tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-56687126023340039542024-02-18T20:46:33.686-08:00The EpisconixonianEcclesiastical and political pragmatism, with a beatFr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.comBlogger4463125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-37979572709140374022016-08-13T15:10:00.001-07:002016-11-21T17:20:08.184-08:00The Trump Chronicles<i>To demonstrate that I'm the worst political prognosticator ever, I've assembled some of my Facebook posts on the 2016 election.</i><br />
<br />
<div class="fsm">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2QNHXsORdpXaScZMZbkAGpUoO8ZwA1WtmVedRuimYqNJobShd4fH0VUpoaBgaf2PVibAg_q2nMQpunJ888JtxSG53Ws4_ydZuD2_8vJAjdE8WVcSQcPeTWq88pb0YPW6gaXuqVunSicr/s1600/trumpannounces.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij2QNHXsORdpXaScZMZbkAGpUoO8ZwA1WtmVedRuimYqNJobShd4fH0VUpoaBgaf2PVibAg_q2nMQpunJ888JtxSG53Ws4_ydZuD2_8vJAjdE8WVcSQcPeTWq88pb0YPW6gaXuqVunSicr/s200/trumpannounces.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Trump doing thumb and finger thing</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://nbcnews.to/1T2tvf6">Mexico Drops Out</a> Of Miss Universe Pageant</span></b></div>
<div class="fsm">
Entire nation of Mexico is now on the no-admit list at Trump National Doral, Miami. [June 30, 2015]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/donald-trump-john-mccain_us_55aa7ff1e4b0caf721b2feb7?ncid=fcbklnkushpmg00000063">Trump Prefers Veterans "Who <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Weren't</span> Captured"</a> Over John McCai<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">n, Leading To My First <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Spectacularly</span> Wrong Prediction</span></span></b><br />
Fourteen minutes and counting. [July 18]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Nixon-Trump Aide <a href="http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2008/06/02/the-dirty-trickster">Roger Stone</a> <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ostensibly</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></span>Leaves Trump Campaign<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, Inspiring Another <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Spectacularly </span>Wrong Prediction</span> </span></b></div>
</div>
<div class="fsm">
<div class="fsm">
Now <a href="http://www.politico.com/story/2015/08/sources-roger-stone-quit-wasnt-fired-by-donald-trump-in-campaign-shakeup-121177.html">ends</a> the era of "let Trump be Trump." He really wants to be president. He'll act more discerningly
from now on. Of that, we should probably be even more frightened. [Aug. 8]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Kurds, Quds, Whatever. So<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">me <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Of<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Them, I<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Assume<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Are Good People</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b></div>
<div class="fsm">
A vengeful Trump <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/09/03/donald-trump-stumbles-and-bristles-during-foreign-policy-question/?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share">called</a> my Nixon brother <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/search/label/Hugh%20Hewitt">Hugh Hewitt </a>a "third-rate radio announcer" for tripping him up on foreign policy.
Who assisted the candidate with the deft Watergate allusion? [Sept. 4]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="uiGrid _51mz _5f0n"><tbody>
<tr class="_51mx"><td class="_51m- vTop _5ep6"><br /></td><td class="_51m-"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Real Housewives Made The Radio Star</span></b></div>
<div class="fsm">
Civilization will survive Trump. Not so sure about Sirius<span style="font-size: x-small;">XM</span> canceling <span style="font-size: x-small;">C-SPAN</span> in favor of <a href="https://www.siriusxm.com/radioandy">Andy Radio</a><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/andyradio?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cm"></span></a>. [Sept. 5]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKssb3x42mz2dgHXqBATJ84T27QQNBfbpfp4ey8kMT4UcchrUZGENxCd8VpKtNtovLD9-1WoWzyVsK1mWXA38DUlIsGBa9FyA-0JaXuN_XjCe8uMIx7IGCQeJiHU2rPKt9Fmx74__EXpsM/s1600/michael-stipe-getty-images.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="135" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKssb3x42mz2dgHXqBATJ84T27QQNBfbpfp4ey8kMT4UcchrUZGENxCd8VpKtNtovLD9-1WoWzyVsK1mWXA38DUlIsGBa9FyA-0JaXuN_XjCe8uMIx7IGCQeJiHU2rPKt9Fmx74__EXpsM/s200/michael-stipe-getty-images.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Smack, crack, Trumpwhacked</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even Though He Really <i>Might</i> Be The End Of The World As We Know It</span></b></div>
<div class="fsm">
Angry at his use at a rally of "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)" -- <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/08/bending-notes-and-constitution.html">Leonard Bernstein</a>! -- <span style="font-size: x-small;">R.E.M.</span> tells Trump to-- Well, you'll <a href="http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/r-e-m-to-trump-other-pols-go-f--k-yourselves-for-using-our-music-20150909">see</a>. When I was director of the Nixon library,
we asked <span style="font-size: x-small;">R.E.M.</span>'s permission to use a video of one of their performances in a <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1995-10-24/entertainment/ca-60636_1_nixon-white-house">1995 exhibit</a> on
presidents and popular music. My enterprising colleague Noah McMahon
got as far as their manager, who was in a car with lead singer and songwriter Michael Stipe. The manager spoke to him for a moment and then came back on the line and told Noah no. "Nixon is antithetical to everything we believe in," he said. My reaction: "You talked to somebody who was sitting
next to <i>Michael Stipe</i>? Cool." We mentioned the dissing in the exhibit text. Very meta. [Sept. 18]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What Deporting People <i>En Masse</i> Actual<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ly </span>Looks Like</span></b></div>
<div class="fsm">
The mass deportation that Trump promises has a harrowing Depression-era antecedent that few remember. <a href="http://www.npr.org/2015/09/10/439114563/americas-forgotten-history-of-mexican-american-repatriation?utm_campaign=storyshare&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social">Listen</a> until 18:00, and you'll hear an <span style="font-size: x-small;">OC</span> angle (involving Cal State Fullerton). [Sept. 11]</div>
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Other Way Roger Ailes <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Ab<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">u<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">sed People</span></span></span></span></b><br />
Over four in ten Republicans <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2015/09/13/politics/barack-obama-religion-christian-misperceptions/">think</a> the president is a Muslim, and nearly
three in ten think Trump's a conservative. Confused bunch! [Sept. 17]</div>
</div>
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tragedies Play Into Trump's Hands</span></b><br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">NYT</span> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/11/16/trump-questions-whether-syrian-refugees-are-trojan-horse/?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share">thinks</a> Trump will lose ground after Paris. Wishful thinking. Watch him turn up the heat on immigration. [Nov. 16]<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Trump Has A Secret Plan To End Daesh</span></b></div>
<div class="fsm">
No <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> candidate has a magic bullet for Daesh. Most (besides Trump, who promises war crimes) would probably end up with a policy like Obama's. But they want to scare people, so <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/12/06/republicans-attack-obamas-address/?smid=fb-share">this</a>. [Dec. 7]</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="uiGrid _51mz _5f0n"><tbody>
<tr class="_51mx"><td class="_51m- vTop _5ep6"><br /></td><td class="_51m-"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Send</span> Your Tired, Your Poor, Your Yearning To Breathe Free <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To Canada, Please</span></span></b><br />
<div class="fsm">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijNl9NNFw_j8Vy6pIgrNFKT5T0B2x6e7l0pOYF_ZqhLt6QSeVUWW5bCI4KtQTE7f-3r4rddy0heHh8t2ko_DVuz4j6HEY8mxTYe9bKVWralxSyj3qJVTK87BJV13MhyP06VPgEizqk0T6o/s1600/syriansincanada.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijNl9NNFw_j8Vy6pIgrNFKT5T0B2x6e7l0pOYF_ZqhLt6QSeVUWW5bCI4KtQTE7f-3r4rddy0heHh8t2ko_DVuz4j6HEY8mxTYe9bKVWralxSyj3qJVTK87BJV13MhyP06VPgEizqk0T6o/s200/syriansincanada.jpg" width="200" /></a>Wanted: A <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> candidate willing to take an actual conservative position on refugees. Here's your talking point:<br />
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aea2ba7f5ba2940098141">
<br />
"Knowing what I do about government, we should do a better job vetting everyone who wants to come to our country legally. <br />
<br />
"But it's dangerous to go down the road of singling out one national
and especially one religious group over another for special scrutiny --
unless, in the cas<span class="text_exposed_show">e of terrified Syrian
Muslims, Christians, and Sikhs in our time and the German and Austrian
Jews we should've done more to help in an earlier time, we want to make
provisions to admit even more than would be ideal. <br /> <br /> "Why should we do that that? Because it's what the United States does when tyrants threaten the innocent. <br /> <br />
"Daesh wants us to make the problem worse by denying entry to refugees
fleeing its homicidal actions. That's why Daesh has announced that it
plans to sneak terrorists into our country. Daesh wants us to turn the
refugees away. Why does my opponent Trump insist on doing exactly what
Daesh wants? Maybe they want to build a casino.<br /> <br /> "We pour hot
coals on the heads of our enemies by welcoming as many refugees as we
can. So let's kill Daesh with hospitality at home and on the battlefield
in Syria and Iraq. <br /> <br /> "If you're asking me to say that it's a
mathematical impossibility that a terrorist will ever emigrate to the
<span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span>, I can't. If I ventured such a claim, events last week would have
proved me wrong. <br /> <br /> "Nor can I promise that no <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S</span>.-born person
will ever join Daesh. If I ventured such a claim, I would've been proved
wrong last week in San Bernardino and a thousand times over the last 18
months -- each time a misguided soul betrayed freedom to join hands
with tyranny. <br /> <br /> "The only way to stop that second, far greater
peril is to incarcerate all <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> Muslims, a proposal I anticipate Trump
will soon make, seconded s<i>otto voce</i> by his unctuous lapdog Cruz. The
world is complicated, and freedom always entails risk. But if we stop
being free, and if we turn against those who want to breathe free, we've
