Tag Archives: Richard Nixon

legal news, national news, political news

Woodward knows a ‘scandal’ when he sees one

Bob Woodward knows his way around a political scandal.

He once was a young police reporter working for the Metro desk at the Washington Post. Then some goofballs broke into the Democratic Party National Committee headquarters at the Watergate office complex. Woodward and Carl Bernstein, another young reporter, began smelling a scandal in the works.

It turned out to be a big one. President Richard Nixon ended up resigning when it was learned he ordered the cover-up of the burglary.

Woodward sees a similarity between then and what’s happening now with Hillary Rodham Clinton’s e-mail controversy. The e-mail matter deals with messages Clinton sent on her personal server that might have contained highly classified information while she was serving as secretary of state.

According to The Hill: “’Follow the trail here,’ Woodward said on MSNBC’s ‘Morning Joe,’ noting that emails erased from Clinton’s private server when she led the State Department were either sent or received by someone else, too.”

Clinton erased the e-mails, just like those audiotapes were erased back in the 1970s as the Watergate scandal began to creep up on President Nixon. That’s according to Woodward.

The man knows what a scandal looks like. The Clinton e-mail controversy isn’t a scandal. At least not yet.

political news

Crowd size is overrated … trust me

Former Labor Secretary Robert Reich is blown away by the size of the crowds greeting Vermont U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders as he campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination.

Here’s what Reich posted on Facebook: “What amazes me, frankly, are the crowds. Not since Robert F. Kennedy sought the Democratic nomination in 1968 has a candidate for the nomination of either party generated such large numbers of people eager to see and listen to him. None in living memory has summoned such crowds this early, before the nominating season even begins. Even Sanders’ advisers are amazed (I spoke with one this morning who said they never expected this kind of response).

“What’s the explanation? It’s not his sense of humor. It’s not his youth. He isn’t a demagogue, bashing immigrants or pandering to hatred and bigotry. It’s that he’s telling Americans the unvarnished truth about what has happened to our economy and our democracy, and he is posing real solutions. And it seems that America is ready to listen.”

I guess I need to remind Reich — who I’m sure is aware of a lot more than I am — about a reality.

It is that big crowds don’t translate necessarily into votes.

The late U.S. Sen. George McGovern drew big crowds as well when he ran for president in 1972. I stood among a throng of thousands of people in a plaza in downtown Portland, Ore., as McGovern fired up the masses. That crowd was big, boisterous, enthusiastic — and it mirrored many of the political rally crowds McGovern was drawing all across the nation.

Sen. McGovern lost the election that year by 23 percentage points, as President Nixon rang up a 49-state landslide victory.

Yes, Sanders is telling voters his version of the “unvarnished truth.” Indeed, RFK did much the same thing in 1968 as he sought the Democratic presidential nomination. Kennedy’s message was different; it dealt more with issues of the heart, such as peace abroad and justice at home for all Americans.

Sanders’s crowds are impressive. Let’s remember, though, that he remains a still-distant second to the Democrats’ frontrunner, Hillary Rodham Clinton, who’s got another all-important edge over the rest of her party’s primary field: money.

We now live in an era where money matters far more than massive crowds.

media news

Of course the question was intended to offend

Major Garrett, CBS News’s chief White House correspondent, and I have something in common.

We both worked for the same person, although at different times.

How’s that for name-dropping?

Garrett went to work for the Amarillo Globe-News back in the old days. The then-editor of the paper, Garet von Netzer, hired him; von Netzer later would become publisher of the paper and then he hired yours truly, although long after Garrett had moved on.

Having laid down that useless predicate, let me now say that Major Garrett asked a patently offensive question of President Obama, to which the president responded appropriately.

The question involved four Americans held captive in Iran and Garrett wondered how the president could be “content” that they’re still being held on trumped-up charges while he is “celebrating” the nuclear deal worked out with the Islamic Republic.

http://www.politico.com/story/2015/07/obama-major-garrett-shuts-down-press-conference-120156.html?hp=b2_r1

Obama took offense at the tone of the question. He scolded Garrett, saying he “should know better” than to ask a question that contained “nonsense.”

