affair with a mistress of a major crime boss with its attendant compromises, Mr. Kennedy played by his own rules against the backdrop of the last gasp of an age of media mercy. He lived on the edge, from his monumental sexual addiction, to his experimentation with illicit drugs, to his dependence on substances that, while not illegal, seemed grayish—John F. Kennedy’s time was running out. People were always covering for him (some of the same ones still are). But was it only a matter of time before someone broke rank?

If Watergate taught us anything, it was that it is hard to keep a lid on a big story—even in the White House.

The story of Jack’s faults is, though, more than the tale of a bad boy—he may very well have compromised national security. Mr. Kennedy’s fascination in 1963 with an unfolding scandal in Great Britain likely had to do with the fact that he was beginning to worry about his own bailiwick. British Prime Minister Harold MacMillan’s government was then being rocked by a sex scandal involving one John Profumo, the Minister for War, and a notorious woman named Christine Keeler who had at least two boyfriends: Profumo and a Soviet naval attaché named Yevgeny Ivanov. And there were other women.

Why would this discomfit JFK? Well, because he had been flying rather close to the same kind of flame at the time. In fact, among the “other women” involved in the British scandal were two trollops, Suzy Chang and Maria Novotny. Both had been involved “romantically” with Kennedy. So it was quite possible that the scandal that eventually led to MacMillan’s government being voted out in 1964 might have by that time tarnished the name of the President of the United States.

Interestingly, while John F. Kennedy visited the United Kingdom and broke bread with MacMillan one Saturday in the summer of 1963, a story was beginning to break stateside. It appeared briefly in the New York Journal-American (Hearst paper) and spoke cryptically of “a man who holds ‘very high’ elective office” who was involved with some of the women being mentioned in the Profumo matter.

The story was pulled after one edition following pressure from U.S. Attorney General Robert Kennedy.

But beyond this, there was actually another “bimbo” problem plaguing JFK, and this one had to do with a German girl by the name of Ellen Rometsch. Said to strongly favor actress Elizabeth Taylor, she was a 27-year old prostitute who regularly “serviced” Mr. Kennedy in 1963.

Rometsch was from East Germany and had been a member of the Communist Party and many thought she was, in fact, a spy. She was paid by JFK for sex and participated in what could only be described as orgies in the White House pool. The party girl visited Kennedy at least ten times that spring and summer. When confronted by J. Edgar Hoover, Director of the FBI, about the fact that Rometsch was likely a spy, Bobby Kennedy worked feverishly to have her deported—and she was soon en route to her homeland behind the Iron Curtain.

The story went away, but not all that far away. Less than a month before Kennedy’s fateful trip to Dallas, one Iowa newspaper broke a story: “U.S. Expels Girl Linked to Officials.” In the article was the tidbit that this woman had been involved with “some prominent New Frontiersmen from the executive branch of the government.” But those were the days before White House reporters went for the jugular asking tough questions.

Why is any of this important now? It matters simply because there tends to be a measure of selective amnesia when it comes to iconic figures. If a myth better serves current political purposes this trumps truth.

Had John F. Kennedy lived and had his shortcomings been investigated and written about with Woodward-Bernstein-like passion, he may not have been reelected in 1964. And if he did manage to win that race, and investigators did their jobs, JFK might very well have been impeached or brought to the place of resignation.

Then again, that may be fantasy, because it was unlikely that Ben Bradlee, editor of the Washington Post in those days, and inbred Kennedy crony, would have allowed any such story to go forward. At any rate, it all went away that sad November day and we are left with a legend that does history, not to mention the American people, a disservice.

Stephen Kronish is the screenwriter for upcoming mini-series, The Kennedys, and he insists that they are “not out to destroy the sacred cow.” But as Gene Healy, author of The Cult of the Presidency, recently wrote:

In an age when Americans periodically swoon for imperial presidents, a little sacred cow-tipping would be a public service.

A Historian’s Responsibility

May 4, 2010 by David Emig | Filed Under History, News media, Politics, Presidential libraries, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

Recently the New Yorker came out with allegations that Stephen Ambrose (famed WWII and Nixon Biographer) exaggerated his contact with Dwight Eisenhower, General of the Army and 34^th President of the United States.  {See: Raymer, Richard, “Channeling Ike,” The New Yorker, April 26, 2010.}

The late Dr. Ambrose {1936-2002} was the author of some 25 books during his 40 year career.  He was one of the most popular World War II historians, the writer of Band of Brothers (2001), and the technical adviser to “Saving Private Ryan” Steven Spielberg’s D-Day blockbuster.  Ambrose’s three volume biography of Richard Nixon: {The Education of the Politician [1913-1962](pub.1983), “The Triumph of the Politician [1962-1974](pub.1987)”, “Ruin and Recovery [1974-1990](pub.1991)”} stand out as almost required reading for Nixon scholars.

Towards the end of his prolific career, Ambrose was accused of by his critics, and excused for being a virtual “history factory.”  A Stephen Ambrose Inc. who employed his children as research assistants.  {See: Plotz, David, “The Plagiarist: Why Stephen Ambrose is a Vampire”, Slate Magazine, January 11, 2002.}

The current controversy centers on the beginnings of Ambrose’s association with Ike in 1964.  Ambrose’s account, last stated in To America (2002), was that Eisenhower sought out Ambrose after reading his first book, Halleck: Chief of Staff (1962).  The recently retired Eisenhower was especially interested in Lincoln’s Chief of Staff’s story because Eisenhower was interested in writing a book about George Marshall, the Chief of Staff during the Second World War.  Eisenhower wanted Ambrose to work with him on his papers and finally his biography because he figured that Ambrose would be fair.  {See To America pp. 153-154}

Seven years later a different version of events emerged.  Last year, the deputy director of the Eisenhower Library, Tim Rives was looking for documents and the like for his exhibit on Ambrose’s writing on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the publication of the Eisenhower’s biography.  Rives discovered letters in the archives of Stephen Ambrose soliciting contact with Eisenhower.  It was Ambrose who sent the Halleck book along to give Ike “the opportunity to see some of my writing.”  Another letter was more forward.  “It therefore seems to me that the time has come to begin the scholarly biographies of the leaders of World War II, I would like to begin a full scale, scholarly account of your military career.”  The New Yorker article strongly states that Eisenhower never approached Ambrose, but the editor of the Eisenhower papers, Alfred Chandler, took Ambrose to see Eisenhower at Gettysburg.

