Palin and Nixon

November 25, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

At Air America and The Huffington Post, Mark Green compares Sarah Palin and Richard Nixon.  He notes an obvious difference: RN “was vastly more experienced and sophisticated.”  He has a point, but one could make the same point about most other political figures, including the incumbent president.  Barack Obama is the first White House occupant since Harding with neither military nor executive experience, and even liberal observers are starting to notice the consequences. Leslie Gelb unfavorably contrasts Nixon-Kissinger diplomacy with President Obama’s recent Asia trip, which he says “suggests a disturbing amateurishness in managing America’s power.”

Green notes RN’s ideological pragmatism and asks rhetorically: “When has Palin ever shown such a moderating inclination?”   One may find the answer in an Associated Press report from May of 2008:

During her first year in office, Palin distanced herself from the old guard, powerful members of the state GOP. She asked Alaska’s congressional delegation to be more selective in seeking earmarks after the state’s “Bridge to Nowhere” became a national symbol of piggish pork-barrel spending.  She stood up to the oil interests that hold great power in Alaska, and with bipartisan support in the statehouse, she won a tax increase on oil companies’ profits.

The biggest similarity, Green says, is that Palin practices the “politics of resentment” by attacking elites.  It is true that RN considered himself an outsider, as does Palin.  But as James Ceaser and Andrew Busch explain in their book on the 1992 election, Upside Down and Inside Out, “outsiderism” is a very old tradition in American politics.  The next time Green goes to one of his party’s Jefferson-Jackson Day dinners, he will find himself honoring two practitioners of that tradition.

Palin, 37, And 37 Years Ago

September 30, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under China, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

An overlooked part of former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s speech in Hong Kong earlier this month notes that a constructive Sino-American relationship is predicated on what 37 accomplished thirty-seven years ago:

Nothing of what I am saying should be seen as meaning conflict with China is inevitable. Quite the contrary. As I said, we welcome China’s responsible rise. America and China stood together against fascism during World War II, before ravages took over in China – we were ready to stand together with China to shape international politics after World War II. Much has been accomplished since President Nixon’s fateful visit. And again, we stand ready to work with what we hope will be a more open and responsible China on the challenges facing the 21st century.

(Hat Tip: Tom Van Oosterom)

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)

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.

Nixon’s America, Palin’s America

August 2, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon in the News, Religion, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 7 Comments 

Suggesting that conservatives such as Sarah Palin face political doom, a Daily Kos writer observes:

When Richard Nixon won the presidency, the silent majority of Americans was white and conservative. The demographics of this country have changed, and that change is now accelerating. Voters are getting younger, more racially diverse, and less tied to organized religion.

There is some truth here, but a careful look at the data reveals a different picture.

Black and Hispanic political participation has grown over time.  Even so, new Census statistics show that three-fourths of the 2008 electorate consisted of non-Hispanic whites.

In 1974 (RN’s last year in office), the General Social Survey found roughly equal percentages of liberals and conservatives in the population.  In 2006, conservatives outnumbered liberals by 8 points, and a Gallup survey indicates the conservative lead has grown even more.  Granted, self-identification can be slippery, since the definition of terms can shift over time.  And on certain social issues (e.g., gay rights), opinion has become more liberal.  But in other respects, it is hard to argue that RN’s America was more conservative.  Despite a modest inflation rate, he faced pressure to impose wage-price controls.  When he yielded — which he later acknowledged as a mistake — public reaction was overwhelmingly positive.  Today, even President Obama is not talking about such measures.

As for religion, there has been a great deal of hype about a Newsweek cover proclaiming the end of Christian America.  According to the American Religious Identification Survey, the share of Americans who say they have no religion is at a high — but is still only 15 percent.  That figure has barely increased since 2001, and self-identified atheists and agnostics make up less than 2 percent of the population.  When Gallup asked respondents if they had attended services during the last seven days, 39 percent said yes.  That figure was statistically the same as the 1972 figure of 40 percent.

Of couse, serious problems do confront Republicans in general, and Sarah Palin in particular.  But it is a serious misreading of the data to suggest a sudden leftward shift that rules out GOP victory.

