"Lyndon B. Johnson’s men almost certainly bugged Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane in 1964. The John F. Kennedy administration authorized the wiretapping of Martin Luther King Jr. for its own political reasons. The Franklin D. Roosevelt administration surveilled Charles Lindbergh when the famous aviator led the America First Committee and contemplated a presidential run in 1940. Did Nixon try—albeit unsuccessfully—to obtain the tax returns of political adversaries? Well, Roosevelt successfully ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate opponents such as William Randolph Hearst, Huey Long, and Charles Coughlin. Nixon operated a clandestine unit inside the White House—the so-called plumbers—to trace and stop officials who leaked to the media, you say? Under previous administrations, the FBI acted as a giant government-plumbing agency, surveilling troublesome journalists such as Drew Pearson and Jack Anderson. Indeed, a probably core reason for the exposure of the Watergate break-in was that the long alliance between Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover faltered after 1971, for complex reasons, obliging Nixon to use amateur investigators for the Watergate burglary and other black-bag jobs that, under past administrations, the FBI would have conducted for the president...."
Some people will say that words like scum and rotten are wrong for Objective Journalism -- which is true, but they miss the point. It was the built-in blind spots of the Objective rules and dogma that allowed Nixon to slither into the White House in the first place. He looked so good on paper that you could almost vote for him sight unseen. He seemed so all-American, so much like Horatio Alger, that he was able to slip through the cracks of Objective Journalism. You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful....
Watergate was a CIA psy-op. Why the CIA wanted Nixon out, I can’t say. The “burglars” were all CIA, and so was Woodward. Since I was anti-Vietnam War, it’s painful to admit that it was Nixon who devised a strategy to get the U.S. out. Saturation bombing of the north and Cambodia to appease the “They tied our hands behind our backs” militarists. Then, Nixon just got the hell out. A humanitarian nightmare, particularly in Cambodia, where it triggered the Killing Fields, but evidently the only sensible Machiavellian strategy. There probably was no other way to get the U.S. out. No U.S. pol wanted to take the blame for “losing Vietnam.”
"You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful...."
In other words, you had to a drug-addled pervert like Gonzo Thompson to utter the filthy lie. The left hated Nixon because he helped expose Alger Hiss for the traitor he was. Consequently, they vilified him unceasingly in public, and conspired against him unceasingly in private.
Thompson made a reputation by hanging out with the Hell's Angels. He wrote about them with thinly disguised awe and envy. He was at heart a thug, but too timid to engage in actual criminal thuggery, so he appeased himself with verbal despoliation of decency itself.
"In other words, you had to a drug-addled pervert like Gonzo Thompson to utter the filthy lie."
I'm sure Hunter Thompson would be the first to admit he was drug-addled and a pervert. Really, given the naming convention and his genetic material, I'm surprised Hunter Biden has survived this long. Anyways, Nixon was a milksop, especially for betraying Taiwan, and Trump is infinitely his better.
I just read a thing recently - I say "thing" because I can't recall whether it was a substack, a comment on Turley's blog, a comment elsewhere - in which a journalist(? I think this person described himself as a journalist, but he might have been simply one of the I -can-always-see-right-up-their-noses Ivy grads) was saying exactly this about Trump: objective journalism was not appropriate got Trump because he's self-evidently so evil that it's the duty of Every Thinking Person to go subjective on him. We see this among our lefties.
Our standards have changed so much. We've gone from Woodward and Bernstein, the dogged, danger-defying reporters digging away at the truth, to get to the bottom of a political burglary, to today's clone-like reporters, en masse, working hard to cover the truth about Hunter's laptop (as one example). We've gone from a 2 bit burglary being the story of the century, to the evidence of a President on the take from foreign nationals being that thing you cannot say.
I'd say this is more of an anniversary of the end of Journalism.
Nixon was a very crude man, foul-mouthed and a petty tyrant over his underlings. In that respect he was not unlike Kamala Harris. However, he was unlike her in his ability to plan and execute a world historic strategy that overturned the KBG masterplan for Soviet domination.
