A Canadian View Of David Frum

March 30, 2010 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Canada, Healthcare, News media, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Part of the political fallout resulting from the recently passed health-care legislation has been the alienation of David Frum from the conservative movement. Frum is a 49-year-old native of Toronto who, in the twenty-odd years since settling in New York after attending Yale and Harvard Law, has developed a reputation as an able writer and provocative, and sometimes contrarian thinker.

After publishing a book about 1970s America, How We Got Here (notable for many pages analyzing the impact of Richard Nixon’s presidency on the culture of the era), Frum became a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and, in that President’s first term, gained fame for coining the phrase “axis of evil.” (Although his original wording was “axis of hatred,” with the last word changed by Bush.)

In 2005, Frum left the Bush Administration to become a fellow at the America Enterprise Institute and a regular contributor to National Review. But in 2008, differences started to become apparent between Frum’s views and those of many conservatives when he published one blogpost and column after another criticizing Gov. Sarah Palin’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee.

Although Frum declared his support for Sen. John McCain that fall, with the inauguration of President Obama (preceded by the journalist’s departure from National Review) it became evident that Frum’s thinking was closer to the accomodationism exemplified by Sam Tanenhaus’s The Death Of Conservatism that to that of the Republican establishment.

The debate over the health-care bill made it clear just how far Frum had moved from the GOP consensus. The bill’s passage by a handful of votes was taken by most Republicans as an encouraging sign. Frum wrote that he viewed the result as a Waterloo for the minority party. Soon thereafter, he parted ways with AEI.

However, he does have his defenders – notably in the land of his birth. In the Canadian magazine The Tyee, Crawford Kilian, an American who’s lived in British Columbia for almost a half-century, argues:

Rather than viewing the victory of Obama as the inevitable arrival of the Antichrist, Frum has respected Obama’s political skills and tried to draw lessons from his success — just as Nixon drew lessons from Jack Kennedy’s use of television. ([Rick] Perlstein [in Nixonland] tells us Nixon got his first training in this field from a young TV producer named Roger Ailes, now the head of Fox News.)

In effect, Frum was treating Obama intellectually, not morally. Hence his “Waterloo” rant, and the resulting uproar.

His onetime allies, however, are aggressively anti-intellectual, and enjoy moralizing about their enemies. Their world is clearly divided into good and evil, and only they are good. Apostates and heretics are doubly evil, deserving nothing but very loud contempt.

This may be as much fun as screaming at Emmanuel Goldstein during the Two-Minute Hate, as Winston Smith does in Nineteen Eighty-Four. But it is no way to build and maintain a coherent framework for a revived conservatism.

Richard Norton Smith On The Nixon Funeral

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

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

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

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

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

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

A Race – And Candidate – To Watch

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

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

He also has politics in his blood.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

It will be very interesting to watch—and remember.

The New Nixon

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

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

Related Stories:

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

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

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

Robert Mosbacher 1927 – 2010

January 27, 2010 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under In Memoriam, Nixon Administration figures, Republican Party | Leave a Comment 

Robert Mosbacher  spearheaded the North American Free Trade Agreement as President George H.W.  Bush’s first Commerce Secretary.

Former Secretary of Commerce Robert Mosbacher died on Sunday. He was 83.

After growing up and attending college in the Northeast, he joined his father in the energy business in Texas, later diversifying his family’s fortune in ranching, real estate and banking.

While in Texas, he met the elder President Bush and helped finance his successful Congressional bid in 1966.

In 1976, he rose to become Finance Chair for Gerald Ford’s campaign and was considered a Vice Presidential candidate for Ronald Reagan in 1980. He would eventually reach the post of Commerce Secretary for President Bush in 1989 spearheading the creation of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA).

He most recently served as the General Chairman of Sen. John McCain’s run for the Oval Office in 2008.

Mosbacher was also an avid yatchsman, winning gold medals in world championship competitions throughout the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties. In 1959, he landed on the cover of Sports Illustrated with his brother Bus, who served as Chief of Protocol for the State Department during the Nixon Administration.

Our thoughts and prayers are with wife Michele and his family.

Robert Mosbacher (left) and his brother Bus (right), Chief of Protocol for the State Department during the Nixon Administration, landed on the cover of Sport Illustrated as the Kings of Class Boat Sailors.

A Time For Tempered Temper?

January 23, 2010 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Culture, Political Philosophy, Politics, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 3 Comments 

In case you haven’t heard, this just in—Americans are angry. In fact, many are mad as hell, and they apparently aren’t going to take “it” anymore. Whatever “it” is, it is certainly not good news for current elected officials, no matter what the party affiliation (though, admittedly, it is slightly worse news for Democrats).

There is restlessness across the land, the kind that fuels turbulence in the body politic. Presidential Press Secretary, Robert Gibbs, used the term “anger” several times this past week in his remarks about the recent loss of the once-thought-mega-safe Senate seat of the late Edward M. Kennedy.

But is being angry enough to create constructive solutions to the problems that so easily beset the nation?

Taking a cue from something Winston Churchill once said in another context: Anger may be “a good starter, but it is a bad sticker.” In other words, there is a down side to un-tempered temper.