(Cross-posted from Epic Journey.)

Palin is Not The New Nixon…Not Yet (Newsweek)

August 1, 2009 by David Emig | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 4 Comments 

Howard Fineman presents one of the better comparisons between RN and the departed Alaskan governor.

Advice To Palin: Write Six Crises

July 27, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 6 Comments 

Over at the National Interest, Jacob Heilbrunn argues that Sarah Palin did the smart thing by resigning her post as Alaska governor, but needs to polish – not raise — her public profile with an influential book:

Nixon was down and out when Six Crises appeared. He had been a two-term vice president for Dwight Eisenhower, but was savaged by the liberal press as vile right-winger, much as Palin has been. He ran for Governor of California against Edmund G. Brown, Sr. in 1962. But his book made it clear that he was the real thing: he covered everything from the Alger Hiss case to his tour of South America to his kitchen cabinet debate with Khruschev. Throughout, Nixon suggested that he was the man to turn to in a crisis—calm, collected and possessed of shrewd judgment.

Palin has never served in Congress or in a presidential administration, which is something of a handicap. Or is it? It may be that Palin’s lack of experience is her strongest plus. She can campaign as an outsider in 2012, someone who was unafraid of even leaving political office in Alaska. She can present herself as untainted, the voice of the people. She certainly retains a blunt speaking style. In her farewell address, she instructed the media, “How about, in honor of the American soldier, you quit makin’ things up?” In her book, which might be called Seven Crises, she could recount both personal stories—such as the trauma her family has endured—as well as a chapter on how she thinks America should deal with North Korea. There’s plenty of fodder for a rich and thoughtful book that positions her for the next presidential race.

It’s also the case that the Obama administration could flub up in coming years. As Frank Rich has observed, Palin could be well-positioned for a new run—just as Nixon made a comeback that no one expected, so could Palin. If the war in Afghanistan is going nowhere three years from now, Palin can score the administration for failing to have a plan to defeat the terrorists. If Iran gains a nuclear capability, the administration will be on the defensive as well. And a ballooning deficit, coupled with higher taxes on the middle-class and wealthy, would provide a target-rich environment for Palin. The administration has already generated considerable unease among voters with its tax and spending plans.

Ultimately, however, Palin will need to preserve her status as a maverick. Like John McCain, she has been an unpredictable force in American politics. The media knows that the only thing worse than having Palin around would be not having her as a potent force. For the GOP she presents as many dangers as she does possibilities. But for a party that has exhausted its old political formula, she offers the chance to reinvent it in her image—spunky and unpredictable. Whether the GOP, let alone the electorate, can live with that is another matter. But for now, Palin is the most powerful figure on the Right, and she’s not going away.

Palin, Nixon, Power, And The GOP

July 15, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under American Politics, Democratic Party, Election 2008, Nixon in the News, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 5 Comments 

In the Times of London, Daniel Finkelstein writes:

There is no more eloquent statement of modern Republicanism than resigning office with time still on the clock. Mrs Palin has chosen to talk about power, rather than exercise it. She would rather write a book and give lectures about being a governor than actually be a governor. And her party has made the same choice.

Yet the anger of Nixon’s coalition has never quite left it, even after years of huge political success. They see themselves as the eternally frustrated rebels knocking on the barred doors of Washington DC, when they have been on the inside themselves for years.

It has cast itself, deliberately, as the opposition, the angry outsider, and it is more comfortable in this role than it is as the party of power. As Rick Perlstein describes in his book Nixonland, being the party of the angry outsider began as an election strategy. Richard Nixon wanted to mop up votes that went to urban machine “law-and-order” Democratic mayors such as Richard Daley in the North and populist rabble rousers such as the segregationist Democrat George Wallace in the South.

Others attack the GOP from exactly the opposite direction. For years, we have heard that Republicans are elitist insiders who only want power.  ”It is power that attracts them,” wrote John Dean in Broken Government, “it is a tropism for authoritarian personalities, like moths to the flame.”  In 2006, Thomas B. Edsall wrote Building Red America: The New Conservative Coalition and the Drive for Permanent Power.   He called the GOP “the party of the socially and economically dominant and of those who identify with the dominant.”

