Barack Obama–Administrator: A Story Of Tomorrow

March 5, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Healthcare, History, Political Philosophy, Politics, Presidents, Public Opinion, U.S. History, White House | 1 Comment 

Did you know that the word, “manufacture” is from the Latin and literally means: “to make by hand?” Of course, the term has long since been connected with things made by machines. The word no longer means what it meant.

Language—any language—is like that. “Brave” used to mean “cowardly.” Really. And “nice?” Well, it originally meant, “not to know,” or another way to say someone was ignorant.

Nice.

Etymologists—those who study word origins and meanings—tell us that words change for several reasons: generalization—specialization—degeneration, to name a few. Now, apparently, we must add politicization to the list of word-changers. Most of the time, such linguistic morphing is subtle and hardly noticed. But right now before our eyes, a very good word is becoming something quite unlike what it originally meant.

Reconciliation—a word rich in nuance, meaning, and historic impact; a term that has for centuries indicated the removal of barriers and the restoration of relationship—may be rendered virtually meaningless soon. What is now being planned for the whole health care fix in this country, all other avenues having failed those who just know they know better than the rest of us, will likely come to pass in some form via a political process now known famously as Reconciliation.

George Orwell would be proud. What once meant the end of hostility and all parties coming together in good will, soon will likely stand for the raw exercise of party and power politics. And in the process it will leave in its wake anything but the fruit of real reconciliation. In fact, all indications are that we are on the verge of entering a fierce period of vituperative political conflict—one even worse than what we have recently seen.

Yes, I understand that, in this case, the word is being used in an accounting sense. But when you “reconcile” your bank statement, isn’t that also called “balancing?” Where’s the balance in such a political maneuver?

Of course, the idea—and in fact, the practice—of reconciliation in matters of legislation has been around for more than 35 years. And the process was used in the past by Republicans, giving some credence to the charge of hypocrisy now being hurled by the Democrats. But a closer look at matters handled in the past via the Byrd-rule suggests that nothing prior even comes close to comparing to what is being suggested and orchestrated now—a takeover of one-sixth of the U.S. economy.

It’s all part of that “fundamental transformation of America” that was being talked about in 2008.

In the past, the opposite of reconciliation—in fact, a key reason for the term’s existence in language—was alienation. Now, however, reconciliation will not be healing alienation, rather it will be exacerbating it. And what is striking and enduringly frustrating about the whole thing is that at every turn Americans have been sending not-so-subtle signals to those breathing the rarified air inside the Beltway. The message has been consistent and persistent: Read our lips—no new Health Care. The things that are weak in our current system can be fixed, not by moving away from market-based economics, but by creating incentives for the market to fix itself.

One particular thing that makes my skin crawl every time I hear it is this idea that under Obamacare all Americans who are happy with their current health care can keep things as they are. While theoretically (i.e., outside the actual real world) this may sound reasonable and reassuring, the facts speak otherwise.

Most Americans did not choose their current coverage—their employers did—or, at least, some entity within the business, corporation, or union organizational structure. That means that decisions about future coverage will not be in the hands of employees, but rather such decision makers. And if a business owner or CEO sees a better deal, or feels pressure to alter the plan—does anyone really think a mere employee has much of a say?

Why, then, the big push in the face of overwhelming political ill will? The only reasonable answer is that those pushing the Obamacare agenda have made up their minds that they know best and that those opposing the measures are simply ignorant. In other words—it’s arrogance.

And when political arrogance meets perceived public ignorance, it can only mean one thing: The spirit of Woodrow Wilson is back at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.

Like the professor who knew better way back then, Mr. Obama and company honestly feel that if this thing can be passed, even by the thinnest of razor margins, Americans will ultimately like enough of the plan once implemented that they’ll tend to embarrassingly forget what all the fuss was about. They are also banking on the fact that once a generation grows accustomed to a certain entitlement, it is almost impossible to reverse it.

But Woodrow Wilson learned a thing or two the hard way about the folly of political arrogance. Self-assurance, crusader-zeal, and personal charisma can only carry a politician so far. History shows that leaders who rely on such traits long-term are eventually devoured by them. One day the cheering actually does stop.

Interestingly, such arrogance also smacks of something out of a work of fiction that flew close to the flame of fact nearly 100 years ago. Published anonymously in 1912, the year Mr. Wilson was elected as the 28th President of the United States, was the novel “Philip Dru—Administrator: A Story of Tomorrow, 1920-1935.” The author was actually Edward House (he was referred to by the purely honorific “Colonel” House), a man who became Woodrow Wilson’s alter ego—he was the Rahm Emanuel of the day, only much better at it.

The book tells the story of a man, Philip Dru, who becomes the dictator of America—but as a despot he was of the benevolent sort (I told you it was fiction). He was a leader who took unprecedented power, only doing so for the good of the people. Father knows best. In the book’s dedication, House wrote:

“This book is dedicated to the unhappy many who have lived and died lacking opportunity, because, in the starting, the world-wide social structure was wrongly begun.”

One gets the feeling that the ghosts of Philip Dru, Edward House, not to mention Woodrow Wilson are not merely haunting the halls of the White House these days.

In fact, they’re part of the team.

The Shift In Massachusetts

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The First Nixon-Kennedy Debate

December 26, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, TV, U.S. History | Leave a Comment 

With the prospect of debates among British party leaders, an article in The Australian opines:

Appearances do not only matter in television debating: they are, in some ways, the only things that matter. The first TV debate in 1960 pitted a sweaty, unshaven Richard Nixon recovering from flu, against a tanned, youthful John F. Kennedy who had spent much of the previous week on the golf course. Those who heard the debate on radio reckoned Nixon the winner. But more than 80 million Americans watched it on television, and in that medium the victor was clear. It was not so much a measure of JFK’s abilities as a resounding tribute to the power of television.

Some corrections are in order.  RN was not recovering from the flu, but from an infected knee.  He was clean-shaven, though his complexion tended to give the impression of a five o’clock shadow.   While the recently-hospitalized RN did not look his best, he hardly had the death’s-door appearance of legend.  (When I show video of the debate to students, they wonder what the big deal was about.)  JFK was youthful, but so was RN, who was only four years older.  One poll did show that radio listeners scored Nixon as the winner, but that result has limited significance, since those who listened on radio were demographically very different from those who watched on TV.  The radio audience was predisposed to support RN to begin with.  To the extent that the first debate did affect the election, substance counted more than cosmetics. Trying to shake his attack-dog image, RN erred by being too deferential and defensive.

Even the leading lines of the article are misleading:  “On October 15, 1992, the first president Bush glanced at his watch, and lost the presidential election. At almost the same moment, Bill Clinton took three paces forward, and won it. 2 election.”   No, Bush’s watch glances looked bad but did not cost him the election.  Clinton was leading Bush before the debates.  Afterward, in fact, his lead narrowed.

Beware Of Green Sheep Bearing Urgent Messages

December 11, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Environmental issues, History, International Affairs, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Public Opinion, UN | 2 Comments 

Long ago, the wisest of all men who ever trod earthly sod reminded us to beware of those peddling false information, noting that they often appear in “sheep’s clothing,” but really they are nothing more than “ravenous wolves.” These days we are bearing witness to the resurgence of ideas that have long since been discredited in former form, so the wool suit has been brought out for stealthy reasons. But a closer look reveals that those sheep have really big teeth.

Dust off your old Orwellian “newspeak” dictionary, where words are set free from actual meaning. There is a new code in town and it is worthy of being broken – a barely cryptic puzzle, but one that may, in fact, deceive many. Socialism is not only on the comeback trail via a full frontal political assault in our country (never mind that is has never actually worked anywhere), it is also on the march under a new banner – though to see this we must look through the looking glass. Not only has terminology been tweaked, the political color chart is being revised, as well – while too few actually notice.

Green is the new Red.

The actual practical application of so-called socialist dogma since the days when its seeds were hydrated in the bloodbath of the French Revolution has never come close to living up to its utopian promises. The goals of equality and liberty – noble concepts themselves – have never been achieved through coercive collectivism. Countries have certainly tried to level the playing field – or, if you prefer “spread the wealth around” – but it has always been done at the expense of personal freedom, not to mention the fact that wealth has tended to disappear in the process of that “spreading.” Some of the wealth did, of course, survive – for a time at least – in the coffers of those who happened to be the ruling elite du jour.

In other words, although socialism has regularly been presented as the cultural and political pathway to fairness and prosperity for all, it has had a poor record in history. In fact, it has tended to actually make matters worse. But never mind that: let’s give the tired doctrine one more try. After all, we have smarter people in charge now and the fact that the math still doesn’t add up is irrelevant.

It’s the same with environmentalism. As the world watched what happened this past week in wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen, the mantra was about saving the planet. But lurking beneath and behind the machinations and rhetoric of this latest climate-change-kum-by-ya moment is the same old ideology, albeit with a leafy facelift. Saving the planet, we are regularly told by the smart people, requires more centralization of power and less individual liberty.

And if there is any doubt as to this agenda, we need only look back to a few days ago when Environmental Protection Agency Czarina, Lisa Jackson, told us all that the EPA regards carbon dioxide as a grave threat to mother earth and that the pollutant must therefore be controlled by government guardians. They’ll be the people wearing those special biohazard suits – yep, you guessed it, the ones made of wool.

It is emerging that there are plans, if the Congress doesn’t do the bidding of the new greed reds, to simply do a smack down on the economy with a method described as “command-and-control.” This is a management style popularized in the now deceased HBO series, “The Sopranos,” as in that memorable line, “I got your ‘command-and-control’ right here – badda bing, badda boom.”

You say, “cap-and-trade,” others say, “command-and-control,” why don’t we call the whole thing off?

Please don’t miss the significance of what Jackson has said. Our entire economy is based just as much on carbon as it is the dollar. A “command-and-control” approach is another way of saying: “You think a take over of health care is a power grab? Wait until you see this!”

What does this have to do with socialism? Environmentalism relates to socialism in much the same way that Marxism relates to Leninism – and for the same reason. Neither is really about giving people a better life or saving the planet. The ultimate agenda – the wolf in sheep’s clothing – is political power and the micromanagement of individual lives through collectivism, with all the strings pulled by an emerging political aristocracy made up of the “really smart” people. And I use that word “aristocracy” deliberately, though with tongue-in-cheek, because the word comes from the Greek and literally means: “the rule of the best.”

The problem is that this latest group of “the best and the brightest” has a clear and present problem with priorities. We are facing some very great crisis-level challenges in America, the top two being, 1. It’s the economy, stupid, and 2. The war against Islamism (or, reverse the order, if you like). But the body language of those “really smart” people is all about matters that, well, don’t actually matter to most Americans – at least not right now.

Seventeenth century British preacher, Thomas Fuller, a man who would have done well in the age of the sound bite, once said: “He that is everywhere is nowhere.” This is the same idea Steven Covey and other management gurus talk about when they warn that the “urgent” can be the enemy of the “important.” And Americans right now are living under a new tyranny – that of the neo-urgent. However, the present “urgent-priority” is being orchestrated by those who seem to simply want power centralized and personal liberties marginalized.

