Tag Archives: Richard Nixon

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Third time a charm for Mitt?

The political chattering class is clattering these days about a possible Mitt Romney run for the presidency — again.

The more I think about it, the more sense it makes.

History might be on Mitt’s side.

I think I’ll refer, incidentally, to the 2012 Republican presidential nominee by his first name from now on, given the media’s insistence on referring to the presumed Democratic frontrunner as Hillary.

http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2014/07/the-case-for-mitt-romney-in-2016-108532.html?hp=l7#.U7Vc31JOWt8

Mitt captured nearly 61 million votes in 2012, the highest total ever for a losing presidential candidate. He cut into President Obama’s electoral vote count from four years earlier. He had a serious chance to win the White House two years ago, but then stumbled badly when he was overheard talking about that dreaded “47 percent” of the population who’ll vote for Democrats no matter what, as they depend on government to do everything for them.

Some other stuff got in the way, too, such as Hurricane Sandy — which provided Barack Obama a chance to do some highly visible presidential things, such as go to New Jersey and put his arm around Gov. Chris Christie while promising all kinds of federal assistance.

History may foretell another Mitt candidacy.

Richard Nixon lost narrowly to John Kennedy in 1960; two years later he got thumped in the race for California governor and declared the media wouldn’t have “Dick Nixon to kick around anymore.” He came back to win the White House in 1968, got re-elected in a landslide in ’72 and, then, well, resigned because of that scandal called Watergate.

Ronald Reagan became president on his third try. He threw his hat into the ring at the 1968 GOP convention. He then challenged President Ford in 1976 and nearly took the nomination away from him. He came back in 1980 to be nominated and then went on to defeat President Carter in a blowout.

Republicans seem willing to give their show horses second and third chances.

Mitt’s capable of running a stellar campaign. He’s got the pedigree, the money and now the experience. He lost the GOP nomination in 2008, won it against a field of Republican weirdos — e.g., Michelle Bachmann and Herman Cain, to name just two of them — in ’12.

The 2016 field might not be so tough to conquer if he were to try one more time. Rand Paul, Marco Rubio, Chris Christie? They all have soft spots in their armor.

Bring on Hillary vs. Mitt in 2016!

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Towering U.S. Senate titan dies

Howard Baker didn’t fill a room with his physical stature. He wasn’t a tall or burly man. He was short and perhaps one could call him of slight physique.

The Republican senator from Tennessee was a giant nonetheless. Baker died today at age 88.

With his death, the ranks of senators who know the fine art of legislating have grown a bit thinner.

http://www.cnn.com/2014/06/26/politics/howard-baker-died/index.html?hpt=hp_t2

Baker uttered perhaps the most memorable line not made by President Nixon during the Watergate hearings of 1973-74.

Baker served as vice chairman of the Senate select committee looking into the Watergate scandal. His presence on the panel was meant to preserve a bipartisan atmosphere at the hearings and meant to convey to the world that the Senate intended to conduct this investigation with dignity and decorum.

He then posed this question of a witness: “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

As we all would learn in due course that President Nixon knew plenty about the cover-up of the break-in at the Watergate office complex in June 1972.

Baker was among those senators of his time would could work across the aisle comfortably. He reached out to Democrats while working closely with his fellow Republicans. He understood the fine art of compromise and that one need not sacrifice principle if he or she intended to get something approved by Senate.

Sen. Baker served in the “world greatest deliberative body” with high honor and distinction.

Another of the Senate’s great statesmen has left us.

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No do-overs on Watergate

The late Richard Nixon probably had a few regrets along the way, perhaps some things he wished he could do over.

Forty-two years ago today, some goofball goons broke into an office at the Watergate hotel and office complex in Washington, D.C., and sought to steal some papers from the Democratic National Committee. They were acting on behalf of President Nixon’s re-election committee.