This isn’t the most serious charge in the article. Although having boasted about hundreds of hours of interviews with Eisenhower, a recent search of the historical record might suggest otherwise.  Rives states that records of Eisenhower’s schedule for the years of 1964-1967 show that Ambrose met with Eisenhower three times, for a total of five hours.  These records show that Eisenhower was somewhere else or in other meetings, during some of the times Ambrose has listed as having an interview with him.

However, to read Ambrose’s writing through his biographies and in his account of his relationship with Eisenhower in Ambrose’s last book, it is difficult to discount Ambrose’s familiarity with his subject.  Eisenhower did write the foreword to Duty, Honor, Country: A History of West Point, (1966).  “To America” also describes discussions about more mundane things, such as Ike’s recommendations of restaurants in the area.  {p. 161.}   The New Yorker also brings up the point of just how much of Eisenhower’s career in the military and as President could be discussed in five hours.  Perhaps the author relied more on his knowledge of Eisenhower’s papers, and interviews with other principals than his five hours with Eisenhower.  The record only shows a difference in accounts, without displaying the motivation behind it.  Ambrose, like most biographers, never detailed what historical documentation he valued over others.

It is interesting to note that while Dr. Ambrose has dates for the interviews in the book in question Supreme Commander (1970); in subsequent books on Eisenhower such as the two volume biography and the consolidated Eisenhower: Soldier and President (1991), Ambrose only mentions “Interview with DDE” and doesn’t specify a date.  Maybe it is merely a mistake of a young historian who quietly learned his lesson.  We truly cannot know for sure, since the professor isn’t here to tell us.

Stephen Ambrose was no stranger to controversy about his scholarship.  In the recent piece in the History News Network, entitled “How the Ambrose Story Developed,” the articles cites seven Ambrose books that are in possible question for plagiarism.  According to an article in Forbes Magazine, this habit dates back to his Ph.D dissertation, Upton and the Army (1964). {See: Lewis, Mark, “Ambrose Problems Date Back To Ph.D. Thesis,” Forbes Magazine, May 10, 2002.}  Must we factor in these tendencies in our assessment of his historical analysis?

A few famous historians have been called on insufficient citation.  Most notably Doris Kearns Goodman, who had the remaining copies of The Fitzgeralds and the Kennedys (1987) destroyed, made corrections to future editions, and owned up to the mistakes.  (See: Goodman, Doris Kearns, “How I Caused That Story,” Time Magazine, January 27, 2002.)

What is plagiarism?  According to the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, (as quoted in Wikipedia) it is the “use or close imitation of the language and thoughts of another author and the representation of them as one’s own original work.”  My definition is simple.  It is the lifting of another person’s words, then representing them as your own.  When you describe a event in someone’s life that has been described by different authors…then one reaches a grey area of interpretation. How can there not be similarities?  This is illustrated when comparing Ambrose’s account of RNs hospital experience in 1975 in “Ruin and Recovery,” with a similar account 16 years earlier in Robert Sam Anson’s book, “Exile.”  {See Lewis, Mark, “More Controversy For Stephen Ambrose,” Forbes Magazine, January 9, 2002.}  While the examples in the article might be a case of insufficient citation, they do not reach the level of plagiarism.

However, making up dates for interviews is a different plateau of error.  While corrected quietly in future works; the sin of creating interviews in “The Supreme Commander” give the reader a false impression that he was writing with Eisenhower’s perspective. As mentioned earlier, for this latest controversy, Dr. Ambrose isn’t here to offer a defense, reason or excuse.

This whole Ambrose controversy should serve as a cautionary tale for all of us.  It is a reminder to tighten one’s craft.  Plagiarism, insufficient citation, and other errors can be taken care of in the cases of established historians like Goodwin, and Ambrose.  After all, the great publishing houses can repair the damage by correction.  While the established historians would be assessed by the totality of their work; these errors would be fatal to the career of the beginning historian and his or her first book.

Great care and attention must be put towards citation.  In my other vocation in the legal profession, proper citation is a given.  There are legal consequences for failure.  During the plagiarism charges regarding The Wild Blue (2001), Dr. Ambrose wrote on his website, “I tell stories.  I don’t discuss my documents.  I discuss the story.  It almost gets to the point where, how much is the reader going to take?  I am not writing a Ph.D dissertation.”  (Quoted from Kirkpatrick, David, “As Historian’s Fame Grows, So Does Attention to Sources,” New York Times, January 11, 2002.)

Fair enough.  While histories and biographies shouldn’t turn into dissertations; we as biographers and historians do write for two audiences.  One is the casual reader of history – who is looking for a good, interesting read without the distraction of footnotes within the text.  Current biographers such as Edmund Morris, Richard Reeves, and David McCullough use source notes at the back of the book rather than footnotes.