Oh, by the way, Thomas Fuller also famously said, “It is always darkest just before the day dawneth,” which gives me some comfort. That is, until I recall one college professor of mine many years ago – a particularly and regularly befuddled man – who once botched this quote while giving us a pep talk before a major exam: “Now, uh, class, uh, always remember what Thomas Fuller said, ‘It is always darkest before the storm.”

President Obama’s Vocal Minority Speech

December 2, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Afghanistan, Barack Obama, Democratic Party, History, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

1 December 2009 and 3 November 1969: the desire to contain a vocal minority and the determination to mobilize a silent majority.

I’ve looked at a lot of the coverage of the President’s speech at West Point last night, and, so far at least, no one seems to have noticed the precedent and example that is hiding in plain sight: Richard Nixon’s “silent majority” speech of 3 November 1969.

Nixon was eleven months into his presidency forty years ago —just as Mr. Obama is eleven months and a week into his— when he went to the people to explain his plans for the war the nation was fighting in Vietnam.

Both leaders used a highly-publicized and much-anticipated speech to explain the conduct of a war started by their predecessor(s); to separate themselves from that history; and to announce their new policies for ending the war and bringing peace.

Both speeches were about the same length —4500 words. And both, based on the knowledge that the nation was divided and confused, and that there was a widespread feeling that the leaders hadn’t been leveling with the people, began with straightforward narratives of the story to that point.

Nixon even listed the questions he would answer:

How and why did America get involved in Vietnam in the first place?

How has this administration changed the policy of the previous administration?

What has really happened in the negotiations in Paris and on the battlefront in Vietnam?

What choices do we have if we are to end the war?

What are the prospects for peace?

Obama recalled the brutal provocation of 9/11, the decisions that followed, the developments in Iraq, and the current situation in Afghanistan:

Over the last several years, the Taliban has maintained common cause with al Qaeda, as they both seek an overthrow of the Afghan government.  Gradually, the Taliban has begun to control additional swaths of territory in Afghanistan, while engaging in increasingly brazen and devastating attacks of terrorism against the Pakistani people.

Nixon mentioned his reservations about the way the war had been conducted:

Now, many believe that President Johnson’s decision to send American combat forces to South Vietnam was wrong. And many others —I among them— have been strongly critical of the way the war has been conducted.

Obama recalled his outright opposition:

I opposed the war in Iraq precisely because I believe that we must exercise restraint in the use of military force, and always consider the long-term consequences of our actions.

Nixon mentioned the possibility —and acknowledged the temptation— of simply ending the war by blaming the administration that began it.

From a political standpoint this would have been a popular and easy course to follow. After all, we became involved in the war while my predecessor was in office. I could blame the defeat which would be the result of my action on him and come out as the Peacemaker. Some put it to me quite bluntly: This was the only way to avoid allowing Johnson’s war to become Nixon’s war.

But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election.

Obama examined and refuted the arguments —within his own party— that he should wash his hands of the wars his predecessor started.  Indeed, he cited Vietnam in this regard:

I recognize there are a range of concerns about our approach.  So let me briefly address a few of the more prominent arguments that I’ve heard, and which I take very seriously.

First, there are those who suggest that Afghanistan is another Vietnam.  They argue that it cannot be stabilized, and we’re better off cutting our losses and rapidly withdrawing.  I believe this argument depends on a false reading of history.

Both Nixon and Obama quoted Eisenhower — Nixon albeit indirectly and Obama to make the opposite point.  Nixon said:

In 1963, President Kennedy, with his characteristic eloquence and clarity, said: “. . . we want to see a stable government there, carrying on a struggle to maintain its national independence.

“We believe strongly in that. We are not going to withdraw from that effort. In my opinion, for us to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Viet-Nam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there.”

President Eisenhower and President Johnson expressed the same conclusion during their terms of office.

Obama said:

I’m mindful of the words of President Eisenhower, who — in discussing our national security — said, “Each proposal must be weighed in the light of a broader consideration:  the need to maintain balance in and among national programs.”

The thirty-seventh President spoke of the great weight of his decisions as Commander in Chief:

There are powerful personal reasons I want to end this war. This week I will have to sign 83 letters to mothers, fathers, wives, and loved ones of men who have given their lives for America in Vietnam. It is very little satisfaction to me that this is only one-third as many letters as I signed the first week in office. There is nothing I want more than to see the day come when I do not have to write any of those letters.

I want to end the war to save the lives of those brave young men in Vietnam.

As did the forty-fourth:

As President, I have signed a letter of condolence to the family of each American who gives their life in these wars.  I have read the letters from the parents and spouses of those who deployed.  I visited our courageous wounded warriors at Walter Reed.  I’ve traveled to Dover to meet the flag-draped caskets of 18 Americans returning home to their final resting place.  I see firsthand the terrible wages of war.  If I did not think that the security of the United States and the safety of the American people were at stake in Afghanistan, I would gladly order every single one of our troops home tomorrow.

So, no, I do not make this decision lightly.

Although the two speeches —separated by forty years— shared many similarities, there were major differences between them in terms of substance, technique, and intention.

At the core of both speeches, both Presidents presented essentially similar policies in radically different ways.  Nixon expounded on the Vietnamization that he had initiated earlier in the year:

We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable. This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness. As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater.

And Obama set out what amounted to a policy of Afghanization:

The 30,000 additional troops that I’m announcing tonight will deploy in the first part of 2010 —the fastest possible pace— so that they can target the insurgency and secure key population centers.  They’ll increase our ability to train competent Afghan security forces, and to partner with them so that more Afghans can get into the fight.  And they will help create the conditions for the United States to transfer responsibility to the Afghans.

But Nixon was adamant about staying until the job was done and about keeping his counsel in the meantime:

I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program. And there are obvious reasons for this decision which I am sure you will understand. As I have indicated on several occasions, the rate of withdrawal will depend on developments on three fronts.

While Obama was definitive about his timetable for disengagement.

And as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan.  After 18 months, our troops will begin to come home.

Nixon had written his speech entirely by himself at Camp David over the weekend before the Monday night on which he delivered it.  He did this partly because he considered the content so important, and partly because he was determined that none of it would leak in advance.  He took considerable satisfaction from the fact that what he said completely confounded the widespread speculations and predictions about what he would have to say.

Obama’s speech was parceled out in leaks over the preceding several days; and the text was accurately reported twenty-four hours before the speech was delivered.  In the event, the delivery confirmed the expectations.

Nixon read his speech in the Oval Office in the White House at 9.30 PM.  The glass-top desk was covered with a piece of brown baize and the only backdrop was the closed gold silk window curtains.  The Obama address, delivered using TelePrompter at 8.30 PM, was a highly staged and choreographed event in Eisenhower Hall at the United States Military Academy at West Point —the second largest auditorium east of the Mississippi (only Radio City Music Hall is bigger).  The event was opened with introductions and concluded with a crowd bath.

The Nixon speech was intended to speak directly to the American people by going above the large and growing anti-war movement while going around its sympathizers and supporters in the media.  Nixon was convinced that “the great silent majority” of Americans would support his plan to end the war the way he proposed if only he could reach them and explain himself to them.

His belief was justified by the phenomenal results of that single speech.  Overnight his poll ratings jumped from the high thirties to the high sixties, and the wind was at least temporarily sucked from the sails of the anti-war movement.

The Obama speech, on one very important level, was a finely calibrated exercise at mollifying, or at least containing, the vocal minority of leaders and activists inside the president’s own party who want nothing to do with this or any war.

Whether President Obama’s speech is as successful at containing the vocal minority as President Nixon’s was at mobilizing the silent majority will take at least a few more days to begin to figure out.

Another Of The “Other” Richard Nixons

November 6, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under New Media, News media, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

Between 1969 and 1974, when there was nothing especially urgent to report, newspapers used to routinely publish articles about ten-year-old Little Leaguers or 95-year-old nursing home residents or 38-year-old insurance salesmen named Richard Nixon, which would describe how these otherwise ordinary Americans coped with having the same name as the President – the jokes they would hear, the raised eyebrows when they would fill out a form or sign a hotel register (back in the days when hotels had registers), etcetera.

Articles like these are frequent whenever a new President takes office. Or were frequent, that is, for it seems fairly likely that the forty-fourth President is the only person in this country named Barack Obama. (A situation with which I can sympathize, as I appear to be the only person on Earth with my name, although there are Robert Nedelkovs in Canada and Australia.)

And so it is that the New York Times website has taken to running posts about people around the country named for President Obama’s forty-two predecessors. (Remember that Grover Cleveland was the twenty-second and twenty-fourth President.) The site has already posted about an African-American in New York named George Washington, and a fellow named Calvin Coolidge who is a distant relative of the thirtieth Chief Executive. (As, indeed, is the case with just about everyone named Coolidge in the country, including the popular actress Martha Coolidge, whose usual onscreen roles are about as far removed from the persona of Silent Cal as can be imagined.)

The other day, the site posted about Richard Nixon, for decades a firefighter in Atlantic City, New Jersey, who now lives in retirement not far away in Brigantine. There’s nothing especially out of the ordinary in the post – as I said, it’s much the same as the articles that used to appear four decades ago. But it does show that in this age when we hear so much about the decline of print, online journalism does follow the traditions of its predecessor in various small ways.

The Silent Majority Speaks

November 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | 1 Comment 

Public response to the 3 November speech was phenomenal.  The President, seen above with Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, displayed some of the letters and telegrams on his desk in the Oval Office.

In his diary entry for 4 November, Haldeman wrote:

Reaction day, and a spectacular one!  Wires pouring in all day as fast as machines could process them.  Piled them all on P desk.  He greatly enjoyed going through them all through the day as the pile steadily grew.  Showed his favorites to all comers.  Almost all favorable, and about 43 referred to “quiet majority”….Bill Hopkins (White House Staff Administrator through many previous administraitons) says biggest telegram response to a president’s speech.

On 6 November, Haldeman wrote:

The euphoria continues.  Reaction runs high, even the bad guys have finally agreed the P scored heavily with the speech and the election results.  The worst the Washington Post could do was complain editorally that he shouldn’t have been so happy about it.  Now the telegrams are fading out and the letters starting.  30,000 today, amazing!   Ended up with about 50,000 wires…..

P said this afternoon he really needs the weekend off, hasn’t slept much recently, first getting ready for speech, then trying to unwind.  Said this week brought a greater turn-around in public attitude than at any time since the FUnd Speech in 1952 (the so-called Checkers speech), and interestingly both were brought about solely by a solo TV talk to the people, and both by Nixon.

11.3.69

November 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

“Very few speeches actually influence the course of history.  The November 3 speech was one of them.”

—RN in RN

Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon wrote and delivered a speech that both changed the course of American foreign policy and altered the course of American politics.  As he later wrote, “Very few speeches actually influence the course of history.  The November 3 speech was one of them.”

By the end of 1969, it was clear that the new President’s dreams of ending the Vietnam War during his first year in the White House hadn’t survived the light of common day.  His early optimistic predictions were already poignant by midsummer.

RN never had —and never said he had— a “secret plan” to end the war; that was a press creation that morphed into a political canard.  He thought that a renewed resolve on the battlefield (to convince the enemy that, unlike his predecessor, he couldn’t be gulled into bombing halts by the mere hint of negotiations), combined with willingness to reach a diplomatic solution that was equable to both sides, would enable him to end America’s involvement and bring the troops home.