Both lines of attack are caricatures. Republican politicians do want power — like Democratic politicians — but they are often inept and disorganized in pursuing it.  As for economic dominance, one need only note that a majority of those among those making $200,000 a year or more supported Barack Obama.

There is a bit of truth to Finkelstein’s analysis: Republicans have indeed cast themselves as the opposition. Since Democrats control the White House and Congress, that’s what Republicans are. When the GOP was in power, Democrats were the opposition. Barack Obama deliberately cast himself as an outsider, hence his Secret Service code name — and the title of an admiring biography — “Renegade.”

Is Sarah Palin In Or Out Of The Picture?

July 10, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, News media, Nixon in the News, Presidents, Republican Party, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin, TV News Personalities, U.S. History | 4 Comments 

On November 11, 1962, five days after Richard Nixon told an audience of reporters that “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference,” ABC News aired a thirty-minute TV special titled The Political Obituary Of Richard Nixon, hosted by veteran broadcaster Howard K. Smith. Among those featured in the broadcast were then-Rep. Gerald R. Ford and RN’s longtime advisor Murray Chotiner, both of whom expressed their regret that his political career had concluded; former Rep. Jerry Voorhis, who mused bitterly about his defeat by Nixon in 1946; and Alger Hiss, the former State Department official who had been convicted and jailed for perjury after a House investigation led by Nixon (and whose appearance on this program led to ABC’s switchboard being deluged by angry callers).

None of the four expressed any doubt that Nixon had, in fact, given his press conference and was gone from the political stage. Yet a little over five years later not only was he back on it, but well on his way to the White House.

It’s therefore rather amusing that last Sunday, although not using the same title as the 1962 show, ABC’s This Week With George Stephanopoulos featured a 20-minute panel discussion about the political future of soon-to-be-former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin featuring the show’s host; columnists George Will and Tony Blankley; former Bush strategist Matthew Dowd; journalist Cynthia Tucker; and Todd Purdum, whose article in the current issue of Vanity Fair is thought in some circles to have helped trigger Palin’s announcement of her impending resignation.

With the exception of Blankley, who argued that the resignation freed Palin to make a greater impact in political life in “the lower 48″ and to strengthen her following, and a rather cautious Stephanopoulos, the panel seemed to take it for granted that the career of the 2008 Republican vice-presidential nominee has ended. Naturally, Nixon’s “last press conference” of 1962 was brought up; Blankley cited it as evidence that it’s unwise to count Palin out.

All through this week, the division of opinion has continued. The Washington Post ran two columns, side by side, by William Kristol and Richard Cohen. Cohen’s column was couched entirely in terms of the menace that might have been, treating the end of Palin’s career as a given, while Kristol, who played an important role in bringing the Alaska Governor to the notice of Sen. John McCain as a possible running-mate, made it plain that he doesn’t think she’s in the wilderness yet (other than in the literal sense, “way up north” as the late Johnny Horton would say).

As the days have gone by, several more voices have expressed the view that the political picture for Palin is rosier than many people claim. Interestingly, two of those arguing the case for her continued relevance have ties to the Nixon era. In NewsMax.com, Roger Stone, who served his political apprenticeship in the 1972 Nixon campaign, and who has probably studied the details of RN’s re-emergence from 1962 to 1968 as carefully as any historian, explains why he thinks Palin’s resignation puts her in a stronger position than before.

And in The Fix, Chris Cillizza’s often insightful column in the Washington Post, Fred Malek, a premier GOP strategist and fundraiser (and Nixon White House veteran), makes the case for Palin’s continued importance for 2012. Cillizza writes:

Malek is quick to note that he has absolutely no idea whether Palin will ultimately run for president and, even if she does, he isn’t pledging his support for her.

But, he does have some advice for the soon-to-be former governor if she wants to continue to keep her name in the mix as a national figure and/or potential presidential nominee.

