From "How Richard Nixon captured white rage - and laid the groundwork for Donald Trump" by Scott Laderman (which I originally encountered at The Eagle, but I see that it's also in The Washington Post, here). Laderman is a history professor and the author of "The 'Silent Majority' Speech: Richard Nixon, the Vietnam War, and the Origins of the New Right." This new book is only 192 pages and costs $31.69 on Kindle — $107.70 as a hardback book. Those are some strange prices!
Anyway... I've had Nixon's "silent majority" speech noted on my calendar — on November 3rd — for a long time, and I really wanted to blog it for you as one of my "50 years ago today" posts. I tried watching the speech yesterday, but I could not make it. It is so awkward and painful:
Now that I know "silent majority" is at the very end, I'll recommend starting here, with "I know it may not be fashionable to speak of patriotism or national destiny these days...":
Please note that Nixon's appeal to the great silent majority in this speech is completely about the Vietnam War. He's trying to summon support for his effort to "win the peace." There's nothing racial or anti-youth in this speech. There's nothing divisive in what he's saying: "Let us be united for peace." Of course, everyone I knew hated him. I was a couple months into my college career at the time, and I assure you we all hooted at the TV screen and regarded him as a horrendous villain, whatever he did.
Two hundred years ago this Nation was weak and poor. But even then, America was the hope of millions in the world. Today we have become the strongest and richest nation in the world. And the wheel of destiny has turned so that any hope the world has for the survival of peace and freedom will be determined by whether the American people have the moral stamina and the courage to meet the challenge of free world leadership.ADDED: In saying "to you, the great silent majority," he had to be leaving some people out. Like Hillary with her "basket of deplorables" or Romney with his 47%, Nixon had the idea that some Americans could not be reached. And he set this group to the side as he made his appeal. Just before he got to the part of the speech quoted above, he spoke of a minority, and these were the people exemplified by the protest sign, "Lose in Vietnam, bring the boys home." He said that "a vocal minority" can't "dictate" the policy. But he did address the minority with kind words:
Let historians not record that when America was the most powerful nation in the world we passed on the other side of the road and allowed the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people to be suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.
And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.
I respect your idealism. I share your concern for peace. I want peace as much as you do.... I want to end [the war] so that the energy and dedication of you, our young people, now too often directed into bitter hatred against those responsible for the war, can be turned to the great challenges of peace, a better life for all Americans, a better life for all people on this earth.
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99 comments:
So fifty years ago Richard Nixon told himself that there’s a young guy fresh out of Wharton who will be running for President in 2016 and if I get right on it I can lay the groundwork for his campaign.
Yeah, I can totally see that.
pretzel logic...........
From the urban dictionary
"fallible, twisted or circular reasoning that when dissected is wrong, does not make sense or does not explain the situation rationally."
The uninterested majority ought to figure in. I don't remember it, having more interesting things to do.
Interesting things to do ought to be added to the poverty list.
They described calls for unity as divisive? Support for the forgotten and neglected as appeals to whites?
Some things never change.
I remember Nixon resigning, though. That upset the gf and there was no sex for a while.
Nice anniversary remembrance. I can see why someone might try to draw parallels to current times- there’s kids causing trouble, groups of people with relatively higher levels of disdain for the President and his style, etc. but the kids know are whinging about not having free tuition and does it make sense to pacify the loathing adults acting like they’re toddlers having a fit on the floor of the grocery store because there’s a guy in the white house that isn’t like them and their friends? Their corrupt friends in some cases?
Meanwhile the economy is humming along - those ‘forgotten’ silent majority types have jobs or better jobs, their economic well bring has improved...earnings are up strongly again this quarter- ‘surprisingly’...
Racist Nixon and the not-so-silent minority.
My understanding is that it's hard for experts to point to a speech that actually changed minds: from position A on an issue to position B. Nixon's silent majority speech is one. He had promised in the 1968 election that he had a plan for peace, and he won a tight election at least partly on that promise. In the speech he convinced "his" voters that it would be best to wait until peace could be achieved with some kind of honour (without paraphrasing Chamberlain after Munich too much). Nixon won a landslide in 1972 against an opponent who promised immediate withdrawal.
Before Nixon, the Silent Majority referred to the Dead.