Nixon was a flawed genius, like every genius before and since. Harris is just a simpleton who has inherited a position she could not achieve on her own merits. Nixon was our Henry IV. Kamala may be our Henry VI.
Eric Hunley and Mark Grobert at America's Untold Stories are in the middle of a series of podcasts and interviews reviewing the Nixon scandal. The next one drops today on Locals/Rumble ++. Needless to say it's a lot different than I remember.
Irwin F. Gellman has two interesting revisionist books on Nixon, "The Contender: Richard Nixon: The Congress Years, 1946 to 1952" (1999) and "The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961" (2015). Basically, Gellman asked himself, "What does the evidence in the archives at the newly opened Nixon Presidential Library actually say about the received wisdom?" His answer, "A lot of it is untrue, unfairly negative to the real person."
Biden administration authorized the wiretapping of Trump Tower for its own political reasons. The Biden administration surveilled Donald Trump when the famous realtor led MAGA and contemplated a presidential run in 2020. Did Nixon try—albeit unsuccessfully—to obtain the tax returns of political adversaries? Well,Biden successfully ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate opponents. Nixon operated a clandestine unit inside the White House—the so-called plumbers—to trace and stop officials who leaked to the media, you say? Under all Democrat Party administrations, the FBI acted as a giant government-plumbing agency..
They needed to destroy Nixon to lose (that is, win) Vietnam. It was all a commie plot. For some, it was the other way round. It's amazing that Reagan's reputation survived winning the Cold War, but they tried their best. W was not so lucky, but he didn't exactly win, either.
FDR went after Andrew Mellon, too. It's a mystery why he still gave us the National Gallery of Art and his collection in '37, but he was too old to wait him out.
Geoff Shepard has written at least two books accusing the judges and prosecutors of abuse of power for the ways they chased Nixon. I don’t think an honest examination of the Democrats has been attempted, even after 50 years.
Yes, Nixon was unlucky. Also inept. He sensed the deep state, Dems, and MSM were trying to take him down, of course, but bungled his response. The coup was all the stranger in retrospect, since he was no conservative.
The real lesson lay in the impunity of the attack: Deep Throat got away with it, the MSM celeberated their scalp, Dems had their sword hanging over any GOPer.
The attack under O took it up to a new level--the IRS going after conservative organizations, "unmasking" of Trump and his allies, the launching of the Russia hoax, later followed by lawfare under Joe. I've called Trump a clown and a loser etc. etc. but a lesser man would have folded in the face of the Nixon-squared attacks.
Most people think the FBI is legal agency. Act of congress, legislation, signed by president etc.
It is not. There is no legislation authorizing it. It was created by t Roosevelt created it (at the time plain Bureau of Investigation) specifically as a political police. Congress objected loudly to creation of a political police, tr did it anyway.
Hoover saw there was a distaste for a political police force sor publicized it as a crime fighting agency. Who could object to fighting crime? And not even police, just investigating. Hoover was a pr genius
Fbi was born in 1908 as an American stasi/gestapo/Cheka style political police
Why did Hunter S. Thompson kill himself (shooting himself in the head inside the family home)?
"Years of alcohol and cocaine abuse contributed to his problem with depression. Thompson's inner circle told the press that he had been depressed and always found February a "gloomy" month, with football season over and the harsh Colorado winter weather. He was also upset over his advancing age and chronic medical problems, including a hip replacement; he would frequently mutter "This kid is getting old." Rolling Stone published what Douglas Brinkley described as a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife, titled "Football Season Is Over." It read: 'No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax — This won't hurt.' Thompson's collaborator and friend Ralph Steadman wrote: '.. He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too—and Peacocks...'"