It took several rebuffs before he accepted that the North Vietnamese had no interest in negotiating. Their strategy was to wait and depend on domestic opposition to the war to force RN to abandon President Thieu and pull out American forces unilaterally.

Indeed, domestic antiwar sentiment was widespread and growing apace.  The nation’s campuses had reopened to the announcement of an October 15^th “Moratorium” — the first of a series of nationwide protests on the ides of each month until the war was ended.  A quarter million people —mostly young— descended on Washington for the Moratorium.  They were wished well by North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong in a statement broadcast over Radio Hanoi: “May your fall offensive succeed splendidly.”

The “Moratorium to End the War in Vietnam” on 15 October received widespread and almost universally favorable coverage.  It attracted a quarter of a million anti-war protesters to Washington.  Radio Hanoi broadcast a message to them from North Vietnamese Premier Pham Van Dong: “May your fall offensive succeed splendidly.”

The turnout was impressive and the coverage was as positive as it was relentless.  In order to show that the President was not reacting to any of these factors, the White House announced on the 13th that he would address the nation on the subject of Vietnam on November 3^rd.

Politicians and the public were curious about what the increasingly beleaguered President would say; media speculation on the subject approached obsession. The general consensus was that Nixon was either smart enough to register the serious extent of opposition to the war, or canny enough to appreciate that this would be his last chance to act before “Johnson’s War” became “Nixon’s War.”  Either way, the anticipation centered around method —would he announce a ceasefire in place or a  withdrawal of 50 or 100,000 men— rather than substance.

Democrats and anti-war activists absorbed and reflected this ambient optimism and hinted at the bipartisan benefits to be enjoyed by cutting and running; some even pledged their support in advance.  Within his own administration —at Defense and State and even on the NSC— there was considerable support for a softer public line.  The Republican Senate Minority Leader urged the President to declare a unilateral ceasefire.   The prospect of peace made the stock market soar.

Ever since the Fund Speech saved his vice presidential candidacy in 1952, RN understood the use of television as a way to leapfrog political opposition and media criticism and talk directly to the American people.  He also understood the dramatic advantages of encouraging speculation in order to increase the audience and heighten the impact.

Unlike other presidential speeches that involved a collaborative process melding input from experts with language from wordsmiths, RN wrote this speech entirely by himself and mostly in the seclusion of Camp David.  On Saturday, November 1^st, he worked through the night, filling dozens of yellow pads.  Around 4 AM he wrote a paragraph calling for support from “the great silent majority of Americans.”  After a couple of restless hours trying to sleep, he was back to work.  At 8 AM he called his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and said, “The baby’s just been born.”

After spending Sunday making final revisions and practicing the speech, the President choppered back to the White House on Monday afternoon.  Several hours later, at 9 PM, he spoke to the nation from the Oval Office.  Whether Americans supported or opposed the War, few felt that power had been speaking truth to them about it.  On November 3rd, in the course of thirty-two minutes, the American people heard more plain talk about Vietnam than they had heard in the last few years.

The  speech’s opening was direct and unadorned:

Tonight….I would like to answer some of the questions that I know are on the minds of many of you listening to me.

How and why did America get involved in Vietnam in the first place?

How has this administration changed the policy of the previous administration?

What has really happened in the negotiations in Paris and on the battlefront in Vietnam?

What choices do we have if we are to end the war?

What are the prospects for peace?

His answers to those questions pleased some and infuriated others — but few accused him of parsing or wiggling.

He went through a fairly detailed history of his futile attempts to negotiate with North Vietnam — including backchannel overtures by personal emissaries, secret talks conducted by National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger, and even a personal letter to Ho Chi Minh.

He stated that capitulation or withdrawal, aside from the deadly consequences for the people of South Vietnam who had depended on our promises of support and joined our side, would undermine worldwide confidence in the dependability of American alliances and the integrity of American foreign policy.  So that option —however widely popular and politically attractive it might be— was off the table.

He addressed the antiwar activists —and particularly the young people— directly:  “I respect your idealism.  I share your concern for peace.  I want peace as much as you do.”  He announced that increasing numbers of American troop withdrawals would be coordinated with a policy of Vietnamization — training and equipping the South Vietnamese army to defend itself and its country.

Again, in contrast to presidential and other political obiter dicta regarding Vietnam over the preceding few years, he accepted the consequences of his decision to “Nixonize” the Vietnam War: “I have chosen a plan for peace. I believe it will succeed.  If it does succeed, what the critics say now won’t matter.  If it does not succeed, anything I say then won’t matter.”

He said that the enemy could choose to end the war at any time by sincere negotiations.  But, in the meantime until Vietnamization was complete, what his plan needed to succeed was time.  And that brought him to the phrase that has become a permanent part of the political lexicon:

And so tonight-to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans, I ask for your support.

I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge.

The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed; for the more divided we are at home, the less likey, the enemy is to negotiate at Paris.

Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

As the President signed off, the network news departments swung into gear — and revealed that he had achieved his desired surprise with a vengeance.  The wisdom that he would announce the beginning of the end of the war had become so conventional that the reporters and pundits were totally unprepared to deal with what he actually said.  As a result the tone of the commentary was almost universally critical; and its most common denominator was criticism  that he had not done what they had expected him to do.

The media barrage surrounding the Moratorium was focused and relentless.  The conventional wisdom was that RN had no choice but to accept the widespread —or at least widely covered— anti-war sentiment abroad in the country.  Media speculation about the 3 November speech dealt with how far RN would go reversing his prior policy and how soon he would end the war.   Not the least element of the speech’s impact and success was its effective end run of the anti-war media by going directly to the people and asking for their support.

The public clearly disagreed.  For the audience of 70 million watching and listening, the  immediate impact of the speech was all but unprecedented.  An overnight Gallup phone poll found 77 percent in favor; during the next week the President’s approval rating, which had been stuck in the high ‘30s, soared to 68 percent.  While some of the reaction was undoubtedly ginned up by the White House, the speech’s phenomenal impact has never really been challenged.

Chief of Staff Haldeman’s diary entry for November 4^th reflected RN’s attitude: “P especially pleased at the reaction from the speech because he succeeded in moving people to action without demagoguing.  His view is that you fire people up with a tough loud speech, but you win them over an change their minds only by calm reasoning.”

In the event, the November 3^rd speech only bought the President a very little time in Vietnam.  The willingness of the enemy to hold out for total victory and the pent up resentment of the anti-war opposition ended up imposing serious constraints on his ability to act.

But the silent majority would prove a sleeping giant which, once roused by RN, remained largely loyal to him until the very end of his presidency.  And the political results of its arousal —there were Nixon Democrats long before there were Reagan Democrats— led to the 1972 landslide that, but for Watergate, might have permanently reconfigured the landscape of American politics.

40 Years Ago Today: An Historic Speech

November 3, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under Nixon Administration, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

In his introduction to the November 3 speech in his book Lend Me Your Ears: Great Speeches in History, the late Bill Safire wrote:

“There is nothing the president has reflected on with greater anguish,” Henry Kissinger told the Nixon senior staff in the Roosevelt Room of the White House a few hours before the president was to address the nation, “than what he is about to say tonight.  Night after night, he has worked until two or three in the morning, producing draft after draft….The president told me, “I don’t know if the country can be led here –– but we must try.”

The antiwar movement was gathering momentum in the first year of the Nixon presidency: on October 15, 1969, a well-organized moratorium, a nationwide day of protest including a march on Washington, increased the pressure of public opinion to speed the war’s end.  Columnist David Broder warned of “the breaking of the presidency,” much as Lyndon Johnson’s ability to govern had been shattered.  In a radio campaign address three years later, Nixon reviewed the circumstances of his “Silent Majority” speech:

“In every presidency there are moments when success or failure seems to hang in the balance….One of those moments came toward the end of my first year in office….On November 3, 1969, I came before my fellow Americans on radio and television to review our responsibilities and to summon up the strength of our national character.

“The great silent majority of Americans —good people with good judgment who stand ready to do what they believe to be right— immediately responded.  The response was powerful, nonpartisan, and unmistakable.  The majority gave its consent, and the expressed will of the people made it possible for the government to govern successfully….”

Here is the complete text of RN’s “Address to the Nation on the War in Vietnam,” delivered on 3 November 1969, from the Public Papers of the Presidents. And here is an mp3 audio of the speech:  

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (version 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the latest version here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

Good evening, my fellow Americans:

Tonight I want to talk to you on a subject of deep concern to all Americans and to many people in all parts of the world-the war in Vietnam.

I believe that one of the reasons for the deep division about Vietnam is that many Americans have lost confidence in what their Government has told them about our policy. The American people cannot and should not be asked to support a policy which involves the overriding issues of war and peace unless they know the truth about that policy.

Tonight, therefore, I would like to answer some of the questions that I know are on the minds of many of you listening to me.

How and why did America get involved in Vietnam in the first place?

How has this administration changed the policy of the previous administration?

What has really happened in the negotiations in Paris and on the battlefront in Vietnam?

What choices do we have if we are to end the war?

What are the prospects for peace? Now, let me begin by describing the situation I found when I was inaugurated on January 20.

–The war had been going on for 4 years.

–31,000 Americans had been killed in action.

–The training program for the South Vietnamese was behind schedule.

–540,000 Americans were in Vietnam with no plans to reduce the number.

–No progress had been made at the negotiations in Paris and the United States had not put forth a comprehensive peace proposal.

–The war was causing deep division at home and criticism from many of our friends as well as our enemies abroad.

In view of these circumstances there were some who urged that I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of all American forces.

From a political standpoint this would have been a popular and easy course to follow. After all, we became involved in the war while my predecessor was in office. I could blame the defeat which would be the result of my action on him and come out as the peacemaker. Some put it to me quite bluntly: This was the only way to avoid allowing Johnson’s war to become Nixon’s war.

But I had a greater obligation than to think only of the years of my administration and of the next election. I had to think of the effect of my decision on the next generation and on the future of peace and freedom in America and in the world.

Let us all understand that the question before us is not whether some Americans are for peace and some Americans are against peace. The question at issue is not whether Johnson’s war becomes Nixon’s war.

The great question is: How can we win America’s peace?

Well, let us turn now to the fundamental issue. Why and how did the United States become involved in Vietnam in the first place?

Fifteen years ago North Vietnam, with the logistical support of Communist China and the Soviet Union, launched a campaign to impose a Communist government on South Vietnam by instigating and supporting a revolution.

In response to the request of the Government of South Vietnam, President Eisenhower sent economic aid and military equipment to assist the people of South Vietnam in their efforts to prevent a Communist takeover. Seven years ago, President Kennedy sent 16,000 military personnel to Vietnam as combat advisers. Four years ago, President Johnson sent American combat forces to South Vietnam.

Now, many believe that President Johnson’s decision to send American combat forces to South Vietnam was wrong. And many others–I among them–have been strongly critical of the way the war has been conducted.

But the question facing us today is: Now that we are in the war, what is the best way to end it?

In January I could only conclude that the precipitate withdrawal of American forces from Vietnam would be a disaster not only for South Vietnam but for the United States and for the cause of peace.

