On second thought (Revisionism on Nixon is Itself Being Revised)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette ^ | June 19, 2005 | David M. Shribman

[RWR8189]

Sometimes a great nation changes its mind. Sometimes that's a good thing

The most jarring thing I read last week was a headline. My guess is that the headline, in a British newspaper, may be the most jarring thing you read this week: Nixon Becomes Watergate Hero.

Forget for a moment the argument, which is hard to summarize and even harder to support. The important thing is that the way we look at Watergate is changing even if only one fact about Watergate has changed. (That would be the identity of Deep Throat. He was former FBI official Mark Felt.)

The truth is that the past is changing all the time. That may seem to be an odd notion, because we all know that what is past is past; we can't do much about it, or change it. But much of the utility of the past is how we employ it -- both to understand the present and to shape the way we approach the future. And the way we view that usable past is always being transformed.

Now I'm not willing to assert that Nixon was the hero of Watergate, but I am willing to say that the way the world views Nixon has changed, a lot, even in my own lifetime -- a lifetime during which Watergate was, along with the election of President Kennedy, among the formative political moments.

The old consensus was that Nixon was a hopeless creep, a near crook (if not an actual one), a paranoid schemer whose openings to Moscow and Peking were motivated as much by opportunism as by vision. The new consensus is more complex. Watergate is still part of it, and the Checkers speech has not lost its smarminess, and the way he smeared Helen Gahagan Douglas in the

 

[jammer]

Good find. Thanks for posting. As for me, I am at a loss to determine how Nixon could be viewed as "conservative." I doubt we'll ever see THAT revised, unless he somehow is revised into becoming a hero, and then the left will adopt him. Sure, he was a staunch anti-communist, but, except for fellow-travellers, who wasn't? Kennedy was, Humphrey was, Jackson was, Johnson was, Truman was, Kennan was.

Wage and price controls, affirmative action, the EPA, and on and on, make him at least an anti-republican statist, if not a modern day liberal.

[Fiddlstix]

BTTT

[Drammach]

Let's not forget Nixon's "War On Drugs" which continues to this day..

[NCSteve]

...with the possible exception of George H.W. Bush, who is also enjoying a bit of a revival these days. Some liberals find his views on social welfare more congenial than those held by Bill Clinton.

And there it is. Nixon was predecessor to a political group known today as the neo-conservatives. Typical of political doublespeak, there is nothing conservative about a neo-con. Nixon and both Bushes were/are global socialist in economic and political alignment. A better name for them might be liberal hawks.

I expect Nixon's image will continue to be "reformed" over time as the left gets past the context of its visceral hatred for everything Republican and starts realizing Nixon did more for their agenda than any of his successors until the Bushes.

[jammer]

Well put, sir.