The other audience is fellow historians and students of history.  Accurately quoted and cited source materials; whether it is from a secondary source, or an interview, or letter is essential.  Doris Kearns Goodwin put it best when she said: “The writing of history is a rich process of building on the work of the past with the hope that others will build on what you have done. Through footnotes you point the way to future historians.”  (See: “How I Caused That Story.”)  After all, no writer of history or biography wants to jump in the abyss…

For the modern historian without Professor Ambrose’s reputation; the making up of interviews of their main subject would be an unpardonable offence.  With modern technology, there is no excuse for not accurately accounting for all interviews with your subject.  They must be treated and cited like any other document or secondary source material, with the date and place of interview listed.  This includes the extra step of transcribing of all interviews, a process that is invaluable for documentation.

The historical jury is still out on how Professor Ambrose’s scholarship will finally be judged.  In the end, after the author is long gone….the work must defend him.  As our work as historians and biographers must defend us.

Whenever I visit the Nixon Library, I always stop by President and Mrs. Nixon’s gravesite to pay my respects.  Once there, I sense an overwhelming responsibility.  The voice that tells me…  “Get It Right.”

President Nixon And Arbor Day

May 1, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Environmental issues, Holidays, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

I suspect that Arbor Day, as it was when I was a child, is a holiday most familiar in the elementary schools of America, since it does not involve grownups getting the day off from work, except in Nebraska (not a state famous for its orchards and forests). On a (hopefully) sunny day at the end of April, fourth or fifth or sixth-graders go outside and either help plant a tree, or watch other people plant one. That’s the way I recall the process, anyway.

It wasn’t until recently, though, that I learned that it was President Nixon who standardized observance of Arbor Day by proclamation in 1970, fixing it on the last Friday of April. Here’s an article about the ways in which the day is observed.

The Gulf Oil Disaster And Memories of 1969

May 1, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Environmental issues, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

As I observed recently at TNN, it was a large oil spill off the coast of Santa Barbara, California, about a week after Richard Nixon was inaugurated in 1969, that focused the nation’s attention on pollution and ecology in a dramatic fashion, and helped spur the movement that led to the first Earth Day and the formation of the Environmental Protection Agency the following year.

This week, the disaster that released enormous quantities of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, near southeastern Louisiana, is threatening the fishing and shrimping industries of five states. This has been the big story, at a time when the Gulf region, like the rest of America, is trying to get on the road to economic recovery. But the environmental aspect also looms large, as Lisa Margonelli of the New America Foundation points out in the New York Times:

Oil, however, is too complicated for simple solutions. Whether this spill turns out to be the result of a freakish accident or a cascade of negligence, the likely political outcome will be a moratorium on offshore drilling. Emotionally, I love this idea. Who wants an oil drill in his park or on his coastline? Who doesn’t want to punish Big Oil on behalf of the birds?

Moratoriums have a moral problem, though. All oil comes from someone’s backyard, and when we don’t reduce the amount of oil we consume, and refuse to drill at home, we end up getting people to drill for us in Kazakhstan, Angola and Nigeria — places without America’s strong environmental safeguards or the resources to enforce them.

The Most Enduring Legacy Of Nazi Hate

April 23, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Book Review, History, Islam, Islam and the West, Israel and Palestinians, Middle East, Presidents, U.S. History, UK Politics, War on Terror | 6 Comments 

On February 1, 1944, two unlikely allies in the United States Senate—Robert Wagner (D-New York) and Robert Taft (R-Ohio)—introduced a resolution that caused shockwaves around the globe. Their initiative advocated American support for “free and unlimited entry of Jews into Palestine for the creation of a Jewish commonwealth.” This was a bold move and one that put the Roosevelt administration on the spot.

Nearly five years earlier, the British government had released a White Paper on the issue of Palestine—one that largely abandoned the Jewish people in that region. Since the 1917 Balfour Declaration and during the period of the British Mandate they had been largely supportive of Jewish migration to Palestine and the idea of a Jewish state there. In essence, the White Paper changed all of that. It advocated severe limitations on Jewish immigration to Palestine—this at a time when European anti-Semitism was reaching critical mass.

The gang in Berlin was pleased.

Interestingly, at the time of that 1939 White Paper, two men who would later strongly support the creation of the modern state of Israel saw things differently. Winston Churchill spoke to the House of Commons on May 22, 1939 “as one intimately and responsibly concerned in the earlier states of our Palestine policy,” and insisted that he would not “stand by and see the solemn engagements into which Britain has entered before the world set aside.”
And here at home, Senator Harry S. Truman from Missouri—who had no clue at the time that he’d be a major player on the world stage in a few years–also issued a forthright condemnation that was inserted into the Congressional Record:

Mr. President, the British Government has used its diplomatic umbrella again,(this being an unmistakable dig at Neville Chamberlain) …this time on Palestine. It has made a scrap of paper out of Lord Balfour’s promise to the Jews. It has just added another to the long list of surrenders to the Axis powers.

But instead of embracing the ideas put forth by Taft and Wagner in 1944, the White House, State Department, and other powerful entities in the government pulled out all the stops to make sure that the idea of proposing a homeland in Palestine for Jews went away. They did this even though they knew very well about the ongoing mass extermination of European Jews at the hands of the Nazis.

The standard answer to the obvious question as to why the Holocaust evoked little official response from our government until near the end of the war has been to cite “isolationism,” or “economic Depression,” or “xenophobia” in our nation. Presumably, the idea of doing anything overtly “pro-Jewish” was politically untenable—so goes the argument.

But a closer look reveals something else going on at the time—and ever since.

The most lasting legacy of the toxins that created an epochal global conflict is the fact that elements of Nazism in many ways survive to this day in Islamism. The short-sightedness of FDR’s cronies was corrected in part by his successor, a man of courage who chose to recognize the new State of Israel eleven minutes after its birth in May of 1948. But the question remains: Why did FDR and company not get on the bandwagon, even while millions of Jews were being slaughtered?