Malek believes Palin should keep her hometown of Wasilla as a home base and make two of three trips a month out of the state. Those trips should include appearances for candidates — Malek said former Virginia state attorney general Bob McDonnell is very interested in Palin coming to the state — fundraising for 2010 candidates, a paid speech or two and perhaps an event for a charity of her choosing.

Should Palin really want to run for president, she would need to get “more serious on substantive stuff,” hire a speech writer, pen an occasional opinion piece to flesh out her world view and make a foreign trip (Palin recently traveled to Kosovo) every six months or so, according to Malek.

What is most striking about Malek’s remarks is his observation that Bob McDonnell, locked in a hard-fought race for the governorship of Virginia, wants Palin to visit the state. Her rallies in the Old Dominion in 2008 were heavily attended and high-spirited. Her image as a moose-hunting mom also helps in a state which has one of the highest numbers of National Rifle Association members per capita in the country.

Therefore, despite what a lot of the pundits say, I’m thinking that we haven’t heard the last of the Wasilla wonder yet.

Never Mind, Mordecai

July 8, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Sullivan notices Gov. Palin’s Esther quote from the Hebrew Testament, noted here Tuesday afternoon.

Politics Or Bible Study? You Decide

July 7, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Conceding that stepping down as governor entails some risk, Gov. Palin said today, “If I die, I die. So be it.”

Heard that before? Just ask Madonna. In Esther 5:16, Esther says as much to Mordecai as she promises to risk her life to save her people.

Came out okay for Esther, by the way.

It’s My Job, And I’ll Quit If I Want To

July 7, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Sarah Palin | 2 Comments 

John Podhoretz:

[Nobody] accused, say, Govs. Kathleen Sibelius of Kansas or Janet Napolitano of Arizona of “abandoning their posts” when they resigned to take cabinet jobs in the Obama administration. Nobody accused Rahm Emanuel of dissing his Chicagoland voters when he quit Congress weeks after winning reelection in November to become White House chief of staff. That these elected officials took other jobs in public service is meaningless; they all ran for full terms and decided that they wanted to do something else, so they went ahead and did something else. That’s fine, and so is Palin quitting for whatever reason she chose to quit. Being elected is not a prison sentence; just ask Barack Obama, who didn’t let his promise to Illinois voters that he would serve out a full term impede him from running for office; same with Hillary Clinton, for that matter.

Thrilla In Wasilla Gets A Fair Shot From NBC

July 6, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under News media, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Andrew Sullivan Awaits Redemption

July 5, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under Hackosphere, News media, Sarah Palin | Leave a Comment 

Though he hides it behind a sneer, Andrew Sullivan can’t conceal his hope that Gov. Palin resigned because last fall’s fictionalized pass-the-baby story, the most effective libel of the ‘08 campaign, which he shamefully repeated and amplified before checking the facts and personally kept alive for all the months since, is really true. He writes:

Is Trig really Tina Fey’s child?

Palin, Nixon, And The “Secret Plan”

July 4, 2009 by Jack Pitney | Filed Under American Politics, Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin, Vietnam | 1 Comment 

At CQ Politics, Jonathan Allen contrasts Sarah Palin and Richard Nixon.  “Palin doesn’t have Nixon’s interest in, or knowledge of, foreign affairs,” he writes. “Imagine the reaction if Palin suggested she had a “secret plan” to win the war in Afghanistan.”  He is undoubtedly right on his major point, but I must nitpick the second sentence. As Frank Gannon and yours truly have noted on this site, RN never said that he had a secret plan to win the war in Vietnam.  That urban legend started with a wire report that inaccurately paraphrased his comments at a town meeting.

The CQ article links to a piece that acknowledges this point, while suggesting that RN let the myth stand during the 1968 campaign because it worked to his advantage.  Actually, as Nixon speechwriter Raymond Price has written:  “We on the Nixon staff immediately pointed out, to all who would listen, that he had not claimed a `plan.’ Nixon himself told reporters that if he had one, he would have given it to President Johnson.”  Nelson Rockefeller kept the canard alive as a way of attacking Nixon.  Richard Reeves reported in the New York Times on March 19, 1968:

When he has been alone with friends, Mr. Rockefeller has scornfully mocked Mr. Nixon by patting his suit pocket and saying that he keeps a peace plan there while hundreds of Americans die each week in Vietnam. The Governor has said that he will ‘pound away’ at Mr. Nixon’s secret plan during the Oregon campaign.