For the South Vietnamese, our precipitate withdrawal would inevitably allow the Communists to repeat the massacres which followed their takeover in the North 15 years before.

–They then murdered more than 50,000 people and hundreds of thousands more died in slave labor camps.

–We saw a prelude of what would happen in South Vietnam when the Communists entered the city of Hue last year. During their brief rule there, there was a bloody reign of terror in which 3,000 civilians were clubbed, shot to death, and buried in mass graves.

–With the sudden collapse of our support, these atrocities of Hue would become the nightmare of the entire nation–and particularly for the million and a half Catholic refugees who fled to South Vietnam when the

Communists took over in the North. For the United States, this first defeat in our Nation’s history would result in a collapse of confidence in American leadership, not only in Asia but throughout the world.

Three American Presidents have recognized the great stakes involved in Vietnam and understood what had to be done.

In 1963, President Kennedy, with his characteristic eloquence and clarity, said: “we want to see a stable government there, carrying on a struggle to maintain its national independence.

“We believe strongly in that. We are not going to withdraw from that effort. In my opinion, for us to withdraw from that effort would mean a collapse not only of South Viet-Nam, but Southeast Asia. So we are going to stay there.”

President Eisenhower and President Johnson expressed the same conclusion during their terms of office.

For the future of peace, precipitate withdrawal would thus be a disaster of immense magnitude.

–A nation cannot remain great if it betrays its allies and lets down its friends.

–Our defeat and humiliation in South Vietnam without question would promote recklessness in the councils of those great powers who have not yet abandoned their goals of world conquest.

–This would spark violence wherever our commitments help maintain the peace–in the Middle East, in Berlin, eventually even in the Western Hemisphere.

Ultimately, this would cost more lives. It would not bring peace; it would bring more war.

For these reasons, I rejected the recommendation that I should end the war by immediately withdrawing all of our forces. I chose instead to change American policy on both the negotiating front and battlefront.

In order to end a war fought on many fronts, I initiated a pursuit for peace on many fronts.

In a television speech on May 14, in a speech before the United Nations, and on a number of other occasions I set forth our peace proposals in great detail.

–We have offered the complete withdrawal of all outside forces within 1 year.

–We have proposed a cease-fire under international supervision.

–We have offered free elections under international supervision with the Communists participating in the organization and conduct of the elections as an organized political force. And the Saigon Government has pledged to accept the result of the elections.

We have not put forth our proposals on a take-it-or-leave-it basis. We have indicated that we are willing to discuss the proposals that have been put forth by the other side. We have declared that anything is negotiable except the fight of the people of South Vietnam to determine their own future. At the Paris peace conference, Ambassador Lodge has demonstrated our flexibility and good faith in 40 public meetings.

Hanoi has refused even to discuss our proposals. They demand our unconditional acceptance of their terms, which are that we withdraw all American forces immediately and unconditionally and that we overthrow the Government of South Vietnam as we leave.

We have not limited our peace initiatives to public forums and public statements. I recognized, in January, that a long and bitter war like this usually cannot be settled in a public forum. That is why in addition to the public statements and negotiations I have explored every possible private avenue that might lead to a settlement.

Tonight I am taking the unprecedented step of disclosing to you some of our other initiatives for peace–initiatives we undertook privately and secretly because we thought we thereby might open a door which publicly would be closed.

I did not wait for my inauguration to begin my quest for peace.

–Soon after my election, through an individual who is directly in contact on a personal basis with the leaders of North Vietnam, I made two private offers for a rapid, comprehensive settlement. Hanoi’s replies called in effect for our surrender before negotiations.

–Since the Soviet Union furnishes most of the military equipment for North Vietnam, Secretary of State Rogers, my Assistant for National Security Affairs, Dr. Kissinger, Ambassador Lodge, and I, personally, have met on a number of occasions with representatives of the Soviet Government to enlist their assistance in getting meaningful negotiations started. In addition, we have had extended discussions directed toward that same end with representatives of other governments which have diplomatic relations with North Vietnam. None of these initiatives have to date produced results.

–In mid-July, I became convinced that it was necessary to make a major move to break the deadlock in the Paris talks. I spoke directly in this office, where I am now sitting, with an individual who had known Ho Chi Minh [President, Democratic Republic of Vietnam] on a personal basis for 25 years. Through him I sent a letter to Ho Chi Minh. I did this outside of the usual diplomatic channels with the hope that with the necessity of making statements for propaganda removed, there might be constructive progress toward bringing the war to an end. Let me read from that letter to you now.

“Dear Mr. President:

“I realize that it is difficult to communicate meaningfully across the gulf of four years of war. But precisely because of this gulf, I wanted to take this opportunity to reaffirm in all solemnity my desire to work for a just peace. I deeply believe that the war in Vietnam has gone on too long and delay in bringing it to an end can benefit no one–least of all the people of Vietnam ….

“The time has come to move forward at the conference table toward an early resolution of this tragic war. You will find us forthcoming and open-minded in a common effort to bring the blessings of peace to the brave people of Vietnam. Let history record that at this critical juncture, both sides turned their face toward peace rather than toward conflict and war.”

I received Ho Chi Minh’s reply on August 30, 3 days before his death. It simply reiterated the public position North Vietnam had taken at Paris and flatly rejected my initiative.

The full text of both letters is being released to the press.

–In addition to the public meetings that I have referred to, Ambassador Lodge has met with Vietnam’s chief negotiator in Paris in 11 private sessions.

–We have taken other significant initiatives which must remain secret to keep open some channels of communication which may still prove to be productive. But the effect of all the public, private, and secret negotiations which have been undertaken since the bombing halt a year ago and since this administration came into office on January 20, can be summed up in one sentence: No progress whatever has been made except agreement on the shape of the bargaining table. Well now, who is at fault?

It has become clear that the obstacle in negotiating an end to the war is not the President of the United States. It is not the South Vietnamese Government.

The obstacle is the other side’s absolute refusal to show the least willingness to join us in seeking a just peace. And it will not do so while it is convinced that all it has to do is to wait for our next concession, and our next concession after that one, until it gets everything it wants.

There can now be no longer any question that progress in negotiation depends only on Hanoi’s deciding to negotiate, to negotiate seriously.

I realize that this report on our efforts on the diplomatic front is discouraging to the American people, but the American people are entitled to know the truth-the bad news as well as the good news-where the lives of our young men are involved.

Now let me turn, however, to a more encouraging report on another front.

At the time we launched our search for peace I recognized we might not succeed in bringing an end to the war through negotiation. I, therefore, put into effect another plan to bring peace–a plan which will bring the war to an end regardless of what happens on the negotiating front.

It is in line with a major shift in U.S. foreign policy which I described in my press conference at Guam on July 25. Let me briefly explain what has been described as the Nixon Doctrine–a policy which not only will help end the war in Vietnam, but which is an essential element of our program to prevent future Vietnams.

We Americans are a do-it-yourself people. We are an impatient people. Instead of teaching someone else to do a job, we like to do it ourselves. And this trait has been carried over into our foreign policy.

In Korea and again in Vietnam, the United States furnished most of the money, most of the arms, and most of the men to help the people of those countries defend their freedom against Communist aggression.

Before any American troops were committed to Vietnam, a leader of another Asian country expressed this opinion to me when I was traveling in Asia as a private citizen. He said: “When you are trying to assist another nation defend its freedom, U.S. policy should be to help them fight the war but not to fight the war for them.”

Well, in accordance with this wise counsel, I laid down in Guam three principles as guidelines for future American policy toward Asia:

–First, the United States will keep all of its treaty commitments.

–Second, we shall provide a shield if a nuclear power threatens the freedom of a nation allied with us or of a nation whose survival we consider vital to our security.

–Third, in cases involving other types of aggression, we shall furnish military and economic assistance when requested in accordance with our treaty commitments. But we shall look to the nation directly threatened to assume the primary responsibility of providing the manpower for its defense.

After I announced this policy, I found that the leaders of the Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam, South Korea, and other nations which might be threatened by Communist aggression, welcomed this new direction in American foreign policy.

The defense of freedom is everybody’s business–not just America’s business. And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened. In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.

The policy of the previous administration not only resulted in our assuming the primary responsibility for fighting the war, but even more significantly did not adequately stress the goal of strengthening the South Vietnamese so that they could defend themselves when we left.

The Vietnamization plan was launched following Secretary Laird’s visit to Vietnam in March. Under the plan, I ordered first a substantial increase in the training and equipment of South Vietnamese forces.

In July, on my visit to Vietnam, I changed General Abrams’ orders so that they were consistent with the objectives of our new policies. Under the new orders, the primary mission of our troops is to enable the South Vietnamese forces to assume the full responsibility for the security of South Vietnam.

Our air operations have been reduced by over 20 percent.

And now we have begun to see the results of this long overdue change in American policy in Vietnam.

–After 5 years of Americans going into Vietnam, we are finally bringing American men home. By December 15, over 60,000 men will have been withdrawn from South Vietnam including 20 percent of all of our combat forces.

–The South Vietnamese have continued to gain in strength. As a result they have been able to take over combat responsibilities from our American troops.

Two other significant developments have occurred since this administration took office.

–Enemy infiltration, infiltration which is essential if they are to launch a major attack, over the last 3 months is less than 20 percent of what it was over the same period last year.

–Most important–United States casualties have declined during the last 2 months to the lowest point in 3 years.

Let me now turn to our program for the future.

We have adopted a plan which we have worked out in cooperation with the South Vietnamese for the complete withdrawal of all U.S. combat ground forces, and their replacement by South Vietnamese forces on an orderly scheduled timetable. This withdrawal will be made from strength and not from weakness. As South Vietnamese forces become stronger, the rate of American withdrawal can become greater.

I have not and do not intend to announce the timetable for our program. And there are obvious reasons for this decision which I am sure you will understand. As I have indicated on several occasions, the rate of withdrawal will depend on developments on three fronts.

One of these is the progress which can be or might be made in the Paris talks. An announcement of a fixed timetable for our withdrawal would completely remove any incentive for the enemy to negotiate an agreement. They would simply wait until our forces had withdrawn and then move in.

The other two factors on which we will base our withdrawal decisions are the level of enemy activity and the progress of the training programs of the South Vietnamese forces. And I am glad to be able to report tonight progress on both of these fronts has been greater than we anticipated when we started the program in June for withdrawal. As a result, our timetable for withdrawal is more optimistic now than when we made our first estimates in June. Now, this clearly demonstrates why it is not wise to be frozen in on a fixed timetable.

We must retain the flexibility to base each withdrawal decision on the situation as it is at that time rather than on estimates that are no longer valid.

Along with this optimistic estimate, I must–in all candor–leave one note of caution.

If the level of enemy activity significantly increases we might have to adjust our timetable accordingly.

However, I want the record to be completely clear on one point.

At the time of the bombing halt just a year ago, there was some confusion as to whether there was an understanding on the part of the enemy that if we stopped the bombing of North Vietnam they would stop the shelling of cities in South Vietnam. I want to be sure that there is no misunderstanding on the part of the enemy with regard to our withdrawal program.