I've always been strongly anti-Nixon -- if you were a kid in the 60s and 70s, it was the way you were. Or at least if you were a leftist, which I was. Nevertheless, I'm having doubts about this. It first came up when I read The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen in which he points out several problems. [As an aside, I just picked this up at the library intending to skim through it, but it's a very interesting book. Rosen concludes that Mitchell was a crook, but not for Watergate, which seems true in hindsight.] Since that time, I've come across Geoff Shepard's website and his Temple University lectures. https://shepardonwatergate.com/temple-lectures/ Shepard was a young attorney in the Nixon White House and he praises Nixon's "liberal" innovations - including the opening of trade to China, the EPA and many other green initiatives, Affirmative Action, the ending of the Vietnam War. I've started listening to these lectures but have not gotten far. Shepard also has a series of interviews he conducted with Hugh Hewitt for the Nixon library which covers a lot of the same territory. Anyway, I have a lot of doubts about the received wisdom of the myth that is the Watergate break in and subsequent cover-up. I think John Dean is the éminence grise of the drama, but the establishment is protecting him. Perhaps, in 100 years time - if the USA is still around - there will be a reassessment.
Hunter Thompson was such an alcoholic they had to give him ethanol via IV tube after he recovered from surgery. He had been a drunk for 40 years, and a drug user for 30 when he died. He was lucky to live as long as he did.
As for Lindhberg, FDR had the IRS audit all his tax returns and those of his wife. All the phones for Lindhberg and America FIrst were tapped by the FBI, and FDR surrogates called him Nazi in public and on radio. After Pearl Harbor, FDR refused give him a commission even though Hap Arnold asked FDR to give him one. And he got Lindberg Blackballed by all the Defense contractors - that's why he went to work for Ford helping develope the B-24, Henry Ford told FDR to go fuck himself.
A humanitarian nightmare, particularly in Cambodia, where it triggered the Killing Fields
Nixon had negotiated a cease-fire with Hanoi that required the presence of American soldiers in the south to enforce. Congressional Democrats refused to fund it and thus the Americans were forced to withdraw leading to the ensuing Domino effect which everyone had previously pooh-pooed.
As for Nixon, he wasnt loyal to his subordinates and they weren't loyal to him. He hired the untrustworthy Dean on the word of Len Garnmett his WH counsel. And was about to make him the "Fall Guy" when Dean turned. Butterfield was delighted to disclose the existance of the tapes, and Gray at the FBI felt no loyalty to Nixon either. Nixon weirdly thought he could rely on the SCOTUS and lost 9-0. Its actually poetic justice that the man who stood by and let Agnew get RR out of office by liberals at the DOJ was destroyed by the same "lawfare"
Leftists ALWAYS excuses their own sins as a necessary way to “fight evil” just like children. They always exaggerate the sins of anyone who they see as against them. They are emotionally stunted children. Democrats are like Nazis. They will put us all in death camps as a way to “fight evil”. Funny Ann doesn’t see that, but then again she is a leftist before all else.
To wake up and sort of agree with David Frum means it's going to be a weird day. Nixon wouldn't have had trouble if he'd gotten the FBI to do his wiretapping, or if he had been a Democrat. Frum doesn't object to authoritarianism and the surveillance state if he gets to be one of those in charge. He is Canadian, after all.
There isn't as much of a difference between Woodward and Bernstein and today's journalists as people think. Today's journalists report what government leakers tell them. Woodward had the story fed to him by Mark Felt. Their heroic narrative may have been ego gratifying, but it was a romanticization.
So much of the hostility to Nixon was tribal. If you, or anybody you knew, had trouble with HUAC in the 40s or 50s you were obligated to hate Nixon. There was also a sense that the better, more intelligent people had to despise Nixon. He was middlebrow, unsophisticated, provincial and inauthentic. Look around today -- Biden, Harris, Walz. Nixon was much the same as other politicians. He was even brighter than most, though not bright enough to survive in the political jungle.
Well it took almost 50 years for certain details to leak out, such as Leon Jaworsky the lead prosecutor on the Special Counsel's team was JFK's oppo-research guy on Nixon during the '60 campaign. And he met privately with Judge Sirica, no counsel for Nixon present, in order to shape the case for their side. The way the Deep State and Democrat operatives as "special prosecutors" worked together to find something anything to convict has a very timely ring to it.
Maybe that's the way it's always worked. If so, the institutional hatred of Trump starts to make sense as a practical matter, but it speaks horribly of the actual operation of "our democracy" doesn't it.