Sarah Palin Is Not The New Nixon

July 3, 2009 by Jonathan Movroydis | Filed Under Nixon in the News, Richard Nixon, Sarah Palin | 3 Comments 

So Alaska Governor Sarah Palin has decided to step down before the end of her first term freeing her from the constraints of local politics. This is a possible signal she will use her free time to travel the country, effectively running for president 3 years early. TNN’s own John Taylor wrote an article shortly after the election and suggested some advice on her longterm campaign strategy for 2016. Rev. Taylor advised her to go back to work and take some time off the national stage in order to gain experience and gain “a little scarce and mysterious” credibility.

But Rev.  Taylor also said that Gov. Palin should take the time to read up on international issues, meet with world leaders, and like RN become a loyal campaigner for GOP candidates in the midterm elections. Perhaps this is the route she’s going, but maybe just a tad too early for RN’s tastes:

RN would begin with the assumption that Obama will probably not fail. An incumbent is likely to be reelected, and Obama will probably not make Carter’s mistakes. Because circumstances may nonetheless hobble him, however, Mr. Nixon would advise Palin to keep her ‘12 options open, but he’d urge her to fix her attention on ‘16.

As for the present Palin, he would have enormous respect for the potential she embodies. She has an astonishing reservoir of political capital. But he would have some significant concerns. And so he would almost certainly write her a “Dear Governor Palin” letter beginning, “I am sure you are receiving a great deal of free advice from well-meaning fans and self-appointed advisers around the country. While you are of course under no obligation to give it any consideration whatsoever, I have taken the liberty of enclosing a memorandum containing just a few…” In such circumstances, his insights were usually based in the reliability of his own experience. He would make points such as this:

Take some time off the national stage. The temptation will be to accept too many of the invitations that are flowing in and to go out and challenge her critics. We’ve probably seen too much of her already just this week. Better to be a little scarce and mysterious. As RN liked to say, it never hurts to leave them wanting more.

Get back to work. Her critics say she’s a lightweight fashion plate. Confound them by being an effective governor (or senator).

See the world and meet leaders. RN would consider this crucial — first, because she’s justifiably seen as weak in foreign policy, and second, because it would help her prepare to be in power.

Do favors. Some of RN’s most important political work was done in 1964, when he campaigned loyally for the hopeless Goldwater candidacy, and in the midterm elections of 1966, doing favors that were repaid in 1968. In 2012, assuming she doesn’t run, Palin should be the most loyal and committed advocate of whomever does. Purely in terms of her own political interests, the worst than could happen is that he would win and she’d have her pick of jobs.

Don’t let your enemies define you. Palin provoked panic among abortion rights advocates. The weekend after she was named to the ticket, Andrew Sullivan republished a lie about her son Trig’s parentage on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site that obviously still rankles. Yet Palin would close herself off from growth as a leader by taking it personally. If some people despise her because of her pro-life views, what might she learn from their passion? Some women experience the possibility of restrictions on abortion as an existential challenge. She is comfortable seeing the issue almost solely in terms of the rights of the unborn. What about the rights of the half of the population that wasn’t permitted to vote until 1920? Hillary Clinton did herself a tremendous favor three years ago with a speech in which she spoke respectfully of those who hate abortion. Palin should consider making an analogous gesture, both on the abortion and the gay rights front.

Read and think. At least from afar, Palin doesn’t seem curious or self-critical. Confidence is good in a leader; smugness is not. Mr. Nixon read hungrily all his life and spent long hours in Socratic dialogs with experts, advisers, and aides. While his core principles didn’t waiver, his approach to great issues changed with the times. The anti-communist of the 1940s became the internationalist of the 1950s, the course-changing peacemaker of the 1960s and ’70s, and the elder statesman of the ’80s, respected by all his Democratic and Republican successors in spite of the circumstances of his administration’s end.