We have noted the reduced level of infiltration, the reduction of our casualties, and are basing our withdrawal decisions partially on those factors.

If the level of infiltration or our casualties increase while we are trying to scale down the fighting, it will be the result of a conscious decision by the enemy.

Hanoi could make no greater mistake than to assume that an increase in violence will be to its advantage. If I conclude that increased enemy action jeopardizes our remaining forces in Vietnam, I shall not hesitate to take strong and effective measures to deal with that situation.

This is not a threat. This is a statement of policy, which as Commander in Chief of our Armed Forces, I am making in meeting my responsibility for the protection of American fighting men wherever they may be.

My fellow Americans, I am sure you can recognize from what I have said that we really only have two choices open to us if we want to end this war.

–I can order an immediate, precipitate withdrawal of all Americans from Vietnam without regard to the effects of that action.

–Or we can persist in our search for a just peace through a negotiated settlement if possible, or through continued implementation of our plan for Vietnamization if necessary–a plan in which we will withdraw all of our forces from Vietnam on a schedule in accordance with our program, as the South Vietnamese become strong enough to defend their own freedom. I have chosen this second course. It is not the easy way. It is the right way.

It is a plan which will end the war and serve the cause of peace–not just in Vietnam but in the Pacific and in the world.

In speaking of the consequences of a precipitate withdrawal, I mentioned that our allies would lose confidence in America.

Far more dangerous, we would lose confidence in ourselves. Oh, the immediate reaction would be a sense of relief that our men were coming home. But as we saw the consequences of what we had done, inevitable remorse and divisive recrimination would scar our spirit as a people.

We have faced other crises in our history and have become stronger by rejecting the easy way out and taking the right way in meeting our challenges. Our greatness as a nation has been our capacity to do what had to be done when we knew our course was right.

I recognize that some of my fellow citizens disagree with the plan for peace I have chosen. Honest and patriotic Americans have reached different conclusions as to how peace should be achieved.

In San Francisco a few weeks ago, I saw demonstrators. carrying signs reading: “Lose in Vietnam, bring the boys home.”

Well, one of the strengths of our free society is that any American has a right to reach that conclusion and to advocate that point of view. But as President of the United States, I would be untrue to my oath of office if I allowed the policy of this Nation to be dictated by the minority who hold that point of view and who try to impose it on the Nation by mounting demonstrations in the street.

For almost 200 years, the policy of this Nation has been made under our Constitution by those leaders in the Congress and the White House elected by all of the people. If a vocal minority, however fervent its cause, prevails over reason and the will of the majority, this Nation has no future as a free society.

And now I would like to address a word, if I may, to the young people of this Nation who are particularly concerned, and I understand why they are concerned, about this war.

I respect your idealism.

I share your concern for peace. I want peace as much as you do. There are powerful personal reasons I want to end this war. This week I will have to sign 83 letters to mothers, fathers, wives, and loved ones of men who have given their lives for America in Vietnam. It is very little satisfaction to me that this is only one-third as many letters as I signed the first week in office. There is nothing I want more than to see the day come when I do not have to write any of those letters.

–I want to end the war to save the lives of those brave young men in Vietnam.

–But I want to end it in a way which will increase the chance that their younger brothers and their sons will not have to fight in some future Vietnam someplace in the world.

–And I want to end the war for another reason. I want to end it so that the energy and dedication of you, our young people, now too often directed into bitter hatred against those responsible for the war, can be turned to the great challenges of peace, a better life for all Americans, a better life for all people on this earth.

I have chosen a plan for peace. I believe it will succeed.

If it does succeed, what the critics say now won’t matter. If it does not succeed, anything I say then won’t matter.

I know it may not be fashionable to speak of patriotism or national destiny these days. But I feel it is appropriate to do so on this occasion

Two hundred years ago this Nation was weak and poor. But even then, America was the hope of millions in the world. Today we have become the strongest and richest nation in the world. And the Wheel of destiny has turned so that any hope the world has for the survival of peace and freedom will be determined by whether the American people have the moral stamina and the courage to meet the challenge of free world leadership.

Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.

And so tonight–to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans–I ask for your support.

I pledged in my campaign for the Presidency to end the war in a way that we could win the peace. I have initiated a plan of action which will enable me to keep that pledge.

The more support I can have from the American people, the sooner that pledge can be redeemed; for the more divided we are at home, the less likely the enemy is to negotiate at Paris.

Let us be united for peace. Let us also be united against defeat. Because let us understand: North Vietnam cannot defeat or humiliate the United States. Only Americans can do that.

Fifty years ago, in this room and at this very desk,1 President Woodrow Wilson spoke words which caught the imagination of a war-weary world. He said: “This is the war to end war.” His dream for peace after World War I was shattered on the hard realities of great power politics and Woodrow Wilson died a broken man.

1Later research indicated that the desk had not been President Woodrow Wilson’s as had long been assumed but was used by Vice President Henry Wilson during President Grant’s administration.

Tonight I do not tell you that the war in Vietnam is the war to end wars. But I do say this: I have initiated a plan which will end this war in a way that will bring us closer to that great goal to which Woodrow Wilson and every American President in our history has been dedicated–the goal of a just and lasting peace.

As President I hold the responsibility for choosing the best path to that goal and then leading the Nation along it.

I pledge to you tonight that I shall meet this responsibility with all of the strength and wisdom I can command in accordance with your hopes, mindful of your concerns, sustained by your prayers.

Thank you and goodnight.

Note: The President spoke at 9:32 p.m. in his office at the White House. The address was broadcast on radio and television.
On November 3, 1969, the White House Press Office released an advance text of the address.

9.26.60

September 26, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Media, News media, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Forty-nine years ago tonight —on Monday  26 September 1960— the first televised debate ever held between presidential candidates was broadcast coast-to-coast.   Vice President Richard M. Nixon and Massachusetts Senator John F. Kennedy faced off in the studios of WBBM-TV, the Chicago CBS affiliate, and together they forever changed the face of American politics.

For some reason the first of the four YouTube videos of the first Nixon-Kennedy debate is disabled.  You can see it here.

Here are parts 2-4:

A transcript of the first Nixon-Kennedy debate can be found here.

The influence of the TV debates in general —and of the first one in particular (viewership declined with each subsequent rematch)— in changing voters’ minds has become a subject of some debate.  But in what would become the November 8 cliffhanger, any factor was bound to be significant.  As Erika Tyner Allen described it:

At election time, more than half of all voters reported that the Great Debates had influenced their opinion; 6% reported that their vote was the result of the debates alone. Thus, regardless of whether the debates changed the election result, voters pointed to the debates as a significant reason for electing Kennedy.

The outcome of the first, and most important, debate ended up turning on appearance rather than substance.  RN had only been out of the hospital for a couple of weeks, and  had carried on a grueling campaign schedule right up until he arrived at the studio.  He had lost an inch in collar size but hadn’t bought any new shirts.  He looked tired and gaunt.  To add insult to injury (literally) RN wore a light suit because he had been told that the background would be dark.  It wasn’t, and he faded into it while Kennedy popped vigorously out.

JFK, who had a recently-refreshed Palm Beach tan, had spent the afternoon resting, in one way or another,  in a hotel room.

Marshall McLuhan famously analyzed the debate, ascribing Kennedy’s victory to his objective, disinterested, “cool” persona; while RN’s arsenal of talents (resonant voice, rigorous logic) were better suited to the “hot” medium of radio.  Indeed, polls showed that people who listened to this debate on radio considered RN the winner.

Several years ago, the late Don Hewitt, who produced that first debate, recalled some of the determinative atmospherics.

And RN, in RN, agreed:

It is a devastating commentary on the nature of television as a political medium that what hurt me the most in the first debate was not the substance of the encounter between Kennedy and me, but the disadvantageous contrast in our physical appearances.  After the program ended, callers, including my mother, wanted to know if anything was wrong, because I did not look well.

What turned out to be a telling range of skin tones: On stage on the night of 26 September 1960, JFK, producer Don Hewitt, and RN.

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.

Gander Sauce Now Appearing On White House Menu

September 21, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, National Security, News media, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Presidents, Public Opinion | Leave a Comment 

From the earliest days of RN’s administration he was plagued with leaks of highly classified material that ended up in the media.

RN condemned the leaks as undermining his ability to end the war and conduct the nation’s foreign policy.

The anti-war establishment justified them as acts of conscience, and the media celebrated them as examples of a free press at work and doing its very best.

Now everything old is new again, and it will be interesting to see how President Obama deals with the leaks that are already causing him problems.  The most serious appeared today as a story by Bob Woodward on the front page of the Washington Post:

The top U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan warns in an urgent, confidential assessment of the war that he needs more forces within the next year and bluntly states that without them, the eight-year conflict “will likely result in failure,” according to a copy of the 66-page document obtained by The Washington Post.

Gen Stanley A. McChrystal says emphatically: “Failure to gain the initiative and reverse insurgent momentum in the near-term (next 12 months) — while Afghan security capacity matures — risks an outcome where defeating the insurgency is no longer possible.”

His assessment was sent to Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates on Aug. 30 and is now being reviewed by President Obama and his national security team.

How will —how can?— the President maintain his former equanimity regarding leaks now that he is actually in charge and his policies will be at risk because of them?  Will the goose sauce he dished out so liberally as a Senator and a candidate be so tasty now that he’s the gander?

RN knew how the  accumulation of leaks had driven LBJ into an increasingly narrow corner.

In RN, he vividly recalled his visit with Johnson at the White House  on 12 December 1968:

I sat on one of the sofas in front of the fireplace in the Oval Office while he sat in the king-size rocking chair that he had brought in to replace Kennedy’s smaller one…..

Jabbing his finger at my chest, his voice raised, he said, “Let me tell you, Dick, I would have been a damn fool to have discussed major decisions with the full Cabinet present, because I knew that if I said something in the morning, you could sure as hell bet it would appear in the afternoon papers.  It’s the same thing with the National Security Council.  Everybody there’s got their damned deputies and note-takers with them sitting along the wall.  I will warn you now, the leaks can kill you.”

But RN didn’t take LBJ’s advice to hunker down and only deal with a minimum of aides; and he was soon being threatened with the death of a thousand leaks.

The leaks began almost with the start of my administration, and before long I experienced firsthand the anger, worry, and frustration that Johnson had described.  In the first five months of my presidency at least twenty-one major stories based on leaks from materials in the NSC files appeared in New York and Washington newspapers.  A CIA report listed forty-five newspaper articles in 1969 that contained serious breaches of secrecy.

Within a matter of days after the NBS held its first meeting on the Middle East on February 1, the details of the discussion that had taken place were leaked to the press.  Eisenhower, whom I had personally briefed on this meeting, considered any leak of classified foreign policy information, whether in war or peace, treasonable.  When he saw the news story he telephoned Kissinger and warned him in no uncertain terms.  “Tighten your shop,” he said.  “Get rid of people if you have to, but don’t let this go on.”

Not only did it go on; a trickle became a tsunami.

Today, forty years later, leaks are an inevitable part of the Washington scene, where agendas and egos first mix, then match, and then go looking for a friendly reporter.

It will be interesting to see how the Democrats, so long used to enjoying the leaks undermining and embarrassing the Republicans, will handle this particular reality of the power they now possess.