His farewell speech was the best ever. Humble, respectful, honoring his parents, don't hate. He went on to publish wonky books and was a trusted advisor to Bill Clinton.
Yes, Nixon's farewell speech WAS a good one. Nixon was a loser. A good loser. He patted himself his entire life for losing in 1960 and not contesting the obviously stolen election. The D's just laughed at him for being a chump. But then Nixon's whole beef against the Establishment was that it didn't like him, not that he disliked the Establishment. Nixon helped pass the 57 civil rights bill and implemented - but got called a racist. He was a wilsonian internationalist and wanted to pass a guaranteed income - but was mocked as a Rightwinger who only cared for the rich
The whole moderate Republican - "let me reach accross the aisle" - has been a loser for long time.
"A Democrat would have almost certainly gotten away with it, but a Republican? Not happening in a million years."
Mainly because Republicans don't stand up for their own. What did in Nixon was the Republicans in Congress that turned on him. Has a Democrat ever turned on a Democrat? They know how to fall in line and protect their own. Republicans not so much.
All that fits very well with the Gonzo personae that he carefully crafted. I enjoyed a lot of his writing, found a good part of it just page-filling. But - as a person - I find if difficult to respect someone that blew his brains out knowing that it would be his kid or his wife that would make the discovery.
After the last 50 years of Democrat scandals, there's a word for the Republicans that "did the right thing": RUBES.
I think the MIC was really miffed about the end of the Viet Nam war because it was oh, so financially lucrative. They were looking for anything and, like how they took advantage of Trump being a germaphobe, exploited his paranoia about his enemies to take him down.
So is anyone and everyone in Government. Each in his/her own way. Anyone and everyone in Government or out.
If you believe there are too many crooks in Government, the only rational solution is fewer people in Government. If Government is abusing the Liberty you have loaned them (hint: they are!) then take your Liberty back.
Nixon on why they wanted him out https://youtu.be/jEFYjQb1K2E
Here is Nixon on the media's power. We are seeing the media lash out as their power, even when devoted to Democrats in office, is waning in today's world. They had the government functionaries pressuring social media to censor, but it has faltered of late
"core reason for the exposure of the Watergate break-in was that the long alliance between Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover faltered after 1971" Could've been worse for Nixon. Much, much worse.
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84 comments:
It was as much a sham as the steele dossier
Must be some really appalling news about to drop regarding Obama/Biden/Harris spying on Trump.
The head of counterinteligence toppled a sitting president never mind
It seems Biden's TSA may be following Tulsi Gabbard.
"Lyndon B. Johnson’s men almost certainly bugged Barry Goldwater’s campaign plane in 1964."
Almost certainly? Unless you are certain, you're arguing by inuendo, which is certainly David Frum's typical style.
Watergate was a CIA psy-op. Why the CIA wanted Nixon out, I can’t say. The “burglars” were all CIA, and so was Woodward. Since I was anti-Vietnam War, it’s painful to admit that it was Nixon who devised a strategy to get the U.S. out. Saturation bombing of the north and Cambodia to appease the “They tied our hands behind our backs” militarists. Then, Nixon just got the hell out. A humanitarian nightmare, particularly in Cambodia, where it triggered the Killing Fields, but evidently the only sensible Machiavellian strategy. There probably was no other way to get the U.S. out. No U.S. pol wanted to take the blame for “losing Vietnam.”
Because lbj was betraying our ally in south vietnam
Why the square bracket? Apparently Althouse's side of the "new and improved" Blogger is a clumsy and ugly as our commenter side.
Thats what the chennault controversy was about
They were going to thrown south vietnam to the wolves
Did they mention what Obama did to the Trump campaign? What the Intel agencies did in 2020?
It seems that every President enjoyed “immunity” except poor Richard Nixon. “Everybody else did it” generally doesn’t work too well as a defense.
1968; my sixth grade class had selected students give speeches supporting the candidates. I gave the Nixon speech. I still love Nixon.
From the WSJ:
Nixon Shouldn't Have Resigned
"You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful...."
