Posted on 11/14/2008 5:45:10 PM PST by MartinaMisc
Thirty-five years ago this month, the edifice began to collapse.
“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook,” said President Richard Nixon at a televised press conference on November 17, 1973. “Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got."
Of course, Nixon was a crook, and less than a year later he would resign from the White House, his legacy saturated with scandal. Nixon’s disgraceful departure inflicted a wound upon the American psyche that would not be fully healed until the election of Ronald Reagan six years later. Some believed that Jimmy Carter’s 1976 Presidential win would heal that wound, but the pain merely became worse and worse until Reagan applied the necessary balm.
Today, one must wonder if history is repeating itself. Will Barack Obama’s election be remembered as another botched effort to remedy the damage caused by a troubled Presidency? Will Obama’s successor be the person who actually heals our broken country?
It’s clear that outgoing President George W. Bush is the Nixon of the 21st century. No, Bush is nowhere near the moral reprobate that Nixon was, but the parallels between Bush and Nixon are fairly obvious. Both were elected, and re-elected, by voters disgusted with what they saw as rampant, aggressive secularism and an attempt by the left to destroy traditional American values. Both were ideologically incoherent, embracing a bizarre mix of liberal and conservative philosophies. Both were “big-government Republicans” whose actions demonstrated a deep scorn of conservative principles. Both men threw judicial bones to the right: Nixon placed William Rehnquist on the Supreme Court, while Bush gave conservatives Justices Samuel Alito and John Roberts.
(Excerpt) Read more at humanevents.com ...
If we are doing history, lets look at Woodrow or FDR.
Crooked how exactly? he was never tied to any bribes that I recall -- but I was just a wee lad way back in the day.
I’m pretty sure all liberals are crooks.
It's just amazing how the Kennedy administration got away with murder, literally, LBJ's sins never came to light until after his death, and Nixon didn't do ANYTHING nearly as illegal. What a joke, Bobby Kennedy as Attorney General did illegal wiretaps on Martin Luther King among others.
I read Julie Nixon biography of her mother, and she wrote that her mother wouldn't talk of Watergate, except to say that she believed it all went back to left-wing enemies that her husband had made with the Alger Hiss affair. I think she was right, because Nixon's Watergate problem amounted to nothing, and his sin was trying to protect his friend from a ridiculous mistake that caused no harm.
Nixon’s worst failure was that he didn’t fight back, just like a Republican.
What was to become the Watergate scandal began slowly, and very intentionally, by the Democrats. They were terrified that Nixon was going to start hearing about “Who was responsible for losing the Vietnam War?” (The wicked flee when no man pursueth.)
Had Nixon done so, at the beginning of the scandal, the Democrats would have approached him with a deal to kill both investigations. And had Nixon refused to deal, people like John Kerry and Jane Fonda and a slew of others might have found themselves wearing striped pajamas.
But Nixon failed by not disemboweling the Democrats over their traitorous perfidy. So the Democrats felt free to pursue him for political gain, as far as they could get.
This is the price of not crushing your political enemies when you have the chance.
It might be appropriate to recognize the incredible power of the MSM. We have seen this demonstrated once again. For, as has been said it was third rate amateur's attempt at burglary (Watergate). Had President Nixon initially said "I will not hear of this any further, I advise you to seek counsel". he would have survived. Alas, he was a loyal commander and it cost him dearly.
I hope we are spared those two unconscionable fading, dreary men, Bernstein and Woodward. For years and years, they have been dragged out by the MSM.
We hear of moves to crush talk radio, one of our last bastions of truth. The battle is on.
Obvious exaggeration aside, I'm still dubious about this claim.
Carter was an engineer before turning politician. Obama was a "community organizer".
check it out.... this is pretty smart.....
I would argue that his worst failure was wage and price controls, just like a big-government Republican (aka Socialist).
You really hope? My bet is that when they're dead, they'll both be stuffed by a taxidermist and brought out for display to remember the glory days when MSM journalists could bring down a president that had won re-election winning 49 states out of 50. The one state that did go for McGovern was, of course, Massachusetts.
Despite this, he got our prisoners home, crippled the NVA, beat back the Easter Offensive, stopped the draft (coincidentally, the noble "peace movement" ended the same day) and successfully opened the way to diplomatic relations with the Soviets and the Chinese.
The Left, the Kennedy people, the press and the gullible populace brought him down, not any real scandals.
Someday we'll realize the real value of Nixon and plant the people who brought him down in a septic tank somewhere.
What a crock of crap. Watergate was payback for Alger Hiss, pure and simple. Nixon didn’t “prosecute” an unpopular war, he inherited it from Johnson, McNamara, and Westmoreland and did his best to end it as quickly as American pride would allow. The lefty American press and the Democratic Party were gunning for Nixon since before Eisenhower was elected in ‘52, and in Watergate, they finally found something they could gin up into an excuse that would work.
Go look into Hillary Rodham’s role in the Watergate hearings. She was working for Ted Kennedy and her job was to make sure that Nixon didn’t get a chance to present evidence that what he had done was peanuts, compared to what JFK got away with.
Has it been that long? I remember touring the White House as a teenager right about this time 35 years ago. What an unbelievable time that was.
I agree with your assessment. Nixon was a saint compared to JFK, LBJ, and BJC. The red commies hated Nixon with a media passion, just like they do President Bush.
I think Carter is an apt comparison of the rift we’ll see shortly in the Dems. They are holding a majority comprised of hippies, Blue Dogs, minorities, and gays that hate each other deep down.
The question is whether THE ONE (peace be upon Him) will be able to pull off blaming W. for the entirety of his four year term.
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