The Madding Crowd — Now And Then

September 16, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Nixon Administration, Obama administration, Popular Culture, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 3 Comments 

There must be something in the water over at the Daily Beast where posts sympathetic to RN (albeit unintended and/or inadvertent) have now appeared twice in three days.

First it was Chris Matthews’ admiring exposition of the role Edward Kennedy and a panoply of Kennedy partisans played in bringing down a President who had just been re-elected with the second biggest landslide in American history.

Today it’s Lee Siegel, one of the Beast’s most dependably provocative provocateurs, who provides the latest answer to the question “Is Obama the New Nixon?”.

Mr. Siegel urges a general untwisting of panties over the recent Tea Party rally on Pennsylvania Avenue.  Despite the deepest fear (and fondest hope) of cable TV, the current wave of protest doesn’t represent a political apocalypse about to plunge the country into civil war.

But, he says, it does represent something very different and very important: the rise of a new counterculture.  He writes:

The parallels between today’s right-wing radicals and radical tactics of the 1960s are striking. Sixties’ Dada theatrics—e.g. Allen Ginsberg leading people in an attempt to levitate the Pentagon (my favorite)—are echoed in the alarmist and conspiratorial theatrics of right-wing cable television. Then, too, just as the radical left was inspired by a few personalities—Abbie Hoffman, Jerry Rubin, Mark Rudd et al.—today’s radical right is whipped up by Glenn Beck, Rush Limbaugh, Sarah Palin et al.

And while the new counterculture’s racist images of Obama are sickening, they are similar in their emotional violence to the images of the old counterculture’s Representative Villain, Richard Nixon—caricatures which ran the gamut from violent to pornographic. Just as Nixon exemplified middle-class, middle-aged white, repressive stasis, so Obama exemplifies—for his haters—ceaseless, wearying, uprooting change.

Each man presented the perfect vexation to enraged opponents—Nixon a hurdle to change, Obama a wide-open door to an uncertain future.

And he ends with an appeal for some patience and some perspective:

In other words, everyone, calm down. What we are seeing is the good, old American Berserk in action. It’s just that, ever since the 1960s, we are not accustomed to seeing it come from the other side.

The central role the counterculture played in American history during the 1960s and ‘70s, and its impact on the Nixon presidency, has been pretty much overlooked and undervalued.  But, in fact, the 1960s represented the apotheosis of the axiom: Let me write a country’s songs and I don’t care who writes its laws.

RN arrived in the White House just when the elements of a perfect storm had fallen into place: a debased elite that had lost confidence in itself and its values; a youth cohort that was economically empowered, intellectually flattered, hedonistically assaulted, and that felt personally threatened by the war and the draft; a mass media that had achieved almost total national saturation and exercised a virtual monopoly on public opinion; and a hard core of organized radicals —ranging from loopy anarchists to regimented terrorists— that knew how to intimidate the elite, exploit the media, and inspire and/or amuse the kids.

Today’s protesters are really very different from those of the ‘60s and ‘70s.

What the protesters of the ‘60s and ‘70s reflected and represented was a top-to-bottom crisis of the entire American —indeed, of Western— culture.  What we’ve been dealing with so far in the summer of ’09  is still only a politically-triggered media-driven populist phenomenon.

The ranks of today’s protesters, while growing apace, is still specifically segmented.  It is comprised of a lot of average citizens who are fed up with the extravagance and corruption of government and the arrogance of its representatives; of a smaller, and overlapping, group that is motivated by conservative media; and of a miniscule fringe of LaRouche wingnuts that the media consciously neglects to identify and unconscionably presents as representative.

But —whether he’s right or wrong about an emerging counterculture— it’s promising that Mr. Siegel is thinking and writing along these lines.  There can be no balanced assessment of RN’s presidency without an understanding of what he was up against.

Just Like The Wilderness Years?

August 31, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

Sarah Palin plans her first foreign trip to Asia for this September.

(Hat Tip: Tom Van Oosterom)

Memories Of 1969

August 29, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under Music, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, U.S. History, Vietnam | Leave a Comment 

The fortieth anniversary of “three days of peace, love and music” on Max Yasgur’s farm in Bethel, New York, continues to be celebrated, most recently in movie theaters this weekend when Taking Woodstock, the new film by Cold Mountain and Incredible Hulk director Ang Lee, opened to somewhat mixed reviews and brought in a disappointing $1.2 million.  The film stars Demetri Martin, a comedian best known for his short-lived series on Comedy Central, and features, in the role of Yasgur, the eminent funnyman Eugene Levy in a rare dramatic role.

Still, the one moment during the past month’s boomlet in counterculture nostalgia that has stuck in my mind came on August 15, during a show billed as “Heroes Of Woodstock” at the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, close by the original festival site.  The performers included several acts from the hippie era that did not actually perform at Woodstock, such as Big Brother And The Holding Company (a band Janis Joplin had left well before she appeared at the festival). But several musicians who were there took the Center’s stage, including Alvin Lee of Ten Years After, Richie Havens, and Country Joe McDonald.  Before reprising his “Feel Like I’m Fixin’ To Die Rag,” so familiar after countless rebroadcasts of the Woodstock documentary, McDonald, who served in the Navy from 1959 to 1962 and has been involved in veteran’s activities in Northern California, paused to read the names of the natives of Sullivan County, New York, where Woodstock took place, who died in Vietnam and have fallen so far in Iraq and Afghanistan.

And speaking of Vietnam reminds me of an event that occurred ten days ago in Columbus, Georgia, but, in the clutter of news in recent days (the health-care debate, President Obama’s trip to Martha’s Vineyard, the release of the two American journalists by North Korea, Ted Kennedy’s death) received comparatively little attention.  A member of that city’s Kiwanis Club invited a veteran of the Vietnam War to appear before the organization, deliver some remarks about his experience, and take a few questions. Usually, this would hardly attract notice outside the local level, for countless veterans have spoken before chapters of fraternal organizations across America through the years.  But when the veteran’s name is William Calley Jr., and he is appearing to speak about the massacre which he supervised in the hamlet of My Lai in what was then South Vietnam in March 1968, that’s another matter entirely.

It was September 5, 1969, that Lt. Calley was charged with the deaths of 104 Vietnamese civilians in the massacre; later estimates gave the death toll as high as 500, but the U.S. Army ultimately concluded that 347 died. Two months later, Seymour Hersh broke the story of the bloodbath, a scoop which made his name as an investigative reporter.  For the next eighteen months, as two dozen other officers and enlisted men were charged but either acquitted or went untried, Calley became the focus of intense debate at dinner tables across the nation.  For many of the young, and a large number who supported the war as well as opposing it, he was unquestionably a war criminal.  But in the rural United States and especially the South, there were those who argued that it should be kept in mind that Calley believed he was acting in accordance with the orders of his superior officers to subdue a base of Viet Cong operations. (An example of such views is Terry Nelson and C Company’s record “The Battle Hymn Of Lieutenant Calley,” which figures prominently in Hunter S. Thompson’s Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.)

Calley was convicted by a military court on March 29, 1971 – the only participant in the My Lai atrocities to be found guilty. Two days later, after Jimmy Carter and George Wallace had spoken on Calley’s behalf, and following a flood of letters and telegrams to the White House, President Nixon ordered the lieutenant’s release pending his appeal.  When the appeal was upheld, Calley served three and a half years under what amounted to house arrest in Fort Benning, Georgia.  Upon his release, he married the daughter of a prominent jeweler in Columbus, obtained a gemologist’s certificate, and went into the business of selling diamonds and other stones, from which he retired a few years ago. Through the decades, he avoided discussing My Lai.

But this month, Calley – now a portly, bald, bearded figure with little resemblance to the youth who was so much a part of the news nearly four decades ago – chose to finally break his silence. He told his audience at the Kiwanis Club: “There is not a day that goes by that I do not feel remorse for what happened that day in My Lai. I feel remorse for the Vietnamese who were killed, for their families, for the American soldiers involved and their families. I am very sorry.”

During the q-and-a period afterward, he reiterated what he had stated after he was charged – that he acted as he had because he thought the orders he had received from Capt. Ernest Medina, which specified that My Lai’s habitations were to be destroyed and its livestock killed, implicitly included the killing of any persons found there. (Medina was also charged, but, after being defended by the famed attorney F. Lee Bailey, was found not guilty.)  One wonders if the Kiwanis appearance was an isolated one or if Calley has anything more to say about the event to which his name is forever linked.

“Angry White Males,” Health Care, And Richard Nixon

August 17, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Annals of the Obama Administration, Healthcare, Nixon Administration, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon | 4 Comments 

Commentators such as Thomas Edsall, Charles Cooper and Michael Crowley have blamed protests against Obamacare on a GOP effort to stir up “angry white males.”  It all goes back to Richard Nixon’s “Southern Strategy,” they say.  The main problem with such arguments is that they don’t make one bit of sense.

Start with “white males.”  Actually, females make up a lot of the people who are protesting.  Survey data show that a plurality of women oppose health-care schemes before Congress.  And the focus on race is strange.  Of course non-Hispanic whites account for much of the opposition:  they make up 76 percent of the electorate.   In any case, the key variable is age, not race.  Senior citizens are the strongest opponents, and for good reason:  Obamacare would cut hundreds of billions from Medicare.  The president claims that seniors don’t have to worry since all the savings will come from greater efficiency.  But in the entire history of American social policy, has a cut that big ever failed to affect services?  (If you can think of an example, please let me know.)

The references to Nixon are invalid.  A previous post dealt with “The Southern Strategy.”  And the notion that Nixon sought to cut health and welfare programs is jaw-droppingly preposterous.  Forty years ago this month, he proposed a guaranteed income, which he acknowledged would “cost more than welfare.”  As for health care, President Clinton said that his own plan “reflects the pragmatic approach that President Nixon took in 1972 when he asked all American employers to take responsibility for providing health care for their employees.”

Rick Perlstein On The Town Hall Demonstrators

August 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Bush Administration, Congress, Double Standard Paranoia Quotient, George W. Bush, Healthcare, New Media, News media, Nixon Administration, Nixonland Nitpicks, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin, TV News Personalities, U.S. History | 9 Comments 

A little over a year ago, when Rick Perlstein published his mammoth study of “the American berserk” – the original subtitle of Nixonland – in the years between 1965 and 1972, he concluded his 748-page saga of heated hardhats and howling hippies (or was it the other way around?) by arguing that the culture and political wars of the late Sixties and early Seventies had not only not died, but had never really gone away.

Perlstein maintained that the 37th President’s legacy to the nation was “a notion that there are two kinds of Americans: one kind viewing themselves as “people of faith,” patriots, “nonshouters,” and viewing the other kind – “liberals,” “cosmopolitans,” “intellectuals” – as “un-Americans, anti-Christians, amoralists, aliens [Perlstein's emphasis].”

The book’s final paragraphs read:

Do Americans not hate each other enough to fantasize about killing one another, in cold blood, over political and cultural disagreements? It would be hard to argue they do not.

How did Nixonland end? It has not ended yet.

When Nixonland appeared, several reviewers criticized that penultimate statement, and said that Perlstein clearly was mistaken to think that the passions of that time still ran as strong.

