RICHARD NIXON'S REVENGE

Tricky Dick had a history of such political machinations -- another second rate attorney who rose in the political ranks because of the Peter Principal and studying "The Prince." He resigned for more reasons than just the distinct possibility of being impeached for Watergate. Pandora's Box was about to be opened. Anyone can believe what they want to believe but this sleezebag was a crooked attorney who spoke out of two sides of his mouth.

(Johnson wasn't much better but there wasn't much there to doubt his sanity).

Pat Buchan used Nixon as the metaphor around which he built his thesis re media's propensity for the politics of personal destruction and a secondary thesis of "what goes around comes around".

Since Nixon seems to be more interesting that the media, however, I thought the following Buchanan article interesting. Which president is glaringly absent from the list of presidents he mentions:

Rating the Presidents
by Patrick J. Buchanan

With the passing of President Reagan, historians, scholars and journalists have again taken to rating our presidents.

Invariably, greatness is ascribed to only three: Washington, Lincoln and FDR. Which reveals as much about American historians, scholars and journalists as it does about American presidents.

Certainly, Washington is our greatest president, the father of our country and the captain who set our course. But Lincoln is great only if one believes that preventing South Carolina, Georgia and the Gulf states from peacefully seceding justified the suspension of the Constitution, a dictatorship, 600,000 dead and a resort to a total war that ravaged the South for generations.

As for FDR, he was the greatest politician of the 20th century. But why call a president great whose government was honeycombed with spies and traitors, and whose war diplomacy lead to the loss of 10 Christian countries of Eastern Europe to a Muscovite despot whose terrorist regime was the greatest enemy of human freedom in modern history?

FDR restored the nation's confidence in his first term and won a 46-state landslide to a second. But by 1937, the Depression was back and we were rescued only by the vast expenditures of World War II into which, even admirers now admit, FDR lied his country. The man talked peace as he plotted war.

None of the historians, scholars or journalists rate Reagan a great president. Yet his leadership led to the peaceful liberation of a hundred million children and grandchildren of the people FDR sold down the river at Teheran and Yalta, as well as of the 300 million people of the Soviet Union.

And why are Wilson and Truman always listed among the "near great" presidents?

While our entry into World War I ensured Allied victory, Wilson brought home from Versailles a vindictive peace that betrayed his principles, his 14 Points and his solemn word to the German government when it agreed to an armistice. That treaty tore Germany apart and led directly to Hitler and a horrific war of revenge 20 years later. Moreover, Wilson's stubborn refusal to accept any compromise language to protect U.S. sovereignty led to Senate rejection of both his treaty and the League of Nations. Why, then, is this obdurate man "near great"?

As for Truman, he dropped two atom bombs on defenseless cities, sent back 2 million Russian dissidents and POWs to his "Uncle Joe," death and the Gulag, offered to send the USS Missouri to Russia to bring Stalin over to give him equal time to answer Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech, lost China to communism, fired Gen. MacArthur for demanding victory in Korea, presided over a corrupt administration, left us mired down in a "no-win war" and left office with 23 percent approval.

What is near great about that? Why is Eisenhower, who ended the Korean War in six months, restored America's military might and presided over eight years of secure peace not the greater man?

Now consider one of the men whom all the raters judge a "failure" and among our worst presidents, Warren G. Harding.

Harding served five months less than JFK, before dying in office in 1923. Yet his diplomatic and economic triumphs were of the first order. He negotiated the greatest disarmament treaty of the century, the Washington Naval Agreement, which gave the United States superiority in battleships and left us and Great Britain with capital-ship strength more than three times as great as Japan's. Even Tokyo conceded a U.S. diplomatic victory.

With Treasury Secretary Andrew Mellon, Harding cut Wilson's wartime income tax rates, which had gone as high as 63 percent, to 25 percent, ended the stagflation of the Wilson presidency and set off the greatest boom of the century, the Roaring Twenties. When Harding took his oath, unemployment was at 12 percent. When he died, 29 months later, it was at 3 percent. This is a failure?

If it is because of Harding's White House dalliance with Nan Britton, why does not JFK's White House dalliance with Judith Exner make him a failure? And if Teapot Dome, which broke after Harding's death - and in which he was not involved - makes him a failure, why does not the Monica Lewinsky scandal that led to his impeachment make Clinton a failure? Of the seven Democratic presidents in the 20th century, only Truman and Carter did not have lady friends in the White House.

Harding's vice president, Calvin Coolidge, succeeded him, won one of the great landslides in U.S. history and was, as Jude Wanniski writes, an inspiration for Ronald Reagan, who considered Silent Cal a role model and put his portrait up in the Cabinet Room as a mark of respect.

Harding, Coolidge, Eisenhower and Reagan were men who kept us out of war and presided over times of peace, security and often of soaring prosperity. Yet, the 20th century presidents who took us into war and who lost the fruits of war - Wilson, FDR, Truman - are "great" or "near great."

These ratings tell us less about presidents than they do about historians, scholars and journalists.
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig5/buchanan1.html

All subjective opinion which constitutes not-so-clever propaganda.