Sadly, the real reason has a lot to do with U.S. surrender to Nazi propaganda—its power and content.

Largely overlooked or dismissed in the years since is the fact that the Nazi propaganda machine, the distortion factory that shaped attitudes in Germany throughout the duration of the infamous Third Reich, had its most lasting impact far away from the boroughs and beer halls of Deutschland. In fact, Hitler’s nightmarish vision of ridding Europe of Jews was only the beginning of what he wanted to do—he wanted to extend The Final Solution to Palestine.

And he had been preparing the hearts and minds of the Muslim world for many years.

Jeffrey Herf, a professor of history at the University of Maryland, has written an eye-opening book about the effectiveness of Nazi ideas in the Middle East during the Second World War called, “Nazi Propaganda For The Arab World.” In it, he describes the Nazi campaign for the minds and hearts of the Arab world in great detail—particularly the Axis radio programs that ran in Arabic around the clock from late 1939 until March of 1945.

These broadcasts spewed venomous anti-Semitism and pushed every demagogic button imaginable. They were also highly effective. In fact, long after the last vestige of Nazi rhetoric faded from consciousness in Europe, the poisonous seeds planted back then are still bearing deadly fruit.
The mind-set that gave way to the Third Reich is very much alive and well in the Muslim world of the Middle East.

When those two senatorial strange-bedfellows offered their visionary resolution in 1944 about a Jewish homeland in Palestine, the “Axis Broadcasts in Arabic” were way ahead of the story. Mr. Herf has accessed a significant cache of transcripts and leaflets produced by the Nazis during the war—materials that have not been adequately examined—until now.

So back in 1944, any hopes a couple of well-intentioned voices in Washington might have had to garner widespread national support for a Jewish homeland in Palestine were dashed by forces largely influenced by the hate-speak of Nazi propagandists. Berlin, broadcasting in Arabic, referred to Taft and Wagner as “criminal American senators,” while announcing, “a great tragedy is about to be unfolded, a great massacre, another turbulent war is about to start in the Arab countries.”

And in phraseology that sounds eerily familiar to what we still regularly hear from Islamists, the Nazis described the stakes as kill or be killed:

Arabs and Moslems, sons of the East, this menace threatens your very lives, endangers your beliefs and aims at your wealth. No trace of you will remain. Your doom is sealed. It were better if the earth opened and engulfed everybody; it were better if the skies fell upon us, bringing havoc and destruction; all this, rather than the sun of Islam should set and the Koran perish…Stir up wars and revolutions, stand fast against the aggressors, let your hearts, afire with faith, burst asunder! Advance your armies and drive out the menace.

Bear in mind that this is a Nazi broadcast to the Arab/Muslims in Palestine. Of course, the relationship between Hitler and Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti in Jerusalem, is well known and documented (see my article: “Hitler’s Favorite Jihadist”), but the broadcasts from Berlin to Palestine are just now beginning to be examined. And what is being found is further evidence that to refer to Islamists as Nazi or Fascist-like is no smear—or stretch.

The rhetoric broadcast to the Middle East 70 years ago is still being noised about—and even more pervasively and effectively. Back then, the attitudes it reinforced, complete with distortion, hate, and prejudice, caused U.S. officials, from FDR on down, to “go wobbly”—as Margaret Thatcher would say.

It is sadly clear that the most lasting impact of the Nazi propaganda machine is that murderous ideas espoused back then are alive and well in our day and age and still being used to threaten and kill Jews—while nouveau wobblers turn away.

A National Day Of Humiliation

April 18, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Faith, History, Presidents, Religion, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

Of course, it will be appealed and wind its way through a process of judicial, if not national debate before all is said and done, but the mind fairly boggles at the arrogant absurdity of a court in this land ruling the National Day of Prayer unconstitutional. Back when George W. Bush occupied the Oval Office, the radical anti-theist group (read: atheists on steroids), “Freedom From Religion,” filed a lawsuit and the toxic seed planted then has now borne poisonous fruit. Stay tuned.

I know it’s fashionable these days to bash-Bush, blaming the man and his administration for all the ills our current leaders find to be overwhelming and resistant to their heady scheme-dreams, but our 43rd President is a man of passionate faith. Sometimes he’s accused of wearing his faith on his sleeve, but personally I find that to be preferable to politicians who always seem to have something up their sleeves.

I had the privilege the other day of receiving a nice note from Mr. Bush. He had received a copy of my new book, a Texas story from the 1920s called, “Apparent Danger—The Pastor of America’s First Megachurch and the Texas Murder Trial of the Decade in the 1920s.” In the note, along with kind words about the book, he said something that I find quite timely in light of the news about the ruling by Judge Barbara Crabb in U.S. District Court (a Jimmy Carter appointee, by the way)—something about prayer: “During our time in the White House, Laura and I were inspired by the strength of the American people and sustained by your prayers and encouragement.”

Certainly, I understand that he was talking about personal prayers, not necessarily public ones, and that there is nothing in the current court ruling banning private prayer. Duh. I get that. But there is nuance, code, and an unmistakable trend. Our current president and his sometimes profane pals seem to be very uncomfortable with any form of pious-speak, and downright out of place in any role requiring lip-service to faith.

Religion—well, let’s be fair, anything related to Christian or Jewish religion—is increasingly being relegated to stepchild status. In the case of Islam, exceptions are made all the time, of course.

I would appeal to President Barack Hussein Obama today, to reach back beyond his Muslim, Marxist, and Liberation Theology (which is to real Christianity as anthrax is to sugar) roots and try to connect with his “inner-Lincoln.” It is clear to all of us that he very much loves to tap into Lincoln-like moments and trappings. From his announcement to run for president in Springfield, Illinois, to his train ride from Philadelphia en route to his inauguration following the route Lincoln took in 1861, to using Lincoln’s Bible while taking the oath of office, he has deliberately cultivated this clever image.

