"[Nixon's] men broke into the Democratic National Committee in 1972—so what?"

"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...."

Writes David Frum in "Richard Nixon Was Unlucky/The Watergate scandal forced his resignation 50 years ago. Today, he’d probably have gotten away with it" (The Atlantic).

Nixon gave his resignation speech 50 years ago last night.

ADDED: The Atlantic homepage has a link to Hunter S. Thompson, "He Was a Crook/A scathing obituary of Richard Nixon, originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994."

"Flares of unprompted anger. Glimpses of the politician’s inner monologue... spoken aloud... in all its narcissism and vulnerability."

Sounds like the way they talk about Trump, but it's David Frum, talking about Biden, in "Biden’s Heartbreaking Press Conference/His pathos should not become America’s tragedy" (The Atlantic).

The headline doesn't sound like the way they talk about Trump. No one's heart breaks for Trump. No one speaks of "pathos" and "tragedy" when describing his unusual, emotive speech.

Well, it's obvious why but I doubt if David Frum comes out and says it.

I was halfway through the headline when I wrote the post title.

I'm reading "Why Biden Should Not Debate Trump/The networks want their show, but to give the challenger equal status on a TV stage would be a dire normalization of his attempted coup" by David Frum (in The Atlantic).

The second half of the headline confirms my suspicion.

We're not supposed to read Biden's refusal to debate to mean that he lacks the mental capacity to debate. Frum and others will instruct us, repeatedly, in articles repeating the talking point.

"As an impromptu speaker, Bush had a reputation for gaffes and mangling phrases, but Mr. Gerson provided him with memorable flights of oratory..."

"... such as the pledge to end 'the soft bigotry of low expectations' in the education of low-income and minority students and the description of democracy — in Bush’s first inaugural address — as a 'seed upon the wind, taking root in many nations.' As a Bush confidant and head of the speechwriting team, he also encouraged such memorable turns of phrase as 'axis of evil,' which Bush used to explain the administration’s hawkish posture as it started long and costly wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.In the chaotic months after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, Mr. Gerson became the key craftsman articulating what became known as the 'Bush Doctrine' — which advocated preemptive strikes against potential terrorists and other perceived threats. With his team of writers, he began shaping Bush’s tone and tenor... 'It is a real mistake to try to secularize American political discourse,' Mr. Gerson told NPR in 2006. 'It removes one of the primary sources of visions of justice in American history.'"

From "Michael Gerson, Post columnist and Bush speechwriter on 9/11, dies at 58/Mr. Gerson helped shape President George W. Bush’s messaging after the 9/11 attacks and then moved to The Washington Post, where he wrote about politics and faith" (The Washington Post).

"Democrats Are Falling Into the Ilhan Omar Trap/By rushing to stand with the controversial congresswoman, the 2020 contenders are allowing Trump to transform her into the face of their party."

Writes David Frum in The Atlantic.

Against Omar’s propensity to provoke, the Democratic Party seems institutionally almost defenseless. Pelosi was thwarted when she attempted to pass a resolution condemning anti-Semitic expressions by House members....

After Trump’s tweeted attack, Omar will become even more internally uncriticizable and unmanageable, without becoming any more careful or responsible. Indeed, the speech by Omar that provided Trump with the sound bite he exploited—“some people did something”—itself exemplifies her carelessness and irresponsibility....

ADDED: The video Trump passed along was extremely effective because of the repeated the line "some people did something," abruptly cut off at "something." I had not been troubled by the original clip, because I understood it in context. But with the focus on "something," I heard an upward lilt that felt like laughing. And then the look on her face seemed like a smile. That semblance of laughing, in sequence with 9/11 images, had a very powerful effect. It is what ads do. There's no lying, just an effect created by editing. And the more people complain about it and say it's not fair, the more viral the ad becomes.

WE WILL NEVER FORGET! pic.twitter.com/VxrGFRFeJM

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 12, 2019

Is the Trump Derangement Syndrome fever breaking?

That the president of the United States owes his office to Russian help is not a theory. It's a matter of record. What we're waiting for Mueller to clarify is how much the president and his team knew about that Russian help before it was delivered. https://t.co/oGR2wvRkDd

— David Frum (@davidfrum) March 23, 2019

On "Face the Nation" today, the panelists seemed to be playing a game called: Talk about Trump as much as you can without talking about Trump.

