From a NYT book review of "Pat and Dick/The Nixons, an Intimate Portrait of a Marriage," by Will Swift.
Swift succeeds in showing a young couple united by a degree of class resentment and a political understanding of how their apparent ordinariness could spark a sense of sympathetic identification in the mass of voters who would eventually form Nixon’s “silent majority.” More profoundly, the couple shared what the author calls “an underlying, no-nonsense melancholy” that derived from “the sadness of their difficult childhoods.”
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Just because Kennedy stole the election there is no reason for Nixon having Kennedy shot. The confession was caught on tape -- almost eighteen-and-a-half minutes.
Not so much, "The Kennedy's" but "The Kennedy People" who stole the election. No doubt about it. Nixon, did not choose to contest it as it would be a divisive issue to Americans, unlike Gore who didn't give a s--t.
Dead people voting in Illinois? Never-existent people voting in Texas? That's not stealing an election. That's the Democrats' S.O.P.
South Texas and Chicago in 1960? Need a few votes?
Nixon also thought it likely that the election had been "stolen" in Illinois and elsewhere. He also declined to make that an issue because (1) there could be no certain proof and (2) a fight over the issue would damage the country. He further rightly assumed that he might (not would) get another chance to run for President. Not only did he not protest the election result, he did not make it a political issue or talking point.
Contrast that with the unending howl over the 2000 election.
In 1960, Chicago, controlled by Mayor Daly, came in long after the rest of Illinois and, amazingly, had just enough votes to give Illinois to Kennedy. What a surprise.
Nixon's biggest mistake was to resign. He should've forced Republicans to simply refuse to convict for any reason.
Let's be blunt: He's done far less than Obama has done to date.
I was a Democrat when Nixon resigned, so much so that I took our Black and white TV with us so I would be able to see the resignation live when we went camping. Looking back on it, I see it as Watergate happened, LBJ was doing the same thing but one man was castigated for what someone did in his name and one wasn't for many actions of the same. It was media frenzy led. I know that now, it was a long time ago and I have learned a lot in the meantime. That is why I blog (not often) as Rockport Conservative. I've learned a lot.
Nixon was born as poor as anyone who ever became President. Perhaps the poorest. He had a chip on the shoulder no doubt, and likewise many of his opponents were driven by pure snobbery. Class warfare in this case did not line up with the expected political sides.
This doesn't come up much, as also with the class conflict of today, where the uppers are Democrats and liberal Republicans, and the middle-lowers are conservative Republicans.
I'm sure the NYT review is sympathetic toward the Nixons.
OH! sarc/ off.
Nixon, did not choose to contest it as it would be a divisive issue to Americans, unlike Gore who didn't give a s--t
Also note that Nixon chose to resign rather than put the country through the impeachment battle that Clinton did.
Clinton would have burned the tapes.
Kennedy DID steal the 1960 election. It all worked out in the end, though, so whatevs.
In the fourth Kennedy-Nixon debate in 1960, Nixon said three times, "America can't stand pat." What. A. Doofus.
In his biography, the late columnist Bob Novak wrote that the Wall St. J. sent a team a reporters to look into allegations that JFK's father paid off West Va. politicians to rig the primary vote. The story was to have run just as the Dem. Convention was starting. Novak, who at the time worked for the Journal, wrote that the publisher killed the story, saying that his newspaper wasn't going to throw the election into turmoil.
She was right on both counts.
The Nixon Coup.
Mark Felt got superlative revenge. L Patrick Gray was an honorable man unlike Felt.
A Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
When you look back, you can see that commies took down 3 U.S. Presidents in a row, Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. Fortunately, the country was more resilient than its Presidents.
Waaaaahhhh.
Well they did succeed with the Southern Strategy.
It's hard to disagree with what Pat says about 1960 (although Watergate is a different matter).
I didn't vote for Nixon in 1960 because I wasn't 21 (and that's how old you had to be to vote in those dark and oppressive days), but I did vote for him in 1968 and 1972. Given the alternatives, I'm glad I did so. But Nixon was the beginning of my long education about moderate Republicans -- they ought to be electable, and they ought to move the country in the right direction, but they don't. It took awhile for me to learn that: In 1980 Reagan was my third choice, after Howard Baker and George Bush, the greater fool I.