It was, as Nixon’s people described it, a “third-rate burglary.” It soon would mushroom into something quite different. It became a cat-and-mouse game played by the campaign committee, the FBI, the CIA and, oh yes, the White House itself.

The coverup orchestrated by none other than the Main Man himself, the president, resulted in Nixon’s resignation from office a little more than two years later.

The very term “Wategate” added the “gate” suffix to subsequent controversies that many have thought to turn into scandals. But this one stands alone. It was a doozy.

Imagine, though, if President Nixon could do it over, get a second chance at trying to do the right thing, assuming of course that he was capable of doing it.

It might go something like this:

H.R. “Bob” Haldeman, White House adviser and good pal of the president: Uh, Mr. President, I have just heard something that you need to know about. I just got word that the D.C. cops have arrested some morons at the Democratic Party headquarters. They’ve been charged with burglary.

President Nixon: Say that again, Bob? Oh, never mind. I heard you first the time. You mean to say that someone got caught trying to screw up my re-election campaign by pilfering papers from (DNC Chairman) Larry O’Brien’s desk drawers? What in the bleeping name of all that is holy is this all about? Don’t those yahoos know I’m going to win re-election by a landslide against anyone the Democrats throw against me? Who told ’em to do that?

Haldeman: Mr. President, it appears it came from CREEP (the Committee to Re-elect the President). They issued the order.

Nixon: You know, that’s about the most appropriate acronym I’ve ever heard. (Nixon laughs; so does Haldeman, nervously.) OK, here’s what we’re going to do. You’re going to get on the phone right after this meeting and you’re going to fire the campaign chairman. Tell him you’re acting on my direct order. Get him to tell you who else was in on the planning … and then you’re going to fire them, too.

Haldeman: That’s it?

Nixon: Oh, no, Bob. Call the press office and tell (White House press secretary Ron) Ziegler to schedule a press conference. I’m going to go the briefing room and I’m going to announce the firings. I’m going to apologize publicly to O’Brien and the Democrats for this terrible lapse in judgment on my campaign staff. I’m going to announce that the White House will cooperate fully with local and federal law enforcement authorities. I’ll announce that anyone in the White House who had any advance knowledge of this event should just leave immediately. I’m going to clean house. I will not stand for this kind of conduct.

Haldeman: OK, and that’s it?

Nixon: One more thing. Then I’m going to answer questions from the press. I know those guys hate my guts, but it’s the right thing to do.

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Time to end the Afghan War

President Barack Obama said it succinctly today: It is harder to end a war than to start one.

With that, the nation’s longest war now appears to be drawing to a close.

I’m glad about that.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/05/obama-afghanistan-troops-stay-9800-stay-2014-west-point-107115.html?hp=l2

The president’s critics were quick — as they have been all along — to blast him for setting a well-chronicled timetable for withdrawal. The United States, Obama said, will leave 9,800 troops in Afghanistan in an “advisory” capacity by the end of this year; we’ll draw down to that level from the current level of 30,000-plus.

Our combat role will end. Afghans will be responsible for their own country’s security. Our war effort will be over.

The critics say the timetable gives the Taliban time to plan, strategize and hit back hard at the Afghan government that seeks to cement its control.

That’s an interesting view, to which I have a single-word response: Vietnam.

President Nixon did not set a timetable for the “Vietnamization” effort he began shortly after taking office in 1969. But by the time he left office in August 1974, our combat role had diminished to near zero. Fewer than nine months later, in April 1975, the North Vietnamese communists had mustered enough firepower to overrun South Vietnam.

My point is this: With our without a timetable, the other side is going to keep fighting. The task, then, is to prepare our allies in power to defend themselves adequately against an enemy that’s been degraded significantly over the course of the past dozen years.

As the president noted, al-Qaida isn’t extinct. Its leadership has been decimated, Osama bin Laden has been eliminated, its organization has been scattered. Is it still operational? To a large degree, yes. Our forces, though, continue to hunt down and kill bad guys when and where we find them. That effort will — and should — continue.