The moderator was John Dickerson, and his actual question was: "You are an assignment editor. And you have to assign coverage for the year 2017. How do you deploy your forces? What’s the story?" Obviously, the story you've got to cover is President Donald Trump. But they're not going to say Well, duh, John, we've got to cover the damned Trump presidency.

Our first contestant is Jeffrey Goldberg, the editor-in-chief of The Atlantic:

JEFFREY GOLDBERG:  Well, the story is-- there’s one overarchingly huge story. A very big league story, as Michele might say. The-- the-- the story is-- the-- the story is the upending of American politics. The story is of the outs coming in and the ins going out. --The story is trying to explain to the American people what’s happened to their two main parties. And-- and the deeper story, also, I don’t want to forget this -- the deeper story is globalization, and technological disruption, and anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions. All of that is-- is there undergirding the larger, more immediate story, which is how did Donald Trump become president of the United States....

Bzzz. Goldberg mentioned Donald Trump. He had a great run going — the outs coming in and the ins going out... anxiety born of-- of rapid change, rapid, destabilizing change, the fragility of institutions... Great stuff. There's overarching and undergirding — construction to go along with the destruction. It was mindbending. I was ready to give him the prize, but then he said the name. Wipe out.

Let's get the next contestant up here. Michele Norris, a journalist affiliated with something called the Race Card Project:

"Our poor monkey brains just can't deal with complex combinations of certain logical operators, especially with respect to the logic of contemporary American politics."

Language Log indulges in more analysis than David Frum and The Atlantic deserve for publishing the ludicrous sentence "Many wavering Republicans will come home — even if the home to which they now return has changed in ways that render it almost indistinguishable from the dwelling it used to be."

When did articles all start to begin "When did...?"?

"When Did the GOP Lose Touch With Reality?"

"When Did Liberals Become So Unreasonable?"

"Sarah Palin’s political voice had dwindled well before she announced her decision not to run."

"Now it will sink altogether into inaudibility. She will be no kind of force in future national discussions."

Sayeth David Frum.

"Tim Pawlenty was debate night’s big loser. He walked onto that stage with one mission..."

"... to prove himself the ultra-base alternative to Romney. He failed, miserably. Pawlenty’s failure is not the kind of stumble he can correct later. It goes to the core of the guy: offered the chance to confront Romney directly, he flinched. He did not look 'nice.' He did not look like he was observing the 11th commandment. He looked uncertain and weak. He looked like a man fully aware that Romney would best him in a one-to-one discussion of healthcare policy."

Frum says.

ADDED: James Taranto said Pawlenty looked weak.

AND: Here's the relevant video of Pawlenty.

"I used to worry that Sarah Palin would be the Barry Goldwater of 2012. My bad. Paul Ryan is the Barry Goldwater of 2012."

Frum yanks your chain.

"We Just Witnessed The Media's Test Run To Re-Elect Barack Obama."

Brilliant blog post by William A. Jacobson:

The ruthless efficiency with which the left-wing blogosphere tied Palin to the shooting, and the success of their efforts in equating Palin with mass murder, is a lesson we should not forget....

Having created a false narrative of Palin's responsibility for the shooting, the mainstream media tried to deprive Palin of the ability to defend herself against the charges. And unfortunately, some who supposedly are on our side have jumped on that bandwagon.

And all the while, Barack Obama stood back for days and let his supporters in the media rip Palin apart, much as he left it to his supporters to go after the Clintons during the primary, only then to proclaim that we don't really know why Jared Loughner did what he did. And the media narrative was how wonderful Obama was, how he helped heal the nation.

Any Republican or conservative or Tea Party supporter who dumps on Palin in any way over the Tucson shooting or her defense of herself should just stop talking now.

It does not matter whether you support Palin for President, whether you think she is electable, or even whether you like her. This is not about Palin, it is about the mainstream media's desire to have Barack Obama re-elected at any cost and to take down any Republican candidate who stands in the way.