But to give Nixon his due, if I were writing an alternative history in which Nixon won the 1960 election (JFK didn't pick LBJ for VP and lost Texas, and did something to tick off Mayor Daley and lost Illinois), a younger, less insecure Nixon, would have avoided the morass of Viet Nam (he didn't have to prove he was anti-Communist), would have prevented the establishment of the Berlin Wall, and would have given the Cuban resistance the support they needed to overthrow Castro. Anyone who wants to write that novel has my permission to do so, no charge.
Nixon would probably have followed Eisenhower's advice on VN and Ike had refused to bail out the French. There is a fair case to be made that a better policy might have been to bail them out but they had all the wrong ideas of what they wanted.
Kennedy used all sorts of bogus themes in 1960; "missile gap" which vanished once elected; Quemoy and Matsu, a question on my NYT crossword yesterday; and his fecklessness with the Soviets which probable got him into trouble in Cuba.
A very different world would be ours.
1960 South goes for JFK = OK
1968 South votes for Nixon = racism
1976 South votes for Carter = OK
The liberal mind. "Southern Strategy" LOL.
Democrats never forgive, never forget, and never shut up.
Democrats never forgive, never forget, and never shut up.
A Vast Left Wing Conspiracy.
Heh, indeedy. Republicans think blacks and women voting is voter fraud, so they never accept Democratic wins.
Contrast that with the unending howl over the 2000 election.
Especially considering how so much of the howl can be summed up as “it’s unfair that our voters are too stupid to know that you don’t spell Al Gore with P-A-T-B-U-C-H-A-N-A-N.”
I kind of prefer the alternate history where President Nixon sends in Dr. Manhattan to bring the Viet Cong to their knees.
1968 South votes for Nixon = racism
Well, actually ...
1968 South votes for Wallace = Democrat racism
"Republicans think blacks and women voting is voter fraud"
Too crazy to even refute.
Titus: "Well they did succeed with the Southern Strategy"
When?
"Heh, indeedy. Republicans think blacks and women voting is voter fraud, so they never accept Democratic wins."
Only the dead ones.
Nixon would have just outlawed the costumed crime fighters.
garage mahal said...
Heh, indeedy. Republicans think blacks and women voting is voter fraud, so they never accept Democratic wins.
Yeah, Lincoln was a Democrat, George Wallace was a Republican, white Republican Redeemers passed Jim Crow laws. That is why American History is no longer a required course in high schools and colleges. Ways too embarrassing for some to face historic facts.
For those who complain, these historic "facts" are specifically revised to save gm's head from exploding.
It won't happen for another generation or two, but there will be a revisionist history of Nixon. I read the review. It didn't drip with malice and there were no cheap shots. So that's a start......He did have a successful marriage. I was a shrewd judge of hot girls at the time, and Julie Nixon was hot.
"Julie Nixon was hot."
That nice Eisenhower boy thought so.
Astute woman.
Rick Caird said...
In 1960, Chicago, controlled by Mayor Daly, came in long after the rest of Illinois and, amazingly, had just enough votes to give Illinois to Kennedy. What a surprise.
Here In Illinois we take vote fraud for granted.So much so that when the rest of the country talks seriously about a Republican running for mayor of the city of Chicago or for Governor, we just shake our heads and laugh.
Illinois. Where even the Republicans are Democrats.
Nixon should have contested the election. It was a bad precedent. Today's Democrats think it's their right and privilege to steal elections (see for instance garage's remarks above). Democrats have never forgiven Dubya for fighting back.
"Democrats have never forgiven Dubya for fighting back."
Democrats have never forgiven Nixon for winning. Especially the race against Helen Gahagan Douglas, for the sin of calling a fellow traveler a fellow traveler. Interestingly enough, JFK was pleased to see Nixon win that race. There was no love lost between JFK and Douglas.
i'd Lovvve to see the studies undergirding the heh "observation" that a "difficult childhood" begets a melancholic temperament[in adulthood]. i call Poop Psychology on this
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