risked and lost everything."<br /> <br /> The photo shows Syrian refugees being welcomed. By Canada. [Dec. 11]</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I Got This Prediction Wrong, Too (It'<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">s Mid-August, And Still No Pivot)</span>, <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But</span> I Feel Fine</span></b><br />
I invite those who haven't yet averted their eyes from <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> politics
please not to be sanguine about Donald Trump or about Sarah Palin's
endorsement. In and of itself, her move is a bit of a sideshow. She
knows Trump's not a conservative. Indeed she presents as a certain kind of non-ideological Trump voter with an axe to grind. For years, through her
actions and statements she has evinced bitter resentment over the <span class="text_exposed_show">way
she feels she was treated in '08. </span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnASTysOxCbojS_NdTiZdSMhbQaOhS9mo6FZL3VFQXFMnfwSsEmBmx6U314YustHJmJUakollTrmToAHqp-1GGnJeEtZ2hOGFlq2cSixc6akJ4qxyZ_y1ru7Y_NTqZPR16Knk5sN0I6u68/s1600/trumppalin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="121" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjnASTysOxCbojS_NdTiZdSMhbQaOhS9mo6FZL3VFQXFMnfwSsEmBmx6U314YustHJmJUakollTrmToAHqp-1GGnJeEtZ2hOGFlq2cSixc6akJ4qxyZ_y1ru7Y_NTqZPR16Knk5sN0I6u68/s200/trumppalin.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Keep smiling, and keep being you!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="text_exposed_show">What we have to worry about is that a
great deal of the popular discontent these days also tends to transcend
ideology. Trump now stands a fair chance of being nominated. If that
happens, he'll move to the center so fast that heads will spin. He'll do
so brazenly and joyously, in a manner Republicans usually dare not
risk. Even now, Trump's base acquiesces in his apostasies against
conservatism, so there's no reason to think they won't stay with him in
the general even as he adds mad-as-hell independents and Democrats (to
whom he's already appealing directly). </span><br />
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Meanwhile, having made the same
mistake she did in '08 -- namely underrating an insurgency -- <span style="font-size: x-small;">HRC</span>
actually could lose her nomination. If you have a Sanders-Trump race,
you would probably have a Trump presidency. It would amount to the <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span>
realignment that my colleague the Rev. Rick Whittaker predicts in another thread, though in the form of a rough beast slouching toward Bethlehem. [Jan. 19, 2016]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That Time Trump Went To Church</span></b><br />
Interesting that Donald Trump didn't pick a politically simpatico
megachurch but a parish in in his own denomination, where he <a href="http://bigstory.ap.org/article/9c8cdd5747bb4e87aefe14c401d9e8a6/trump-iowa-church-hymns-readings-and-childrens-choir?nc=1453738987898">heard</a> some
good social gospel teaching from the Rev. Dr. Pamela Saturnia. [Jan. 25]<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One </span>Time I Erred And Strayed <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">From</span> The Way Of Grace</span></b><br />
Cruz joyously <a href="http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2016/02/03/donald-trump-ted-cruz-twitter-iowa_n_9149462.html">unleashes</a> on the loser. One should argue for Christian
forbearance. But karma must be fun for these candidates after months of Trump insults. [Feb. 3]<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Year Money Didn't Dominate Politics</span></b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilbBt0pYrK4g-M5lidFpiExZjXxH1RH4_9WIoMG70G-9SKinsT7qldegegbIN9gHBFp12UcHIhPHxwDmtmTwOWIkSyGvN9eBc4Ged51lFvXjNwfARe4qd-br6FWnLCvDa0pz2mDtd6zcKF/s1600/sanders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="137" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilbBt0pYrK4g-M5lidFpiExZjXxH1RH4_9WIoMG70G-9SKinsT7qldegegbIN9gHBFp12UcHIhPHxwDmtmTwOWIkSyGvN9eBc4Ged51lFvXjNwfARe4qd-br6FWnLCvDa0pz2mDtd6zcKF/s200/sanders.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">You can't buy Bernie</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When
it comes to money and presidential politics, I'm afraid Sen. Sanders'
rhetoric, while sometimes satisfying, points in the direction of
unhelpful restrictions of a free-wheeling process where everyone from
unions to the Koch brothers and their fellow billionaires can send
candidates <span style="font-size: x-small;">PAC</span>ing. I say let everyone spend what they want but be a lot
more militant about disclosing big donors' names so<span class="text_exposed_show"> reporters and thoughtful voters can see who's paying for what kind of speech. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">I once toyed with the idea of doing it British-style, limiting the
duration of the campaign season and commandeering <span style="font-size: x-small;">TV</span> time so everyone
gets the same amount of commercial and debate exposure. But that
wouldn't work here. The virtue of our system, messy and tiresome as it
can be, is that candidates run a two-year gauntlet of political elites,
big donors, media, small donors, more media, frequent debates, and
finally caucuses and primaries, leaving us with candidates who have been
tested against the stress of the process and the imperatives of the
Zeitgeist.<br /> <br /> So now we have Cruz, Rubio, Trump, Clinton, and
Sanders. May we make something out of the fact that they get older as
they get lefter (Cruz is five or six months older than Rubio, and
Trump's a little older than HRC, but you get the idea)? Possible answers
include the fresh thinking of younger people, the wisdom of older people,
and the irrelevance of chronological age. <br /> <br /> Voters have a pretty rich selection, actually. Translating that roll call back to Boomerville, you basically have Goldwater, Nixon, Rockefeller (like Trump, a
rough-hewn, non-ideological billionaire libertine flipping the bird and
pretending to be a conservative), Humphrey, and McGovern. Missing, as
usual: A socially progressive, fiscally conservative foreign policy
realist (Mayor Bloomberg?). [Feb. 6]</span><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="uiGrid _51mz _5f0n"><tbody>
<tr class="_51mx"><td class="_51m- vTop _5ep6"><br /></td><td class="_51m-"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Speaking Up For H<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">illary </span>Clinton</span></b><br />
I
spent the '90s working at the Nixon library, where I encountered <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span>
elites who hated the Clintons because they were the first anti-Vietnam
war babyboomers to reach the White House. Several (these were otherwise
serious, notable people) tried to get me to watch a video saying the
couple had actually had people murdered.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2g7Y-at1RFNUov4ApovwlrtJ-DZczBV3xTw1xKoOh2kcuyNWEEZUajb0H5OUmUx8PJyBzfd-eHOzhS7HO8msbkyqpqe66rYpdfWLd6N0biO-eoPEAZehi2EJXOxiq3WBT5ywB-PuUr6F/s1600/ap_gty_nixon_clinton_lb_150702.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjn2g7Y-at1RFNUov4ApovwlrtJ-DZczBV3xTw1xKoOh2kcuyNWEEZUajb0H5OUmUx8PJyBzfd-eHOzhS7HO8msbkyqpqe66rYpdfWLd6N0biO-eoPEAZehi2EJXOxiq3WBT5ywB-PuUr6F/s200/ap_gty_nixon_clinton_lb_150702.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kathy's story: She saw them together</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I know people hate President
Obama, but I've never personally experienced th<span class="text_exposed_show">e
intensity of the vengefulness of those early despisers of Bill and
Hillary. Only someone such as her own <i>bete noire</i> Richard Nixon could
appreciate what it was like to be exposed to such withering fire from
ideological opponents throughout one's political career. So if Hillary
Clinton has a severe edge, if she still talks about the vast right-wing
conspiracy, if she acquiesced in what turned out to be an unwise means
of keeping her private correspondence out of the public record, I'm
inclined to cut her some slack. She's by most accounts a gracious, kind
person who's been a punching bag for a quarter-century. How would that
make you feel? </span><br />
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">It's fine to oppose her policies, if you do. But most of
the attacks <i>ad hominem</i> aren't fair. At least she has a primary opponent
who treats her with respect. As a result, the Democrats by and large
are having a more elevated policy conversation than the Republicans. [Feb. 9]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Trump's Still-Missing Tape <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">W<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">oul<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">d Prove, If Found, That</span></span></span> He Was Against The Iraq War</span></b><br />
Trump just released a transcript of remarks he made at a golf course opening
in Florida in early '03:<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
"I hear those radical Sunnis are really bad
guys, entirely terrorists, though some, I assume, are good people. The
insiders I talk to on a daily basis in Baghdad tell me -- I'm sorry, but
they do, they call me, what am I supposed to do about it, right? They
want to know what I'd do -- they tell <span class="text_exposed_show">me
that when <table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRlY0n0Uq4E1zQJ0najOiASA14zcZofGLgTPbbKc0jy54JY1VijqkU0tRaYToX4UG5KL5B3bIye7TRrRd1m1M-GAGF6PiN6FCrVdLLLrXz6f_2vPrlwEoUzlfVa7KU99X22AK-x8MX_FVI/s1600/blog_trump_politifact_iraq_war.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="66" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgRlY0n0Uq4E1zQJ0najOiASA14zcZofGLgTPbbKc0jy54JY1VijqkU0tRaYToX4UG5KL5B3bIye7TRrRd1m1M-GAGF6PiN6FCrVdLLLrXz6f_2vPrlwEoUzlfVa7KU99X22AK-x8MX_FVI/s200/blog_trump_politifact_iraq_war.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Politifact</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><span class="text_exposed_show">Bush goes in there, the Sunnis are going to get mad, and
they're going to join forces with al-Qaeda, </span><span class="text_exposed_show">and then they're gonna hook
up with the bad guys from Syria -- because that miserable stinking place
is going in the toilet, too, beginning in the spring of 2011, or so I'm
told on very very good authority by my sources in Damascus. And then
it's like you're going to have a whole country of these awful bad guys
right in the middle of, you know, everybody else's freaking countries.
Then before you know it the Russians will be in there, and they'll ruin
it for everybody just like they did Atlantic City. It's just a terrible
deal, a giant loser. Stay away." [Feb. 15]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show">Trump's Biggest Lie</span></span></b><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">The story of Trump's big Iraq lie grows more fascinating by the hour. Check out James Fallows' <a href="http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2016/02/donald-trump-says-he-was-against-the-iraq-war-thats-not-how-i-remember-it/462804/">updates</a> to his definitive post. He shows that there's no evidence Trump
opposed the Iraq invasion before it occurred or predicted that it would
destabilize the region. In response, Trump supporters have told
Fallows, "He was against the war — you just didn’t ask him to find out!"