As Palin matures as a potential national leader, her views will, one hopes, become more moderate and nuanced. Her New Reagan advisers will caution her against permitting this to happen. Lost in the fantasy that Reagan’s conservative bona fides (rather than the “R” after his name) won him the ‘80 election, they’ll urge her not to tamper with the time-tested Palin brand. But if she thinks she’s fully formed and ready to be President, she’ll never make it. She’ll fade away prematurely or, at best, squander her potential on a quixotic ‘12 bid that would probably relegate her to oblivion and her party to another generation in the wilderness. If she uses the next eight years wisely, focused more on substance than on politics, she could truly be the new Nixon, and a winner.

Comedy Isn’t Pretty — And Often Not Even Funny

June 12, 2009 by Frank Gannon | Filed Under American Politics, Comedy, Entertainment, Sarah Palin | 6 Comments 

After five years of working for and with David Letterman at Late Night, my respect and affection for him are pretty darn close to unbounded.

But, of course, that doesn’t mean that I think everything he does is OK — much less that every joke he tells is funny.

A recent unfortunate —and uncharacteristic— case in point is the small run —in the opening monologue and the Top Ten List— of marginally tasteless and arguably unfunny of material about Sarah Palin on Monday night’s show.

The hook was the Governor’s highly-publicized whirlwind trip to New York that had received saturation news coverage over the preceding weekend.

On Sunday’s itinerary was a family outing to the new Yankee Stadium with Rudy and Judith Giuliani.  And that’s where the trouble started.

Then, as you look at it, insult was added to injury a couple of minutes later with Number Two on the Top Ten List from the Home Office in Wahoo, Nebraska.

TOP TEN HIGHLIGHTS OF SARAH PALIN’S TRIP TO NEW YORK

10. Visited New York landmarks she normally only sees from Alaska.

9. Laughed at all the crazy-looking foreigners entering the U.N.

8. Made moose jerky on Rachael Ray

7. Keyed Tina Fey’s car

6.  After a wink and a nod, ended up with a kilo of crack

5.  Made coat out of New York City rat pelts

4.  Sat in for Kelly Ripa. Regis couldn’t tell the difference.

3. Finally met one of those Jewish people Mel Gibson’s always talking about.

2. Bought makeup at Blomingdale’s to update her “slutty flight attendant” look

1. Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman

I know at first hand and from considerable personal experience and observation that Dave is —despite his ostensibly prickly personality and self-proclaimed dumb guy persona— a highly intelligent, thoughtful, considerate, and sensitive fellow.

None of the jokes in question are very funny —with the exception of Numbers Ten and Six it has to be one of the lamest Top Ten lists in a long while— but that’s the law of averages, not the law of unintended consequences.  And I can assure you that the notion that he intentionally set out to insult or demean a pre-teen is, simply, off the table.  (The technicality is that the Palin daughter present at the ball game turned out to be 14 year old Willow rather than 18 year old single mom Bristol.)

To the extent that there may have been any operating principle behind what happened, I suspect it’s hiding in plain sight in the Number One Highlight of Sarah Palin’s Trip to New York: “Especially enjoyed not appearing on Letterman.”

There has been bad blood —entirely and gratuitously McCain (and by indirection McCain-Palin) generated— between the 2008 GOP presidential ticket and The Late Show with David Letterman.  Even after Senator McCain admitted screwing up and tried to set things right, he failed to deliver on a promised joint appearance  with his running mate.

To most people these events might seem like tempests in teapots.  But having been there and done that I know how seriously Dave takes his show and treats his audience.  Besides, he comes from a time and a place where, if you make a promise, you’re expected to keep it.

What would otherwise have been a minor blip noted only by those with highly sensitive blip monitors, has been turned into a brouhaha bordering on a cause celebre by the Palins — who have effectively charged Dave with pedophilia.  Whether this was done in a misguided attempt to make a point or in order to further an agenda will be the subject of debate for some time.

I think they made a mistake in not accepting Dave’s apology and moving on.  Partly because I think it would have been the right thing to do; and partly for the reasons put forward by Margaret Carlson on today’s Daily Beast:

…picking a fight with a trained comedian, refusing to accept his apology and continuing to battle after the white flag is shown reveals a complete lack of political sophistication.