Now, before you dismiss this essay as short on conviction and insufficiently caustic for any authentic political conservative, hear me out. I share the current capacity and taste for outrage—politically and culturally. Beginning with the final years of the Bush administration, and accelerating at breakneck speed last year with the dawn of the age of Obama, we have borne witness to a steady erosion of conservative values, fiscal as well as social.

And I very much believe that recent elections in Virginia, New Jersey, and now Massachusetts, are a clear and notable reaction to the resurgence of big government-ism. The election of 2008, though a watershed moment in the sense of breaking an important barrier, is turning out not to be a mandate to govern from the far left, after all.

I mean, seriously—could there be any stronger hint that Americans don’t actually want the whole cap-and-trade, sweeping healthcare reform en route to socialized medicine, and a kinder-gentler you-have-the-right-to-remain-silent approach to those who are inclined to blow all of us up in the name of Islamism, than to have the forever-blue Ted Kennedy seat in the Senate turn several shades of Republican red?

Think of the imagery. It was, in a real sense, Ted Kennedy’s endorsement of Barack Obama just about two years ago that became the catalyst for the momentum leading to the Illinois Senator’s ultimately victory over front-runner Hillary Clinton for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. And Mr. Kennedy’s funeral last year became a obvious and awkwardly inappropriate rally for healthcare reform, turning the last lion into a Gipper of sorts.

So losing Teddy’s seat is a big deal on steroids.

This is where the Churchill-ism I referred to earlier—about anger being a good “starter” but not a good “sticker” comes in. The kind of anger we are hearing about and actually seeing has been sufficient to create electoral seismicity, but there is a case to be made that ire itself is not enough to effectuate lasting change.

In other words, anger may be a good place to start, but it is a horrible place to stay.

We should all should bear in mind that anger has throughout history been categorized as a serious, even deadly evil. Anger is impulsive and impatient. It can provide the spark to get a transformative engine started, but what it unleashes can sometimes turn ugly—especially if performance doesn’t match promise. Mr. Obama and his supporters are learning this lesson right now.

And if conservatives who have leveraged current political dissatisfaction into electoral triumph don’t deliver constructive and effective policies, they’ll feel the backlash sooner as opposed to later. There is no time for end-zone antics—the game is far from over.

While I find myself very glad that some who share my vision and values have recently been successful, I also am concerned that the angry mood in America—if not relieved somehow (ideally by reasonable policies involving a much more limited approach to government)—may lead to a period of political instability.

Anger can be a good thing—in small doses. Even the scripture says, “Be angry and sin not.” But we are also reminded not to let the sun go down on our wrath. Why? Because of all the great “sins,” anger is the easiest to rationalize. It is subtle and comforting. We feel right in being mad, or as we might prefer to call it, “righteously indignant.” But at some point anger must be put aside, jettisoned into the sea like an exhausted booster rocket, and wisdom and reasonableness must provide thrust thereafter. Prolonged and sustained anger is always toxic and destructive. Indignation, to be ultimately vindicated, can and must be transformed into positive and constructive action.

Of course, my views on this are rooted in scripture. But I learned long ago that unresolved and unrestrained anger becomes a breeding ground for bigger problems. Parents are admonished not to “provoke” children to wrath. Why? Because angry kids are more prone to get into other kinds of trouble. In fact, anger is a co-factor in most anti-social behavior.

And in a sense, it’s the same with politics. People voted out of anger in 2008. People voted out of anger in 2009. Now it has happened in 2010, and likely will again later this year. But it is not sufficient to be mad enough to throw the old people out. The new people must have a plan. Conservatives have an opportunity right now, a moment in time, not just to take seats and jobs away from those more liberal, but also to offer a compelling vision for the future.

Ronald Reagan was successful because he was a conservative who, while having the capacity for anger, knew that you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar. He wasn’t mean or ugly, brooding or negative—with him it was “morning in America,” not two minutes before midnight.

Richard Nixon’s highly effective campaign in 1966, during those off-year elections, is one that should be examined by Republican strategists and tacticians right now. He instinctively understood the anger in the nation at the time, but recognized that merely tapping into anger was not nearly enough to get anything worthwhile done. He emerged as someone seasoned and sage, a youngish elder statesman. And it paid off politically.

No one understood the practicalities of politics like Mr. Nixon.

I am not advocating a revival of phrases like “kinder-gentler” or even “compassionate conservatism,” but any resurgence of tough-minded authentic—even enlightened—conservatism in this country needs to have a congenial tone to match its populist bent.

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.

Nixon, Now More Than Ever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

The Party Of Nixon

December 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

A Chicago Tribune reader laments:

In “Dems of yore” (Voice of the People, Dec. 13), letter writer Gary Ziolkowskitraced the evolution of today’s Democrats. Some of his criticisms have grains of truth. In the same spirit, I’d point out that today’s Republicans aren’t your father’s Republican Party either. During the ’50s and ’60s, the Republicans stood for balanced budgets. In many states, progressive Republican governors made lasting improvements in education and transportation. The GOP was the party of Dwight Eisenhower, who resisted dubious foreign interventions and wasteful military spending, and signed the first civil rights laws in nearly a century.

It was the party of Richard Nixon, who reached out to longtime adversaries abroad, proposed a guaranteed annual income and established the Environmental Protection Agency.