But that was last year, and now that many of this month’s “town halls” about the proposed health-care legislation across the country have featured very heated rhetoric, not only at the meetings themselves, but among the crowds assembled outside the venues, Perlstein has written an op-ed for the Washington Post that makes it clear that he considers himself vindicated in his argument.

Now, anyone following the town hall meetings closely knows that many speakers at them have been as fervent about single-payer care and the proposed legislation’s failure to incorporate it, though not as visible in TV sound bites as the ones who have been waving pocket copies of the Constitution and arguing against the bill’s big-government tendencies.

But the leftist voices at the meetings count for nothing where Perlstein is concerned. What he sees is nothing less than the return of the right-wing fervor that swept through parts of America during the Kennedy years. And the op-ed’s title, though probably the work of a dependably liberal Post staffer, sums up its attitude toward the liberatarian and conservative voices at these gatherings: “In America, Crazy Is A Pre-Existing Condition.”

Yes, all the objections raised to the mammoth scope of the bill, and to the possibility that it marks the start of a path which will see Americans turn over as large a percentage of their income to the state as was the case in Sweden at the height of its cradle-to-grave system – or perhaps more – yes, all the worries raised by hard-working citizens, in Perlstein’s opinion, are on a par with the fears of almost 50 years ago that fluoride in drinking water would brainwash children into being Communists, or whatever members of the John Birch Society were supposed to have believed in those days.

(I have to admit that sometimes fluoride does worry me a bit. The other night I was gargling with that new Listerine “Whitening Formula,” or whatever it’s called, in which the active ingredient is sodium fluoride. On the back of the bottle I noticed an instruction not to drink or eat anything for 30 minutes after using it. If the idea is to keep fluoride out of my system, then why would it be in my drinking water? But then again, my dentist tells me there’s been an upsurge in cavities because kids don’t drink as much tap water as they once did. End of digression.)

In the op-ed, Perlstein states:

Liberal power of all sorts induces an organic and crazy-making panic in a considerable number of Americans, while people with no particular susceptibility to existential terror — powerful elites — find reason to stoke and exploit that fear. And even the most ideologically fair-minded national media will always be agents of cosmopolitanism: something provincials fear as an outside elite intent on forcing different values down their throats.

Why, of course, “crazy-making panic” is endemic only to conservative Americans, otherwise defined, in the world of the Post, as those people who still insist on regarding Sarah Palin as a political force even after her daughter’s former fiance has started dating Kathy Griffin. Those thousands upon thousands (or maybe millions upon millions) of words, many of them still online, which fretted about Guantanamo in the Bush years presaging internment camps for the young and disaffected in the United States? That was legitimate political discourse, nothing irrational about it.

(As is, presumably, the post at a left-leaning site I read the other day that compared the present political situation in America to that of Germany in about 1930. Anyone for Obama as the new Heinrich Bruening?)

Although, as I write, it will be several more hours before Perlstein’s piece appears in the antiquated ink-on-paper format, it has already stirred up several dozen responses from across the political spectrum. Matt Yglesias has one of the most thoughtful posts about it on the Left. He focuses on these remarks of Perlstein’s:

You never heard the late Walter Cronkite taking time on the evening news to “debunk” claims that a proposed mental health clinic in Alaska is actually a dumping ground for right-wing critics of the president’s program, or giving the people who made those claims time to explain themselves on the air. The media didn’t adjudicate the ever-present underbrush of American paranoia as a set of “conservative claims” to weigh, horse-race-style, against liberal claims. Back then, a more confident media unequivocally labeled the civic outrage represented by such discourse as “extremist” — out of bounds.

As opposed to the “in-bounds” rhetoric of the SDS and Black Panthers, which got substantial on-air attention. But let’s look at today’s situation. In Portsmouth, New Hampshire, when President Obama held his town hall meeting about health care this week, William Kostric, a self-described “free stater,” was spotted in the crowd by an MSNBC crew with a sign reading “Time To Water The Tree” (it referred to a quote attributed to Thomas Jefferson, which concludes “with the blood of patriots and tyrants”) – and a gun strapped to his leg, which he had a permit to carry.

It turned out that Kostric had not simply brought the weapon to provide a headache to Secret Service personnel who had to worry about any individuals who might not be carrying weapons simply to “make a statement.” He meant for the gun to attract media attention and stir curiosity about what he wanted – which turned out to be, presumably like all the “crazies” Perlstein describes, to get on TV.

And which program finally extended an invitation to appear? Was it Glenn Beck’s show, or Sean Hannity’s, or The O’Reilly Factor, or any of the other shows which, as every schoolperson in Santa Monica or Marin County knows, are diabolically constructed by “elites” to inflame the heartland? No, it was Hardball with Chris Matthews, a show which is not usually viewed as a hotbed for “crazies.”. I assume that Kostric chose Hardball because MSNBC was the channel that gave him visibility. (He also appeared on Alex Jones’s radio talk show, a venue more along the lines of his personal views, but certainly not the creation of any media “elite.” Indeed, Michael Savage, singled out as a rabble-rouser by Perlstein, has not had Kostric appear on his program.)

Perlstein doesn’t seem to realize that most of those who are concerned about the drawbacks of the health-care bill are voicing heartfelt and rational objections. They know that every citizen of the country already is shouldering a share of the national debt equivalent to nearly a fifth of a million dollars and they hope that there’s some way to keep it from going to a quarter of a million. They were not happy with the idea of a President doing his best Lyndon Johnson imitation and insisting that Congress pass over a thousand pages of slapped-together taxes and regulations before the end of last month, before it became clear that would not happen. (And compared to the versions of the health-care bill now in the works, even the most hastily drafted bills of LBJ’s Great Society look like they were penned by James Madison or George Mason.)

But that doesn’t matter to Perlstein; for him, “the tree of crazy is an ever-present aspect of America’s flora.” However, he’s not going unchallenged about this. One of the more impressive retorts so far has come from Stephen Bainbridge, a professor at UCLA’s law school. The professor sums up the op-ed as follows: “we lefties are rational, nice, kind people who are puzzled by conservative crazies. We’ve got no crazies on our side, of course. Just nice rational people like me.” Then Bainbridge lists some “rational” responses to perceived threats from the Right by left-wing organizations, starting with the Weathermen.

Bainbridge’s post got this prompt response from Perlstein, who says: “I hate the Weathermen. Read my book. So does everyone I know on the left.”

Well, it may be that everyone Rick knows on the Left deplores what the Weathermen, as a whole, became, or some of its actions. But individual former members of the Weathermen, whether or not they still think they were justified in what they did, certainly are not hated by many of his colleagues – indeed, quite the opposite, as Bill Ayers’s recent well-attended book tour demonstrates.

And, before I forget: does Perlstein mention Richard Nixon in his article? Yes, he does, classing RN as one of the “vultures” who exploited the fears sprouting from the “tree of crazy” – and, somehow, managed, by doing so, to secure a 49-state victory in 1972.

With a little help from 47,168,710 “crazies.” Count ‘em.

RN Revisited And Rethought

August 10, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon Administration, Presidents, Public Opinion, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

An article by Richard J. Cross III in yesterday’s Baltimore Sun deserves quotation in full. Mr. Cross IDs himself somewhat in the piece; more recently he was press secretary and speechwriter for former Maryland Governor Bob Ehrlich.

In February, America celebrated the bicentennial of its most revered president, Abraham Lincoln. Its most controversial president – Richard M. Nixon – resigned 35 years ago today.

Richard Nixon fascinates me. This began when his old nemesis Alger Hiss visited one of my classes at the Johns Hopkins University, and grew when I worked for former Rep. Helen Bentley, once an official in the Nixon administration. Along the way, I devoured every Nixon biography I could find.

Sharing this news typically elicits offers of intervention from concerned friends. Eventually, people ask me why.

First, Mr. Nixon led an epic life. He ascended from freshman congressman to vice president in just six years. He is one of only two Americans to run on a national ticket five times. He dodged multiple attempts by a hostile establishment to write his political obituary. F. Scott Fitzgerald famously said that there are no second acts in American lives. I count four in Mr. Nixon’s: his rise, his triumph, his fall and his resurrection.

Second, Mr. Nixon was always a step ahead in gauging voters’ attitudes. The “Silent Majority” coalition he built helped the GOP win seven of 11 presidential elections between 1968 and 2008. Conservatives distrusted Mr. Nixon, but without him there would never have been a President Ronald Reagan.

Third, Mr. Nixon was tough. During the winter of 1935, a maintenance man found an impoverished law student squatting in a tiny unheated tool shed, the walls insulated by cardboard. “I’ll manage all right if you don’t run me out,” Mr. Nixon assured him. For better or worse, that fortitude was evident throughout his life.

Fourth, Mr. Nixon achieved. He launched the war on cancer, created the Environmental Protection Agency, opened the door to China, signed an arms control agreement with the Soviets, desegregated schools (68 percent of black children in the South attended all-black schools in 1968; 8 percent did by the end of 1972) and brought innovative approaches to domestic and foreign policy. He also presided over a GOP not yet skewed toward social conservatism.

Obviously, not all aspects of Mr. Nixon’s career are as admirable. But where Nixon haters see Darth Vader, I see Wile E. Coyote.

As I see it, inept burglars broke into a national party headquarters, a secondary source of useful political intelligence. Rather than respond with transparency, Mr. Nixon and his aides plotted to cover up the caper – on tape. At the same time, GOP minions inspired by Democratic prankster Dick Tuck engaged in a sophomoric dirty tricks campaign to win an election they couldn’t lose.

Clearly, a president preoccupied with his political adversaries made bad decisions and paid a terrible price. Still, it helps to put things in historical context.

JFK countenanced the wiretapping of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and the assassination of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem. LBJ unleashed J. Edgar Hoover and led the country into war under false pretenses.

Further, America recently completed 16 years of successive polarizing presidents – one who was impeached and one who left office as unpopular as Mr. Nixon during Watergate.

Comparatively speaking, were Mr. Nixon’s errors worse?

My Nixophilia peaked Jan. 20, 1994, when I attended a Nixon administration reunion in California. Frail and reeling from the recent death of his wife, Mr. Nixon spoke without notes, delivering forward-looking, forceful remarks. It was one of his last speeches.

As I watched, I thought of those he engaged during his long career: Truman, Eisenhower, Khrushchev, Kennedy, Johnson, Rockefeller, Humphrey, DeGaulle, Brezhnev, Mao – and even Presley. Long after a tumultuous time in history had ended, Richard Nixon was still standing.

One day, President Nixon will be judged in the context of when he served: a time of social and economic unrest resulting in five abbreviated presidencies. One ended in assassination. One ended in war. One ended in scandal. Two presidents were fired by voters.

Richard Nixon was a brilliant, flawed politician. Whether his flaws or his brilliance defined him is a question best answered by tomorrow’s historians.

Rules For Witnesses

August 7, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Book Review, Cold War, Congress, Domestic issues, Economic issues, Faith, Healthcare, History, Movies, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Public Opinion, Religion, U.S. History | 15 Comments 

There is a scene early on in the movie Patton, where the feisty general watches the forces under his command do battle with those led by the legendary German Panzer leader, Erwin Rommel. To prepare for this particular skirmish, “Old Blood and Guts” studied the writings of his adversary, prompting the memorable line uttered in a gravely voice by actor George C. Scott: “Rommel, you magnificent bastard, I read your book!”