In other words, you had to a drug-addled pervert like Gonzo Thompson to utter the filthy lie. The left hated Nixon because he helped expose Alger Hiss for the traitor he was. Consequently, they vilified him unceasingly in public, and conspired against him unceasingly in private.
Nixon wasn't unlucky. He was set up.
Well he did eventually blow his head off but it took 30 years
Things didn’t work out too well in the end for Hunter Thompson either.
I would be delighted to see Inga show up to defend Alger Hiss. I have but to stretch my arm to pull down my copy of The Mitrokhin Archive.
The new narrative dropped. It's always been this way. It's normal. It's almost a tradition, like Thanksgiving.
Well commie agents got to stick together
Nixon challenged the intel consensus so he had to go
Democrats laying the groundwork to justify spying (or worse) on the Trump campaign.
Trust the experts.
South Vietnam is a fiction of your imagination. CIA puppet government, created out of whole cloth in violation of the 1954 Geneva Accords.
Thompson made a reputation by hanging out with the Hell's Angels. He wrote about them with thinly disguised awe and envy. He was at heart a thug, but too timid to engage in actual criminal thuggery, so he appeased himself with verbal despoliation of decency itself.
"had to be" Dammit.
Quaestor
"In other words, you had to a drug-addled pervert like Gonzo Thompson to utter the filthy lie."
I'm sure Hunter Thompson would be the first to admit he was drug-addled and a pervert. Really, given the naming convention and his genetic material, I'm surprised Hunter Biden has survived this long. Anyways, Nixon was a milksop, especially for betraying Taiwan, and Trump is infinitely his better.
You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly
I just read a thing recently - I say "thing" because I can't recall whether it was a substack, a comment on Turley's blog, a comment elsewhere - in which a journalist(? I think this person described himself as a journalist, but he might have been simply one of the I -can-always-see-right-up-their-noses Ivy grads) was saying exactly this about Trump: objective journalism was not appropriate got Trump because he's self-evidently so evil that it's the duty of Every Thinking Person to go subjective on him. We see this among our lefties.
Our standards have changed so much. We've gone from Woodward and Bernstein, the dogged, danger-defying reporters digging away at the truth, to get to the bottom of a political burglary, to today's clone-like reporters, en masse, working hard to cover the truth about Hunter's laptop (as one example).
We've gone from a 2 bit burglary being the story of the century, to the evidence of a President on the take from foreign nationals being that thing you cannot say.
I'd say this is more of an anniversary of the end of Journalism.
Nixon was a very crude man, foul-mouthed and a petty tyrant over his underlings. In that respect he was not unlike Kamala Harris. However, he was unlike her in his ability to plan and execute a world historic strategy that overturned the KBG masterplan for Soviet domination.
Nixon was a flawed genius, like every genius before and since. Harris is just a simpleton who has inherited a position she could not achieve on her own merits. Nixon was our Henry IV. Kamala may be our Henry VI.
No surprise, Hillary was part of the team going after Nixon. She learned her dirty tricks early on.
Eric Hunley and Mark Grobert at America's Untold Stories are in the middle of a series of podcasts and interviews reviewing the Nixon scandal. The next one drops today on Locals/Rumble ++. Needless to say it's a lot different than I remember.
Irwin F. Gellman has two interesting revisionist books on Nixon, "The Contender: Richard Nixon: The Congress Years, 1946 to 1952" (1999) and "The President and the Apprentice: Eisenhower and Nixon, 1952-1961" (2015). Basically, Gellman asked himself, "What does the evidence in the archives at the newly opened Nixon Presidential Library actually say about the received wisdom?" His answer, "A lot of it is untrue, unfairly negative to the real person."
Nixon did not arrest his political opponents or prosecute them for phony crimes.
No, he wouldn't have. He was a Republican.
Biden administration authorized the wiretapping of Trump Tower for its own political reasons. The Biden administration surveilled Donald Trump when the famous realtor led MAGA and contemplated a presidential run in 2020. Did Nixon try—albeit unsuccessfully—to obtain the tax returns of political adversaries? Well,Biden successfully ordered the Internal Revenue Service to investigate opponents. Nixon operated a clandestine unit inside the White House—the so-called plumbers—to trace and stop officials who leaked to the media, you say? Under all Democrat Party administrations, the FBI acted as a giant government-plumbing agency..