But something happened in the last 40 years. Instead of cherishing its tradition of supporting civil rights, the party extended the red carpet to Democrats dismayed by their party’s embrace of equality. Instead of continuing a tradition of wise environmental stewardship, Republicans embraced last-ditch, bitter-end polluters.

Rudy Giuliani’s Decision

December 26, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Politics, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

This week, former New York City mayor and unsuccessful 2008 presidential candidate Rudy Giuliani made it official: he has no plans to run for either New York governor or the U.S. Senate, but for now will concentrate on developing his security firm and maintaining his law practice. An article by Ron Scherer of the Christian Science Monitor quotes one leading pollster who thinks that this effectively eliminates Rudy as a contender in the 2012 race and perhaps beyond:

Of course, in politics, anything is possible. Politicians considered “yesterday’s news” have managed to get elected.

“Richard Nixon rewrote the book about comebacks,” says John Zogby, head of the polling firm Zogby International, which is based in Utica, N.Y. “But it is more likely that this is it.”

Will Mr. Obama Seize His Big Mac Moment?

November 27, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under Afghanistan, American Politics, Barack Obama, Cold War, George W. Bush, History, Military, National Security, Obama administration, Presidents, Republican Party, Terrorism, U.S. History, War on Terror | 3 Comments 

This Tuesday, Barack Obama will travel to the United States Military Academy at West Point to deliver the most important address of his young presidency. He has obviously chosen the site for the speech with great care and in the hope that the backdrop – a storied scene on the Hudson – will engender an image of him as a strong and effective commander in chief.

It is probably a smart move, but one not without a measure of risk.

The President of the United States will be treated with respect and be received enthusiastically – all very appropriate and quintessentially American. But when the fanfare fades and the applause lines become fewer, he will have the tough job of articulating a compelling vision for the future of a war that has lost its name, if not its way.

Though Mr. Obama’s White House predecessor spoke at West Point twice – once in each term – not all presidents make this trip. Eisenhower, one of the two graduates of the academy who went on to become Commander in Chief (the other being fellow Republican, Ulysses S. Grant), never made a major speech there during his two terms as president. And his predecessor, the man from Missouri, avoided the place like the plague. President Truman saw West Point as a breeding ground for “stuffed shirts” – and at any rate, his firing of the academy’s former commandant – Douglas MacArthur – probably kept the presidential welcome mat in storage in the basement of the Thayer Hotel.

As Mr. Obama’s team prepares for this important speech, I wonder if the wordsmiths are taking time to consult the history of what has been said there by other presidents and prominent Americans?

Franklin Roosevelt gave the commencement address in 1939 to graduates who would soon be in harm’s way in Europe and the Pacific. He told that class:

During recent months international political considerations have required still greater emphasis upon the vitalization of our defense, for we have had dramatic illustrations of the fate of undefended nations. I hardly need to be more specific than that. Recent conflicts in Europe, the Far East and Africa bear witness to the fact that the individual soldier remains still the controlling factor.

However, when John F. Kennedy spoke to another graduating class on June 6, 1962 (inexplicably, for a president who prided himself on his sense of history, never mentioning that date as the 18th anniversary of D-Day), he shared a vision about changes in warfare, telling his honorable audience:

Your responsibilities may involve the command of more traditional forces, but in less traditional roles. Men risking their lives, not as combatants, but as instructors or advisers, or as symbols of our Nation’s commitments.

He, though, never lived to see how quickly “instructors or advisors” would become “combatants.”

The most recent president to make a major speech at West Point was George W. Bush, a man who usually does not fare well in the eloquence department, especially when compared to President Obama. Yet, what he had to say back in 2002 should be reviewed, not only by White House speechwriters, but also by all Americans – because the words still ring true:

Because the war on terror will require resolve and patience, it will also require firm moral purpose. In this way our struggle is similar to the Cold War. Now, as then, our enemies are totalitarians, holding a creed of power with no place for human dignity. Now, as then, they seek to impose a joyless conformity, to control every life and all of life.

America confronted imperial communism in many different ways – diplomatic, economic, and military. Yet moral clarity was essential to our victory in the Cold War. When leaders like John F. Kennedy and Ronald Reagan refused to gloss over the brutality of tyrants, they gave hope to prisoners and dissidents and exiles, and rallied free nations to a great cause.

Some worry that it is somehow undiplomatic or impolite to speak the language of right and wrong. I disagree. Different circumstances require different methods, but not different moralities. Moral truth is the same in every culture, in every time, and in every place. Targeting innocent civilians for murder is always and everywhere wrong. Brutality against women is always and everywhere wrong. There can be no neutrality between justice and cruelty, between the innocent and the guilty. We are in a conflict between good and evil, and America will call evil by its name. By confronting evil and lawless regimes, we do not create a problem – we reveal a problem. And we will lead the world in opposing it.

However, if I were on Mr. Obama’s speech writing team (corpulent opportunity), I would spend some time going over another famous speech made at West Point. It just may be the most relevant to current realities, not to mention one that we all need to hear again.

The date was May 12, 1962 and the speaker was retired General Douglas MacArthur. The Old Man was 82 years of age and his frail movements reflected it. But there was a spark of eloquence left in him; one that he fanned that day into a brilliant rhetorical flame.