LOL. Not a Bush in the bunch.

Meanwhile, is Buchanan "Deep Throat"? This article gives odds on some possibilities, including....drum roll......well, go read it and see

http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americas/story.jsp?story=609187

Come on LW. We have been allowing you your subjective opinion. And Buchanan is giving very specific and verifiable criteria for which he bases his opinion making it considerbly more than subjective. I don't ask you to like what he says or agree with his conclusions, but given his credentials and experience, don't try to dismiss it as propaganda.

And JW, not only are the Bushs' missing, but so is NIXON, one of the three president he worked for.

I'll admit it never cross my mind that either Buchanan nor George the 1st could have been Deep Throat. Not only does Buchanan seem to be in excellent health but so does the senior Bush for that matter. But wouldn't it be a hoot if that rumor turned out to be true about one of them?

It's also going to be a huge disappointment if we never know who Deep Throat is/was as it is going to look very much like Bernstein and Woodward made him up. Bernstein was a fair to good reporter in his days. Woodward is quite a bit more flaky but still has better ethics than to manufacture sources I think though.

Ah, but I said "all," which included Buchanan and the lists of greatest Presidents, be they by public polls or other means including historians. The difference is I'm not trying to propagandize like political pundits Buchanan and the rest -- I am simply reporting based on my experience and knowledge, much of it gleaned from direct contact with someone high up in the Nixon Administration who was still involved with politics through the 90's. Not that I needed anyone telling me what Machiavellian manipulations go on in politics in the USA or anywhere else. It's those who are gullible enough not to realize what's going on that need to wake up and smell the coffee.

I agree with Buchannan in every point but one...

Lincoln is not in my list of good presidents. The Civil War was far too costly and the one real justification of the war (ending slavery) was an secondary issue.

We should have let the southern states leave peacefully. As one from the Northeast it is very clear the United States would be much better off now had these states succeeded in seceding.

I am agnostic about Wilson (not knowing the alternative) I think he tried and failed to ensure peace.

I think that Trumans use of the bomb is indefensible.

IHowever, n my opinion both Nixon and Reagan will always be crooks..

Lookit. If Richard Nixon had gone on tv that Sunday night and said "I had to fire a bunch of guys today, including two of my closest aides, because they went way overboard in trying to assure my re-election. I say to the American people these actions are not the way we do things in America and I assure you there will a full investigation of the whole affair."

(Sounds like him doesn't it? No, try saying it out loud with the little headshake. See?)

The whole thing would have been over by Labor Day. Poof.

Instead, well, instead we got the stonewall, the firings of the Attorney(S) General, the replacement of the head of the FBI and on and on. The fight over the tapes before the Supreme Court..... it still makes me sick to my stomach. It was a true subversion of the US Constitution.

The US media did it's job. It ripped the rotting roof off the cover-up.

The change in the media doesn't have a damned thing to do with Nixon getting any revenge because he doesn't deserve any. You have to be wronged before you seek revenge. The change in the media has much more to do with good propaganda technique and careful marketing.

Joe( We can't pay them off, that would be wrong. RMN) Nation
Joe(See if we can't get some reporters to write our side. gwb?)Nation

There is so much you guys are leaving out of this in your analysis.

Joe, I agree. But don't you think that Nixon himself, perhaps, thought of his dumb, feloniuous action as noble? In his mind, he was not only protecting his own toches, he was standing by his boys, no matter how misguided their actions. The "plumbers" might have seen their work as protecting the White House, but I'm not sure that Tricky Dick himself was all that selfish. As you said, he could have saved himself by the extremely simple expedient of making a clean breast of it and throwing himself on the mercy of the American people. We Americans love that kind of stuff. We would have forgiven him at the snap of a finger. But he chose to try to stand by his gang of loyal lawbreakers instead.

Actually I think a critical analysis would show there was an initial kneejerk reponse to either a) not get tarred with the brush or b) loyalty to friends. It wasn't too long after that Nixon did acknowledge he had been briefed on the burglary and from that time on he did not attempt to block prosecution of those who committed it.

What he did try to block was the attempts of zealous reports/Democrats, whomever, who weren't satisfied with taht but want to be sure the tar brush was well utilized. It wasn't the coverup; it was the lie that sunk Nixon.

All the firings and other shenanigans that went on were to protect the Oval office from a clear assault on executive privilege. Those tapes Nixon never expected to see the light of day and there is no way he wanted them made ublic to Congress or anybody else. It was here that he pushed the boundaries of constitutinal law and I daresay none of us, not even Buchanan, knew what his motives were. They could have been good. They could have been bad.

He lost the battle and he lost his presidency.

I have to say that I really enjoy reading your posts, Foxfyre, I get a real insight into how twisted a view of reality can become if a person has the time and effort.

There was no assault by anyone on executive privilege, it was offered up by the Nixonians as a block to the investigation into Watergate and properly disregarded by the Supreme Court. How anyone can believe that Richard Nixon would install the taping system in the Oval Office and not expect that someday those recordings wouldn't be part of the public record of his Presidency is beyond me. His error was in thinking that, one, no one who knew about the system would bring it up and two, once it did become known that the executive privilege smokescreen would give him cover. Sorry, investigation of a crime trumps just about everything except National Security and, of course, they tried to pull out that one too.