If that's true, why didn't Trump care enough to speak up? [Feb. 15]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Drilling Down On Trump's Base</span></b><br />
My Andover classmate Trip Gabriel has filed the Trump <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/18/us/politics/the-more-trump-defies-his-party-the-more-his-supporters-cheer.html?smid=fb-share">analysis</a> of the week. His 35-40% of the <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> electorate includes cohorts who like hearing him insult people for the
sheer cathartic joy of it, who are anxious about slow economic growth
and dwindling opportunity for wage earners, who fear the <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> is
changing, and whose interest in what's going on in Syria and Iraq is
limited to<span class="text_exposed_show"> keeping terrorists (and for
some, Muslims) out of the <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> </span><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbb6BOEm4uaDeJdxwi_4pIbVIBw5BT5C7TniycLu_bdVraL42lTAj3w5TfMEA29k3ZPVDYWQJJsp5Ma5X5aMftu5UEkoEEi3evw3l60e52IhZk2bnnW39hmDYXfexvZOVVAcMCmCBLOE0E/s1600/Obama-Trump-e1444612935502.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="146" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbb6BOEm4uaDeJdxwi_4pIbVIBw5BT5C7TniycLu_bdVraL42lTAj3w5TfMEA29k3ZPVDYWQJJsp5Ma5X5aMftu5UEkoEEi3evw3l60e52IhZk2bnnW39hmDYXfexvZOVVAcMCmCBLOE0E/s200/Obama-Trump-e1444612935502.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">As long as Obama's smiling, I'm good</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<span class="text_exposed_show">As Gabriel argues, typical <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> rhetoric
about protecting and extending freedom and making government smaller
actually goes against most of that. Much of the anxiety feeding the
phenomenon, as is usually the case in politics, is about the economy and
jobs. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">But the angst goes deeper. A people's humanity and
good-heartedness, its capacity for continuing to live into pluralistic
values such the ones we proclaim at our best, require conditions that
are missing, especially a shared sense of national purpose and a
reasonable degree of confidence about the future.</span><br />
<br />
<div class="fsm">
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aea06ae39ee8708151849">
<span class="text_exposed_show">I sympathize with the
president's frustration about not being able to promote this kind of
unity. He no doubt could have done more. But virtually from the moment
of his election, many <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> elites were determined to construe him as an
outlier. That toxic way of thinking has delivered the Republican Party
into Trump's maw. Elaborating a point my friend Thomas Bushnell made in another
thread about <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> chickens coming home to roost, I'd say it's pretty
clear that <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/birthers-and-big-lie.html">birtherism begot a birther frontrunner </a>whose nomination would
do damage to the party that would take years to heal. (From 2011, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/birtherism-and-death-of-decency.html">more reflections on birtherism</a>.) [Feb. 17]</span></div>
</div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Race That Might've Been<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, </span>And <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A Prediction That's Still Hanging Fire</span></span></span></span></b><br />
In 2012 as in this election cycle, I was absolutely sure about who
shouldn't be elected, and for reasons that have very little to do with
politics. No matter what they believe, persons as self-infatuated,
reactive, and undifferentiated as <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/search/label/Newt%20Gingrich">Newt Gingrich</a> and Donald Trump don't belong in the presidency, because it would be bad for us and the world.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL42YOxbpILcuc66HtaGvS8obS2eeui-Z0PnQ3kijyPAj9FA6ISV2RYQG4TuaLzVycsrU6RFgzlk28sIyPurqKe5eiBl97f6FzHvrWguYf3E3q4ig_0kYY5d_EGhyphenhyphensOkGh8iHIaa3dCdAZ/s1600/160212_inv_cruzsanders.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="133" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjL42YOxbpILcuc66HtaGvS8obS2eeui-Z0PnQ3kijyPAj9FA6ISV2RYQG4TuaLzVycsrU6RFgzlk28sIyPurqKe5eiBl97f6FzHvrWguYf3E3q4ig_0kYY5d_EGhyphenhyphensOkGh8iHIaa3dCdAZ/s200/160212_inv_cruzsanders.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I would've liked to see this race</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
I'll keep looking for my candidate: A social p<span class="text_exposed_show">rogressive,
fiscal conservative, and cool-headed foreign policy realist. But once
Trump's off the stage, I won't care (or post!) anywhere near as much.
Imagine Ted Cruz and Bernie Sanders as the nominees, for instance. The clarity would be almost refreshing.
One abhors the federal government, the other wants to expand it. If they
win primaries and elections, it's because of people who believe as they
do, which is the way the system's supposed to work. By the same token,
the candidate whose views on most issues align most broadly with those
of most people is Hillary Clinton. For that reason alone, after all the chaotic hoo hah of these bizarre few months, I bet she wins. [Feb. 23]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another Uncharitable Post. I Resolved To Tone It Down After This One. (But The Debates Really <i>Could</i> Be Like This<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">!</span>)</span></b><br />
My friends, Democrat, independent, and Republican: Defeating Trump is a matter of national security. You may take a different view, and I
respect that. But I for one can't abide having the country and people I
love nor the world we share put at risk by a Trump presidency.<br />
<br />
So Sen. Rubio<a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/rubio?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cm"></span></a>, please endorse Sen Cruz. Gov. Kasich, it's time to withdraw and back Cruz. If you have money <span class="text_exposed_show">to
donate to a politician -- whether you're Democrat, Republican, Whig, or
Trotskyite -- send it to Cruz with a bag of Hershey's Kisses. All <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> <span style="font-size: x-small;">PAC</span>s should target Trump, too. <br /> <br />
Cruz almost certainly won't be nominated. Trump probably will, though
ideally after a contested convention. Ending up with someone different,
no matter who it was, would be an incalculably great blessing.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ8Dr_XVbNUgeTE4fOxaJZvmK7N7DGeiYX5njHGBMLB2PsBtvkFALjc2bX-qcgVe-tWixZJJDwnhmdJNbvcqWFLgw5F-oRmMnXBCG6wp6-tsX7GcDgeomgUZZnOvuWwOyHuXm0B8oFsfes/s1600/trump_angry.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="100" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJ8Dr_XVbNUgeTE4fOxaJZvmK7N7DGeiYX5njHGBMLB2PsBtvkFALjc2bX-qcgVe-tWixZJJDwnhmdJNbvcqWFLgw5F-oRmMnXBCG6wp6-tsX7GcDgeomgUZZnOvuWwOyHuXm0B8oFsfes/s200/trump_angry.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">F-f-fiddlesticks!</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
</span><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">But if it's to be Trump, let's make him battle every step of the way so
that his rage continues to mount. He'll keep storing up resentments and
grudges, personalizing every criticism and defeat, and threatening
reprisals against those who oppose or attack him. The bulging anthology
of instances of his whining and brutality will come in handy in
Democrats' ads in the fall. <br /> <br /> Then Sec. Clinton will coolly, methodically, and surgically disassemble him. This will
actually be the fun part. Trump won't be able to hold his own or control
his temper in debates with a confident, non-compliant female who talks
expertly about almost every issue (especially jobs, Sec. Clinton; please
keep talking about jobs) while rubbing his nose in his lack of
applicable experience and knowledge when it comes to the intricacies of
republican government in a pluralistic society. Still smarting from his
nomination battle, his epic lack of intellectual and moral standing at
last fully manifest to hundreds of millions around the world, he won't
be able to help aiming insults at Clinton that are so ridiculous, so
adolescent, so base and vile that even his supporters may find
themselves wincing with shame at their grotesque of politics. <br /> <br />
Republicans who naturally regret that all this leads to an historic
landslide for the Democrats might consider getting their act together
next time. [March 6]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show">It's All Nixon's Fault. And Kathy's.</span></span></b><br />
To my wife, former Nixon chief of staff Kathy O'Connor, who typed this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/politics/first-draft/2015/09/08/donald-trump-praised-by-former-president-nixon/">letter</a>: Please look up "Reconciliation of a Penitent" in
the prayer book and make an appointment with the clergy. [March 11]<br />
<div class="fsm">
</div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show">Never Forget Love</span></span></b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0N6CxLv2pMR8xOf1StTc6PXqzBnvDLueOL6pG8NfHzXTnFck_eZPt6xINhMETkHztm4zW3ghU4u5uCTzkYzPQWw7RhlpDZ7hoX77mjMfg3BuWP1nCLi2nrj6xtxE1XneZ3Il1Sp3aWMQ/s1600/immigrantspaytaxes.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv0N6CxLv2pMR8xOf1StTc6PXqzBnvDLueOL6pG8NfHzXTnFck_eZPt6xINhMETkHztm4zW3ghU4u5uCTzkYzPQWw7RhlpDZ7hoX77mjMfg3BuWP1nCLi2nrj6xtxE1XneZ3Il1Sp3aWMQ/s200/immigrantspaytaxes.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Plus we invited them here to work</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<i>This post originally appeared in the Easter issue of the </i>Via Con Dios, <i>the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church<b>.</b></i><br />
<br />
In April 2014, preparing to run for president, former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush told a Texas audience that those who came to the <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S. </span>illegally to provide a better life for their families were committing acts of love. Before he spoke, he hesitated and revealed something else on his heart: That he was taking a big risk. “I'm going to say this,” he said, “and it'll be on tape, and so be it.”<br />
<br />
Bush was right to worry. When the <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> campaign got underway last summer, Donald Trump mocked Bush with a video on Instagram showing three undocumented immigrants who had committed felonies.<br />
<br />
Bush hadn’t meant those guys. He’d been talking about the vast majority of those who come north looking for work. But that was too fine a distinction for politics. “Love?” Trump said. “Forget love. It’s time to get tough.”<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> voters have made it clear that they agree. To paraphrase Bruce Springsteen, Trump’s still here, and Bush’s all gone. Trump’s rhetoric, as well as Bernie Sanders’, appeals to those who are worried about their own families and futures in an under-performing economy. Many of their concerns are understandable. Wages have been stagnant for 40 years. According to a recent survey, nearly half of us would have trouble coming up with $400 in an emergency without selling something or borrowing the money.<br />
<br />
Still, as a political slogan, “forget love” amounts to an emergency for Christians, especially during Easter. We may have our passionately held beliefs about issues and candidates. We may be convinced that the other party will lead the country to shame and ruin. We may be mad as all get out and determined not to take it anymore.<br />