When I watch Mr. Obama’s speech this Tuesday, it will be Big Mac’s speech that I use as the gold standard reference point. Here are some excerpts. The words speak for themselves:

Duty, Honor, Country: Those three hallowed words reverently dictate what you ought to be, what you can be, what you will be. They are your rallying points: to build courage when courage seems to fail; to regain faith when there seems to be little cause for faith; to create hope when hope becomes forlorn. Unhappily, I possess neither that eloquence of diction, that poetry of imagination, nor that brilliance of metaphor to tell you all that they mean.

The unbelievers will say they are but words, but a slogan, but a flamboyant phrase. Every pedant, every demagogue, every cynic, every hypocrite, every troublemaker, and, I am sorry to say, some others of an entirely different character, will try to downgrade them even to the extent of mockery and ridicule.

And through all this welter of change and development your mission remains fixed, determined, inviolable. It is to win our wars. Everything else in your professional career is but corollary to this vital dedication. All other public purpose, all other public projects, all other public needs, great or small, will find others for their accomplishments; but you are the ones who are trained to fight.

Yours is the profession of arms, the will to win, the sure knowledge that in war there is no substitute for victory, that if you lose, the Nation will be destroyed, that the very obsession of your public service must be Duty, Honor, Country.

The long gray line has never failed us. Were you to do so, a million ghosts in olive drab, in brown khaki, in blue and gray, would rise from their white crosses, thundering those magic words: Duty, Honor, Country.

Echo of 1970?

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

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

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

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

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

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

Conservatism And The Commonwealth

October 2, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Barack Obama, Republican Party | 1 Comment 

Evangelical Christian voter erosion away from the Republicans and toward the Democrats in 2008 was undoubtedly a significant factor in the election of Barack Obama. It didn’t work out too badly for those clinging to his coattails, either.

But will the trend continue?

This question will be at least partially answered soon in New Jersey and Virginia where hotly contested races for statewide office have entered the final stretch. Many signs point toward Republican victories – possibly portending a GOP resurgence of sorts. At this point, Chris Christi (R) leads incumbent Jon Corzine (D) in the Garden State, while in the Old Dominion, Bob McDonnell (R) leads Creigh Deeds (D). But both races are tightening.

In Virginia, there is a sharp contrast between McDonnell and Deeds on issues that resonate with social conservatives – a contrast seen as well in the contests for Lieutenant Governor and Attorney General. In the AG race, Republican State Senator Ken Cuccinelli, a staunch and stalwart cultural and economic conservative who has represented the 37th district in Fairfax County since 2002, is ahead in all polls. Both McDonnell and Cuccinelli hail from Northern Virginia, a section of the Commonwealth that went overwhelmingly for Obama, as well as Mark Warner (D) for U.S. Senate and Gerry Connolly (D) for the House of Representatives, last year.

Of course, some of this can be chalked up to the politics-as-usual way one party has of living to fight another day after being trounced a year or two before. But there is also something else happening – something that is not being widely reported. The Democrats appear to be ignoring something they did with a great measure of effectiveness last year.

In 2008, there was a full-court-press – a conscious and deliberate strategic and tactical effort – to engage and recruit Christian evangelicals. Most famously, there was that “candidate forum” out at Saddleback Church in California, hosted by megachurch pastor, Rick Warren. And many voters, who had usually made electoral choices on the basis of particular cultural values such as the pro-life issue, found themselves being swayed by other neo-fascinating issues. Things that until then had largely been the bailiwick of the Democrats: the environment, universal healthcare, etc, began to resonate with some, particularly younger, evangelicals who didn’t drive Dad’s Oldsmobile and didn’t necessarily want to echo Mom’s very conservative politics.

Now a year later, Democrats in Virginia are refusing every opportunity to participate in similar Saddleback-like candidate forums. Possibly, they feel that without Rick Warren’s star power and his carefully cultivated rapport with the left on some issues, such forums would be like being in the proverbial lion’s den.

But what it really looks like is that the courtship of evangelicals by the Democrats is over and was never actually intended to lead to a happy marriage. It was simply a cynical exercise in strange-bedfellows politics.

In fact, this must be faced by conservative Christian evangelicals who voted for Obama and company the last time around: They were the witting victims of a campaign “roofie” – a political sedative (with obvious hallucinogenic qualities) that had been slipped into their Kool-Aid. The overtures last year were never really about long-term commitment.

Many evangelicals were seduced to a one-night stand on November 4, 2008. It was all about fun, excitement, and a big party. Then the morning after (in this case, a morning equals a year), surprise, surprise, there was just a note with a fake phone number. And all some evangelicals have left is a terrible headache, overwhelming nausea, and the feeling of being used.

“Yes, we can” is becoming: “What have I done?”

In Northern Virginia a steering committee comprised of lay leaders and pastors made repeated efforts to get the statewide candidates to participate in a “Saddleback-style forum.” The Republican candidates welcomed the idea, but the Democrats resisted at every turn.

Why?

Well, certainly such forums may have been held in venues tilted more toward the conservative side, as was the fact at Saddleback last year. But Rick Warren was fair – and so was the audience. It was widely regarded as a very positive event. Both candidates were given a fair shake. In fact, Barack Obama likely picked up support as some evangelicals saw and heard him in that context.