Later, the general found out that Rommel himself had not actually been present for the confrontation, but he is comforted by an aid: “If you defeat Rommel’s plan, then you defeat Rommel.”

It is a fascinating thing when an adversary ironically uses a methodology that was previously owned by an opponent – especially when he does so with surprising effectiveness. When a football team known for its excellent running game throws the bomb on the first play from scrimmage, when a home run hitter bunts, and when a political adversary takes a page from the book of the other guy, well – you gotta love it.

Under any credible definition of the phrase “dazed and confused” there now appears the look on Nancy Pelosi’s face. Yes, that one. That, “we are the good guys, why are people giving us a hard time, they must be Nazis, or just nuts” look. Surely you’ve seen it. I have had a persistent “where-have-I-seen-that-look-before?” feeling when seeing the speaker’s visage on the screen, but it took me a while to make the connection.

The date is December 21, 1989 – the place Bucharest, Romania. Nicolae Ceauşescu, the man who had ruled his country with an iron first for a couple of decades, was on his balcony trying to address an increasingly unruly crowd. It was a moment of truth for the dictator. The look on his face – one of complete incomprehension – was one of the Kodak moments capturing the scene at the end of the Cold War.

That look might be described by my grandkids as: “clueless.” Others might simply say that it is a facial expression that begs the question, “what the?” But it is a look that is botoxed in place for Ms. Pelosi. And that same expression has recently been found on the faces of many members of the House and Senate as they have gone home to meet with constituents.

Sadly, the time has come in America where recess is no longer any fun.

What Nancy Pelosi is seeing is her side being on the receiving end of some of the kind of methodological medicine the left has been forcing down the country’s throat for quite a long time. I recently got around to reading Saul Alinsky’s book, Rules for Radicals. Yes, I know I should have done so long ago, but I thought I had a good enough grasp on what the man said back in 1971 via the thorough treatment his musings have received from the conservative punditry.

I was wrong. My bad. Every American should read it. It’s chilling.

I believe what we are now witnessing is a case of people being, as the saying goes (and as is actually used in Alinsky’s book) “hoisted with their own petard.” Fire is being fought with fire. The reflexive dismissal of angry citizens showing up at town hall meetings these days to give Washington insiders a piece of their mind as somehow orchestrated, notwithstanding.

This is not a top-down campaign with a few sinister puppeteers pulling the strings. The opposition to liberal health care machinations and other stuff is very real. What they see as orchestration is actually mobilization. And it is only the beginning. We are, I think, on the verge of seeing one of the great collapses of political popularity and good will in American history. The nation is on the verge of a Network moment, where “Yes, we can” is being drowned out with cries of “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”

George Washington died because of misguided notions about how getting the bad blood out via leeches would cure his ailment. It was a case of a cure that killed. Sure, his cold was gone, but so was he. In a sense, the draconian measures some would use to remake our nation’s fabric, from health care, to national security, to the economy itself, are somewhat akin to bleeding the nation en route to restoration. All this will do is make us weaker. Or dead.

I shared a sermon last Sunday at my church based on a haunting passage from the writings of the prophet Jeremiah called, A Dying Nation At A Crossroads. The prophet was a patriot, but he knew that sometimes patriotism involves even more than waving a flag – a stand must be taken. His message was:

“Stand at the crossroads and look; ask for the ancient paths, ask where the good way is, and walk in it, and you will find rest for your souls.” Jeremiah 6:16 (New International Version)

Jeremiah was speaking to a nation at a pivotal moment – a time that called for clear thinking and action. They had been on a slippery slope for a long time and the clock was running out. Nothing short of a return to what made them strong – even great – in the first place would correct the problem.

The week Winston Churchill traveled to diminutive Fulton, Missouri to deliver his most famous speech – the one that talked about a sinister iron curtain born of Soviet expansionism – Time Magazine published a review of two recently publish books. One was a work by Frederick L. Schuman, the Woodrow Wilson professor of government at Williams College, called Soviet Politics. It was basically a defense of the Soviet system. The other was by Saul Alinsky, who had written Reveille For Radicals, the spiritual ancestor of his 1971 work. The title of the review was: Problem Of The Century.

The reviewer suggested that, “the dominant problem of the 20th century is the reconciliation of economic liberty with political liberty.” He saw this issue resolved in Schuman’s book by simply “liquidating political liberty.” He saw Alinsky’s ideas in a little more favorable light, suggesting that it was written with a “burning honesty” and that the author had “glimpsed a vision which is greater than his ability to put it in practical terms.”

In other words, the review for Time saw something constructive in what Alinsky was saying in those days immediately following World War II and as the Cold War was just barely being noised about. But he indicated that only time would really tell.

In fact, that reviewer did not live long enough to see the fruit of Saul Alinsky’s attempt to put his vision into those “practical terms” in Rules For Radicals. He died 10 years before that. His name was Whitaker Chambers.

He never got to write a review of that book, but he did write one of his own and it became a classic called simply, Witness. It was his treatise as a man who had once been a communist, even an agent. Then he had seen the light and spent the rest of his days fighting, at a great personal price, his former faith. Along the way, he exposed a traitor or two, gaining him the wrath of the liberal elite in America, though he has long since been vindicated as a truth-teller by many infallible proofs.

He began his book with a letter to his children, letting them know the nature of the struggle and the craftiness of the enemy:

Communists are bound together by no secret oath. The tie that binds them across the frontiers of nations, across barriers of language and differences of class and education, in defiance of religion, morality, truth, law, honor, the weaknesses of the body and the irresolutions of the mind, even unto death, is a simple conviction: It is necessary to change the world.

It is not new. It is, in fact, man’s second oldest faith. Its promise was whispered in the first days of the Creation under the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil: ‘Ye shall be as gods.’ It is the great alternative faith of mankind. Like all great faiths, its force derives from a simple vision. Other ages have had great visions. They have always been different versions of the same vision: the vision of God and man’s relationship to God. The Communist vision is the vision of Man without God.

It is the vision of man’s mind displacing God as the creative intelligence of the world. It is the vision of man’s liberated mind, by the sole force of its rational intelligence, redirecting man’s destiny and reorganizing man’s life and the world.

The Communist vision has a mighty agitator and a mighty propagandist. They are the crisis. The agitator needs no soapbox. It speaks insistently to the human mind at the point where desperation lurks. The propagandist writes no Communist gibberish. It speaks insistently to the human mind at the point where man’s hope and man’s energy fuse to fierceness. The vision inspires. The crisis impels.

Too bad Mr. Chambers didn’t live to see the demise of such thinking. But then again…

The President At Notre Dame

May 16, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, California politics, Congress, Culture, Democratic Party, Domestic issues, Election 2008, Lifestyle, Media, Obama administration, Political Philosophy, Presidents, Public Opinion, Religion, Republican Party, Supreme Court, Vice President Biden, economy, education | 1 Comment 

Tomorrow President Obama will receive an honorary degree at the University of Notre Dame, the nation’s quintessential Catholic institution of higher learning, and will deliver an address to the assembled graduates. The invitation extended by the school’s president has stirred considerable controversy (and plenty of vocal protests) because of the President’s espousal of the pro-choice viewpoint on abortion throughout his career. (It has been noted here and there that other pro-choice politicians like New York’s onetime Governor Mario Cuomo and the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan appeared at previous Notre Dame commencements without much incident. But it may have helped that they were lifelong Catholics, unlike Obama.)

The Chief Executive’s appearance tomorrow is an opportunity for him to extend a conciliatory hand to the large number of Americans who, whether or not they voted for him in November, are not supporters of some of the radical programs being espoused by a considerable number of Democratic-affiliated groups, such as an expansion of legal abortion, decriminalization of marijuana and other drugs, and gay marriage.

It seems to become more evident by the month that when voters sought “change” in voting for Obama and Vice President Biden last month, a substantial percentage of them were mainly concerned with the economy, health care, and perhaps increased opportunity of education, and were not that keen on the other aspects of “change” as defined in the agendas of MoveOn.org or other groups. This would especially apply to voters in the states surrounding the Deep South, large portions of the Catholic electorate, and churchgoing African-American voters nationwide.

In California, the voters in the latter group helped Obama carry the state, but at the same time provided the margin that passed Proposition 8 which reversed the California Supreme Court decision legalizing gay marriage. And it turns out that on abortion, the percentage of voters supporting Roe vs. Wade and the pro-choice line, after peaking during the Clinton years, has steadily been declining, to the point that this week, a Gallup poll revealed that a bare majority of those whose opinion was sampled – 51% – described themselves as “pro-life.”

This strongly indicates that a considerable number of voters – perhaps poised on becoming the majority – would not be looking forward to Al Franken taking his seat in the Senate and locking in a (theoretically) filibuster-proof majority that would then fulfill all the left’s fondest dreams in the social arena.

The events of the last few weeks involving Miss California USA, Carrie Prejean, might prove a harbinger of things to come. A few weeks ago, during the Miss USA pageant, Ms. Prejean, educated at Christian schools, was asked by the online gossip columnist Perez Hilton, one of the pageant’s judges, what her opinion was of gay marriage. The contestant replied that her own view was that marriage could only exist between a man and woman – which is still officially the view of Congress, as expressed in the Defense of Marriage Act, passed by a majority of both parties and signed by President Clinton a decade ago.

Hilton (followed by an avalanche of bloggers and left-leaning pundits) subjected Ms. Prejean to ridicule. But instant polls soon made it clear that most Americans supported her right to express her opinion, and even Gavin Newsom, the San Francisco mayor who spearheaded the legalization of same-sex unions in his city, acknowledged her right to free speech.

Ms. Prejean was then ridiculed as a hypocrite, after some rather mild and fairly tasteful photos of her in an unclad state appeared online. But Donald Trump, owner of the Miss USA pageant, rejected pressure to strip her of her crown, and so in recent days the beauty queen has managed to largely prevail in the court of public opinion.

The way this particular controversy has played out has not been conveniently timed for the supporters of same-sex marriage. As I noted last week in my post “Gay Marriage At The Crossroads,”  the District of Columbia city council just voted to recognize such unions as performed in other states. Under the Home Rule Bill, Congress has a right to challenge this decision – and GOP lawmakers have made it clear that they will pursue this option, which means that in a matter of months each member of Congress will have to vote yes or no on this question.

The issues of abortion, gay marriage, and narcotics delegalization will also be prominent when the President selects a nominee to replace Justice David Souter on the Supreme Court. It seems less and less likely that any thoroughly liberal, MoveOn-approved choice would automatically sail through the Senate.

So I think that the best approach for the President tomorrow is not to mouth a series of platitudes predicated on the idea that his listeners (or the American public in general) will automatically accept all of his positions, but to acknowledge that there are differences of opinion and to express a willingness to work within the Constitution to achieve a consensus that will bridge these differences. If he does that, and follows through, he may considerably improve the chances of his party maintaining control of Congress in 2010. If he pursues a partisan path, however, the GOP – perhaps as early as the Virginia election this year – could be on the comeback trail.

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