<br />
But Christians can never forget love. No matter what our views are on undocumented immigrants, for instance, no matter how discouraged we are about the economy, faithful citizens should at least able to appreciate Bush’s nuance. All people are beloved of God, and most people, at home and abroad, want to do the best they can for those they love. Saying so shouldn’t be an act of political suicide.<br />
<br />
By the same token, Christians can’t forget love even when they’re talking about the candidates they oppose. I need reminders about this myself sometimes. I’ve always been interested in politics, having sat at Richard Nixon’s knee for ten years and run his library for almost 20. This year, I’m feeling more certain about the candidates I don’t admire than those I do. As a citizen and voter, I’m entitled to my opinions, which I express in Facebook posts and which, I’m sure, sometimes peek between the lines of sermons.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS6FT-_sBjEiJhHZY5SJaYc1_80lw491I9YW4yUrhy9aiLRlteiZBBu03P68560OmC1MEhFFh6dk3qgZQaxU8rj4znJZQAnh_zCTkNOixV0nfhs6M3gUrFpj1q_9w55nHu4QzPCOYt0PuF/s1600/Jeb_Bush_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjS6FT-_sBjEiJhHZY5SJaYc1_80lw491I9YW4yUrhy9aiLRlteiZBBu03P68560OmC1MEhFFh6dk3qgZQaxU8rj4znJZQAnh_zCTkNOixV0nfhs6M3gUrFpj1q_9w55nHu4QzPCOYt0PuF/s200/Jeb_Bush_by_Gage_Skidmore_2.jpg" width="158" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Did he make love a third rail?</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And yet at St. John’s, each of the five remaining contenders no doubt has supporters in the pews. None comes to church to hear a favored candidate or cause condemned by someone standing before the altar of Christ. So as we head into the conventions and the general election, I resolve to stay as close as I can to the <i>via media</i>.<br />
<br />
One way to keep partisanship at a minimum in church settings is to say what we’re for rather than whom we’re against. So for now, I pray that God will lead all our candidates to discerning choices based on what’s best for the largest number of people. I pray that anxious voters will look for candidates who offer solutions to our problems instead of just blaming scapegoats. And I pray that all candidates and voters, especially those who follow Christ, will remember (or perhaps receive latter-day revelations) that we can never forget love.<b></b><br />
<div class="fsm">
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Oops</b></span></div>
<div class="fsm">
In which Fox News <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/04/26/isis-foreign-recruitment-plummets-as-airstrikes-destroy-its-cash-supplies.html"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a><a href="http://www.foxnews.com/world/2016/04/26/isis-foreign-recruitment-plummets-as-airstrikes-destroy-its-cash-supplies.html">acknowledges</a> the success of the anti-Daesh policy of the Obama <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/obama?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>administration that the candidates Fox supports insist isn't working. [April 26]</div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">That Speech Trump Made That Time Without Creating A Huge Crisis For His Campaign</span></b><br />
Fox News' Obama critics, 2008: He needs a TelePrompTer. Fox News' Trump boosters, 2016: Isn't he great with a TelePrompTer? [April 27]<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Quite Frankly</span></b><br />
Dude, the word is not "pundunt." [May 4]</div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span class="text_exposed_show">It<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> Turns Out </span>That <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Money-History-Billionaires-Radical/dp/0385535597/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471120480&sr=8-1&keywords=dark+money">Dark Money</a> Is Highly Overrated</span></span></b><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Old conventional wisdom: Koch brothers will buy election. New CW: Can't the Koch brothers stop Trump? [May 10]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">OK, Really. Why Trump?</span></b><br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="uiGrid _51mz _5f0n"><tbody>
<tr class="_51mx"><td class="_51m- vTop _5ep5"><br /></td><td class="_51m- vTop _5ep6"><div class="fsm">
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
Okay, campers, it looks like Clinton and Trump are neck and neck in a new poll of likely voters. Make yourself a
s'more, and have a seat around the campfire so we can reason together.
Wait, let's sing "Sloop John B" first, to bond a little. </div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPfB0HNj1C5ceEnHKv6NdAA6p2ZkpCUN69ToeGSYouVqUpmcmtzYtScykXptOBhlJY_LmTAbU7XNyw-45uMilwsg_jlAcLBiq4QDMuMCi_EMxevISslYkgLowSOdCVR_xWnazOlhoB1uK/s1600/clinton-vs-trump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiHPfB0HNj1C5ceEnHKv6NdAA6p2ZkpCUN69ToeGSYouVqUpmcmtzYtScykXptOBhlJY_LmTAbU7XNyw-45uMilwsg_jlAcLBiq4QDMuMCi_EMxevISslYkgLowSOdCVR_xWnazOlhoB1uK/s200/clinton-vs-trump.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">He's a liberal, she's a hawk. Take that.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
First
off: If you don't like Clinton's ethics, Trump's just aren't any better.
You might say she's a big liberal. So is he. The public works and <span class="text_exposed_show">defense
spending and tax cuts he's promised will make the the national debt
clock explode. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">On social issues -- <span style="font-size: x-small;">LGBTQ</span> people, restroom equity, even
abortion (if you credit what he used to say, before he was a Republican)
-- he usually sounds like a centrist, which means that from a strictly
conservative perspective, he'd be unreliable on <span style="font-size: x-small;">SCOTUS</span> <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/scotus?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>appointments. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Clinton's against deporting 11 million undocumented
workers and their families. To the <span style="font-size: x-small;">NYT</span>, in secret, Trump evidently said
he was negotiable on the question (which put him way to the left of Cruz<a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/cruz?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>).
They both favor raising the minimum wage. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Is national security your
issue? Clinton was cozy with Putin in '09, and Trump is now. He invokes
isolationist Charles Lindbergh, supports protectionism, says he was
against Iraq, opposes future interventions, and yet promises to defeat Daesh<a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/daesh?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>. She's a globalist and hawk who thinks Obama <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/obama?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>is too cautious on Daesh. So while Clinton's position on the #1
security challenge proceeds more consistently from her record, they both
sound tougher than the incumbent. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57ae9f8bb10269477052908">
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Besides all that, she has years of
experience in Washington. We good so far? Did I get anything wrong? Want
another s'more? A chorus of "Wagon Wheel"? So you still like Trump? Um,
why? [May 11]</span></div>
</div>
</td><td class="_51m-"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Democrat<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">s' </span>Nixon</span></b><br />
This historic night, as Hillary Clinton clinches her party's nomination, is a good time to read this <a href="http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2016/05/hillary-clinton-candidacy.html?mid=fb-share-di">epic profile</a><a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hillaryclinton?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cm"></span></a>.
One great insight among many: "Everyone assumes Clinton is harboring an
underlying secret. It’s a paranoiac cycle — Clinton and her team think
that everyone is after her, and their behavior creates further incentive
for everyone to come after her. But at some point, cause and effect
cease to matter. Defensiveness, secrecy, and a bunkered combativeness
(that perhaps relates to her worrying hawkishness) are her very real
shortcomings. The question is whether they can be overcome by her very
real strengths, especially as she prepares to take on a man whose own
flaws are so outsize." [June 7]<br />
<br />
<div class="fsm">
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57af97c42b0431347292308">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Whom Are We Supposed To Bomb?</b></span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57af97c42b0431347292308">
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLhVcMlGMV_ry6nRXmZnU_OladetFXH76HcINv5AdYc5K0qVgNK3u5HCwaaERU0It84tWS89gPFcQFxuFrv-HZ09kc0disqFqBXjSxC2CTFADiUWAXIIazZrZsbk-CKdi90vNFmqSgjVvX/s1600/orlando.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLhVcMlGMV_ry6nRXmZnU_OladetFXH76HcINv5AdYc5K0qVgNK3u5HCwaaERU0It84tWS89gPFcQFxuFrv-HZ09kc0disqFqBXjSxC2CTFADiUWAXIIazZrZsbk-CKdi90vNFmqSgjVvX/s200/orlando.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">Getty Images</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Read
this <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/06/13/us/omar-mateen-early-signs-of-promise-then-abuse-and-suspected-terrorist-ties.html?smid=fb-share">profile</a> and others like it, and ask yourself exactly how we go to
war against this. Omar Mateen’s ex-wife says that he hit her, sometimes
as she slept, and that he suffered from mental illness. A former
colleague said he was prone to homicidal ideation. He may have learned
his bigotry against <span style="font-size: x-small;">LGBTQ</span> people from his father, who is reportedly
given to grandiosity himself. So Mateen found a <span class="text_exposed_show">sick
ideology, a code, a cause that gave him permission to loose his demons
on the innocent. Deranged murderers often do. It has ever been thus. I
don’t deny that this is a problem with complex dimensions. Maybe he was
incited by a tweet or a web site. Daesh is losing ground and doing all
it can to spark a holy war. But whom exactly should we bomb? How are we
going to make sure they’re not innocent, too? [June 13]</span><br />
<br /></div>
</div>
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jean Would've Loved <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This Poli<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">tical </span>Y<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ear</span></span></span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Np1rQCksDNQjqsrTQZkFgDEJqb-2YKjruxOAeYbCLsxM-bayRvgVDA0pl0OGwsJe54bN74J-iec3UCWUxRSWaEZK2Qq846XkPn64Yx0uqreE1-XzjRn7QXY7NirN1plLwCJjl-6f8pWC/s1600/IMG_8829.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Np1rQCksDNQjqsrTQZkFgDEJqb-2YKjruxOAeYbCLsxM-bayRvgVDA0pl0OGwsJe54bN74J-iec3UCWUxRSWaEZK2Qq846XkPn64Yx0uqreE1-XzjRn7QXY7NirN1plLwCJjl-6f8pWC/s200/IMG_8829.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean on deadline</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Flag Day would've been my distinguished editor <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2016/08/always-special.html">mom</a>'s 92nd birthday. It
was Trump's 70th. She would've been amused. And she'd be scouring the
papers every morning, rooting for her brother and sister editors,
reporters, and photographers as they covered this election of elections.