So, what’s the deal with Democrats not wanting to do the same thing this year? What are they afraid of? Saddleback Church wasn’t a lion’s den – it was a living room. And there is no indication that any of the forums proposed here in Virginia would have been any less civil and comfortable.

I think the reason Creigh Deeds, Steve Shannon, and Jody Wagner have shied away from this kind of encounter is that they sense something has really changed. Many who got caught up in the “moment” last November have had a wake-up call. Christian evangelicals are opening their eyes more and more every day as they see the change they voted for turn out to be something other than what they bargained for.

They are looking at the candidates with much greater scrutiny. Things that used to matter most are starting to matter once again.

Evangelicals are also, hopefully, learning to keep an eye on the Kool-Aid.

It’s A Family Affair

September 29, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon family, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

The New York Times continues to chronicle the election of Ed Cox as the Chairman of the New York State Republican Party.  That was unanimously accomplished this morning at a meeting in Albany.

The Nixon family took center stage at the state Republican Party’s conference on Tuesday, as county leaders gathered to elect Edward F. Cox, Richard Nixon’s son-in-law, as the party’s new state chairman.

Mr. Cox’s wife, Tricia Nixon Cox, was in attendance and hard to miss in a fire-engine red ensemble. So was the couple’s son, Christopher Nixon Cox, who ran John McCain’s New York campaign alongside his father and will most likely have some role in the state party.

“We will rebuild our party, and we will win elections,” Mr. Cox said in his speech to the gathering. He promised to win back one Congressional seat and retake a majority in the State Senate, and even raised Assembly Speaker Sheldon Silver as a Democratic bogeyman.

During the 2008 presidential election, Christopher Cox, RN’s grandson, served as the  Executive Director of the McCain campaign’s New York operations.

Hard to miss: the Coxes yesterday in Albany, New York, where Ed was named State GOP Chairman.

Edward Cox To Be New York State GOP Chairman

September 29, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon family, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 2 Comments 

The New York Times’ Danny Hakim has written an interesting and timely profile of Ed Cox.  Accompanying the article is a slide show of several photographs, beginning with Mr. Cox’s wedding to Tricia Nixon in the White House Rose Garden in June 1971, through his current role as the putative New York State Republican Chairman (he is uncontested in the election for the position to be held today in Albany).

He appeared on American television screens nearly four decades ago, a blond-haired Princeton man in cutaway and striped trousers who married Tricia Nixon in a Rose Garden ceremony.

Edward F. Cox became an adored son-in-law to President  Richard M. Nixon, appearing at the president’s side during some of the nation’s most pivotal moments, including Nixon’s teary farewell address in 1974.

Now, Mr. Cox, 62, is re-entering public life, taking on a task that many see as impossible: reviving the demoralized and shrunken Republican Party in New York…

Mr. Cox grew close to his father-in-law, and recalled traveling the world on good-will missions with his wife and going to China with Nixon after he left office. He has ferried messages between Chinese and South Korean trade missions and met  Fidel Castro at the Palace of Justice in Havana. He recalled a trip to the Soviet Union during the Nixon presidency in which he had to mediate between a KGB general and the Secret Service.

There were happy moments — his wife can even be heard on the Nixon White House tapes gushing to her father, “Eddie passed the bar.” Then there were more difficult moments, like standing behind his father-in-law during his final address as president. “During his farewell, he asked me to bring him a book,” he recalled. “I was working with him the night before and got it from the library — it was where Teddy Roosevelt wrote about the death of his wife, his first wife, ‘The light went out of my life,’ ” Mr. Cox said, referring to passages Nixon read during his speech.

“Obviously, it was a very emotional time, it was extraordinary,” he added. “He was a man who really had control of himself, but also saw the bigger picture and what he was doing in the bigger picture.”

Speaking of the lessons he had learned from his front-row seat, he said of politics, “You’ll get bloodied, and sometimes it’s tough, but there are moments when you’re on the mountain peak.” “That’s what public life is about,” he said. “You have to be willing to take those ups and downs if you’re going to accomplish something.”

Edward Cox at a the Metropolitan Republican Club in New York.  (Photo for The New York Times by Chang W. Lee.)

The article analyzes the problems —and the opportunities— Mr. Cox will inherit with the State Chairmanship.

The cerebral, centrist Mr. Cox represents a break from the parochial Republican county leaders who have led the state party in recent years, presiding over disastrous electoral results. In the 2006 election, Republicans were shut out of all statewide offices, and in 2008, they lost control of the State Senate, their last power base. The absence of Republican star power means that Mr. Cox will play an outsize role as a voice of the party, whose leaders will gather Tuesday in Albany to elect a new chairman; Mr. Cox is the only remaining candidate for the post. Despite the odds against the party, he said he believed a wave of Democratic scandals could be a boon for Republicans in New York.

9.23.52

September 23, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, History, Media, News media, Pat Nixon, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, U.S. History | 1 Comment 

Taking matters into his own hands:  On 23 September 1952, RN went on radio and TV to answer charges of financial impropriety.   The phenomenal success of his speech assured Ike’s victory and put RN’s bench mark on the emerging medium of television.