It’s time to end this war.

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Happy Earth Day, everyone

It just occurs to me that with all the trouble in the world today, Planet Earth is going to have a big day.

Earth Day is upon us.

We’ve been obsessed with a lot of disheartening news of late: that missing jetliner that’s lying in the bottom of the Indian Ocean, the mudslide in Oso, Wash., the capsized ferry off the Korean coast, Russia’s incursion into Ukraine, the Syrian civil war … and a whole of other things that are too numerous to mention.

But now it’s the 44th celebration of Earth Day.

This is the day we’re supposed to call attention to taking better care of the tiny planet all 7 billion of us inhabit.

My wife and I spent a few days in the Davis Mountains region of Texas recently. We took a trip to McDonald Observatory near Fort Davis, where we heard about the construction of a telescope that looks deeply into space. We heard narrations about billions of galaxies floating hundreds of billions of light years away. I tried for a moment to fathom the size of the universe; it cannot be done.

So I’m left to worry about our little, teeny-tiny speck of it that orbits around our relatively insignificant star we call “The Sun.”

Are we taking good enough care of this orbiting globe? Hardly.

We’re polluting our water, cutting down or burning forests, spewing toxic fumes into the air, filling our land with garbage we cannot — or will not — recycle. That’s just the beginning of it.

Earth Day came into being in April 1970, during the administration of that flaming environmentalist Richard Nixon, on whose watch the government created the Environmental Protection Agency. President Nixon had it right then to establish an agency charged with regulating industries’ standards and to hold them accountable for the mess many of them were — and still are — making of the environment.

The EPA since then has become the bogeyman of the far right, which doesn’t like government telling private industry how it should protect the land, air and water. I happen to like the EPA and hope it stays around for as long as human beings inhabit the planet — which I’m supposing will be long after I’m gone.

There’ll be rallies around the world. Well-meaning folks will remind us we can do a better job of protecting the planet. We’ll nod our heads in agreement; some of us will dismiss it as government overreach.

Then the day will pass and we’ll return to wondering about that jetliner and hoping war doesn’t break out in Ukraine.

Earth, though, has a special day set aside. Happy Earth Day, fellow travelers. Take care of this planet. It’s the only one we’ve got.

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Christie’s woes looking more like Watergate

It’s fun to discuss public affairs with people who, like me, are old enough to remember history as it unfolded.

A friend of mine and I were talking yesterday about the Chris Christie mess in New Jersey, involving whether the New Jersey governor knew about the closing of lanes on the George Washington Bridge that caused all that traffic havoc on the world’s busiest motor vehicle span.

Christie insists he didn’t know anything in advance. He categorically denies ordering the lanes closed in retaliation against the Democratic mayor’s failure to endorse the Republican governor’s re-election bid in 2013.

My friend and I were recalling Watergate and how this controversy is beginning to resemble the track that the Watergate scandal took in 1972 and into 1973.

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/02/chris-christie-scott-walker-republican-governors-2016-presidential-election-103133.html?hp=t1_3

For those who are too young to remember, here’s a quick primer:

On June 17, 1972, some burglars broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate office complex in Washington, D.C. The cops arrested them. The Washington Post covered the event as a crime story. They buried the initial report of the burglary deep inside the paper.

Two young reporters working the Metro desk, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, were assigned to cover the cop story. But they began to smell a rat. Sources were telling them the burglary was more than what it appeared to be. Big hitters were involved. Bernstein and Woodward believed their snitches and sought more time to work the story. Their editors blew them off, telling them they didn’t think much of their tips. The reporters persisted. Finally, they talked their editors into letting them work their sources more aggressively.

President Richard Nixon was revealed to have ordered the cover-up of the investigation. We learned about enemies lists and we learned about how the president abused his power to cover his own backside. Nixon resigned rather than face certain impeachment.