The president said he isn’t “content” over the Americans’ continued captivity and said he and his team are “working diligently” to secure freedom for the individuals.

What irks me about the question and its aftermath is how Major Garrett insisted it wasn’t intended to ruffle the president. He didn’t apologize and he said it was not asked to call attention to himself.

May I be blunt? That’s pure baloney.

That’s how it goes among the White House press corps. It’s always about getting in a question intended to call attention to the inquiry and to the person making it. Such gamesmanship has been going on for, oh, since the beginning of these televised events dating back to the days when President Kennedy introduced them to the public and turned them into some form of entertainment.

CBS’s Dan Rather famously sought to get under President Nixon’s skin during the Watergate scandal; ABC’s Sam Donaldson did the same thing to President Reagan over the course of many years; Fox’s Ed Henry does the same thing today with President Obama.

Well, now Henry and others have company in the “gotcha” hall of fame.

Major Garrett asked an appropriate question. He just inserted a certain word — “content” — that framed it in a way that got Barack Obama’s dander up.

I would bet that was his intent all along.

 

legal news

Kennedy channels Blackmun and makes history

It’s always risky to put too fine a point on some historical events, but today’s ruling by the U.S. Supreme Court legalizing gay marriage in all 50 states tells me that the court has issued a ruling that is going to change the nation’s landscape … forever.

We can give credit — although some will assess blame — on one justice. That would be Anthony Kennedy, a normally conservative justice who sided with the liberals on the court and wrote the 5-4 majority opinion legalizing gay marriage.

Game, set and match? Not by a long shot.

Kennedy’s role, though, does have an interesting parallel with another justice from another time — with whom he served for five years on the same Supreme Court.

Harry Blackmun was selected to the court in 1971 by a conservative president, Richard Nixon; Kennedy joined the court in 1988 when another conservative president, Ronald Reagan, nominated him.

Blackmun eventually would veer far from where President Nixon thought he’d travel as he served on the highest court in the land. Blackmun became one of the court’s more liberal members.

In January 1973, he authored a landmark ruling that made abortion legal in the United States. Roe v. Wade was a case out of Texas in which the court overturned a Texas law that made getting an abortion a felony offense. Blackmun’s opinion stated that women essentially were entitled to control their own reproductive capacity. The 7-2 ruling set the stage for a debate that hasn’t let up over the course of the past 42 years, but it was a huge decision.

The man on the hot seat now is Kennedy, who remains a conservative jurist. But on this issue, gay marriage, he has decided — along with the court’s liberal wing — that the 14th Amendment to the Constitution, with its equal protection clause, trumps states’ reluctance to allow gay couples to marry.

I doubt strongly we’re going to see Justice Kennedy become a flaming liberal in the wake of this ruling. He just happens to be right — and courageous — in making this decision.

Just as Roe v. Wade changed the landscape in early 1973, today’s ruling on gay marriage sets the stage for another gigantic sea change across the nation.

I wish I was a fly on Justice Kennedy’s wall when he talked this over with his court colleagues and his staff as he pondered how he would write this Earth-shattering opinion. Something tells me he heard the late Justice Blackmun’s voice.

 

national news, political news

Nixon could have squashed scandal … easily

2 Comments

Forty-three years ago today, President Nixon missed an opportunity to squash what had been termed a “third-rate burglary.” All he had to do was deliver a brief speech on national television that went something like this:

My fellow Americans. Good evening.

By now you’ve heard about the break-in at the Watergate office complex and hotel in Washington, D.C. Several burglars were apprehended by the D.C. police and arrested and charged with breaking and entering. 

You also have heard that the men apparently were working at the behest of the Committee to Re-Elect the President. They broke into the Democratic National Committee offices and allegedly rifled through some files, looking for papers relevant to the Democrats’ campaign they intend to launch against me this fall.