Today is the fifty-seventh anniversary of the speech that changed the course of RN’s life and of politics as practiced in America.

It was also the first of the remarkable comebacks from defeat or adversity that marked his long career.

Garry Wills described the spectacular risk RN took, and the stunning success he achieved:

Nixon first demonstrated the political uses and impact of television. In one half hour Nixon converted himself from a liability, breathing his last, to one of the few people who could add to Eisenhower’s preternatural appeal — who could gild the lilly. For the first time, people saw a living political drama on their TV sets — a man fighting for his whole career and future — and they judged him under that strain. It was an even greater achievement than it seemed. He had only a short time to prepare for it. The show, forced on him [by Eisenhower's advisers], was meant as a form of political euthanasia. He came into the studio still reeling from distractions and new demoralizing blows….[A]t the time he went onto the TV screen in 1952, he was hunted and alone.

It had all started several days earlier.  On 14 September 1952,  just as RN was launching his campaign as Ike’s VP  with a whistlestop train trip aboard the Nixon Special, up the coast from Pomona to Seattle.  Three thousand miles across the continent the New York Post ran a headline: Secret Nixon Fund!  Secret Rich Men’s Trust Fund Keeps Nixon in Style Far Beyond His Salary.

Under Dorothy Schiff’s ownership and Jimmy Wechsler’s ownership, the Post in those days was a proudly-identified left-wing tabloid.   The story was completely bogus, and the rap was totally bum.  Far from being secret, the fund had been solicited by letters to hundreds of supporters throughout California, individual contributions had been limited to $500, and the account was administered by a trustee and was regularly audited.

But the reporters smelled blood in the water, and the story soon overwhelmed all campaign coverage.

Not the least of the many ironies of the Fund Crisis was that the Democratic presidential nominee, Adlai Stevenson, did have an unreported secret slush fund of campaign contributions that he had used for purely personal expenses.

It was finally decided that RN should take his case directly to the American people with a speech to be broadcast both on the radio and the new medium of television.  Depending on the popular reaction to the speech, he would either remain on the ticket or voluntarily withdraw.

The approach he took to this situation was as inspired as it was unprecedented.  Instead of the self-serving boilerplate blather usually produced in such situations, he decided to take his national audience on a guided tour of his net worth.  In addition to proving that he clearly met Ike’s ethical standard of being “clean as a hen’s tooth,”  the speech showed that he was just a regular guy, like most of his viewers.

While Adlai Stevenson’s ‘52 campaign slogan was “Let’s talk sense to the American people,” his rhetoric was often elegant bordering on highfalutin.  But RN’s plain speech put everything right out front right up front:

I come before you tonight as a candidate for the Vice Presidency and as a man whose honesty and — and integrity has been questioned.

Now, the usual political thing to do when charges are made against you is to either ignore them or to deny them without giving details. I believe we’ve had enough of that in the United States, particularly with the present Administration in Washington, D.C.  To me the office of the Vice Presidency of the United States is a great office, and I feel that the people have got to have confidence in the integrity of the men who run for that office and who might obtain it.

I have a theory, too, that the best and only answer to a smear or to an honest misunderstanding of the facts is to tell the truth. And that’s why I’m here tonight. I want to tell you my side of the case. I’m sure that you have read the charge, and you’ve heard it, that I, Senator Nixon, took 18,000 dollars from a group of my supporters.

Nothing like this had ever been seen or heard before.  The effect was immediate and electric.

From the moment RN’s image faded off the screen, the Checkers Speech —as it immediately became known— was controversial in direct proportion to its success;  in other words, off the charts.

Nixon supporters reveled in the tsunami of national warmth and support for this honest and plainspoken young man who had, by risking all, turned the tables on his foes.  And his foes, not surprisingly, carped that it had been mawkish and unseemly and embarrassing.

RN preferred to talk about the “Fund Crisis” — because the speech, important as it was, was only part of a greater and no less significant story of a badly wronged man fighting back and coming out on top.  But although the Fund Speech was RN’s preferred term of art, that tale continues to wag the dog, and it has gone down in history as the Checkers Speech.

The drama of those September days has been described by many authors — including RN himself, who made it the second of his Six Crises.   More than four decades later, Six Crises presents incomparably the most vivid and dramatic account, and it still makes exciting reading.   In the first volume of his Nixon trilogy, Stephen Ambrose surveys a lot of the press coverage.  And Conrad Black’s recent magisterial biography supplies both drama and analysis:

Abandoned by everyone except his wife, his mother, [political adviser Murray] Chotiner, [RNC Chairman Arthur] Summerfield, [RNC public relations director Robert] Humphreys, and a few others, put right to the wall and verging on nervous and physical exhaustion, Nixon had staged a political version of MacArthur’s Inchon landing.  He had destroyed his enemies, given the vice presidency a political significance it had never had in 164 years of the history of the office, sacked his judge and the kangaroo court around him and replaced them with his friends in the National Committee, while impeccably restating the greatness of Eisenhower.  Dwight D. Eisenhower was, by most measurements, a great man, but his greatness was not in evidence on this occasion, and that was not the description of him uppermost in Nixon’s thoughts at this time.