(I share Sec. Clinton's birthday. Go figure.) [June 14]<br />
<br />
<div class="fsm">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>An Affront To Christ</b></span></div>
<div class="fsm">
Since
Sept. 11, Muslims have been asked over and over again to repudiate
extremists who misappropriate the faith. Many who have done so
eloquently have been marked for death by Daesh. Christians have the same
obligation to speak against perversions of the gospel, though we rarely
run the same risks as our Muslim brothers and sisters. I repudiate
<a href="http://www.cbsnews.com/news/sacramento-baptist-pastor-roger-jiminez-post-orlando-anti-gay-preaching">Pastor Roger Jimenez's rhetoric</a> as being antithetical, an utter affront, to the gospel
of Jesus Christ. I pray that the Holy Spirit will open his heart to the
truth of God's love and his responsibility as Christ's disciple to live
it out in love, never hate. Always love. And I pray the same Spirit will also
help me do a better job loving and serving in the way of Christ. [June 15]<br />
<br />
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Perils Of Letting Politics Drive Foreign Policy</span></b></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
This <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/07/04/world/middleeast/isis-terrorism.html?smid=fb-share">article</a> clarifies the danger and delicacy of the situation we face in confronting Daesh. <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/daesh?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>The president's critics say he and our allies haven't done enough to
battle it on the ground. We should do more, they say. Many have in mind
either the wholesale massacre of the innocent from the air or a
politically unsustainable commitment of ground forces. </div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
<br />
Meanwhile, it
turns out that we're winning<span class="text_exposed_show"> on the
ground after all. Some experts think Daesh will be destroyed in Syria
and Iraq within a year. The danger remains acute. Failing as nation
builders, their caliphate already in mortal peril, these would-be
tyrants are devolving into al-Qaeda-style gangsters of the type that the
Bush and Obama administrations both have managed to degrade ruthlessly
and effectively. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Hence the delicacy. It's understandable to construe
this as another world war, as a strategic challenge, and of course as a
campaign issue, especially if, God forbid, there are more attacks. But
you don't go war against a crime syndicate. It's a challenge for law
enforcement and intelligence agencies as well as communities devoted to
defeating Daesh's already stalled recruitment efforts by persuading
their young people to walk in the way of light and life instead of
darkness and death. </span></div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
</div>
<div class="text_exposed_root text_exposed" id="id_57aff04c49a186f22066495">
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">It's too early to say that Daesh is in its death
throes. It will undoubtedly strike again. But to overreact now, to let
our politics drive policy, to lash out recklessly and savagely could
make matters far worse and invite the loss of far more than those we
mourn already. An Independence Day blessing on those who realize that
sometimes playing small ball is the best way to fight for freedom. [July 4]</span></div>
<span class="_50jn"></span></div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And The Republicans' Nixon</span></b><br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU8x88_zODl3gzJvwJyfLiurrdTYyIT4bst8inay5CqUjdDb6ys0MWxbhX8vLakp1GZ_QxzvmUjKFbkd9FpUQrKFlP4SIA0y1Jaz_Ti5p0AkkNTopdHTHbW77VgkS-0JmNrDvT0Ey-hXtJ/s1600/nixontrump.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="125" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgU8x88_zODl3gzJvwJyfLiurrdTYyIT4bst8inay5CqUjdDb6ys0MWxbhX8vLakp1GZ_QxzvmUjKFbkd9FpUQrKFlP4SIA0y1Jaz_Ti5p0AkkNTopdHTHbW77VgkS-0JmNrDvT0Ey-hXtJ/s200/nixontrump.jpg" width="200" /></a>They say <a href="http://eeditionmobile.latimes.com/Olive/Tablet/LATimes/SharedArticle.aspx?href=LAT%2F2016%2F07%2F21&id=Ar02002">history repeats itself </a>as farce, don't they? Nixon factotums
turned Trump factotums are <span class="text_exposed_show">probably feeding him the Nixonian tropes -- silent
majority, law and order. </span><span class="text_exposed_show">While Mr. Nixon wasn't as brazen as Trump, he
understood, as Trump does, that fear is a potent political force. </span><span class="text_exposed_show">Mr.
Nixon's '68 acceptance speech was Walt Whitman compared to tonight.
Trump's dark genius is knowing exactly what certain people want to hear but are afraid to say. And then he says it with
a crudeness that Mr. Nixon would never have dared. </span><br />
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Here's what worries
me. Those who argue that 1968 was worse than 2016 forget how terrible
San Bernardino, Orlando, Dallas, and Baton Rouge must seem to people who
don't remember '68. And that's the year that the Democratic candidate, Hubert Humphrey (burdened by
an association with <span style="font-size: x-small;">LBJ</span> and his war) got a mere 42% of the vote. Mr.
Nixon got just 43%, it's true. But he would have broken 50% if George
Wallace hadn't been in the race.</span><span class="text_exposed_show"> [July 21]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The End Of Democracy As We Know It?</span></span></b><br />
I love some people who can't stand Clinton and plan to vote for Trump<a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/trump?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cm"></span></a>. I love some people who can't stand Clinton and plan to vote for her anyway because they're terrified by Trump. Remember that Ruth Bader Ginsburg risked her reputation and Ted Cruz his 2020 chances in order to warn us about a Trump presidency. You might think about how seldom those two agree on anything. Andrew Sullivan <a href="https://www.facebook.com/TheDishBlog/posts/1173040072763990">sums it up</a> cogently. It would be interesting to hear what readers think
about his concerns (as opposed hearing their views about how terrible
they think Clinton is). Ready, set, go. [July 21]<br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even M<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">r. </span>Nixon Released <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2016/08/06/opinion/why-we-ask-to-see-candidates-tax-returns.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share">His Tax Returns</a>, Mr. Trump, And While They Were Under Audit</span></b><br />
Mr. Nixon didn't donate all of his pre-presidential records to the government. Using the
portion he kept, we were able to <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/12/pink-lady-and-i.html">open a research archive</a> at the
then-private Nixon library in the early 1990s. All the collections were
reunited after we turned the library over to the National Archives in
2007. About the infamous 1970 post-dated deed, which he blamed on his
accountant, he used to complain that it was considered illegal for the <span style="font-size: x-small;">
IRS</span>'s purposes but legal for <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span>'s. He lost the deduction, but the
government kept the donated papers. [Aug. 6]<br />
<div class="fsm">
</div>
<div class="fsm">
</div>
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A New Birth Of Bipartisanship?</span></b><br />
Yesterday in Winslow, I saw a John McCain for Senate sign and felt bad that I didn't live in Arizona anymore so I
could vote for him. He's got a close race on his hands. He's more
conservative than I. But he'd definitely be my guy. He's a true hero, Trump's crude insult notwithstanding. Back in my Nixon days, he was a good friend of the nonpartisan <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Nixon%20Center">Nixon Center</a> in Washington. <br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcxi9kY6YtbqPVTVA-YcxO8aZ14urQOh8C2ywFkSrHyL4o0xFcBK9BMFd41yDCcsl6pfa1DrRHhYTh36aKmcojqK7pEaU2d_9Etm_TvwLKMqDdW1bqlOGMZ__ty6hfRhqEJlYZsPZzXgjP/s1600/mccainnixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="111" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcxi9kY6YtbqPVTVA-YcxO8aZ14urQOh8C2ywFkSrHyL4o0xFcBK9BMFd41yDCcsl6pfa1DrRHhYTh36aKmcojqK7pEaU2d_9Etm_TvwLKMqDdW1bqlOGMZ__ty6hfRhqEJlYZsPZzXgjP/s200/mccainnixon.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nixon with McCain, 1973</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And there<span class="text_exposed_show">'s this. I realized that it would probably be better if the Republicans kept the Senate and House.</span><br />
<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">Here's why. The violence and bigotry Trump has modeled and unleashed, while reprehensible, wouldn't have gotten as much traction if it weren't for the economic anxiety so many in our country experience. Both parties’ 2016 insurgencies were fueled by legitimate
worries about the shortage of dignified work at living wages and with
decent benefits for less well-educated folks, especially millions who
graduate from high school each year with no decent jobs in sight. While
there’s no evading the necessity of free trade agreements in a global
economy, Democrats and Republicans should’ve worked together to
reassure, retrain, and reequip our work force. <br /> <br /> Trump’s
inexperience, protectionist policies, penchant for cruelty, and
obsessive zeal to personalize every issue and conflict would, it goes
without saying, make matters far worse. President Hillary Clinton <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/hilllaryclinton?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>will come into office focused on public works and regulatory solutions.
By themselves, they won't be enough. Meanwhile, under Speaker Paul Ryan's <a class="_58cn" data-ft="{"tn":"*N","type":104}" href="https://www.facebook.com/hashtag/paulryan?source=feed_text"><span class="_58cl"></span><span class="_58cm"></span></a>leadership, policy wonks on the House side have churned out a whole
package of market-based economic- and job-growth policies. By
themselves, they won't be enough, either.<br /> <br /> Here's my dream,
born, no doubt, of my relentless optimism: A new era of bipartisan
cooperation emerging from the ashes of this nightmare year. On Nov. 9,
the speaker will call the president-elect, or vice versa, and say, "We
each of us just dodged a bullet, politically speaking. It's in both our
interests, not to mention the interests of the country, that it never
happen again. Trump and Sanders actually did us a big favor. They
demonstrated that neither of our parties was paying enough attention to
working people. So let's focus all our energy on growth and jobs. We
don't need to agree on means, just ends. We'll do some of your stuff.
