Posted on 06/30/2009 9:04:38 AM PDT by presidio9
I wonder sometimes whether the Nixon tapes really will just continue to be the gift that never stops giving. I was in college when Richard Milhous Nixon was first elected president, and I can still remember the profound sense of loathing and disgust that I experienced at the mere sight, let alone the sound, of him and of his most especially repellent sidekick Henry Kissinger. Wiser and older people tell you that the passions of your youth will dry up and that a more sere and autumnal condition will overtake you as maturity advances, but the thought of the Nixon gang in the White House still infuses me with a pure and undiluted hatred and makes me consider throwing up things that I don't even remember having eaten.
Just take a look at the most recent harvest from the tapes that the Nixon Presidential Library has released from the early months of 1973. The impressive thing is that even in the smallest details, the obsessive nastiness and criminality of the bigger picture is further delineated. The foulness of Nixon's mind was not "compartmentalized" between one issue and another. For example, like most "family values" Republicans, he was distressed by the Supreme Court's finding in Roe v. Wade. But, like almost anybody, he could imagine an exception where abortion might be excusable or even desirable. "There are times when an abortion is necessary. I know that. When you have a black and a white. Or a rape." The association of ideas between the first mental picture and the second one is so clear as to be—if it were not so hideous—pathetically laughable in an individual, and really quite alarming in a president of the United States.
As so often, his remarks about black Americans are crude and often sexual,
(Excerpt) Read more at slate.com ...
Compare that to any Conservative you know, who is genuinely fond of at least a few liberal politicians and commentators.
How soon people forget that Nixon’s racial attitudes weren’t so unique at all, but merely a reflection of quite a wide swath of society at the time. Interracial relationships *weren’t* mainstream by any stretch. Remember the interracial kiss on Star Trek with Kirk and Ohura? Caused quite a stir.
Nowadays we yawn and wonder what all the fuss was about, but we cannot directly interpret past attitudes and actions through a present-day moralistic prism. It’s utterly unfair. Nixon’s attitudes on race weren’t anything unusual for the time.
In other words, he's a major tool. He called Rick Warren a “vulgar huckster” following the Warren-moderated debate. He called McCain “borderline senile” during the election (maybe he got one thing right) and he called Palin “a disgrace”.
His name is synonymous with the words “radical leftist”, “arrogant elitist”, “Marx worshiper”, “religious atheist”.
Without getting into these ins and outs, I think dead is correct about one thing. It was Nixon’s role in the Alger Hiss business and the McCarthy red hunt that first earned him the enduring, knee-jerk hatred of liberals.
Sure, he was a liberal in office. He gave us the EPA. He gave us the opening to Red China.
In the minds of knee-jerk liberals and their kids, he was responsible, along with Senator McCarthy, for the Salem witch trials and the Spanish Inquisition.
I agree with both of you, but most of what you are referring to took place before Hitchens was born, or when he as a very small boy. Without much TV or any internet. He had little first-hand experience with Nixon. Certainly not enough to loath him. I know FDR was a terrible president, because of what my grandparents told me, and because of what I have read in the history books. But will never have enough personal familiariaty with the man to loath him unless he rises from the grave and starts chasing me down the block as a wheelchair zombie.
Yes the MSM hysteria reached the point where conservatives had to support the removal of a president.
What did Nixon do that no other president had done? Seriously.
Re: racists.
Al Gore senior, William Fulbright, Lyndon Johnson, . . . .
.. and before the 1960s there are lots of hits when you look for Democrat racist history. As for Nixon and his Christian friends virtually "owning" anti-Semitism well I don't think so.
As for Hitchens' claim that a huge number of American lives and an incalculable number of Vietnamese ones were thrown away to end the war on more shameful terms than had been on offer in the fall of 1968 just look at the post-war comments of the VN Communists.. what really did keep them in the war after their defeat in the Tet Offensive? The American press and the "anti-war" activities in the U.S., that's what! Hitchens and his street rabble friends and pro-Ho heroes.
To wit, "A Vietnamese journalist who was sympathetic to the communist cause during the war and who escaped to Paris after the fall of South Viet Nam had this to say: 'A physician who makes an error kills his patient; a general who makes an error kills his division; a journalist who makes an error kills an entire country.' And this was exactly what happened in Viet Nam. General Vo Nguyen Giap stated in a French television broadcast that his most important guerilla during the war was the American press. This was indeed a tragic compliment! The U.S. media coverage of the Tet Offensive was a classic case of irresponsible reporting . . . ."
1973? That was 35 years ago. The majority of Obama voters hadn’t even been born yet.
Exactly. No, he was too young to have anything to base his "loathing" on, he inhaled it. Nixon was widely loathed by the left because of his role in chasing communists in his early days. The left never admitted that Hiss was guilty, that the Rosenbergs were guilty, that McCarthy was telling the truth, and that the people in Hollywood who were blacklisted were blacklisted by their Hollywood friends, and not by McCarthy, who wasn't even around then.
Bush Derangement Syndrome didn't start with Bush, or Bork, or Thomas. Its how the left reacts to anyone who crosses their path. At least, thats how I see it. Hence, Nixon, Chambers, McCarthy.
What those tapes tell us about the GOP? Nothing. That was almost 4 decades ago, Nixon is long dead, as are most of the people he had with him. It’s about as relevant as the campaign musings of Dewey when defeated by Truman.
Yup.
Between that and the EPA I have a REALLY hard time liking the guy myself.
No, Reagan did not bow out in 1976; he was defeated at the convention in Kansas City. He won the CA primary when average CA people still had the right to vote. KY and TN, following Howard Baker, helped tip the nomination to Ford as much as any states.
Here’s a very good book on Nixon:
The wars of Watergate By Stanley I. Kutle
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