The year 1863 was a critical one for an America then immersed in nation-rending conflict. It was a year that began with his famous Emancipation Proclamation. Later that year, President Lincoln would travel to Pennsylvania and deliver immortal words at a place called Gettysburg. But almost forgotten among our 16th President’s writings, speeches, and proclamations, is something else he said that same year. As the Civil War raged, Mr. Lincoln proclaimed a National Day of Prayer—only he didn’t quite call it that. It was actually called, are you ready for this? “A Day of National Humiliation, Fasting and Prayer.” Now, that would make any liberal “living-constitution” judge’s head spin all the way around today, don’t you think?

Among the things the President said in his 1863 Proclamation were these words:

We have been the recipients of the choicest bounties of Heaven. We have been preserved, these many years, in peace and prosperity. We have grown in numbers, wealth and power, as no other nation has ever grown. But we have forgotten God. We have forgotten the gracious hand which preserved us in peace, and multiplied and enriched and strengthened us; and we have vainly imagined, in the deceitfulness of our hearts, that all these blessings were produced by some superior wisdom and virtue of our own. Intoxicated with unbroken success, we have become too self-sufficient to feel the necessity of redeeming and preserving grace, too proud to pray to the God that made us! It behooves us then, to humble ourselves before the offended Power, to confess our national sins, and to pray for clemency and forgiveness.

Now, therefore, in compliance with the request, and fully concurring in the views of the Senate, I do, by this my proclamation, designate and set apart Thursday, the 30th day of April, 1863, as a day of national humiliation, fasting and prayer. And I do hereby request all the People to abstain, on that day, from their ordinary secular pursuits, and to unite, at their several places of public worship and their respective homes, in keeping the day holy to the Lord, and devoted to the humble discharge of the religious duties proper to that solemn occasion. All this being done, in sincerity and truth, let us then rest humbly in the hope authorized by the Divine teachings, that the united cry of the Nation will be heard on high, and answered with blessings, no less than the pardon of our national sins, and the restoration of our now divided and suffering Country, to its former happy condition of unity and peace.

These days it is fashionable and politically expedient for our President to travel the globe confessing our purported geo-political sins to would-be enemies in an effort to appease and impress. But wouldn’t it be far more effective for our future, and refreshing for the republic, if we had people in charge who were willing to humble themselves before Almighty God, instead of petty potentates, as a shining example to all of us?

Oh, and speaking of Presidents and prayer, maybe someone in the White House should pull out any good biography of another Obama hero, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, and turn to the part about D-Day in June of 1944. There they’d find what I consider FDR’s finest moment and most effective and eloquent utterance and it was in the form of a prayer. That’s right—he led the nation, via radio, in prayer. And, in part, he said this:

My Fellow Americans:

Last night, when I spoke with you about the fall of Rome, I knew at that moment that troops of the United States and our Allies were crossing the Channel in another and greater operation. It has come to pass with success thus far.

And so, in this poignant hour, I ask you to join with me in prayer:

Almighty God: Our sons, pride of our nation, this day have set upon a mighty endeavor, a struggle to preserve our Republic, our religion, and our civilization, and to set free a suffering humanity. Lead them straight and true; give strength to their arms, stoutness to their hearts, steadfastness in their faith.

That’s right. Mr. New Deal said that those heroes storming the beaches of Normandy that fateful day were doing so to “preserve…our religion.”

We’ve apparently come—or better, descended—a long way since then.

Sonia’s Dress

April 17, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under In Memoriam, Presidents, Richard Nixon, White House | Leave a Comment 

On April 2, Lady Sonia McMahon, widow of Sir William McMahon who was Australia’s prime minister during most of President Nixon’s first term, died at the age of 77. Her passing received little notice in this country but the obituaries in Australia, and the United Kingdom, were extensive. And the aspect of her life that got the most ink in them was her appearance in Washington one evening in November 1971 – or, more specifically, the way she appeared, coming down the White House staircase with her husband, the President, and the First Lady.

In the critical weeks leading up to India’s involvement in Pakistan’s civil war from which the nation of Bangladesh emerged, Nixon decided to arrange a quick meeting with McMahon to confer about developments in the subcontinent. This led to plans for a state dinner for the Prime Minister and his wife, which were put together so rapidly that Sonia McMahon, who had already worn some outfits remarkable even by 1970s standards, had little time to select a suitable dress. One day she spotted one in a window, designed by a fellow Australian, Victoria Cascajo, that seemed distinctive enough for the occasion. It was black, but she opted to have it done in white.

And the dress was, indeed, distinctive. It was slit on both sides nearly up to the waist, and from just above the waist, nearly to the shoulder, was vented again, as were the sides of the sleeves. The sides of the vents were connected at intervals by rhinestone-studded straps, between which was a sheer pantyhose-type fabric. If a guest at one of President Obama’s state dinners were to wear it now, in a Washington far less formal and sedate than the one of 1971, gossip sites like Gawker.com would have enough material for at least a fortnight.

“You’ll be in every paper in the country tomorrow,” said the President as Mrs. McMahon walked with him down the staircase. That proved to be true. Luckily, Dr. Henry Kissinger was on hand to demonstrate his diplomatic skills at their most sublime when he remarked: “Mrs McMahon was beautiful enough to change any dull old routine into something special.”

While the dress raised quite a few eyebrows in America, the Australian media happily emblazoned it on front pages from Brisbane to Perth, and the original is now proudly displayed in the Powerhouse Museum in Sydney. In 2005, when Lady McMahon’s son Julian received a Golden Globe nomination for his performance as Christian Troy on the Nip/Tuck series, Australian journalists expressed the hope he would take his mother for the awards, and that she would once more wear the dress. He did bring her to the Globes and she did wear a replica of it – and, as the photos attest, wore it quite well.