I called DNC Chairman Larry O’Brien and expressed my deepest regret for this intrusion into the Democratic Party’s office.

It doesn’t stop there. Today, I fired the head of the Committee to Re-Elect the President and his senior staff. I informed all of them that this kind of chicanery will not be tolerated by me, my closest advisers, and anyone associated with my re-election campaign.

Accordingly, I have instructed the attorney general, the director of the FBI and have asked local police to do all they can to get to the bottom of this caper and to ensure that anyone caught is brought to justice as quickly as possible.

I want to apologize as well to the American people for this shameful criminal act.

Thank you and good night.

That event didn’t happen on June 17, 1972. What did happen is that President Nixon launched the Mother of All Cover-Ups. He instructed the FBI to stonewall the investigation into what happened. He told his senior White House staff to do all it could to block any and all inquiries.

He abused the office to which he had been elected and was about to be re-elected later that year in historic fashion.

Contemporary politicians today keep yapping about the “lawlessness” of the current administration. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, is among those who toss around the “lawless” label a bit too carelessly.

Back when young Teddy was in diapers, the Nixon administration set the standard for lawlessness that hasn’t been met since. If he wants to see how an administration can flout federal law, he need look no further than what the Nixon administration did in the name of the man at the top.

So … there you have it.

The Watergate break-in occurred 43 years ago. It could have been put aside and relegated to the kind of story it was in the beginning: a minor cop story covered by the Metro desk of the Washington Post. Then two young reporters — Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward — began smelling a rat.

They found it — in the Oval Office.

 

 

State news

Castro’s VP stakes on the rise

Julian Castro has the chops to be vice president of the United States.

I’ll lay that out right now. He’s as qualified to be VP as, say, Dan Quayle or Spiro Agnew. Heck, even Richard Nixon was considered a young buck when Dwight Eisenhower selected him to run as vice president in 1952; then again, Ike could have run with a trained chimpanzee and still been elected in a landslide that year.

Castro’s stock as a potential running mate on a Democratic ticket led by Hillary Rodham Clinton appears to be rising.

The Big Question: Does Castro’s presence on a Democratic presidential ticket deliver Texas to the Democrats? It’s not going to happen.

However, it could make Texas more competitive than it otherwise would be.

http://www.texastribune.org/2015/06/12/houston-castro-avoids-veep-chatter/

Castro is the highly charismatic former mayor of San Antonio who now serves as housing secretary. He’s had his federal job for less than a year and wasn’t mayor of Texas’s second-largest city all that long before moving to Washington.

He did light up the Democratic National Convention in 2012 with a stirring keynote speech.

Castro’s ties to the Hispanic community are quite obvious, given his name. What’s more, the name “Castro” doesn’t carry quite the negative political baggage it once did in this country, given that Fidel Castro is now out of power in Cuba and the United States is on the verge of establishing normal diplomatic relations with its former enemy. Sure, it’s still a commie state, but it poses no threat to the United States of America.

These things occasionally have a way of reversing themselves. Someone else could emerge from nowhere to become the next favorite to join Hillary Clinton. Heck, someone else also could emerge — from the same nowhere — to bump Clinton out of her shoo-in status to become the Democrats’ next presidential nominee. Do I think either event will occur? Umm, no — definitely not the latter.

For now, it’s fun to watch Julian Castro navigate his way through the treacherous world of political punditry and speculation.

The young man already is adept at dodging the obvious questions that keep coming at him.

 

national news, political news

Imagine LBJ and HHH hugging like that

BarackandJoe

Take a good look at this picture. It shows two grown men, both of whom occupy the two highest public offices in the most powerful nation on Earth, embracing in a time of profound grief.

What’s not been commented on much in the media is what happened shortly after this picture was snapped. Vice President Joe Biden kissed President Barack Obama on the cheek; the president then returned the gesture by kissing the vice president on his cheek.

The event, of course, was at the funeral of the vice president’s son, Beau, who died this past week of brain cancer.

The president offered a touching eulogy while honoring the memory of his friend’s son.