We'll do some of our stuff. And we'll all take credit when it works."<br /> <br />
We've learned this year that even the greatest nation on earth can’t
take the stability of its political institutions for granted if we don’t
work together to promote a better life for all our people. [Aug. 11]</span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Was Going To Stay Out Of Politics. <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Then I Remembered That Trump W<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">as Still Running And I H<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">ave Three Daughters</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
<span class="text_exposed_show">When Hillary Clinton was nominated, I was struck by the relatively scant
attention that was paid to the breakthrough for women the moment
represented. We now have a situation where 11 women have credibly
accused her opponent of precisely the same predatory behavior he bragged
about to Billy Bush. If he had acted this way with such astonishing
regularity across many years toward individuals from any other
demographic group -- ethnic, socio-economic, religious, cultural -- woul<span class="text_exposed_show">d
his candidacy survive the weekend? What is it about women being the
victims that seems, against all reason, to make this a debatable
question for some people? Even if you like his positions on corporate
and capital gains taxes, how can this possibly be okay? If it is, what
behavior toward women would you find intolerable? It's ironic. A
political culture that yawned when a woman was nominated has now got an
epochal debate on the culture of misogyny on its hands. This is a
profoundly meaningful learning moment for our country and, I'd add, for
the church. God be with us all. [Oct. 14]</span></span><br />
<br />
<b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And Then America Got Just <span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">W<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">hat It Voted For</span></span></span></span></span></span></b><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSo1PdOReDmWY9tt0HpK-vKZuDlt9OadFRr84N4_c1aQhEV3xIn_XniVLUGksCOvaFk4-HGLcxrf2f5dh9byu9qeXL6WGglR3A7MfWio3AOkSjg-0kXF0zzIVmCTU11Er_YdhGQEX5M3Nw/s1600/IMG_1151.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSo1PdOReDmWY9tt0HpK-vKZuDlt9OadFRr84N4_c1aQhEV3xIn_XniVLUGksCOvaFk4-HGLcxrf2f5dh9byu9qeXL6WGglR3A7MfWio3AOkSjg-0kXF0zzIVmCTU11Er_YdhGQEX5M3Nw/s200/IMG_1151.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
About
200 worshiped this weekend at the church I serve in south Orange
County. One said after services this morning that a family caregiver, a
woman of color and a <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> citizen, was told two days after the election
by a man on the sidewalk that Trump was going to send her back where she
came from. A couple told me that a family member and member of the
<span style="font-size: x-small;">LGBTQ</span> community was verbally attacked twice at work. Another relative (a
woman of color, a <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> citizen, and a Christian) was in a store when a
customer said that Trump was going to deport her and all the Muslims.
Three such stories in one week from our small church alone! There's been
plenty of passion and anger on both sides. It would behoove us all to
lower our voices and remember all the ways (the infinite number of ways)
we can make the world better by our own expressions of hospitality,
empathy, forgiveness, acceptance, and love. But everyone knows where
some folks would say they got permission to act so maliciously. It
doesn't matter whom you voted for or what you think about immigration,
the capital gains tax, or the Iran deal. It's not right. It's not
American. Everyone knows it. The Chinese have a saying: "Whoever tied
the knot on the bell is the one to untie it." Please, Mr.
President-elect. In the name of Christ. In the name of love. [Nov. 13]<br />
<span class="text_exposed_show"><span class="text_exposed_show"> </span> </span>Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-75271120904335680512016-08-08T13:25:00.000-07:002016-08-14T09:37:54.391-07:008/8/74: When Nixon Didn't Resign<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1OgjSj_DgD9h_hR5-UcPex28j0wV2ptFI9YW133cEpz_aXYBw0520SFsG0_JgkUmBu4N7lWHP4iqcNIJ6FeB1LX_Kuc6U8yZZ3H3Xi97fCyq626nUGenbVZhqxe3p0wpcJAqxvrhn1PeQ/s1600/nixonresigns.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="112" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1OgjSj_DgD9h_hR5-UcPex28j0wV2ptFI9YW133cEpz_aXYBw0520SFsG0_JgkUmBu4N7lWHP4iqcNIJ6FeB1LX_Kuc6U8yZZ3H3Xi97fCyq626nUGenbVZhqxe3p0wpcJAqxvrhn1PeQ/s200/nixonresigns.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I shall not resign the presidency.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Gordon Partington <span style="font-size: x-small;">III</span>, Richard Nixon’s speechwriter, entered the impossibly tense room and recoiled first from the cold and then the smell of someone’s gaudy perfume laced with the television technicians’ sweat. He threaded his way among colleagues and sloppily dressed, indifferent-looking strangers. Finding an empty spot between the fireplace and a sconce, he settled in to watch the annihilation of all that he loved.<br />
<br />
Like a pastor before services, Gordie had washed his face and hands and combed his thick blond hair before coming in. Though he’d been awake for two days, his pinstriped gray suit was rumpled but serviceable, the jacket neatly buttoned.<br />
<br />
His wash-and-wear, blue and white-striped button-down shirts and paisley ties had once set him apart from Bob Haldeman’s fraternity boys, over-groomed southern Californians in starched white dress shirts and rep stripes. What do you get if you drive a red convertible slowly through the University of Los Angeles campus? A diploma, or so went the old gag. If the car had a Nixon bumper sticker, you also got an office in the West Wing. Gordie went to Andover and Princeton and could sometimes see both sides of a question, so the frat boys never trusted him. But they were all gone now, dressing for meetings with their criminal defense attorneys instead of staff meetings at the White House.<br />
<br />
Much as Gordie loved this room, tonight it was the last place in the world he wanted to be. He considered it to be sacred space, consecrated to the New England-bred principles of good government he cherished -- the imperfectability of man, taking care of those who really needed it, and otherwise leaving him alone. For most of the last five and a half years, they’d been high priests of enlightened pragmatism and great-power drama. Gordie and Nixon’s other writers had stood there proudly when their announcements about great issues of war and peace, all the administration’s coveted “historic firsts,” had been broadcast to tens of millions.<br />
<br />
But Oval Office speeches required turning half the Oval Office into backstage. Gordie had always<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5NaJbUBHUhnxfLKagAn_lD60SZ4h-PC3nhGZBXAyHQTgZO6ZASry9veOqnPDYAQHayfRXLaCjh8ge-ELxmgrH08tPJwTtXlXrZUtoGH0tNIO70UXmsGjqFXziQK7aURqc-tmFOya2M37w/s1600/backstageovaloffice.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="124" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi5NaJbUBHUhnxfLKagAn_lD60SZ4h-PC3nhGZBXAyHQTgZO6ZASry9veOqnPDYAQHayfRXLaCjh8ge-ELxmgrH08tPJwTtXlXrZUtoGH0tNIO70UXmsGjqFXziQK7aURqc-tmFOya2M37w/s200/backstageovaloffice.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Backstage in the Oval Office</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
been put off when he saw the black rubber cables snaking along the blue and gold carpet, lighting fixtures that looked like silver umbrellas mounted on music stands, and interlopers laughing at their inside jokes. His bushy eyebrows gathered into an expression of puritanical revulsion. The situation stank, and so did they.<br />
<br />
Peering around the cameras, he saw the woman who went with the perfume in a halo of light around the president’s desk. She had curly blonde hair held back by a ponytail and wore cowboy boots and jeans stretched across what seemed to Gordie to be a comically inflated bottom.<br />
<br />
He glared at her from the shadows. She was dabbing around the old man’s widow’s peak. He held his big head still. His lips twitched in acknowledgement of the reassurances that Gordie thought she must have been whispering to him. As the makeup was applied, he was trying to keep his small, darting eyes closed, but sometimes, when his eyelids fluttered, Gordie could see him fix curiously on the woman. He wasn’t around people such as her very often. Even tonight, he was probably trying to see down her blouse. One of the few secrets the Nixon White House had managed to keep was that he had a wandering eye, especially when the woman was smart and pretty.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcltCji7P_X9KR0m9WKzKfCYqn_wG0lBZ-vy4usaQ-zUx1RDMmoPNjY8zM44wHlo6MRqyDfXNBG6trggFP1QAhkjyt8HdXpV2Ul-IlrVwtDR9tcgqdVnkiQ_aRaH2g9gLhmR559O4G21d3/s1600/nixonmakeup.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjcltCji7P_X9KR0m9WKzKfCYqn_wG0lBZ-vy4usaQ-zUx1RDMmoPNjY8zM44wHlo6MRqyDfXNBG6trggFP1QAhkjyt8HdXpV2Ul-IlrVwtDR9tcgqdVnkiQ_aRaH2g9gLhmR559O4G21d3/s200/nixonmakeup.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr align="right"><td class="tr-caption">Esquire</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Gordie was only interested in her work. Stroke by stroke, she erased some of the outward signs of weariness and worry. She stepped back and nodded encouragingly. Before she turned away, she reached across his chest and patted his hands, which he had set on the desk in front of him, his delicate fingers entwined on top of a manila folder, which contained history’s first presidential resignation address, his and Gordie’s last collaboration.<br />
<br />
Nixon’s face looked calm and, thanks to the woman’s efforts, a lot healthier than the last time Gordie had seen him. He smiled grimly in the dark. At least he’d leave a decent corpse. If it were really going to come to that, he could have been laid out in the Oval Office for a day or two, since either Nixon or Al Haig, his chief of staff, had ordered the air conditioning as low as it would go in August.<br />
<br />
Still standing against the wall opposite Nixon’s desk, Partington sniffed the air again. The cold stench of failure. But still the frisson of power. Gordie could think of no earthy reason why it should feel different around powerful people. But while Nixon was disgraced and broken, it was still there, like a force field, as though the effect of everything he’d done, every life enhanced or destroyed, would stick to him forever.<br />