Is the Chris Christie tracking inevitably toward a similar course? I don’t know. Republican officials think it’s a trumped-up controversy. They claim it’s phony and doesn’t merit the kind of coverage it’s getting in the media. But this kind of thing has a way of developing a life of its own. Officials are coming out of the shadows and saying the governor knew more than he says he did. One trail has led to alleged misuse of Hurricane Sandy relief money by the governor’s office.

I’ll refrain henceforth from attaching the “gate” suffix to this controversy. There’s only real “gate” scandal, but this one just might — perhaps, maybe — end as badly for the person at its center as the Watergate scandal did for the 37th president of the United States.

Stay tuned.

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Another ‘Gate’ scandal joins the ranks

Now it’s become “Bridgegate.”

Please.

Now many “gate” scandals — or controversies, if you will — must we endure?

I refer, of course, to the boiling mess involving the lane closures on the George Washington Bridge this past year. Did the Republican governor of New Jersey order the lanes closed to get back at the Democratic mayor of Fort Lee, N.J. because the mayor didn’t endorse the governor for re-election? If so, what will be the consequences? If not, will the media let the story die?

http://www.politico.com/story/2014/01/chris-christies-bridgegate-guide-102033.html?hp=l6

It’s become yet another in an interminable line of “gate” stories.

I feel compelled to remind everyone there is only one “gate” scandal that matters. The Watergate scandal of 1972-74 brought down the 37th president of the United States, Richard Nixon.

On June 17, 1972, a team of bungling burglars broke into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate Hotel and office complex in Washington. They got caught. Then over the course of the next few days — we would learn later — the president of the United States ordered federal authorities to quash the investigation into whether the president’s re-election campaign or the White House were complicit in any way.

Therein launched a constitutional crisis of enormous proportions. The debate has swirled ever since ass to whether it merited the attention it got. I believe it did. President Nixon used the power of his office to stymie a federal criminal probe. That’s a very big deal indeed.

He quit the presidency on Aug. 9. 1974, thus ending the Watergate scandal for keeps … or so we all thought and hoped.

The “gate” part of that terrible time lives on as goofballs attach the suffix to every political controversy large and/or small that comes along.

I’m weary of it. There can be only one “gate” scandal. It was enough of a doozy to stand alone forever.

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Gerald Ford: right man, right time

The columnist David Shribman takes note of an anniversary that few people will remember.

I must say this one got by me, but I am glad Shribman wrote this essay commemorating the 40th anniversary of the confirmation of Vice President Gerald Rudolph Ford.

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2013/12/01/the_steady_hand_of_gerald_ford_120822.html

The date will arrive on Friday.

It should be noted that an embattled President Richard Nixon made many correct decisions during his time in office, right along with some horrendous ones. Selecting the then-House minority leader to become vice president was among the best decisions of Nixon’s presidency.

Spiro Agnew had quit in disgrace. He ended up pleading no contest to bribery charges. Nixon looked high and low for a suitable replacement. He found it in Ford.

As Shribman notes, Ford was one of 17 men to ascend from vice president to president. Of course, Ford’s place in history is unique, given that he never was elected to either position. He would become vice president on Dec. 6, 1973 and then, on Aug. 9, 1974, he would take the oath of office as the 38th president of the United States.

Gerald Ford healed the nation ravaged by scandal. Yes, he stirred up a terrible controversy a month into his presidency when he pardoned Nixon. He was criticized roundly for that action. I remember, though, how the late Sen. Edward Kennedy — one of Ford’s harshest critics at the time of the pardon — admitted to the error of that criticism as he issued the former president a John F. Kennedy Profile in Courage Award in 2001. “Mr. President, I was wrong,” Kennedy said to Ford.

President George H.W. Bush called Ford a “Norman Rockwell painting come to life,” in remarks at Ford’s funeral.

Fate came calling one day four decades ago and the nation was blessed to have had Gerald Ford on hand to heal its wounds.