Well, after Nixon's "Silent Majority" Speech in Nov 1969, he went on to:
1. Nov '72: Win an epic political landslide for reelection, by crushing Democrat McGovern 61% to 37% and winning 49 states.
2. Jan '73: Signing the Paris Peace Accords to end the Vietnam War.
Those two facts seem a bit relevant to his prior speech, No?
With the Left, everything has to be about race. Ann correctly notes that the speech has nothing to do with race.
A black Princeton prof was on Book TV yesterday. She has a JD from Harvard and a LLM from Georgetown. She got pulled over for doing 67 in a 45 mph zone. Because she had unpaid parking tickets, she was arrested and cuffed. It made the NYT because she claimed the incident was about race.
And I want to know how many books this guy sells at those prices.
President Nixon found a way out of the Vietnam War, no matter how clumsy that way might have been.
I was a leader of the anti-war movement in my little region of Illinois. There was a time when I hated Nixon. Over the decades, I've learned to appreciate Nixon for what he did. He got us the hell out, something Democratic presidents simply could not or would not do.
Almost all people want to live, work and go to church and school among their own kind. This prattling that this normal human desire is racism is hateful, vicious and stupid.
I love the exotic and the different. I've lived in majority black, gay and Asian neighborhoods in Chicago, San Francisco and New York City. Most of my high school classmates from my teeny tiny all white hometown in Illinois lived almost entirely among their own kind their entire lives.
This is not a pathology for the government and schools to cure. It's normal human behavior to want to live among your own kind in a neighborhood where everybody shares your values and habits. Humans have the right to live in the traditional manner. The individual is not an experimental lab rat to be reshaped by social engineers.
President Nixon was talking to the Deplorables before the radicals' media echo chamber managed to smear them 6 ways from Sunday. It was not about race. Race was one of the 6 ways to smear them. It was then, and is now, all about the law abiding Middle Class Voters Privilege to elect our Government inherited from Washington , Jackson ,and Lincoln. Richard Nixon only had the brilliant idea not to attack those voters.
That Nixonian move was what got the Weathermen Radicals' counter move to redirect all their efforts into attacking through EDU at all levels.They quit attacking the middle class voters directly and instead made an all out mass invasion and sneak attack on the middle class voters' children trapped in the public schools and the elite colleges.
But the uncensored Internet has put it all up for grabs again.
The hatred of Nixon was always misguided. Every glimpse of him in person turns up an all around considerate guy even to people who couldn't possibly do anything for him. He seems to have carried that into all matters.
"valued their all-white neighborhoods..." Slander, then and now.
There was nothing about race in Nixon's rhetoric, either explicitly or implicitly, except for those who see racism behind every phrase, like lily-white liberals who are now digging into history to find it.
There's also the parallel of Democrats blaming Republicans for mistakes made by Democrats. I was well into high school before understanding the war wasn't all Nixon's fault. Nice job managing the narrative from my leftie middle school history teachers.
This new book is only 192 pages and costs $31.69 on Kindle — $107.70 as a hardback book. Those are some strange prices!
That's ok. The students who are required to buy the book can just take out another student loan.
The universities are just plain evil.
All history must be viewed in racial terms, even those events that had absolutely nothing to do with race, and with bonus points for connecting Trump to Nixon. Having been there at the time and having been an adult, my reaction to the hippie/druggie/STD revolution of the late sixties and seventies was amusement that anyone could be mistaking the narcissism and selfishness of the children of the antiwar left for some type of principled movement. They wanted to get high and screw - the antiwar crap was just the vehicle that gave them the excuse to do so.
And so tonight — to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans — I ask for your support.
Their support, for ENDING THE WAR. Nixon (Unlike the Democrats,) wanted to End the War, and bring our boys home: THIS is why the left HATED Him
Did Johnson ever have any plans for ending the war? Did Humphrey ?
Sure, they TALKED about ending the war, but weren't they just like O'Bama? Saying they wanted to end the war, but dragging it out for years and years.
Vietnamifcation WORKED. Within a few (FEW) years, the only american forces in vietnam were flying over it.
As Al Smith would say, Let's take a look at the record...
DEMOCRATS BRING WARS REPUBLICANS BRING PEACE...