Rush Limbaugh gave an excellent dramatic reading of this post yesterday, and Jacobson has the video. Here's the transcript, with this commentary from Rush:

If Republicans are gonna sit by and watch Palin savaged, they'd better be prepared to sit by and watch the next one get savaged and the next one. Because that's what's coming.  If the Republicans cannot defend themselves over this kind of scurrilous, baseless, libelous charge, they got no business running.

They'll not be able to elect anybody.  If we shut up and be silent on this -- if we've got Republicans like Frum who will agree with the left-wing blogosphere and the mainstream media that Palin should shut up, that she should stop defending herself and it's a horrible travesty of just what Palin did; if we're gonna have Republicans sit around and give Obama credit for sitting by for four days while his allies try to take her out, then give a speech and get credit for the wonderful things he said about it -- then we got more idiots in our party than we would want to know....

This call for "civility"? They don't want us to be civil.  They want us to be cowed.  They want all of us to become Frumized.

Go to the links and read the whole thing to see why David Frum is tagged as the exemplar of a useful idiot. Wouldn't you like to see Jacobson and Frum is a dialogue on Bloggingheads? Frum has been on many times. Based on segment headings, he's never talked about Sarah Palin, though. Kind of odd, considering how hard it is not to talk about Sarah Palin. I'm going to recommend a Jacobson/Frum pairing. I think that would be quite delicious.

So who did the conservative bloggers decide were the most annoying left-wing and the most annoying right-wing bloggers?

From The 8th Annual Right Wing News Conservative Blog Awards:

Most Annoying Left-Of-Center Blogger

3) Matt Yglesias (6)
3) Kos/Daily Kos (6)
2) Charles Johnson (10)
1) Andrew Sullivan (11)

Most Annoying Right-Of-Center Blogger

4) Allah (4)
2) Dan Riehl (5)
2) Debbie Schlussel (5)
1) David Frum (8)

More awards at the link, of course. I'm just a particular fan of the concept of annoyingness.

"Is the 9/11 Mosque a Publicity Stunt?"

Asks David Frum. I got there via Hot Air. Hey! I wrote a post 3 days ago titled "Is the proposal to build a mosque near Ground Zero more political performance than reality?" I was bouncing off the same New York Post story that inspired Frum. Damn! I could have had a Hot Air link. But I decided not to publish my post, because, reading to the end of the story, I saw that although the would-be mosque-builders only owned one of the buildings needed for the project, they did have a lease and an option to purchase  the second building at its assessed value. That is, the path to acquiring the second building looked clear, assuming they could raise the money for the project. So raising the money for the project is the only real difficulty, which is the same thing we thought when it seemed that they already owned both buildings.

So is Frum seeing more than I saw or less?

The mosque developers are three Arab-American businessmen: Sharif and Sammy el-Gamal and Nour Moussa. They have a partner in Feisal Abdul Rauf, the Muslim writer and publicist who does most of the talking. But the money and credit pledged to the project belong to the company owned by Moussa and the el-Gamals, Soho Properties.

Soho Properties has paid some $5 million in cash to buy the Burlington Coat Factory building, a building that yields no income. They are paying rent to hold rights to the Con Ed building, which also yields no income. All of this in the midst of the worst commercial property slump in memory, in an area of New York with a very uncertain economic future....

You can see why the Gamal-Moussa team would be dazzled by the notion that philanthropists in the Persian Gulf might donate $100 million to raise a grand gleaming Islamic center in lower Manhattan. You can tuck a lot of development fees into a $100 million project. And if not a mosque … what else do you do with their two loser properties on Park Place?

Frum thinks the Gamal-Moussa businessmen really did originally intend to build condos, but that wasn't going to work, and they hooked up with Feisal Rauf believing he was the kind of guy who could connect them to guys in the Middle East who'd give them $100 million if they were buttered up in a suitably Islamic way. Is "publicity stunt" the right word for Frum's theory? It sounds more like he thinks it was a hare-brained real estate scheme.

$100 million is not so easily raised, not even in Abu Dhabi, not in the middle of a global commercial property slump, not with the Manhattan real estate market in a shambles. Believe it or not, rich people in the Persian Gulf are not yearning to plunge into a U.S. political controversy.