Hope For All C Students

April 13, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, National Security, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

The FBI file of Pulitzer-winning columnist and Nixon White House speechwriter, the late William Safire, has become public. The Associated Press’s Jessica Gresko describes the contents:

Some of the earliest material dates from 1969, when investigators did a background check on Safire, who was joining the Nixon White House as a speech writer. The FBI’s investigators learned that Safire, then 39, had been an “honor senior” at the Bronx High School of Science and served as circulation manager of the newspaper. As a student at Syracuse University between 1947 and 1949, he had an average “just short of a B” before quitting the school. Later, while running his own public relations firm, he had clients such as The Good Humor Corporation and Ex-Lax Inc. in Brooklyn.

The bulk of the file is only partly related to Safire, however, and includes an investigation into the wiretapping, which lasted from 1969 into 1971 and was apparently started because of leaks surrounding Strategic Arms Limitation Talks. The talks between the U.S. and Soviet Union were on the subject of arms control. The documents show Safire was among more than a dozen people, including some at the White House and four journalists, whose phones were tapped. The wiretap on Safire lasted four months and found nothing.

“I have a thing about wiretapping,” Safire said on “Meet The Press” in 2006, describing what had happened to him and referencing wiretapping during the Bush administration. “I didn’t like that … it told me how easy it was to just take somebody who was not really suspected of anything for any good reason and listen to every conversation in his home.”

Smells Like San Clemente Spirit

April 13, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Music, Nixon Library, Nixon in the News, Popular Culture, Presidents, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

A few weeks after the 37th President boarded Air Force One for his last trip as President, David Bowie stood in a studio in Philadelphia and asked the country’s young Americans, “do you remember your President Nixon?”

Not long after that, Neil Young, recording “Campaigner,” reminded the world that “even Richard Nixon’s got soul.”

But it turns out that at the same time, another rock’n'roller was starting his career with songs referring to RN – a musician who, though he is not yet in the Rock’n'Roll Hall of Fame with Bowie and Young, is sure to join them sometime after 2013, when his eligibility starts 25 years after his recording (as opposed to performing) career began.

During his final live shows with Nirvana, in the fall and winter of 1993-1994, Kurt Cobain sometimes brought out an Epiphone Texan guitar for the acoustic portion of the show, which he had found in a store in Los Angeles. It sported a “Nixon Now” bumper sticker from 1972, and is now renowned among students of the Nirvana oeuvre as the best-sounding acoustic Cobain ever used. (At the end of 1994, eight or so months after the deaths of Cobain and Nixon, a blowup photo of Kurt playing this guitar was displayed in the Nixon Library exhibit “Rockin’ The White House.”)

But it turns out that this was not the first time that President Nixon entered Cobain’s musical world. From RTTNews.com comes this article:

Early recordings from a young Kurt Cobain were recently discovered at a garage sale in Aberdeen, Washington.

Producers Jack Endino and Butch Vig [the producers of Nirvana's first two albums] both verified that the tapes are self-recordings of Cobain, who is believed to have been 8 or 9 years old at the time. According to reports, it sounds as though he is playing an acoustic guitar and ukulele, sometime around 1974 or 1975, based on the content of songs about Richard Nixon. [Note: Cobain was born on Feb. 20, 1967, so he may have been as young as 7 when he recorded this material.]

Several cassettes labelled “KDC” – believed to stand for Kurt Donald Cobain – in black magic marker were found at the sale. The tapes are estimated to be worth millions.

New Book On Media Myths

April 11, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, TV News Personalities, U.S. History, Watergate | 1 Comment 

W. Joseph Campbell is a professor at American University School of Communications. Before he entered academia he spent 20 years as a journalist, often traveling and working abroad (in the days when major American newspapers and magazines could afford to send a fair number of reporters overseas).

He has a new book coming out in July, Getting It Wrong, published by the University of California Press. It focuses on ten major myths about the Fourth Estate that have arisen in the last century or so. The Washington Post website’s “Political Bookworm” discusses three of these: that the Spanish-American War was mainly the creation of William Randolph Hearst; that Edward R. Murrow, when he criticized Sen. Joseph R. McCarthy on his TV show See It Now, was the first major journalist to criticize McCarthy’s tactics (when several reporters and columnists were already doing so regularly); and that the thirty-seventh President was removed from office entirely through the efforts of Robert Redford, Dustin Hoffman and the late Jason Robards Jr:

Katharine Graham, The Post’s publisher during the Watergate period, said in 1997: “Sometimes people accuse us of bringing down a president, which of course we didn’t do. The processes that caused [Nixon's] resignation were constitutional.” She was right, but the complexities of Watergate are not readily recalled these days. What does stand out is a media-centric interpretation that the dogged reporting of Post journalists Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein brought Nixon down.

Anatoly F. Dobrynin, RIP

April 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Cold War, Cuba, International Affairs, National Security, Nixon Administration, Nixon Administration figures, Presidents, Richard Nixon, Russia, UN | Leave a Comment 

Yesterday, the death of Anatoly Fyodorovich Dobrynin, the Soviet Union’s ambassador to the United States from 1962 to 1986, was announced in Moscow. He was 90.

Few diplomats served as long in Washington as Dobrynin. (One who served longer was Ernest Jaakson, who was the representative of the Estonian government-in-exile in Washington, then of the revived nation of Estonia, from 1965 until 1993, and who replaced Dobrynin as dean of the capital’s diplomatic corps in 1986, rather to the latter’s irritation.) During those three-plus decades, he served five Soviet leaders (Khruschchev, Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko and Gorbachev) during six Administrations (Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon, Ford, Carter, and Reagan).