<br />
And what about what Nixon could still do, even in these last few hours? What if Vietnam flared up, or the Russians started something? Gordie imagined an aide rushing in and whispering in Nixon’s ear, telling him of yet another crisis demanding his attention. Nixon had always made a fetish out of crisis. He could turn ordering breakfast into an existential struggle, a clash of civilizations. <i>I know they like eating bagels and crepes at Princeton, Gordie, but it’s just not for me. </i>His greatest crisis was giving up power before his time. It had never been done before, not once. So while by all accounts the Nixon presidency was in its dying moments, the night was young.<br />
<br />
“May we have a level, please, Mr. President?” someone said.<br />
<br />
“A what?” Nixon barked the question. He knew what an audio level test was but wanted them to think he didn’t, since no serious person would, and certainly no person occupied with ending wars and undertaking great initiatives. Before the technician could answer, he continued wearily, “Oh, yes, of course. One two three four five six seven. Is that good enough? Do you need more?”<br />
<br />
“That’s fine, sir. Thank you.”<br />
<br />
Nixon, who usually regretted being rude, tried to compensate. “I could do it again,” he said. “I understand it’s important. We all have to do our jobs. I could’ve done mine better.”<br />
<br />
“Thank you, sir,” the man said. “We have it.” Gordie thought the man had spoken gently enough. Still, the speechwriter was always imagining dialog for other people. The technician might have added a little something. <i>I’m sure this is hard for you, sir; I’m sorry.</i> But what does he care? Maybe he hates him, like everyone else in the media. Maybe he had someone die in Vietnam.<br />
<br />
Nixon also could have said something gracious to the stranger. <i>I never know what to do or say when I’m anxious and self-conscious, which is the case pretty much all the time, so I take it out on people such as you, my political enemies, and peasants in small Southeast Asian countries.</i><br />
<br />
Gordie shifted his weight from one foot to the other and steeled his weary, wandering mind. That wasn’t fair, and he knew it. If there was one thing Nixon had agonized about for his whole first term, trying desperately to do the right thing, it was that bastard of a war. Anyway they’d spent far too much time trying to repackage America’s misanthropic geopolitical genius. As Nixon was fond of saying when shredding Partington’s more Whitmanesque exercises, sappy wasn’t his style. Tonight of all nights, let Nixon be Nixon.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCTCPPOuxVg_Ar9CmFF0jOkd3WxYqYQ5q88rJEaWopZjKAhyphenhyphen3fh1r40WVwFqZNdGz-RSbjZ7BRDFTFQYRWQVnUMpepDzzv9FKOcgPsUFgVDJ5FGqK2ftQ9V_S4H9TFGb0rTD5XCNPaG1t/s1600/haig.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgKCTCPPOuxVg_Ar9CmFF0jOkd3WxYqYQ5q88rJEaWopZjKAhyphenhyphen3fh1r40WVwFqZNdGz-RSbjZ7BRDFTFQYRWQVnUMpepDzzv9FKOcgPsUFgVDJ5FGqK2ftQ9V_S4H9TFGb0rTD5XCNPaG1t/s200/haig.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Gen. Alexander M. Haig, Jr.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Haig had told Gordie to start writing over a week ago, after the Supreme Court ruled that Nixon would have to give investigators more of the tapes he’d secretly made of conversations with his aides. Gordie hated the idea. He thought they should keep fighting. But the public’s furious reaction to the tape transcripts the White House released last Monday afternoon convinced even him that Nixon would have to go.<br />
<br />
All week he sent drafts over to the West Wing, and Nixon would send them back, crisscrossed in blue fountain pen ink. On Wednesday, Barry Goldwater led a solemn delegation of Senate and House leaders, all Republicans, to tell Nixon he was going to be impeached by the House and that he had 15 votes at most in the Senate. He’d need 34 senators to avoid being convicted. Nixon knew it already. The visit of erstwhile congressional allies was a set piece in his ritualized emasculation, like King Arthur being stabbed in the crotch with his own sword.<br />
<br />
They’d still been working last night, Gordie in his office taking notes on his <span style="font-size: x-small;">IBM</span> Selectric, Nixon calling from his bedroom on the second floor or his hideaway office in the Old Executive Office Building. He’d been reflective, self-pitying, maudlin. Resigned. He had Gordie add a paragraph on his initiatives with China and Russia. He raged half-heartedly against his tormentors. He apologized for letting everyone down. Once Gordie thought he was crying. Nixon would mutter “thank you” or “fine” and hang up without waiting for a response, and Gordie and his secretary would get to work on another draft. She typed it ten times in five days.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw1b8dHLUFaD1zEw65GXTReij6QFsPV3En1ZTxUxQ1oQ-0tf6QTj8C_kyRDc3oH2JraJdVCYi_TVkD1EA6I2hazOOAbCARRqN2go0EE9VWkiQ9fcKfxPCOnhyxkvm19bjgT78wJULouk28/s1600/rose.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhw1b8dHLUFaD1zEw65GXTReij6QFsPV3En1ZTxUxQ1oQ-0tf6QTj8C_kyRDc3oH2JraJdVCYi_TVkD1EA6I2hazOOAbCARRqN2go0EE9VWkiQ9fcKfxPCOnhyxkvm19bjgT78wJULouk28/s200/rose.jpg" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rose Mary Woods</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
On Thursday, Nixon gave it to his secretary, Rose Woods, who typed it once more in capital letters using a large-font ball so he wouldn’t have to wear his reading glasses. Nixon had always refused to use a TelePrompTer. He thought it looked more authentic to read from a written text, glancing up and down and turning the pages.<br />
<br />
Woods’s typescript was the one in the folder on his desk. Before a broadcast, he would underline words for stress, maybe add a sentence or two. Sometimes he’d warn the speechwriters about a drop-in, but it usually caught them by surprise. They were his reminders that it was not theirs but his.<br />
<br />
“Twenty seconds, sir,” said the technician. Gordie heard the door open and close and saw that Haig had slipped in. They nodded to one another. It was just as Gordie looked back at the desk that Nixon turned to his left, opened the top drawer, and removed another folder.<br />
<br />
“I don’t suppose you have any idea what that’s all about,” Partington said to Haig in a hissing whisper.<br />
<br />
“My purview of operational responsibility did not include preparation of tonight’s address,” Haig said. “So you tell me.”<br />
<br />
Silent monitors facing the back of the room showed the live feed for the three networks -- an exterior shot of the White House, then the presidential seal.<br />
<br />
“Maybe he decided to use an earlier draft,” Gordie said. “Or maybe Rose’s copy was mysteriously erased by a sinister force.”
Haig watched Nixon as he put the first folder in the drawer and opened the second. When Haig had said last December that “some sinister force” may have erased eighteen and a half minutes of one of the tapes that Congress had subpoenaed, Partington and everyone else knew he meant Nixon. “Up yours, Gordon,” Haig whispered.<br />
<br />
“Five seconds,” said the technician, who counted four with his fingers and then pointed to the president of the United States.<br />
<br />
When Nixon began to speak, Gordie’s eyes grew wide. He’d memorized the text. This wasn’t it. Nixon was doing a drop-in? <i>Now?</i> Was he actually winging his goddamned resignation speech? Haig grasped at his arm. He brushed Haig’s hand away and strained to hear.<br />
<br />
Nixon’s voice wasn’t amplified, and the sound on the monitors was turned off. Then he raised his voice and stared into the camera. The two men got every word. “As president, my principal responsibility is to ensure that our carefully balanced system of constitutional government is not shortchanged,” he said, his eyes steely and narrow, “for the sake of what is convenient for any one individual, even if he is the president.”<br />
<br />
Four or five more aides came in, including Emily, the new girl in the counsel’s office, the one just down from Harvard at the beginning of the summer. Partington didn’t think she’d ever even met Nixon or been in the Oval Office before. She was holding yet another manila folder. Scared as he was, his rectitude was offended again. She was too new, too junior to be here.<br />
<br />
Most of the staffers knew something was going terribly wrong and looked suspiciously at Partington and Haig, who were just standing there staring at the president, who was now nearly two minutes along without having read a single word he was supposed to have read.<br />
<br />
Emily, a small, pretty woman with shoulder-length red hair, was fixed on the president. “Therefore,” he said, looking calmly at the camera, though it appeared his hands were shaking a little, “regardless of demands to the contrary by my critics and many well-intentioned people around the country who are understandably weary of Watergate, I shall not resign the office of president of the United States. Effective immediately, Vice President Ford will assume the duties of acting president under the provisions of Section 3 of the 25th Amendment to the United States Constitution, which govern a president’s temporary incapacity to fulfill his office.”<br />
<br />
Haig swore to himself and stormed out. Gordie watched the thick molded door ooze shut and thought he might throw up. Was he witnessing a coup? Would tanks be circling the White House? And where the hell had Haig gone?<br />
<br />
The president continued. “This will enable my advisors and me,” he said, “to mount the defense before the United States Senate to which, in the event of my impeachment by the House of Representatives, the president is entitled and which our Constitution wisely provides. All the work of the presidency and oversight of the executive branch will be carried out by our able and experienced acting president.”<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuZh4lTwpd_wlCaP3t1eWJCzNg6szIVxNhbPlaXCCuBPoLE-RmfqTmyfjU-SkmvTz2jfbE__bPw9zIrSmyunB9a4j0GQ5jG7r77RNPzdXr7CamnW0sU7kiQgui2AjYjsQBVIWDmQHhDgH7/s1600/garment.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="160" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuZh4lTwpd_wlCaP3t1eWJCzNg6szIVxNhbPlaXCCuBPoLE-RmfqTmyfjU-SkmvTz2jfbE__bPw9zIrSmyunB9a4j0GQ5jG7r77RNPzdXr7CamnW0sU7kiQgui2AjYjsQBVIWDmQHhDgH7/s200/garment.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Leonard Garment</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Three or four people arrived and inched along the wall shoulder to shoulder, including Jim St. Clair, Nixon’s lawyer, and Len Garment, the White House counsel. They were glaring at Gordie, too. He shrugged and shook his head. Garment nodded with a limp smile. He and Gordie had been friends for years and recently partners in formulating the administration’s Indian affairs policy. They knew that Nixon had gone off the reservation before, although never like this.<br />