They needed to destroy Nixon to lose (that is, win) Vietnam. It was all a commie plot. For some, it was the other way round.
It's amazing that Reagan's reputation survived winning the Cold War, but they tried their best. W was not so lucky, but he didn't exactly win, either.
FDR went after Andrew Mellon, too. It's a mystery why he still gave us the National Gallery of Art and his collection in '37, but he was too old to wait him out.
Geoff Shepard has written at least two books accusing the judges and prosecutors of abuse of power for the ways they chased Nixon. I don’t think an honest examination of the Democrats has been attempted, even after 50 years.
The CIA knew everything about the break-in. Nixon knew nothing about it.
We listened to Nixon's Aug 8 speech on the radio at Scout Camp in the dark. It was a scary moment for adolescents far from home.
No one drowned at Watergate.
Yes ive mentioned gellmans wirk before
David Frum’s weaselly affect always reminded me of Richard Nixon.
Yes, Nixon was unlucky. Also inept. He sensed the deep state, Dems, and MSM were trying to take him down, of course, but bungled his response. The coup was all the stranger in retrospect, since he was no conservative.
The real lesson lay in the impunity of the attack: Deep Throat got away with it, the MSM celeberated their scalp, Dems had their sword hanging over any GOPer.
The attack under O took it up to a new level--the IRS going after conservative organizations, "unmasking" of Trump and his allies, the launching of the Russia hoax, later followed by lawfare under Joe. I've called Trump a clown and a loser etc. etc. but a lesser man would have folded in the face of the Nixon-squared attacks.
Most people think the FBI is legal agency. Act of congress, legislation, signed by president etc.
It is not. There is no legislation authorizing it. It was created by t Roosevelt created it (at the time plain Bureau of Investigation) specifically as a political police. Congress objected loudly to creation of a political police, tr did it anyway.
Hoover saw there was a distaste for a political police force sor publicized it as a crime fighting agency. Who could object to fighting crime? And not even police, just investigating. Hoover was a pr genius
Fbi was born in 1908 as an American stasi/gestapo/Cheka style political police
It has never changed.
John Henry
Have you ever seen the video of the Hell's Angel denouncing Hunter?
"You had to get Subjective to see Nixon clearly, and the shock of recognition was often painful...."
He's saying 'we don't need no stinking facts. We got feelz.'
Must be why everything Trump is “worse than Watergate.”
If they are trying to excuse Nixon, what crimes has the Harris Administration committed now?
Why did Hunter S. Thompson kill himself (shooting himself in the head inside the family home)?
"Years of alcohol and cocaine abuse contributed to his problem with depression. Thompson's inner circle told the press that he had been depressed and always found February a "gloomy" month, with football season over and the harsh Colorado winter weather. He was also upset over his advancing age and chronic medical problems, including a hip replacement; he would frequently mutter "This kid is getting old." Rolling Stone published what Douglas Brinkley described as a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife, titled "Football Season Is Over." It read: 'No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun—for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax — This won't hurt.'
Thompson's collaborator and friend Ralph Steadman wrote: '.. He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too—and Peacocks...'"
"... find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to—and go there...."
I've always been strongly anti-Nixon -- if you were a kid in the 60s and 70s, it was the way you were. Or at least if you were a leftist, which I was. Nevertheless, I'm having doubts about this. It first came up when I read The Strong Man: John Mitchell and the Secrets of Watergate by James Rosen in which he points out several problems. [As an aside, I just picked this up at the library intending to skim through it, but it's a very interesting book. Rosen concludes that Mitchell was a crook, but not for Watergate, which seems true in hindsight.]
Since that time, I've come across Geoff Shepard's website and his Temple University lectures. https://shepardonwatergate.com/temple-lectures/ Shepard was a young attorney in the Nixon White House and he praises Nixon's "liberal" innovations - including the opening of trade to China, the EPA and many other green initiatives, Affirmative Action, the ending of the Vietnam War. I've started listening to these lectures but have not gotten far. Shepard also has a series of interviews he conducted with Hugh Hewitt for the Nixon library which covers a lot of the same territory.