Let’s set politics aside for a moment and look briefly at what this picture symbolizes.

As the link below notes, it symbolizes the extraordinarily close relationship these two men have for each other.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/in-sorrow-obama-and-biden-put-personal-bond-on-public-display/ar-BBkNdEb

It hasn’t always been that way between presidents and vice presidents. Try to imagine Richard Nixon and Spiro Agnew embracing like that. Or Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey. Or John Kennedy and LBJ, for that matter. Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush? Hah!

Actually, I could see Bill Clinton hugging Al Gore, and George W. Bush doing the same for Dick Cheney — although a part of me wonders whether Cheney would return the embrace.

Historians have written how LBJ would summon the vice president for a meeting — while the president was sitting on the commode!

Obama and Biden, as the article notes, came from vastly different backgrounds. They competed against each other for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. Biden dropped out and then Obama picked him as his running mate — and has given him substantial responsibility during the nearly two terms the men have served together.

Let’s be clear: The picture on this blog post doesn’t tell the whole story. Perhaps they’ve had their differences in private. The vice president is known — at times — to

let his mouth engage prematurely, sometimes to the chagrin of the president.

However, when you’re the president of the United States and you pick someone to serve as the No. 2 individual in your administration, you want to forge a relationship that’s built on mutual respect.

It doesn’t hurt if there’s actual affection involved as well.

 

 

 

 

 

national news, political news

A bullet changed history 47 years ago today

1 Comment

RFK's last speech

Forty-seven years ago today, I had gone to bed. It was late on a Tuesday night.

I had just watched the news about the California Democratic Party presidential primary. Sen. Robert Kennedy had just been declared the winner. I turned in and was happy about the outcome.

Right after midnight, my mother knocked on my door. “You need to come down and see this,” she said. “Something terrible has just happened.”

I dragged myself out of the sack and went downstairs and saw for myself. Someone had shot Bobby Kennedy.

The shock was palpable. No. This isn’t happening. Oh, but it did.

I was about two months away from being inducted into the Army, although I didn’t yet know it that evening. My own life was about to change dramatically.

On that night, the nation’s life changed as well.

RFK died the next day at the age of 42. Would he have been nominated by his party? Would he have been elected president? The debate has raged for 47 years ever since that terrible event in Los Angeles, but I believe the answer is “yes” to both questions.

Maybe it’s my heart overriding my head in believing RFK would have become president. Still, I can make an analytical argument that even though then-Vice President Hubert Humphrey was ahead in convention delegates at the time of the assassination, that RFK could have peeled enough of them away by selling his own candidacy as the only one capable of defeating the Republican nominee, Richard M. Nixon.

I had a fair amount of political interest back then, even though I was just a year out of high school. It was heightened beyond its already high level the week before the shooting.

The previous week the Oregon primary took place. My home state had delivered the Kennedy its first-ever political defeat when Democrats chose Sen. Eugene McCarthy over RFK.

I was working at my job at McDonald’s the night of the Oregon primary. A motorcade pulled into the lot next door in front of a fashionable Chinese restaurant. I shot a look at the figure climbing out of an open convertible. The profile that was back-lit by a lamp belonged to Robert Kennedy. I grabbed a piece of paper and a pen and ran across the lot and walked right up to the senator and  his wife, Ethel; this was before Secret Service agents surrounded presidential candidates and, indeed, it was Kennedy’s death that prompted President Johnson to issue an executive order assigning such protection to future candidates.

I told Sen. Kennedy how much I wanted him to win the presidency and that I wanted to wish him well as his campaign proceeded.

RFK signed his name to the piece of paper and then he asked me one question: “Are you old enough to vote?” I said no. With that, he turned and walked away. He didn’t say another word.

I’ll be candid. I thought at the time it was a serious insult to a young man. Perhaps if I’d anticipated the question, I would have said “yes,” even though the voting age was still 21 and I was a couple of years younger than that. Hey, what would have done, asked for ID?

I didn’t have enough snap at that moment.