To my mind, Trump is like Nixon only in the level of hate he engenders from his political foes. That's about it. Nixon did get us out of Vietnam and if he did so in a way that upset some of the older Boomers, well so be it. Switching to the lottery effectively ended the anti-war movement and that was an act of political genius. If Obama had been as effective with Afghanistan, would have been out of there by 2013 (calculating our involvement in Vietnam from May, 1961). And yet, there we are. I worked for McGovern in 1972, but got over the Nixon hate by the time I was 20. You older Boomers just couldn't let it go.
In the short exert your perfesser uses "White" 4 times labels his piece "White rage". Of course the USA was almost 90% white in 1972, and blacks were NOT excluded from Nixon's speech, unless they were Negative nabobs of Negativism or anti-war activists.
You wonder why this white male perfesser hates whites so much.
Anyway, I couldn't get through the speech. Nixon was a globalist and Wilsonian world saver. He was also an anti-communist, which is why the Right supported him. But had he lived longer he'd have supported the Iraq war. Policy-wise he was a much smarter Bush II. Example: When Gorbachev withdrew from Eastern Europe, Nixon wanted the USA to give him a $60 Billion aid package to "Stabilize" the former USSR.
And if someone starts writing about George Wallace and Busing. Just remember its Busing with ONE s - NOT BUSSING!
I never noticed the similarity in physical appearance before but Adam Schiff looks a fair bit like Richard Nixon. Schiff has a ways to go before his jowels get a little more puffy but he already has the hairline and facial shape. Odd...
A leftist history professor misrepresenting history to criticize Trump and to gin up interest in his new book. Not buying it.
One could just as easily declare FDR's Four Freedoms speech to be about white fears. The substance of the speech really doesn't matter.
🎶He's getting better all the time.
We used to be mad at our schools (ahhh),
The teachers that taught us weren't cool (ahhh),
They turned us around, we were acting like clowns,
We couldn't abide by their rules.
I've got to admit he's getting better,
Better all the time (he can't get no worse)...🎶
Please note that Nixon's appeal to the great silent majority in this speech is completely about the Vietnam War. He's trying to summon support for his effort to "win the peace." There's nothing racial or anti-youth in this speech. There's nothing divisive in what he's saying: "Let us be united for peace."
Althouse, you're just not educated and intelligent enough to understand what everything in history is *really* about.
I suggest getting Meade to apply a ball-peen hammer to your head a few times with sufficient force to improve your understanding.
Sorry , Nixon was wrong about your 60's idealism. It wasn't idealism but cowardice and "me,me,me.". Your generation spit on soldiers returning from Vietnam, started the drug epidemic and screwed like bunnies. No scholarship, always peering into the basement, idealism my arse. Worse group in American history. Take a bow Ann.
“ ‘the white working and middle classes of the nation's heartland....’ ”
How racist is that?
Weren’t there are non-white working class and middle class people in 1968?
I never thought "Ironbutt" Nixon was a villain, and certainly not a crook, but I thought he had personality problems that were going to cause trouble and I thought that when he had said "You won't have Richard Nixon to kick around anymore" that was it and he should have stuck with it.
So I voted for Humphrey in 1968 and McGovern in 1972 though making me vote for a pair of dofooses like that may be the last thing I forgive Richard Nixon for.
I do remember the mindless rage of the left at the time and the number of people thrown out of the sled to feed the wolves and jackals when they could not get to Nixon himself after the pardon. These lynchings were not a proud moment in American history.
Spiro Agnew (remember him?) had been accused of playing the white-rage card when in Maryland politics. He eventually was accused of worse.
Not diversitist. Not exclusive. Not a setup for color blocs and division.
Or Obama and his "bitter clingers" and "burdens" remark. That said, with majority support, what compelled Republican operatives to burglarize a Democrat office. Nixon, for his part, was undone by loyalty and a ravenous WaPo. Then, deja vu, the anti-war activists decried give peace a chance.
History professor Scott Laderman hears the Checkers Whistle in Nixon's speech.
"By this he was referring to the white working and middle classes ..."
If the word 'white' were suddenly to pop out of existence, these people would be mute.