Letterman apologized at unprecedented length for a comment about Palin’s recent trip to New York. There was, he said, “One awkward moment for Sarah Palin at the Yankee, during the seventh inning stretch, her daughter was knocked up by Alex Rodriguez.” To which the Palins shot back: “Laughter incited by sexually perverted comments made by a 62-year-old male celebrity aimed at a 14-year-old girl is… disgusting.”

Who said anything about a 14-year-old girl? Not Letterman. That would be… the Palins. It turns out it was Willow, not Bristol, who went to the baseball game. But who knew that until the Palins brought this “disgusting” comment so painful to their younger daughter to the attention of the 300 million people not tuned into David Letterman?

Letterman’s joke was indeed tasteless—he even owed A-Rod an apology. But I doubt there was another soul in the world who didn’t understand the joke to be about the older Palin daughter, who lapped Jamie Lynn Spears as the most famous pregnant teen in the world once she was trotted out at the Republican National Convention in August. Not that Bristol should have been left at home in the dark, but if you want a “zone of privacy” around your daughter, do you have her appear on stage with her then-fiancée hinting at prospects of a White House wedding waving to the crowd like Charles and Diana of the Klondike?

The Quayling Of Sarah

May 15, 2009 by David R. Stokes | Filed Under American Politics, Election 2012, History, Sarah Palin, U.S. History | 5 Comments 

With Dan Rather-like subjectivity, Chris Matthews talked recently about Alaska Governor Sarah Palin’s new book deal.

“Plus, Sarah Palin – now don’t laugh – is writing a book. Not just reading a book: writing a book. Actually, in the word of the publisher, she’s collaborating on a book. I love the way that sounds. Does that mean that she answers questions of the writer, and then the writer writes the book? I guess the reason to have someone write a book for you and claim it’s your book is you get to do a nation-wide book tour, and act the part of a, of an author yourself.”

Well, in the famous laugh-words of Ralph Kramden: “Har-har-hardy-har-har.”

I’m sure some network executive was at that very moment picking up the phone and calling yet another NBC bigwig. The conversation probably went something like:

“Hey, did you just hear Chris – what’s his name? – Yeah, that’s him. Well, I was thinkin’ that we might want to review our plans about sending the dude with the floppy hair out to California.”

“You mean Conan The Barbarian?”

“No, his name is O’Brien, I think.”

“Whatever – I usually watch the Hannity encore on Fox News at that time.”

“Ok, Ok – not the point. What I am saying is – I think this Matthews guy may be pretty funny – and we could get him for less money for chin man’s replacement. He’s cheap and easy, I hear. Real easy, in fact, you just gotta make his legs tingle and you have him at ‘Hello.’”

Of course, the MSNBC host of Hardball wasn’t the only talking head trying to hide a smirk – the way disgraced former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich tries to hide his hair – when describing Palin’s multi-million dollar pact with publishing giant HarperCollins. The widely reported story received coverage from the mainstream media that was occasionally only dismissive.

That’s because most of the time it was outright derisive.

The “Dan Quayling” of Sarah Palin continues and this make-her-look-stupid-campaign testifies to the fact that she remains a formidable political figure. The irony of this is largely lost on most of the “beautiful” minds over at NBC, MSNBC, CNN, CBS, & ABC, where the teleprompters double as mirrors.

The charismatic Governor of Alaska draws enthusiastic crowds wherever she goes – even after the defeat of the Republican ticket at the hands of the yes-we-can guys. And the very idea that she can make millions with a book at a time when publishers are shy about taking many risks in these challenging economic times, suggests that the lady has not-too-shabby metaphorical legs, as well as real ones.

Any nine-year-old child or MSNBC show host (pardon the redundancy) understands that the idea is to vex and therefore hex Sarah Palin. The goal is to click repeatedly on her image and drag her into a folder marked either “too dumb to lead,” or “demonize by caricature.”