Now that I’m a whole lot older, I understand better that a politician in the middle of a fight — who needs every vote he can get at the last minute — doesn’t have time to waste on someone who couldn’t help him.

Well, it all ended the next week.

Mom was right. Something “terrible” did happen that night.

And I still miss Bobby Kennedy.

 

national news

Speaking in the first person … singular

President Obama can take credit for a lot of good things that have happened while he’s been living and working in the White House.

But as the short video attached to this blog post indicates, he seems all too willing to take all the credit.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2015/06/01/obama_under_my_leadership_the_united_states_is_the_most_respected_country_on_earth.html

Readers of this blog know that I’ve been a strong supporter of Barack Obama’s work to fix what was ailing the country when he took office. I hope those who’ve read it over the years also will understand that I bristle when he keeps using the first person singular pronoun when he speaks of the good things that have occurred.

The president took some questions at the White House and, by gosh, he did it again. He kept using the words “I” and “me” and “my” when referencing the positive accomplishments of the presidency.

“On my watch” the United States is the most respected nation on Earth, he said. “I” fixed the auto industry, he said. “I” got the country working again, he added.

Mr. President, you are part of a team that, yes, you assembled. But you all have worked together to do these things. Isn’t that correct?

President Nixon had an equally annoying habit of referring to himself in the third person. “The president” has the power to do certain things that others don’t have, he would say. Nixon’s use of the third person became prevalent during the Watergate scandal and it chapped my hide royally every time I heard him say it.

I recall something President Reagan once said. I am paraphrasing it here, but he said something about not caring “who took the credit” for positive outcomes. On the flip side, I recall him saying that “mistakes were made” during the Iran-Contra scandal that embarrassed him and his team — as he lapsed into that maddening passive-voice verbiage so common among politicians who refuse to take full responsibility for the policies that go wrong.

It’s fine for the current president to take credit as well for the plus side of his time in office. I just wish he’d be willing to acknowledge publicly, out loud, so everyone can hear it, that it’s a team effort.

How about a little more “we,” “us,” and “our,” Mr. President?

 

media news, national news, political news

Now it's Stephanopoulos on the block

What gives with media superstars who keep making serious professional “mistakes”?

Brian Williams fibs about being shot down during the Iraq War and he gets suspended by NBC News.

Bill O’Reilly fibs about “covering” the Falklands War while reporting from a safe distance … but he’s still on the job at Fox.

Now it’s George Stephanopoulos giving 75 grand to the Clinton Foundation and then failing to report it to his employers or to his ABC News viewers.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/05/the-great-stephanopoulos-mess-117971.html?ml=po&cmpid=sf#.VVjyylLbKt9

ABC calls it an honest mistake. It’s standing by the “Good Morning America” co-host and moderator of “This Week.”

It’s been known for 20 years that Stephanopoulos was an avid supporter of Bill and Hillary Clinton. He worked in the Clinton White House as a senior political adviser. Then he made the switch to broadcast journalism and by most accounts — yes, some conservatives haven’t been so charitable — he’s done a credible job.

Why did he give to the Clinton Foundation — with one of its principals, Hillary Clinton, running for president? He said he’s deeply interested in two issues the foundation supports: the fight against deforestation and HIV/AIDS.

OK, fine. Has he not heard of, say, Greenpeace and the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation who fund efforts to fight those very causes? If he was interested more in the causes and less in the people who champion them, then he could have given to any number of reputable foundations to carry on those battles.

He didn’t. Now his reputation as a journalist has been called into serious — and legitimate — question.

Stephanopoulos isn’t the first political hired hand to make the transition to TV news. Diane Sawyer once wrote speeches for President Nixon and the late Tim Russert once was a key aide to New York Gov. Mario Cuomo. They made the switch. Others have gone into political commentary after working for partisan pols — or themselves been politicians — on both sides of the aisle.

None of them, though, gave large sums of money to overtly political foundations while working as journalists or pundits or commentators.

George Stephanopoulos has created a huge mess for himself — and for his colleagues.