I was watching the day that Butterfield testified. The moment he mentioned that there were recordings made of Oval Office conversations, I lept to my feet, I knew that was the end of the cover-up, the end of Richard Nixon. He was not brought down by the Democrats or the press, he was brought down by his mis-understanding of the American people.

He had the perfect chance to be a hero to a divided country, you remember, at that point in time we had been at war in Southeast Asia for a dozen years, fifty thousand sons and daughters were dead and he was headed for his second term with a promised end to the war and the celebration of the Nation's Bi-centennial coming up. All he had to do was level with us, but he didn't understand that we would forget about the errors of an over active bunch of staffers and love a President who stood above them.

Joe(Some people thought the world would melt) Nation

Joe, you talk as if Nixon was unique with his taping system. He wasn't. Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson taped their conversations as well. In fact the oval office and other key areas were so bugged, Nixon's people had to find all the listening devices and remove them before Nixon could move in. It is well documented that the Nixon tapes were n part for use to defend himself if he was misquoted or a conversation was inaccurately portrayed, but mostly he used them in order to have a complete and accurate account of all events for his memoirs. It is no secret and has been widely reported how much Nixon was a historian and how much he wanted his own time in history to be recorded accurately.

And no, he did not expect the tapes to be subject to public scrutiny until at such time as he determined they would be made public and that is just as Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson expected their secret tapes would not be made public until they deemed it appropriate.

And that in a nutshell was the battle over the tapes and the fight Nixon put up to defend them. And I will never believe he protected the tapes to protect the Watergate burglars since all that was out long before the fight over the tapes started.

Believe what you want. If you don't want to face the fact that Nixon, in collusion with Halderman, Erlichman and Attorney General Mitchell, attempted to subvert the Constitution of the United States in order to remain in power that is your prerogative, but it does not reflect an understanding of either the issues then at hand nor the reality of the danger to our republic.

Joe Nation

I did not say they operated within constitutional law. In fact, I said just the opposite. It is the question of motive that I see as debatable. Not only was there a problem in the methods used by the executive branch, the sharks in Congress smelled blood in the water and they were also pushing the envelope to overturn executive privilege to the extent it had not been done before.

Some people will see the opposition as evil and wrong with no quarter given for any extenuating circumstances. Some people see things more multi-dimensionally as they almost always actually are. Good historians utilize the latter process.

What motives or extenuating circumstances, besides political self-preservation, do you subscribe to Richard Nixon and his cohorts? Please, don't repeat the old song about executive privilege and how important it was for Nixon to try hold off the hordes of Congress. There had been crimes committed, and Foxy, not just a two-bit burglary, not just political dirty tricks, but real crimes, assaults upon the electoral system that is the bedrock of this nation's freedom.

The questions for the President had nothing to do with his official duties and therefore garnered no protection from executive privilege, at least that how the Supreme Court saw it. The answers were due.

Please, if you have any respect for the values of this Republic, you will not defend, in any way, shape or form, the motives of G. Gordon Liddy and the others who, with the knowledge and direction of the highest officials of this nation including Richard Nixon, subverted the Constitution of the United States for their own pathetic need for power. These are not people who need defending.

Joe Nation

Well if you don't want to discuss executive privilege Joe, then there's nothing to discuss because that's what the flap over the tapes was all about. You frankly know nothing of whether my opinions compromise my patriotism and/or appreciation for the values of our Republic. You will perhaps forgive me if I make up my own mind about that.

I have not defended the Nixon administration at all here if you have been paying attention. I have said that I do not accept all the characterizations of motive and intent as asserted by the Nixon/GOP/conservative haters and refuse to attach absolutes to all things as some do. Some good things happened under the Nixon administration and those things should be acknowledged. Some bad things happened and those too should be acknowledged.

I support a spirit of honestyand fairness in assessment of all things and in that spirit I draw my conclusions. If you want everything to be clearly black and white, that's your prerogative. If you see people as totally good or totally evil, I can't do anything about that. I trust the historians and witnesses of the era who don't see it that way.

"Subverting the Constitution" hasn't been tried since Mr. Franklin Roosevelt threatened to pack the Supreme Court with dozens of new judges supporting his treasonous activities.

For those unaware of these long-past events may I recommend the memoirs of an honest and brilliant president, Herbert Hoover, who writes in a footnote (will revert with page if necessary, I don't keep his book "Memoirs" at the office) that the unconscionable decision to endlessly increase federal deficits were justified by the Franklin Roosevelt administration on the basis that "... this is money owed by the people, to the people, so it's not debt at all!" The fact is that only Pearl Harbor - and the incredibly stupid decision by Hitler to declare war on the US - rescued the nation from the great depression, not any of Mr. Franklin Roosevelt's policies.

Joe Nation is not usually a-historical so am surprised at this particular criticism of President Nixon from him.