My youngest daughter took a course called "US History Since 1877" at the U of Arizona in 2008. On her final exam review guide, I found a definition of "The Silent Majority" as "White people who refused to accept the 1964 Civil Rights Act." This is not new. It has been going on for over 20 years. Her study guide also informed her that Plains Indians, who were hunter gatherers, taught the settlers of the West to farm.
Universities have been lying to students since Vietnam.
Apparently the title “history professor” allows one to just make shit up and publicly libel an entire class of people—as long as they’re white.
Otherwise, of course, it would be racist.
Shouting Thomas said...
President Nixon found a way out of the Vietnam War, no matter how clumsy that way might have been.
What do you think of the claim (by Christopher Hitchens most publicly, but by others as well) that the Nixon campaign sabotaged the peace talks while Johnson was president and when Nixon finally achieved an agreement 5 years and many thousands of lives later, it was basically the same peace the Norks were ready to give Johnson in 1967?
I say that if Nixon had a teleprompter, no way he would have been impeached. As it was, he couldn't maintain eye contact with the people whose support he needed.
I originally thought it was Pat Buchanan who came up with the phrase, but on 2nd thought it was probably Safire, since Buchanan was doing a lot of writing for Agnew during this time. Anyway, the "Silent Majority" didn't really help Nixon out during Watergate. His "silent majority" had voted for him in 1972, because they'd disliked McGovern (my apolitical mother called him "Whiny Willie") - how people ever voted FOR Nixon?
That's because Nixon didn't stand for anything except pragmatic moderation in domestic affairs, anti-communism, and a interventionist foreign policy. Reading a book on Nixon, it was almost impossible to know where he'd jump on domestic policy, every issue was up for grabs and he'd go Right this time, and Left the next time. He became POTUS because people were tired of LBJ/Humphrey and got reelected because the D's nominated Muskie. Hopefully, the D's will shoot themselves in the foot again in 2020.
The article is historical revision through the lens of identity politics.
Look at the nations of Africa. As the European nations withdrew and each became independent, they quickly devolved into warring tribes, fired by resentment and blame, fighting over the resources. There was nothing greater for the tribes to unite around. Identity politics on display.
The left in America has embraced identity politics and it has spread like a cancer in academia, destroying the those higher ideals our nation has historically been united by.
Nixon had a Quaker mother who he thought was a saint. Nixon's fundamental decency did him in. Plus, he recorded himself.
Trump grew up thinking that rather than turning the other cheek, you hit the guy who tormented you in the head with with a rock. Like I said the other day, it's the difference between casting a stone (Obama) and throwing a rock (Trump).
A notional Trump response to Trump's appearing on tape organizing a cover-up (in order):
1. It's fake. 2. It's edited. 3. There's nothing wrong on this tape. It's perfect. 4. You've always hated me because you are such a loser. 5. The American people have never been better off. What's wrong with you? 6. Why do you hate America? 7. You are a lying creep. 8. Obama did the same and worse, and you ignored it. 9. Hillary Clinton, James Comey, John Brennan, Sally Yates, and James Clapper all belong in jail, and you are pushing the limit yourself. 10. I'm the best thing that ever happened to you and your lousy newspaper/news channel/political scandal sheet/401(K) account/psychotherapist. 11. Take a look at my beautiful wife and children and eat your heart out, loser. 12. Is your daughter out of jail yet? Too bad about the kid.
The hell of it is, most of those things would be true.
It would have been better if Nelson Rockefeller had become president in 1968. Also being a big state liberal he would have largely followed the same policies as Nixon, but he did not have a five o'clock shadow and he had not run against (an probably won, but for widespread election fraud nationwide) Saint Jack of the Brave New World.
I listened to the full speech. It was smart, focused, substantive. Dealt with high level matters of life and death, war and peace. No mention of the Chinese or Soviets, the Communist puppet-masters of the North Vietnamese. No mention of the Cold War.
Of course ignorant college kids at the time didn't like the speech, because they wanted immediate withdrawal, and didn't care what happened to the South Vietnamese or American national interest.
The omitted piece of history, though, is that the Right didn't like the speech either, because Nixon didn't speak of winning the war. They felt this was setting the stage for a strategic retreat.