Anyway, I have a lot of doubts about the received wisdom of the myth that is the Watergate break in and subsequent cover-up. I think John Dean is the éminence grise of the drama, but the establishment is protecting him. Perhaps, in 100 years time - if the USA is still around - there will be a reassessment.
Hunter Thompson was such an alcoholic they had to give him ethanol via IV tube after he recovered from surgery. He had been a drunk for 40 years, and a drug user for 30 when he died. He was lucky to live as long as he did.
As for Lindhberg, FDR had the IRS audit all his tax returns and those of his wife. All the phones for Lindhberg and America FIrst were tapped by the FBI, and FDR surrogates called him Nazi in public and on radio. After Pearl Harbor, FDR refused give him a commission even though Hap Arnold asked FDR to give him one. And he got Lindberg Blackballed by all the Defense contractors - that's why he went to work for Ford helping develope the B-24, Henry Ford told FDR to go fuck himself.
A humanitarian nightmare, particularly in Cambodia, where it triggered the Killing Fields
Nixon had negotiated a cease-fire with Hanoi that required the presence of American soldiers in the south to enforce. Congressional Democrats refused to fund it and thus the Americans were forced to withdraw leading to the ensuing Domino effect which everyone had previously pooh-pooed.
As for Nixon, he wasnt loyal to his subordinates and they weren't loyal to him. He hired the untrustworthy Dean on the word of Len Garnmett his WH counsel. And was about to make him the "Fall Guy" when Dean turned. Butterfield was delighted to disclose the existance of the tapes, and Gray at the FBI felt no loyalty to Nixon either. Nixon weirdly thought he could rely on the SCOTUS and lost 9-0. Its actually poetic justice that the man who stood by and let Agnew get RR out of office by liberals at the DOJ was destroyed by the same "lawfare"
I believe Mellon made the donation to the National Gallery to avoid his family being impoverished by the estate tax valuation of his collection.
Thompson never wrote anything worth a damn after the mid-70s. That's per the publisher of Rolling Stones. He was too burnt out from booze and drugs.
Leftists ALWAYS excuses their own sins as a necessary way to “fight evil” just like children. They always exaggerate the sins of anyone who they see as against them. They are emotionally stunted children. Democrats are like Nazis. They will put us all in death camps as a way to “fight evil”. Funny Ann doesn’t see that, but then again she is a leftist before all else.
To wake up and sort of agree with David Frum means it's going to be a weird day. Nixon wouldn't have had trouble if he'd gotten the FBI to do his wiretapping, or if he had been a Democrat. Frum doesn't object to authoritarianism and the surveillance state if he gets to be one of those in charge. He is Canadian, after all.
There isn't as much of a difference between Woodward and Bernstein and today's journalists as people think. Today's journalists report what government leakers tell them. Woodward had the story fed to him by Mark Felt. Their heroic narrative may have been ego gratifying, but it was a romanticization.
So much of the hostility to Nixon was tribal. If you, or anybody you knew, had trouble with HUAC in the 40s or 50s you were obligated to hate Nixon. There was also a sense that the better, more intelligent people had to despise Nixon. He was middlebrow, unsophisticated, provincial and inauthentic. Look around today -- Biden, Harris, Walz. Nixon was much the same as other politicians. He was even brighter than most, though not bright enough to survive in the political jungle.
to be fair.. hunter's Hell's Angels book was Very Good..
I was always surprised that he quit writing after that one.
@Bima, thanks for the Eric Hunley / Mark Groubert steer - I thought their LBJ treatise was excellent and thought-provoking.
Geoff Shepard is Tucker Carlson’s latest guest. He paints Bernstein as a dupe and Woodward a CIA mouthpiece.
Well it took almost 50 years for certain details to leak out, such as Leon Jaworsky the lead prosecutor on the Special Counsel's team was JFK's oppo-research guy on Nixon during the '60 campaign. And he met privately with Judge Sirica, no counsel for Nixon present, in order to shape the case for their side. The way the Deep State and Democrat operatives as "special prosecutors" worked together to find something anything to convict has a very timely ring to it.