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Two senators: same ideology, different styles

Ross Ramsey’s analysis of Texas’s two Republican U.S. senators reminded me of a political truism authored by none other than the late President Richard Nixon.

Nixon, who essentially wrote the modern political playbook, used to say that candidates run to their extremes during the primary and tack toward the center in the general election. The president’s theory applied to Democrats and Republicans.

http://www.texastribune.org/2013/11/25/senate-matter-style/

That might work in most eras and in most states. Not in Texas. Not now.

Ramsey, the editor of the Texas Tribune, says Sen. John Cornyn has stepped right out of “central casting” to be a U.S. senator. White hair, former judge, former state attorney general, handsome features. “Soft face.” He says Sen. Ted Cruz presents a different image. Black hair. Fiery temperament. He’s a TV camera hustler.

Cornyn is running for re-election this year. He might face a serious challenge from his right, from the tea party — aka the wacko — wing of his party. Why? Mainly because he opposed Cruz’s tactic of tying Affordable Care Act funding with the government shutdown earlier this year.

Cornyn is a virtual shoo-in for re-election. To secure his party’s nomination in the spring, he’ll have to say all the right things. He might even have to harden that soft face of his while saying them. He’ll blast the ACA to smithereens. He’ll say mean things about Democrats in general. He might even accuse the president of being something other than a true-blue American.

In another time, though, Cornyn then would veer toward the middle, saying more reasonable things. He would talk about his desire to reach across the aisle to work his “friends on the other side.” He might even mention that he is pals with a few of those Democrats.

But these days, in Texas, the Nixon Axiom no longer seems to matter. Cornyn likely will stay focused on the far right. He might even get more inflammatory as the campaign progresses into the summer and fall of 2014. That’s because so many Texas votes seem comfortable with their senators tossing bombs.

Look at Cruz’s popularity among Texas Republican at this moment. If you’re a Texas politician, all that seems to matter is whether the GOP faithful will stand with you.

All of this could play out as described here, except for one possible factor: whether Democratic state Sen. Wendy Davis’s campaign for governor gins up enough support among women angry at the GOP’s stance on abortion rights. I’m not predicting that will happen.

However, if it does, then President Nixon’s general election strategy is back in play.

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JFK a liberal? Not so sure about that

David Greenberg, writing for The New Republic, posits a theory that President John F. Kennedy was a true-blue liberal.

http://www.newrepublic.com/article/115522/jfk-was-unapologetic-liberal

Interesting, eh?

The president, who was shot to death 50 years ago next week, cut taxes. He stared down the Soviet Union by flexing the nation’s military might. He also, according to Greenberg, believed government could be a force for good, not evil. Kennedy preferred diplomacy over armed conflict, Greenberg asserts, making him more liberal than conservative.

I suppose that’s all true.

Greenberg’s piece, though, doesn’t touch on some other key issues that defines liberals and conservatives.

How about abortion? I don’t recall much discussion over the years since JFK’s death about how he viewed women’s reproductive rights. The president was a practicing Catholic, after all. Even though he made it clear during the 1960 presidential campaign that church doctrine wouldn’t inform his public policy, many politicians before and since JFK’s time have relied on their faith to decide some of these critical matters.

Prayer in school? Did the 35th president oppose school-mandated prayer, which the Supreme Court essentially struck down in 1963?

Environmental protection is another favorite issue for liberals. It wasn’t until 1970 — during the administration of Republican Richard Nixon — that the federal government created the Environmental Protection Agency.

Kennedy did seek to further the cause of civil rights, but he had to be persuaded to do so. His death in Dallas prevented him from enacting the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act. That was left to President Lyndon Johnson, whose courage helped the Democratic Party “lose the South,” in the words of his good friend, Sen. Richard Russell, D-Ga.

My own view is that JFK was more of a centrist than a bleeding heart.

Given the extreme views that both parties have adopted in the past two decades, that isn’t such a bad thing.