The thing that struck me most was how adult the speech was. Today, we get mostly infantile tirades based on trivial matters (the Ukranian phone call!). So, I've come to appreciate Nixon, as he helped drive a wedge between the ChiComs and the Soviets, which, ultimately helped lead via Reagan to a collapse of the Soviet Empire.
"He's trying to summon support for his effort to "win the peace.""
He failed. Then again, you can only win a war, or get out.
"There's nothing racial or anti-youth in this speech."
Of course not. But the prog narrative was going strong even then. Once upon a time, it seems, you fell for it. In 2016, you again fell for "Trump is too chaotic." Now what?
"and I assure you we all hooted at the TV screen and regarded him as a horrendous villain, whatever he did."
Operative words: whatever he did. The anti-prog is always a villain, whatever he does. So are we deplorables. That's why we righties always assume bad faith on the left, and never take any particular accusations seriously.
"Nixon understood that, by 1968, millions of white Americans detested what they saw as growing disrespect for authority and the American way...."
Hmmm...the populace of a healthy democracy or democratic republic should have and always maintain a certain "disrespect for authority" that issues from anywhere but themselves.
And...what is the "American Way?" I know it is a propaganda term of long-standing, but what, exactly, comprises the American Way? I'm sure the answer differs according to who is asked.
The wikipedia article on The Silent Majority
gives citations back as far as 1831.
"What do you think of the claim (by Christopher Hitchens most publicly, but by others as well) that the Nixon campaign sabotaged the peace talks while Johnson was president and when Nixon finally achieved an agreement 5 years and many thousands of lives later, it was basically the same peace the Norks were ready to give Johnson in 1967?"
Seems to have been true.
It would have been better if Nixon had toughed it out and fought the impeachment. He would have prevailed and the smack down to the Democrats would have spared the nation a lot of the crap they have done over the last forty years.
What do you think of the claim (by Christopher Hitchens most publicly, but by others as well) that the Nixon campaign sabotaged the peace talks while Johnson was president and when Nixon finally achieved an agreement 5 years and many thousands of lives later, it was basically the same peace the Norks were ready to give Johnson in 1967?
I think it's a lie, and a stupid lie that any intelligent person should be able to see right through. The North Vietnamese only seriously negotiated with the US and South Vietnam after Haiphong harbor was mined and the B-52s plastered the Hell out of Hanoi. Fundamentally Nixon gave the North Vietnamese a bleak choice: give us what we want or we bomb Hanoi until there isn't a brick sitting on top of a brick. All LBJ did with his "signaling" was make himself look stupid.
As a 1968 draftee I wish he had done the bombing in 1969. I probably wouldn't have had to serve the whole two years.
Also being a big state liberal he would have largely followed the same policies as Nixon, but he did not have a five o'clock shadow
Rockefeller was dyslexic and read nothing. He was an idiot protected by all the sycophants he hired. Read his biography. I have.
[T]he 'silent majority' was about race, yes, but it was also about youth. Millions of patriotic Americans despised the young activists
Millions of *young* Americans despised the young activists, who made up a small fraction of their age group. A historian should know that.
What do you think of the claim (by Christopher Hitchens most publicly, but by others as well) that the Nixon campaign sabotaged the peace talks while Johnson was president
The usual bullshit. About as reliable as the theory that Bush I flew in an SR 71 to tell the Iranians to hold the hostages.
"My youngest daughter took a course called "US History Since 1877"
one of the constant lies is that Nixon won in 1968 based on the "Southern Strategy" full of "dog whistles" of racism. Its become a Liberal/Left myth.
The fact is Nixon in 1968 only won 5 southern states, and he'd won three of those 1960: Va, Florida, Tennessee. In 1968, Texas went for Humphrey, and Nixon got 13% of the vote in Alabama and Mississippi. Humphrey actually got more votes in the Deep South (Miss, Alabama, LA, Ark, Georgia) than Nixon.
It is striking how very UNTrumplike that is. How very much better than Trump. The linked article is crap, as Ann shows of course.
I'll just say it again: America was 90% white during this time. Talking about the "white working class or White middle class" is redundant.
"Reactionaries."
Everyone who doesn't agree with me is an extremist. Anyone not on the far Left is a reactionary. That's some mighty fine historical scholarship, there; mighty fine.