The two most significant achievements of Dobrynin’s tenure in Washington came in 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, and ten years later, when he played a central role on the Soviet side in negotiating the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty. The Cuban crisis came six months after his arrival in DC, following a period serving as United Nations Undersecretary-General under Dag Hammarskjold. During the months before President Kennedy learned of Soviet missiles on Cuban territory, Dobrynin managed to establish contacts with Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy that proved to be the basis of the back-channel negotiations that ultimately defused what, to date, has been the most dangerous military situation the world has faced since 1945. None of Dobrynin’s predecessors as Soviet Ambassador had shown anything approaching his diplomatic poise and skill; had he not been on the scene, events might have taken a tragic turn.

A decade later, Dobrynin, negotiating with National Security Advisor Dr. Henry Kissinger, helped to assemble the ABM treaty, which, for nearly forty years, has been the cornerstone on which the disarmament agreements between the US and USSR (and later Russia) have been built. He also considerably facilitated the process which led to the SALT I agreement of 1972, and helped further the meetings between Richard Nixon and Leonid Brezhnev which resulted in full-scale detente between the superpowers.

It should be emphasized that Dobrynin, despite his willingness to steep himself in American culture and his genial persona, was always a loyal representative of the Soviet regime and its ideology. When faced with the human-rights stance of President Carter, he gave no ground, and, in the years before Mikhail Gorbachev gained power, took many a hard-line position where Soviet actions abroad were concerned, especially in Afghanistan and Nicaragua. In his 1995 autobiography, In Confidence, he made it clear that he was unhappy to see the Soviet Union disintegrate. But it should be remembered that as a diplomat, he was committed to dialogue over confrontation, wherever and whenever he thought it possible, and that commitment helped the process which ultimately decreased and finally ended the dangerous tensions of the Cold War.

The Russian site RT.com offers these tributes from Dr. Kissinger, who so many times faced the Ambassador across a negotiating table, and Donald Kendall, a close friend of President Nixon’s:

Former US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger remembers Dobrynin when, during the Cold War, he was working in Washington DC, heading the Russian Embassy there. “First he was my professional partner,” says Kissinger, “and then gradually, he became my friend.” Even though, he says, the Soviet politics of those times which the ambassador was standing by, often went against the US policies, “he was always trying to achieve peace, to reduce tensions and to stand by a more peaceful life on the planet,” says the former US Secretary of State. “I think of him with respect and warm-hearted feelings,” concludes Kissinger.

“I hope Dobrynin will get the memorial that he deserves,” said Donald Kendall, former head of the PepsiCo in an interview to ITAR-TASS news agency. He suggested that both Russia and the United States should put a monument to Dobrynin, as a sign of honor and respect for his achievements.

Kendall is convinced that Dobrynin’s “fantastic diplomatic skills” have several times “saved the relationships” between Moscow and Washington. “I have stressed this many times, that if in those times there would have been a different ambassador in Washington, then there could have been a real war between the two countries.”

Justice Stevens Retires

April 9, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Presidents, Senate, Supreme Court, White House | 1 Comment 

Less than an hour ago word came from Washington that Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens, who was selected by President Ford as William O. Douglas’s replacement in 1975, has announced that he will retire when the Court’s spring term concludes at the end of June. In recent interviews, Stevens, who turns 90 on April 20, has emphasized that he has no interest in trying to break Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr’s record as the oldest person to sit on the Court, or Douglas’s as its longest-serving Justice. But his announcement is still somewhat surprising.

The Justice’s decision to retire presents another challenge to the Obama White House, of finding a nominee who can be confirmed by a majority of the Senate with no more debate and controversy than that which surrounded the comparatively smooth progress of Justice Sonia Sotomayor through the nomination process. As the Washington Post notes today, the candidate who seems most favored by the President at the moment is his Solicitor General, Elena Kagan, previously the dean of Harvard Law School. Ms. Kagan was confirmed for the Federal post by a Senate vote of 61-31 in March 2009, which might seem to augur well for her appointment to the Court. But quite a lot has changed in thirteen months, and the process may well be a tougher one for such a selection now.

Jerald F. terHorst and Eugene Allen, RIP

April 2, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, In Memoriam, News media, Nixon Administration, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, White House | Leave a Comment 

Wednesday marked the passing of two men who, in their respective ways, were part of memorable moments in White House history. In Takoma Park, Maryland, Eugene Allen died at age 90. He joined the White House pantry staff in the last months of the Truman presidency, and rose through the ranks for the next 34 years, retiring in 1986 after five years as the White House maitre d’.

Allen traveled with President Nixon on the historic visit to Romania in 1969, the first time a President had visited the Communist world in peacetime, and shortly before his retirement he, along with his wife, had the honor of attending a state dinner for German Chancellor Helmut Kohl as Ronald and Nancy Reagan’s guests. After two decades of quiet retirement, Allen gained national prominence in November 2008 when he was the subject of a fascinating and moving article in the Washington Post by Wil Haygood.

And, in North Carolina, Jerald F. terHorst died at age 87. He was the head of the Detroit News’ Washington bureau in the 1960s and early 1970s, and in that capacity was a member of the media delegation accompanying President Nixon to China in 1972. But he came to national notice just after Nixon’s resignation, when he was President Ford’s first major appointee as press secretary.

Thirty days later, he became the only major figure in the Ford Administration to leave office over the 38th President’s decision to grant a pardon to his predecessor. Several years later, terHorst co-authored The Flying White House: The Story of Air Force One with longtime AF1 pilot Ralph J. Albertazzie, which contains a lengthy opening chapter describing RN’s flight on the plane from the White House to San Clemente on August 9, 1974. It’s a fascinating account of that trip and the rest of the book is just as worthwhile.