The problem is, all this will do is make her more popular with an important constituency – her core base, in fact – that could very well propel her to the Republican presidential nomination in 2012. Sure, it’s way too early. But did anyone really think a community organizer from Chicago, who had just been elected to his first term as a junior senator, would beat a presumptive nominee named Hillary, not to mention mop up the floor with a genuine American hero en route to the White House, way back in 2005?

For Matthews et al to mock Sarah Palin’s book deal in a way that suggests she doesn’t know how to write and therefore has to depend on a “collaborator” – that word used almost as a synonym for “sneer” by Chris Matthews – is beyond hypocritical.

It’s also stupid.

He apparently has so little respect for his audience that he assumes they won’t dig into this a little more. Or maybe Matthews has studied his show’s demographics and is therefore confident that his viewers themselves don’t read much beyond the titles touted on his show – and maybe those of Keith Olberman, Nora O’Donnell, and Rachel Maddow.

I write, you decide.

Chris Matthews is an all-things-Kennedy fan from way back (though as a kid, he wanted Nixon to beat JFK in 1960 and cried when RN lost), so while he mocks Palin he is, of course, aware that there is a ghost, or at least a skeleton, in the Camelot closet.

When I was a young boy, my dad gave me a copy of Profiles in Courage, written by none other than John Fitzgerald Kennedy. It took me a while, but I made my way through it and still have that copy in my library. It was a cool book about statesmen who had defied the political correctness of their day (another irony?) and did what they thought was right. It was as much a work about character as it was about courage.

I loved the book and the author became an early hero of mine. When he was killed, I cried.

Later, though, I learned – as most of us do when we grow up – that the story behind the story is often the real story. Discovering that the man who wrote about two important virtues and values seemed himself to be deficient in both was, well, a bummer, to say the least. He had a lot of girl friends, a practice that didn’t seem to reinforce the idea of sterling character. But, at least, I still had that courage thing to embrace.

Then I found out – oh, sad, sad day that it was – that the book I loved, that little bestseller that had won a Pulitzer Prize (which I heard was, like, a really big deal), had been written mostly by, gulp, someone else.

I must have spent days walking around in a funk, looking down at bells at the bottoms of my not-quite-long-enough-geek-jeans, for days.

A guy named “Theodore” had done most of the work, I heard. Theodore? The very name didn’t not bespeak, “cool” as Kennedy’s did. I had an image in my head of a bookish guy with old-man glasses. So, I looked him up in the library – and sure enough.

Then it got worse. You remember that Pulitzer Prize? Well, I came to find out that John F. Kennedy’s daddy – a pretty rich and powerful guy, I was told – got a buddy of his on the Pulitzer committee, New York Times columnist Arthur Krock, to champion his boy’s book. Originally, the book was not on the committee’s short list, one that had been submitted by some expert reviewers, but somehow it made it to that important table. At any rate, it wasn’t as “weighty” as prize winners usually turned out to be. But, before long “it came out of nowhere” and won the roses.

It was all pretty good publicity in the run up to the 1960 campaign. After all, though most candidates these days have books out while they run for the big office, Kennedy was one of the pioneers of the practice. And his had won a Pulitzer, which said that he was smart, erudite, eloquent, and therefore would make a good leader.

But his erudition and eloquence were implants.

So, Mr. Matthews – go ahead and make fun of Sarah Palin. Do your best to color her ditzy and as someone with no depth. But just remember, she actually has character and courage. And Americans will be seeing more of her graceful, politically popular, and winning profile for many years to come.

Trig Palin…

April 28, 2009 by John H. Taylor | Filed Under News media, Sarah Palin | 1 Comment 

…should hire Ed Whelan.

Maybe He Should Have Tried Michael P.

February 12, 2009 by Robert Nedelkoff | Filed Under American Politics, Media, News media, Sarah Palin, Terrorism | Leave a Comment 

CNN reports that former Weather Underground leader/education professor/2008 campaign albatross Bill Ayers told the New York Times, in an article to appear in its Sunday magazine, that he wrote to Alaska Governor and former vice-presidential candidate  Sarah Palin not long after Election Day:

“I suggested that we have a talk show together called ‘Pallin’ Around With Sarah and Bill.’ I haven’t heard back.”

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