Cookie
The American Way at a minimum excludes death camps. That distinguishes it from, say, the Russian Communist Way, the Chinese Communist Way, the Khmer Rouge way,the North Korean Way.
The white-hot rage of the non-shouters, of course.
Nixon ended the war, and no bitching from Dems will change that. The US had been involved militarily, escalating through the years, since Truman administration, and any president could have withdrawn our troops at any time, but they didn't, not even St. Jack. Nobody was trying to win that undeclared war, and Johnson publicly admitted it, in so many words. We didn't need the Pentagon Papers to tell us that.
This is less like Hillary's basket of Deplorables than like MAGA. Hillary assumed that the Deplorables were irredeemable, and dismissed them. Nixon made his remarks to the American people as a whole, but Ms. Clinton made them at an LGBT for Hillary gala -- just a bunch of girlfriends and real talk.
"Silent Majority" is like MAGA because there's nothing racial or sinister about it, except in the fevered minds of leftists. They got to decide what it meant, proving Nixon right, ironically enough, just as the America-haters of today turned MAGA into a racist symbol, with all the ignominy of Pepe, and the OK hand sign.
"Seems to have been true."
Based on Johnson administration and deep state spying on the Nixon campaign.
The secret war on Cambodia took place on Nixon's watch, which has been blamed for the coming to power of the Khmer Rouge.
Interesting that my comments are disappearing. Am I on Althouse's ban list ?
Richard Nixon wasn't particularly likable. Neither was LBJ. We got two unlikable Presidents in a row. LBJ was hated by the left with as much intensity as Nixon,but Nixon was the one they did a job on. Why didn't Ellsberg leak the Pentagon Papers during the LBJ years? Why didn't Felt leak info about the FBI's more intrusive activities during the LBJ years?....The resignation of Nixon is universally portrayed as a triumph of the forces of good. Has some historian or scholar ever examined the possibility that there might have been some down sides to it? There are revisionist articles on Churchill, Lincoln, and even such revered figures as Mao and Stalin, but I've yet to read a revisionist account of Nixon.
"It would have been better if Nixon had toughed it out and fought the impeachment. He would have prevailed...."
No, he wouldn't have. He knew it and that's why he resigned.
He became POTUS because people were tired of LBJ/Humphrey and got reelected because the D's nominated Muskie.
This must be what they mean, by watching two movies.
I thought the D's nominated the B-24 pilot from South Dakota?
Nixon had lost the support of his party so he resigned. LBJ had lost the support of his party in 1968, so he chose not to run for another term. Compare and contrast.
Robert Cook said...
"It would have been better if Nixon had toughed it out and fought the impeachment. He would have prevailed...."
No, he wouldn't have. He knew it and that's why he resigned.
Yeah, he did a head count before resigning. Thanks for the link. I found this particularly interesting: "Johnson also ordered the FBI to surveil the Nixon campaign and to figure out if Nixon was personally involved in the back channel operation."
A Democrat using the FBI to spy on a political rival? Trump is like Nixon!
Anyway, the article gives good support that the claim is true, but also concludes that it had no real world effect. So Hitchens was half right. In the end, it's just more evidence that they all suck.
History is not kind, though, to that speech and its goals, is it? South Vietnam fell to the North 6 years later. Nixon wasn't smart enough to realize that the South was always going to lose unless the North was totally obliterated, or unless the US stayed forever. We have learned nothing since then, either.
in reality, the Johnson administration, was betraying an ally, they had created through the coup against diem, relying on bad info, and we were fighting alongside them for nearly three years had advisors there since 1960,
the Nixon administration, had tried to employ proxies notably Iran for the Middle East, but the fall of the Shah,
so alt verse reality, I think jeff greenfield did one where rfk won,
the Vietcong had been operating from Cambodia, as a sanctuary, and they had another supply line up laos way, if you're fighting a war, you handled that business first, but ultimately the Chinese and the soviets were at the other end of the line,
Thank you for putting this together. It’s such a great example of how the “talking heads” corrupt everything they touch. And expose their bigotry. How could that possibly be about white privilege unless you simultaneously believed that people of color would not long for a peaceful and prosperous future?
The left hated LBJ because of Viet Nam.
The Democratic Party hated LBJ because of the Civil Rights Acts.