Bruce Herschensohn’s New Book

March 31, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under International Affairs, Nixon Administration figures, Nixon Library events, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | 9 Comments 

On April 19, political commentator, former assistant to President Nixon, and 1992 Republican senatorial candidate Bruce Herschensohn comes to the Nixon Library to discuss his new book American Amnesia, which presents his thesis that had Congress been prepared to support Presidents Nixon and Ford when they asked for military aid to South Vietnam after North Vietnamese violations of the 1973 peace accords, then Hanoi’s forces would not have been able to defeat that nation in 1975. The theme of his book has particular relevance as American forces prepare to depart from Iraq, a nation whose future may be determined by the whims of its eastern neighbor Iran unless the United States is ready to ensure otherwise. In today’s Victorville (California) Daily Press, Herschensohn discusses his book:

On January 27, 1973, the Paris Peace Accords were signed by the United States, North Vietnam, South Vietnam and the Viet Cong. North Vietnam agreed to an immediate cease fire, and South Vietnam was promised the same sort of freedoms guaranteed Americans under the First Amendment.

Officially, the war was over.

But, Herschensohn says, the U.S. wasn’t so naive as to believe there would be no more hostilities by North Vietnam after American troops went home. So, the accords promised piece-for-piece replacement of any military assets South Vietnam used to defend itself after the Americans left.

“We didn’t do it,” Herschensohn said flatly. “Congress saw a way that we could lose (the war) by not appropriating funds in the piece-for-piece provision.”

Editors note: Bruce Herschensohn will be at the Nixon Library on Monday, April 19, to discuss and sign copies of American Amnesia. For more information click here.

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.

Got A Condo Made O’Stone-a

March 24, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Art, Comedy, Entertainment, Middle East, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 2 Comments 

Last night I read Born Standing Up, actor Steve Martin’s account of the seventeen years he spent making his way up the ladder of standup comedy. It’s a rather worthwhile book. In well-written prose, replete with many funny passages, Martin describes the process by which he rose from playing open-mike nights at obscure folk clubs around Los Angeles to filling stadiums across the country.

As many TNN readers know, Martin acquired his earliest showbiz experience in Disneyland and Knott’s Berry Farm near Garden Grove, the town in which he spent his teenage years, toward the end of Richard Nixon’s Vice Presidency. And RN figured in Martin’s struggling years as a standup; he mentions than when he played college campuses as an unknown in the early 1970s, he had only to mention the President’s name to be guaranteed a laugh. (In fact, the predictability of this response was one thing that led him to remove all political material from his act. Coincidentally or not, his career took off soon after.)

But I didn’t know that one of President Nixon’s decisions, toward the end of his Administration, led to one of the most celebrated episodes of Steve Martin’s comic career. It’s especially timely now, as the exhibition of the relics of Egypt’s King Tutankhamun finishes its run at San Francisco’s DeYoung Museum and gets ready to go to Discovery Channel’s Times Square showplace in New York.

It was in 1974 that President Nixon decided that the United States should respond to the successful display of Egyptian art in the Soviet Union with a truly memorable exhibit to tour the United States. After bringing up the idea during his visit to Egypt’s President Anwar al-Sadat a few weeks before his resignation, he urged Secretary of State Kissinger to work on bringing such an exhibit to these shores. Dr. Kissinger got in touch with the late Thomas Hoving, director of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and the process was begun which, a couple of years later, resulted in the spectacularly successful first visit of King Tut and his relics to the United States – a visit which inspired Steve Martin to write that immortal tune which was introduced to the world on Saturday Night Live.

More than thirty years after he last came for a visit, the boy king is generating some more memories to last a lifetime for countless Americans, continuing a process that started with President Nixon’s proposal for a tour to generate income to help Egyptian museums on that summer day so long ago.

The Missing Moon Rocks

March 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Apollo XI XLth, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

The fortieth anniversary last year of the first moon landing by Apollo 11 stirred interest in the mineral artifacts brought back by that mission and the five others that reached the lunar surface. President Nixon, in the months after Apollo 11’s return, sent a number of moon rocks to governments abroad and gave a rock to each of the fifty states. After Apollo 17, the last mission, returned to Earth in December 1972, he arranged for moon rocks to be sent to the heads of state of 135 countries. At the time, no one knew that the rocks brought back would be the last ones to date.

Nearly 40 years later, it turns out that of the 135 rocks sent abroad, the whereabouts of only 25 can now be confirmed. Some of the others were stolen; others were lost by their recipients or by their descendants; and some simply vanished in political turmoil. (In other words, some may turn up on Ebay.)

To cite two such examples, General Francisco Franco of Spain received a moon rock; nowadays his granddaughter reports that her mother somehow misplaced it. And the moon rock sent to Afghanistan was stolen from the country’s national museum when it was looted in 1996, in the chaos between the withdrawal of Soviet forces and the savage rise of the Taliban.

In this country, the moon rocks have been more securely kept. But, as a graduate student tells us in this column from the Nashville Tennessean, while Georgia proudly displays its rock in a museum, the one in Tennessee has been the object of many theft attempts and so is hidden away under lock and key.

C-SPAN’s Video Library

March 20, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under News media, Presidents, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

For a number of weeks C-SPAN, the venerable public-affairs cable channel founded by Brian Lamb, has had up a beta version of its video library, featuring many hours of its programming over the last 30-odd years. This week the site put up the full-scale version of the library, and now it’s possible for websurfers to select from over 160,000 hours of the channel’s programming.

And President Nixon is featured in several dozen different programs on the site, including excerpts from White House tapes; an interview conducted by Frank Gannon; a lengthy conversation with Lamb from 1992; footage of RN’s 1972 trip to China; and much else. Just put his name in the search box.

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