Posted on 10/26/2006 2:02:03 PM PDT by rob777
"First, the blame for Watergate is Nixon's alone."
Agreed, but the blow out for the party as a whole in its wake is what I think is the point of this article. The party was taken down with Nixon and the result was absolute disaster. That is where I think the MSM was complicit.
I know that I also lost some personal friends and quite possibly, several acquaintances (who worked with/for us and placed their faith and trust in the US) I got to know from my 18 months tour in Vietnam--as a direct result of the Demo-Lib-Rat Congress cutting off all funding, IN SPITE of our having a signed agreement (The Paris Peace Accords) which stated we would support South Vietnam Militarily should the North attempt a takeover.
When that wuss Ford failed to exercise the oath of office he swore to uphold I burnt (symbolically) my Republican Membership Card and since then, have been a Patriotic Conservative.
I also became very disillusioned and did not even bother to vote until Ronald Reagan ran for the Presidency.
I usually end up voting R because it has been some time since I've encountered a D who was a true Conservative (the last being Zell Miller) although (like on the 7th) I will have to hold my nose and vote for the lesser......
Of course, the "lesser" in this instance is definitely better than the "actual" EVIL which awaits us if the DhimiCrats regain control.
God Bless All, God Bless Our Military, God Bless America and see y'all at the pols on the 7th.
"I take by your reply that you view our first president, George Washington, as a bad president, naming only Carter and possibly FDR and LBJ as worse."
It may of sounded that way, but that is not the way I took it. I think he referred to Washington as the first president to mean that Carter was the worst of all Presidents, rather than merely the worst modern day President. I took the reference to Washington as a time frame reference, not that Washington was included in the list of bad Presidents. If so, it would have been simpler just to say that Carter was the worst President of all time as opposed to the worst modern day President.
Not with the burglary itself. John Mitchell (who was, when all was said and done, hung out to dry in the whole affair) answered thus when asked by Len Colodny and Robert Gittlin for Silent Coup (he spoke to the two writers before his death in 1988): "It's just the way you put it. It was Nixon's personality and mode of operation that did him in." That was an allusion to Nixon's penchant for intrigue, a penchant that created the environment in which John Dean could and did mastermind the events that became Watergate.
But Nixon also destroyed himself by taking at face value Dean's implications that Mitchell had sanctioned the Watergate break-in, and by never even thinking to question Mitchell himself---Nixon's purported closest friend in the administration---about whether or not what Dean (or H.R. Haldeman, who was likewise getting it from Dean) was suggesting about him was true.
Taking his information from Haldeman, who had it from Dean, Nixon had come around to the belief that Mitchell had sanctioned the break-in. That belief had been bolstered by the attribution to Mitchell of the suggestion that the CIA be used to stop the FBI---which, we now know, was a lie planted by Dean. Nixon may also have been informed of a third Dean lie---that Mitchell had approved the payment of support money to the burglars. In any event, believing that Mitchell had a role in the break-in and understanding that the Watergate trail would soon lead to (Committee to Re-Elect the President) employee Liddy, Nixon wanted to put distance between himself and the head of the reelection committee . . . Nixon asked (Mitchell) to resign as head of the CRP but to continue in a private capacity as the leader of the campaign. Mitchell was taken aback by this suggestion, and had no intention of resigning when he had entered the White House for lunch (on Friday, 30 June 1972), but he felt he had to bow to his chief's wishes in this matter. Shortly, he resigned. Thus did Dean's tricking of the president into the cover-up claim as its first palpable victim the man whose name Dean had so often invoked without permission, John Mitchell.---Colodny and Gittlin, Silent Coup, p. 214.
[Dean] had succeeded beyond his expectations. He had deceived the President of the United States into joining a conspiracy to obstruct justice in order to cover up a crime that Nixon had not committed, and to conceal Dean's own crimes. And the president, once again reacting to a crisis without gathering the facts (emphasis mine---BD), willingly slipped the noose Dean had handed him around his own neck.---Silent Coup, ten pages earlier.
Reacting to real or alleged crises without facts was the way Nixon destroyed himself. With no little help from his (actual or alleged) friends.
Probably not. It was the Olympics that marked the turnaround. The US hockey team. Electing Reagan gave the country 8 years to recover, and Bush another 4. That made even 8 years of Clinton surviveable.
Yes, quite well. I apologize for coming off so brash in my reply. My reply was a knee jerk reaction. Of all our presidents, it is Washington I most admire. Oh what love of God, freedom and country he possessed!
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