Donald warren called them, middle American radicals, continetti, mentioned them without giving due credit,
"It would have been better if Nixon had toughed it out and fought the impeachment. He would have prevailed...."
No, he wouldn't have. He knew it and that's why he resigned."
No, you assume facts not in evidence.
and we see a certain dejavu, with this long war, which lasted for 18 years,
“ There are revisionist articles on Churchill, Lincoln, and even such revered figures as Mao and Stalin, but I've yet to read a revisionist account of Nixon.”
The left still remembers, and hates, him. The Vietnam generation is still in charge of History departments across the country.
One way that you can maybe look at him and Watergate is that he was too loyal for his own good. This likely wouldn’t have happened with Trump because he never would have helped engage in the coverup. He appears to have little loyalty, outside his own family, and has, time again, thrown his people to the wolves, if the wolves were threatening him. Think of those, starting with his attorney, Cohen, who worked for him, but were left to their own devices after being accused of wrongdoing. Nixon’s crime was, essentially, a result of his loyalty to his people who were trying to help him against his enemies. A Democrat (excluding, probably, Carter) would have thrown the Plumbers to the wolves in a heartbeat - JFK, LBJ, Clinton, Obama. Of course, either of the Clintons would have made sure that any of their sycophants caught in illegalities in their service would come out of the whole thing financially well rewarded (unless they turned on the Clintons, and then they would likely suffer a convenient suicide).
Don't forget that when Nixon was elected, the left already had a near-Trumpian hatred for him for his role in the Hiss affair. They had very strong incentives for getting rid of him.
Routledge (and other academic publishers) have no incentive at all to make their readers' access less costly, none at all.
On the other hand, it's true that I have no real idea of the investment involved in bringing a volume like Laderman's to print; presumably it's more per page than N.'s novel.
Ken Burns or someone has to reprise the standard clichés every 25 years or so, so we won’t look back and see what actually happened:
-- Successive administrations muddle us into war, 1961-68
-- Nixon Vietnamizes war, pacifies South, concludes peace, 1969-73
-- Nixon deposed, South Vietnam isolated and defunded, 1974
-- Hanoi invades and conquers the South, 1975
We're half a century removed from those years, and the outline of how we betrayed our ally and wrote off our dead would stand out pretty clearly at this distance if we didn't keep reapplying the old camouflage.
The President's desk before the advent of widespread on-line data and document storage.
Michael K: "The usual bullshit. About as reliable as the theory that Bush I flew in an SR 71 to tell the Iranians to hold the hostages."
Ouch!!!
A direct hit on conspiracy monger and Stalinist apologist Robert Cook!!
Cookie was Adam Schiff long before Adam Schiff became Adam Schiff!!
And next April 30 will be "pitiful, helpless giant", from another Vietnam war speech.
Ironically, Nixon may well have come into office thinking the war was unwinnable, but thinking he could trade it off for nuclear weapons limitations with the Soviet Union. In fact, if you believe Ray Locker's Nixon's Gamble, he and Kissinger had been trying to put together some sort of 3-sided balance of power with the USSR and PR China since day one. Nixon really did believe he could create "a generation of peace", a slogan me and my friends found obscene at the time, but which has sort of come true (no big world war, no nukes exploded in anger). Kissinger had already written a book about how Metternich of the relatively weak Austrian Empire had masterminded the peace settlement after the Napoleonic Wars (which lasted for 99 years without a major European War) in A World Restored.
According to Locker, Nixon and Kissinger needed lots of secrecy and bypassing people who were supposed to be in charge. After a while, there was so much spying and counter-spying, so much lack of trust, so much doing what was legally questionable that a big scandal was pretty much inevitable. It's the most interesting book I've read about the Nixon presidency.
There is a question whether a majority of Americans today, regardless of race, are willing to see “the last hopes for peace and freedom of millions of people ... suffocated by the forces of totalitarianism.
If corrupt Democrats are able to overturn a presidential election without benefit of probable cause or evidence of “high crimes or misdemeanors” using star chamber tactics, is there really an end to repression in sight? Putin must be loving this and look who his accomplices are.
What’s next, conflict between Democrat collectivists and Islamists to see whether we are governed by Stalinism or Sharia Law?
Moron Democrats still refer to (and teach) Vietnam as “Nixon’s War.”