The role played by PN throughout the Fund Crisis was pivotal and inspirational.   And it wasn’t easy for her, as Julie Nixon Eisenhower revealed in her biography of her mother; and as RN described in the interviews I conducted with him in 1983:

The homely and memorable example of the cocker spaniel has come to dominate —and characterize— thinking about the speech.  In fact, aside from RN’s heartfelt peroration and the central core of reporting his net worth, the speech was an example of extremely sophisticated and hard hitting political rhetoric.  As RN wrote in RN, even  the pooch had a political pedigree:

On the plane [a night flight from Portland to LA where the speech would be delivered], I took some postcards from the pocket of the seat in front of me and began to put down some thoughts about what I might say.

I remembered the Truman scandal concerning a $9,000 ink coat given to a White House secretary, and I made a note that Pat had no mink — just a cloth coat.  I thought of DNC CHairman Mitchell’s snide comment that people who cannot afford to hold an office should not run for it, and I made a note to check out a quotation from Lincoln to the effect that God must have loved the common people because he made so many of them.  I also thought about the stunning success FDR had in his speech during the 1944 campaign, when he had ridiculed his critics by saying they were even attacking his little dog Fala, and I knew it would infuriate critics if I could turn this particular table on them.

“It isn’t easy to bare your life”:  When RN arrived in LA, he refined his thoughts for the speech on a yellow pad.

But enough exposition — here is the speech itself.  After all this time, and despite the outdated and stilted production values of the hastily mounted production  (the opening and closing titles were RN’s Senate calling card)  its human honesty and emotional intensity can still pack a punch.  Imagine what it must have been like when there had never been anything like it.

The complete text of the speech and an mp3 audio will be found here.

Every Dog Has Her Day — And Checkers’ Was 23 September 1952

In my 1983 interviews, I asked RN if he had ever played a practical joke on anyone.  He thought for a moment and replied:

Yes. Oh, I remember, for example, the — the Gridiron speech that I made in 1953.

This was, in effect, similar to a practical joke. That was after I had made what was called the Checkers speech in the fund controversy.  And so, the Gridiron had a very rough skit on me about Checkers, and I knew that it was going to be rough. And I had learned it in advance, thanks to them.

[Political columnist and later best selling novelist] Fletcher Knebel came on set.  He was dressed as a dog, and he cried, and so forth and so on.

And so what I did was to get the real Checkers, our Checkers, and I arranged to have that dog brought to the — backstage in the Statler where the Gridiron was held, and when I made my speech, I started out in a way that really scared my supporters to death.

I remember [newspaper publisher John S. Knight] Jack Knight, who was a great supporter of mine at that point, was just sitting there saying, “He mustn’t do it. He mustn’t do it.” — because I started out and I said, in a very serious way, “I know that everybody is supposed to take whatever barbs are thrown at the Gridiron dinner in good form”, and so forth and so on, “and not respond. But this is one time you’ve gone too far.  Fun is fun, particularly when that is directed against a lady.  And now I want you to see the real Checkers.”

And then Knebel came out holding Checkers.  Checkers, of course, was a female. Well, it brought the house down, and my supporters thought,  ”Well, he’s not as serious as we thought.”

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.

Health Care at Morton’s Fork

September 9, 2009 by David Emig | Filed Under American Politics, Annals of the Obama Administration, Barack Obama, Healthcare, Obama administration, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon | Leave a Comment 

As defined by Wikipedia, a Morton’s Fork is “a choice between two equally unpleasant alternatives.” In the health care debate, this is the choice between government run health care, or corporate run health care.  We progressives like to call this choice — reform or the status quo.

You know, I always laugh at those conservative politicians that decry socialized medicine — while enjoying the benefits of government run health care themselves.  Let them put their health where their mouth is.  Cancel their socialized medicine, and go into the “free” market like everyone else.

As usual, those who oppose reform are using the tried and true fear card.  They tell us that government run health care will lead to socialized medicine, rationing care, and the infamous “death panels”, among other things.

The truth of the matter is: the system that the critics fear is already in place.  It is called corporate health care.  Large insurance companies already ration care by denying claims and coverage.  In California, PacificCare has denied 40% of their claims, while HealthNet has denied 30% of theirs.  Lose necessary tests in a mountain of red tape.  Cancel your policy when you reach a monetary limit.  Never offer insurance at all to those with pre-existing conditions.  Allow the ‘free market’ to raise premiums until a business or individual cannot pay them anymore — and the policy lapses.

For those who have no health insurance, and have a catastrophic illness or injury…aren’t all of these inactions by the corporate insurance companies infamous “death panels?”  Is it easier for the critics to have these death panels consisting of corporate health clerks, rather than government bureaucrats?

Currently, the momentum seems to be away from true reform, and towards reinforcing the corporate health care system.  Proposals such as mandatory health insurance for individuals would only really benefit the corporate insurance market.  It gives them 40 million new customers that must buy their product.  It gives people that are already struggling, another bill.

Any proposed health care system without a public option, a type of Medicare for all, isn’t reform at all.  It is the codification of the status quo, and creation of a windfall comparable to the windfall enjoyed by the oil companies.  This kind of reform doesn’t benefit the majority of American people.  Consider that mother in the news who was trying to feed her family and keep a roof over her head.  She needs real reform, not a Republican congresswoman telling her to “grow up” and get health insurance.