And, of course, the mosque will never be built. The idea that I tossed aside was different. I entertained the notion that the idea was to propose it in order to stir up the reaction that was, in fact, stirred up. Some Americans would be outraged, including a subgroup that would say anti-Muslism things, and some Americans would get passionate about freedom of religion and celebrating diversity. In this theory, the point was always and only to undermine American society by dividing us in two and touching off a terrible, endless fight between the two halves.  In this theory too, then, the mosque is never built. It's not that the business scheme fails, but that the proposal was itself the project, and the project succeeds.

Will the mosque be built?
	Yes.
	No, because it's a business scheme that will fail.
	No, because it was always only intended to produce a destructive debate.
	No, because our protests will cause the developers to abandon the plan voluntarily.
	No, because politicians or courts will find a way to stop it.
pollcode.com free polls

The Davids, Weigel and Frum on Bloggingheads.

They talk about Weigel's recent Journolist-related ouster from the Washington Post, among other things. I haven't watched yet, so I can't vouch for how interesting the discussion is. It's interesting that they're on, so that's how my interestingness standard is met. Will they push each other or just natter on? Maybe listen while you're cooking dinner or something.

"Why I Denied David Frum’s Website A Spot In The Blogads Conservative Hive."

John Hawkins explains:

Now, as a general rule, I try to be very open minded about who gets into the Blogads Conservative Hive. If they're generally friendly to conservatives and seem to have a mostly conservative audience, I don't mind having them on board. So, aside from conservative blogs, there are Libertarian blogs in the Hive and there are blogs I'd call center-right. It goes without saying that there are plenty of issues where members of the Hive, myself included, don't see eye-to-eye.

I'm in the Blogads Conservative Hive, so I can vouch for that!

Guys like Frum want to have it both ways. Being a "Republican" / "conservative" who tells liberals what they want to hear about the Right is a career niche —and it can pay big dividends....

[W]hy is David Frum getting a column at CNN? How is it that Time has a guy like this writing for them? What's the purpose of putting a guy like Frum on TV as opposed to all the genuine conservatives who dwarf his traffic and can obviously draw a bigger crowd?...

[T]he mainstream media loves "conservatives" and "Republicans" who will trash whomever the Left hates most. So, if you're willing to talk about how Sarah Palin is a hick, Glenn Beck is a crank, Rush Limbaugh is bad for the country, and the Tea Party is bad for democracy, the mainstream media will reward you and because conservatives pride themselves on being open minded, they'll all too often give you a pass for your atrocious behavior — especially since the MSM doesn't insist you play their game all the time. As long as you're willing to say what they want about the people they hate the most, they'll reward you with a cover story at Newsweek and then in your off time, you can churn out a few articles to point gullible conservatives towards while you're trying to guilt them into taking you seriously by crying "epistemic closure!"

I Googled "epistemic closure" and got, first, "'Epistemic Closure'? Those Are Fighting Words," a NYT article featuring a photo of Frum. So what's that fight all about?

The phrase is being used as shorthand by some prominent conservatives for a kind of closed-mindedness in the movement, a development they see as debasing modern conservatism’s proud intellectual history....

([Julian Sanchez of the libertarian Cato Institute] said he probably fished “epistemic closure” out of his subconscious from an undergraduate course in philosophy, where it has a technical meaning in the realm of logic.)

Blech. What an ugly phrase and what a pointless and irritating explanation for it. It's pretentious, but the usage is actually inaccurate. How off-putting and unhelpful!

Back to Hawkins:

Long story short, everybody has to make a living. But, I'm not interested in helping people like Frum play this little game where they try to cripple conservatives publicly while coming around on the back end to milk us for money. If Frum wants to be a dancing monkey for the Left, let them come up with the money to pay for the tune.

ADDED: "NOTE TO DAVID FRUM: Google doesn’t own BlogAds." Ha. Frum had written: "Hawkins is the person entrusted by Google to determine who may join the conservative blogads cloud." You'd think Frum would figure out the basics of blog advertising before attacking Hawkins. BlogAds is its own company, and Hawkins took the initiative to set up a "hive" that he called "Conservative" to attract buyers.

Jonah Goldberg goes for the GOP jugular.

He's summarizing Frum's argument to Frum there, but it's funny to hear him say it. (The clip was clipped by Bloggingheads commenter claymisher.)