Cohen, who worked for him
And taped his phone calls.
the investment involved in bringing a volume like Laderman's to print; presumably it's more per page than N.'s novel.
It's probably full of mathematical equations and symbols.
I know they were an later generation of Democrats, but considering how hard they fought to lose Bush's War in Iraq just to deny a Republican Prez a victory, I believe some pushed Nixon out just so we could abandon South Vietnam, which I don't think would have happened without his resignation.
Then they could trot out the "unwinnable war" stuff to justify their defeatism.
William,
If you're looking for a somewhat revisionist account of the early Nixon, you should read Irwin F. Gellman's The Contender: Richard Nixon, The Congress Years, 1946-1952 and The President and the Apprentice: Nixon and Eisenhower, 1952-1961. Gellman had access to a lot of new archival material and so concentrates on new information and correcting old misinformation.
He is supposedly working on a third and final volume, Nixon and Kennedy.
The other thing to point out (which often gets too murky and complicated) is the inter-relationship between Nixon's secret efforts to open up China to the West (and drive a wedge between between the Chicoms and Soviets) and his efforts to end the Vietnam War (Peace with Honor)
The former helped him win a landslide reelection in 1972, and forced a huge international pivot in the Cold War (which I would argue was a good thing).
The latter was the soft landing that helped Kissinger (and his North Vietnamese diplomat) get a Nobel Peace Prize in 1973.
Some smart guys (like Len Colodny of "Silent Coup" fame) think there is a big connection between the two events, and a big connection between them and Nixon's subsequent Watergate resignation.
I read the first book, the second is almost impossible to find, it took Gellman almost 20 years between the two books,
yes the joint chiefs were verklempt over the approach to china, which also involved favoring Pakistan over india, in the Bangladesh conflict, that's where the welander spyring fits into the picture,
We're half a century removed from those years, and the outline of how we betrayed our ally and wrote off our dead would stand out pretty clearly at this distance if we didn't keep reapplying the old camouflage.
Bill, my brother served in the Army in 'Nam. It was most soldiers' opinion that trying to get the South Vienamese to fight was a dead end. We knew that the minute we left, they would fold like a cheap deck of cards.
well cutting supplies to them, probably didn't help things, they had lost the Vietcong, between the tet offensive and the phoenix program,
I remember how the "progressives" (like statism is progress) in college loathed Nixon. There may have been good reasons to; but these were the same people who loved Mao and Ho and Castro and Che. As I've said with Trump, maybe the Left would like him better if he murdered a bunch of people, like their heroes.
I think the one-two punch of Nixon and Reagan knocked out the Soviet Union.
Nixon appeased the Soviets, employed "Detente," and gave them the false sense of security. But by opening up China to Western style economics, Nixon drove a wedge between China & USSR, and greatly softened up the Soviet underbelly.
Once softened up, Reagan simply fought the Soviets straight up. Outspent them on Defense, scared them shitless with "Star Wars," fought them in cold proxy wars in Nicaragua, Greneda, and, the most draining, Afghanistan. (See Charlie Wilson's War.)
Also, the older dinosaur Soviet leaders started dying out (Brezhnev, Andropov, Chernenko, giving rise to a young, naive Gorbachev, who thought he still could retain the soviet gulags, even if he opened them up a bit. Reagan, thankfully, took advantage of his youth and inexperience.
cooper church, ended the bombings in Cambodia, so the nva could resupply, and the khmer could regroup, of course they came in under the umbrella of prince sihanouk, who was in exile in china, some years later the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia, and put their puppet hun sen in power, former member of non lols govt, the the nkpa (sic) regrouped in Thailand, in an alliance of convenience with some of the ousted khmer,
correction, details here,
https://www.csmonitor.com/1985/1023/osplit.html
How many today would recognize that the phrase, "pass on the other side of the road" referred to the parable of the Good Samaritan, who did not pass on the other side of the road, but stopped to help instead?
narciso: I read the first book, the second is almost impossible to find, it took Gellman almost 20 years between the two books,
Au contraire. The second book — Gellman's The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961 — is not “almost impossible to find.” Both Amazon and Abebooks have dozens of copies available, for as little as $5, plus there's a Kindle version available at Amazon.
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