True health care reform doesn’t mean a total government takeover.  Tonight the President needs to return to his original proposal for health care.  If you have health insurance you like, you can keep it.  A strong public option in place for people who cannot afford health care, and foster competition (one of the facets of capitalism I thought).  Outlining pre-existing conditions.  Making the best health care system a right for all American, and not just a privilege for those who can afford it.  While we in America have the greatest health care system in the world – really it’s of limited benefit for people that can’t afford it.

It should be noted that RN in 1971 proposed a similar system of employer mandated health insurance.  The recent book, “The Heart of Power” credits RN with forming the parameters of the future debates of 1994 and 2009 about health care.  The failure of RNs proposal didn’t affect his legacy as president.  There were bigger issues that did.  Watergate.  Vietnam.  China.

In sharp contrast, health care will affect this president’s legacy.  There is also a good chance that it will affect President Obama’s future success and failure as well.  Also the country’s as well…

More On The “Southern Strategy” Myth

September 3, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Republican Party, Richard Nixon | 5 Comments 

To add to Mr. Bostock’s very insightful article today, I wanted to share an excerpt of James Rosen’s book The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate, in which the author shows that RN didn’t sell out his ideals for the Southern vote. Page 47:

Those who later claimed that Mitchell and Nixon pursued a “Southern strategy” to capture the presidency, selling their souls to Strom Thurmond for Southern delegates, often cited the Miami Herald transcript for the transaction; in fact a close reading reveals Nixon gave the South nothing substantial. Even the New York Times acknowledges most of what Nixon said was consistent with previous pledges. As a Georgia historian has noted, Nixon emphasized themes appealing to conservatives, but always remained “cautious enough to make any kind of blatant regional, much less racist, appeals … no unreasonable commitments.”

Debunking the Myth of the Nixon “Southern Strategy”

September 3, 2009 by Bob Bostock | Filed Under American Politics, Civil rights, History, Nixon Administration, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, education | 4 Comments 

I agree with nationally syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker more often than not. Her column today, Can the GOP Speak to Blacks?, makes some excellent points about why the Republican Party has failed to attract support from African-American voters over the past 45 years.

Unfortunately, in analyzing the GOP’s alienation from black voters, Parker repeats the old canard that the African-American exodus from the GOP began in 1968 in response to what she describes as, “Richard Nixon’s ‘Southern strategy,’ which tried to harness votes by cultivating white resentment toward blacks.” At quick glance at a little history refutes this persistent and pernicious myth.

For its first 70 years , the Republican Party – the Party of Lincoln – was the home of the vast majority of African-American voters. FDR was the first Democratic president to win the support of a majority of black voters. Nevertheless, Republican presidential candidates in every election through 1960 could expect to receive the support of roughly one-third of black voters. Indeed, in 1960, about one in every three African-Americans voters voted for Richard Nixon.

It wasn’t until 1964 that African-American support for the GOP fell off the cliff. Barry Goldwater’s vote against the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (which, ironically, was supported by larger proportions of Republicans than Democrats in both houses of Congress) drove black voter supporter for the GOP standard-bearer down below ten percent. In the years since, it has rarely climbed much above that mark and has never come close to the level RN received in 1960.

Goldwater, of course, carried much of the Deep South in 1964 (Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, and South Carolina), all five of which the Democrats had carried in 1960. But, with the exception of his home state of Arizona, that’s all he won. New York Senator Jacob Javits, writing in early 1966 about the electoral debacle of 1964, blamed it squarely on “the Goldwater-Miller ill-fated ‘Southern Strategy.’”

Over the years, however, RN’s critics have blamed him for creating a “Southern Strategy” designed to win white votes by exploiting racial tensions.   If that had been his aim, the results of the 1968 election suggest he failed at it miserably. In 1968, RN lost four of the five Southern states that Goldwater had carried. George Wallace carried the rest of the Goldwater Southern bloc – Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Mississippi. And of those four states, RN ran third, behind both Wallace and the Democrat’s nominee, Hubert Humphrey, in three of them.

Once in the White House, President Nixon’s actions can hardly be called those of a president seeking to inflame racial tensions. Nothing illustrates that better than the historic progress his administration achieved in finally ending the practice of segregating the races in “separate but equal” schools in the South. When RN took office in 1969, 68 percent of black Southern students attended segregated schools. Within five years, that number had been cut to 9 percent. As Tom Wicker wrote in his biography, One of Us, “The Nixon administration did more in 1970 to desegregate Southern school systems than had been done in the sixteen previous years, or probably since.”

Of course, beginning in 1972, the Democrat’s once Solid South turned reliably red at the presidential level, except when a Son of the South was running for president (Carter in 1976 and Clinton in 1992). The lock the Democrats had on Southern Senate and House seats also began to erode during the Nixon years.

The reasons for this change are many. Chief among them is RN’s success in occupying the middle ground in American politics and thus attracting the support of Silent Majority, not just in the South, but also in every part of America. Attributing the Republican Party’s success in breaking the Democrat’s hold on the South to a cynical, Nixon-devised  “Southern Strategy” based on creating and then exploiting racial division is not only simplistic, it’s also contradicted by the record.

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