Maybe that's the way it's always worked. If so, the institutional hatred of Trump starts to make sense as a practical matter, but it speaks horribly of the actual operation of "our democracy" doesn't it.
Pretty neat "first time journalist" effort for old Bob Woodward too, fresh out of Naval Intelligence. Scooped all the real reporters somehow.
"Richard Nixon Was Unlucky/The Watergate scandal forced his resignation 50 years ago. Today, he’d probably have gotten away with it"
Frum is barking mad. A Democrat would have almost certainly gotten away with it, but a Republican? Not happening in a million years.
“Oh why have all the good Republicans like Nixon gone away and left us with Trump. We like the old dead ones much better.”
His farewell speech was the best ever. Humble, respectful, honoring his parents, don't hate. He went on to publish wonky books and was a trusted advisor to Bill Clinton.
On Morning Joe today, Meacham actually said Nixon was right about Hiss.
We’ll miss poor Meacham….
JSM
Nixon was a Quitter. Like Biden.
Hunter Thompson was a Quitter too. Not surprising he hated Nixon.
Yes, Nixon's farewell speech WAS a good one. Nixon was a loser. A good loser. He patted himself his entire life for losing in 1960 and not contesting the obviously stolen election. The D's just laughed at him for being a chump. But then Nixon's whole beef against the Establishment was that it didn't like him, not that he disliked the Establishment. Nixon helped pass the 57 civil rights bill and implemented - but got called a racist. He was a wilsonian internationalist and wanted to pass a guaranteed income - but was mocked as a Rightwinger who only cared for the rich
The whole moderate Republican - "let me reach accross the aisle" - has been a loser for long time.
"A Democrat would have almost certainly gotten away with it, but a Republican? Not happening in a million years."
Mainly because Republicans don't stand up for their own. What did in Nixon was the Republicans in Congress that turned on him. Has a Democrat ever turned on a Democrat? They know how to fall in line and protect their own. Republicans not so much.
The Obama administration did that, not Biden. Crossfire Hurricane.
I gave IV alcohol to every alcoholic patient I operated on. DTs is too dangerous to risk. I would put enough in the IV to make a 5% solution.
All that fits very well with the Gonzo personae that he carefully crafted. I enjoyed a lot of his writing, found a good part of it just page-filling. But - as a person - I find if difficult to respect someone that blew his brains out knowing that it would be his kid or his wife that would make the discovery.
Large numbers turned on LBJ, and the Pentagon Papers was mostly about his administration. But would they have been published during his term?
After the last 50 years of Democrat scandals, there's a word for the Republicans that "did the right thing": RUBES.
I think the MIC was really miffed about the end of the Viet Nam war because it was oh, so financially lucrative. They were looking for anything and, like how they took advantage of Trump being a germaphobe, exploited his paranoia about his enemies to take him down.
"He was a crook..."
So is anyone and everyone in Government. Each in his/her own way. Anyone and everyone in Government or out.
If you believe there are too many crooks in Government, the only rational solution is fewer people in Government. If Government is abusing the Liberty you have loaned them (hint: they are!) then take your Liberty back.
True, though I meant in Congress. They also turned on Biden, though as with LBJ, only when they realized he was a dead man walking.
Nixons's men? Or the CIA's men?
Nixon on why they wanted him out
https://youtu.be/jEFYjQb1K2E
Here is Nixon on the media's power. We are seeing the media lash out as their power, even when devoted to Democrats in office, is waning in today's world. They had the government functionaries pressuring social media to censor, but it has faltered of late
https://youtu.be/1cyazPCjZJo
"core reason for the exposure of the Watergate break-in was that the long alliance between Richard Nixon and J. Edgar Hoover faltered after 1971"
Could've been worse for Nixon. Much, much worse.
Mellon was a real patriot. Something we see little of today.
I wonder if Hunter ever realised they're *all* scum, all the way down to the janitor, and I'm not sure about him either.
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