<br />
St. Clair didn’t know his client as well as the other two men did. He spoke, and they answered, in whispers, since Nixon was still talking. “You must’ve known, Gordon. Len. For Christ’s sake.”<br />
<br />
“I didn’t,” Partington said. “I’ve just spent three days locked in my office writing another speech. Where the hell’s Haig?”<br />
<br />
St. Clair said, “He just came to get Len and me.”<br />
<br />
“Where’s he now?” Gordie said. He wasn’t the only one in the White House who worried about Haig’s four-star authoritarian streak. His Pentagon buddies had been busted a few months before for spying on the White House because they thought Nixon was soft on Moscow and Beijing. He’d been for resignation before the rest of the staff. Gordie wondered if Haig was on the phone with Jim Schlesinger or maybe the Joint Chiefs at the Pentagon, telling them not to worry, he had our lunatic president under control.<br />
<br />
“Haig said he was calling Ford,” Garment said.<br />
<br />
“Did he know?” Gordie said.<br />
<br />
“Haig?” St. Clair said.<br />
<br />
“He meant did Ford know,” Garment said.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDUEGMplQv115_mXNSIKL-4dzRzRtX4b6oo2rfvCseT_jeGgM-Js10Kd-3c7VVQ3h733n7mumUvVvj0FOyZdN4UGsXpR95ZjEchKQ2v8UPVq1PKFP85BUGQbCxOzGJQy9Jv6f78ZRpxQV/s1600/fordnixon.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="108" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEihDUEGMplQv115_mXNSIKL-4dzRzRtX4b6oo2rfvCseT_jeGgM-Js10Kd-3c7VVQ3h733n7mumUvVvj0FOyZdN4UGsXpR95ZjEchKQ2v8UPVq1PKFP85BUGQbCxOzGJQy9Jv6f78ZRpxQV/s200/fordnixon.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Nixon and Ford</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Partington said, “I definitely meant Haig, but now that you mention it, what’s the story on Jerry? I can’t imagine that he acquiesced in this. Section 3 is for sick presidents, not scandals.” He almost never raised his voice, but panic and exhaustion had gotten the better of him. Almost yelling, he said, “Does anybody have the slightest idea what ‘acting president’ actually means in this hellish nightmare of a situation?”<br />
<br />
“I do,” a woman said in a girlishly high voice. “It’s not especially complicated.”<br />
<br />
The three men turned toward Nixon, whom they’d momentarily forgotten. The speech was over. Emily, the new girl, was standing at his right side, fixing them with a determined if somewhat petulant expression. In the bright TV lights, they saw that she had green eyes and freckles. The president was also watching them thoughtfully. Looking down, she opened the manila folder she’d been holding and laid it in front of Nixon. They could see it contained two sheets of paper, each bearing a few lines of typescript. Nixon took a pen out of his suit coat pocket, scanned the top page briefly, signed his name to both, and slammed the folder shut.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7HVpJ9l2Xn-JGcopZvswKlpA2oiy4H8mnxp7D-4UMeqjXxzr4RirrDPqRNQiWRslIt_LeReFzKEKVYUiEWBuM1IY-LHDN_xyylzXyTW84lKfbJhqo7zGwuUWXLMCzUWOvVqd1X-CpMWMj/s1600/cloudpainting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh7HVpJ9l2Xn-JGcopZvswKlpA2oiy4H8mnxp7D-4UMeqjXxzr4RirrDPqRNQiWRslIt_LeReFzKEKVYUiEWBuM1IY-LHDN_xyylzXyTW84lKfbJhqo7zGwuUWXLMCzUWOvVqd1X-CpMWMj/s200/cloudpainting.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><span style="font-size: xx-small;">"Jackson Place"/Robin Rogers Cloud</span></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
He pushed his chair back. Everyone in the room – technicians, aides, and attorneys – stood stunned<i> </i>and silent. No one had thought to turn the room lights back on, so he still looked like an actor on a stage. In his growly baritone, he said to them all and to none, “Someone please tell Mrs. Nixon that we’re moving to Jackson Place tonight.” Then he and Emily followed his Secret Service agents out of the room.<br />
<br />
Garment looked at Partington and St. Clair. His usually bemused face was twisted in astonishment and shame. Emily Weissman was a 25-year-old kid with skinny legs, about six minutes out of law school, who worked on his own staff. He hadn’t talked to her for a total of more than 15 minutes. He was pretty sure she was supposed to be working on the 1974 presidential pardon list.<br />
<br />
St. Clair was seething. He said to Garment, “What the hell’s going on in your shop? Is she sleeping with him?”<br />
<br />
“I didn’t think she was quite his type,” Gordie said with a desperate smile. “She sure [expletive deleted] us.”
<br />
<br />
<i>The real 37th president announced his resignation 42 years ago tonight. This post originally appeared as chapter 3, "Another Historic First," in my 2014 novel, </i>Jackson Place.<i> Find out more <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jackson-Place-John-H-Taylor/dp/1499530838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1470687384&sr=8-1&keywords=jackson+place">here</a>. </i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-1330308395987659902016-08-07T19:03:00.000-07:002016-08-07T19:57:21.243-07:00Always Special<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk_ZPCsS2FQQwYQvqjh7T_xfziLy8lhYkv-Ab1A22pWd5ExfZyGn7b64A7F3Sefo5yo5maAgFbemJ-J3MKm4NNzykr2HX5bNipthRgv8LGJ2pl7ZzWev_qb5bXu-aWAZAtoeI6uTxiVV9P/s1600/IMG_8825.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgk_ZPCsS2FQQwYQvqjh7T_xfziLy8lhYkv-Ab1A22pWd5ExfZyGn7b64A7F3Sefo5yo5maAgFbemJ-J3MKm4NNzykr2HX5bNipthRgv8LGJ2pl7ZzWev_qb5bXu-aWAZAtoeI6uTxiVV9P/s200/IMG_8825.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean on vacation in Michigan, 1957</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My <a href="http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-me-jean-sharley-taylor-20151014-story.html">mother</a> was born in Detroit on the brink of the Great Depression. Her parents, Frank and Lily Sharley, met in the United States after emigrating from England. Jean and her elder brother, George, grew up in a house their father had built but couldn’t afford to finish once the darkness fell. You could see the tarpaper instead of siding. Frank found work as a hospital handyman. They had enough, but just barely.<br />
<br />
You probably understand after hearing from <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_Johnson_(journalist)">Tom Johnson</a>, my mom’s favorite boss ever, that Jean had a reporter’s ear for good stories and revealing details. She loved to tell people that her father, as a boy, once delivered a prescription to Buckingham Palace in the latter few years of Queen Victoria. Her mother’s family, from Lancashire, was about to sail for New York on the Titanic when the steamship company revoked their half-price tickets and resold them at full price to someone almost infinitely less lucky.<br />
<br />
In her father’s case, a brush with greatness. In her mother’s, the touch of Providence. She loved her parents dearly, and their stories helped her understand, when life seemed grey, when poverty embarrassed her, that her life would always glitter in bright colors, that she would always be special.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9LbscaeCRHwBLHmSv-GBvgiDsCa09DGkdf_-nIrCAcWmVZE8jukE-yGyJs9lax7L7Bhc0xzUhNMxl6RR7JhYZh_5Y1dSDxV4J6wZXwr_2Pzw3BvWg9KjiSjrRVPONXmX061tfGBSURGQ/s1600/FullSizeRender+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA9LbscaeCRHwBLHmSv-GBvgiDsCa09DGkdf_-nIrCAcWmVZE8jukE-yGyJs9lax7L7Bhc0xzUhNMxl6RR7JhYZh_5Y1dSDxV4J6wZXwr_2Pzw3BvWg9KjiSjrRVPONXmX061tfGBSURGQ/s200/FullSizeRender+2.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With her mother, Lily</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As a little girl, she went to church with her family and fell in love with the elegant language and cadences of the <i>Book of Common Prayer</i>. “We have left undone those things which we ought to have done.” It can’t really be said of Jean! She couldn’t afford to go to college, but the prayer book, her natural gifts as a writer, and her compassion and curiosity amounted to a graduate degree in journalism.<br />
<br />
Her vocation, which is now undergoing sometimes heartbreaking <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/08/if-you-love-your-country-pay-for-content.html">change</a>, provides its practitioners with constant brushes with greatness in the form of the events and people journalists cover. As for Providence, the church and prayer book worked their more customary magic with Jean as well. She never doubted the loving, saving grace of heaven -- not once. I have a million things to thank my mother for, none more important than an eternal if sometimes reckless optimism and an innate trust in God.<br />
<br />
Greatness eluded her, however, at <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redford_Union_High_School">Redford Union High School</a> in Detroit. As a freshman, she entered a contest to pick the new school fight song. The judges told her she would’ve won if she’d written the three verses they asked for instead of just two. As dementia overtook her at 89 or 90, this injustice, this outrage was one of the last things she forgot.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtAnwgSvyVpNl4dK4EGiVEa80IL-hmBFgMZQsjrN8qJkIBgwSqy8iMQv5Ubvhz8hPOBllVDxBBaf1QAeXJeBQ_04pwLZsBQyixjAyKf7jDKLDbdScIveHkcS_FsVZr5ul2QaPlSAIzPnq/s1600/IMG_8830.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKtAnwgSvyVpNl4dK4EGiVEa80IL-hmBFgMZQsjrN8qJkIBgwSqy8iMQv5Ubvhz8hPOBllVDxBBaf1QAeXJeBQ_04pwLZsBQyixjAyKf7jDKLDbdScIveHkcS_FsVZr5ul2QaPlSAIzPnq/s200/IMG_8830.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">A 1950s fashion assignment</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As a fashion writer for the <i>Detroit Free Press</i>, she traveled to New York for the fall shows. Audrey Hepburn, Renoir, the novelist Colette, and all beautiful people and things captivated her.
Soon her editors wanted her working as a general assignment reporter. At the <i>Free Press</i>, the newsroom was male-only territory -- until Jean got there. One old-timer muttered that lace curtains on the windows would be next.<br />
<br />
Her victories for women came before feminism had a name. Sometimes it was just a matter of making do. Covering a Tigers-Yankees game during 1961’s <span style="font-size: x-small;">AL</span> pennant race, she was barred from the Yankee Stadium press box. She put her portable typewriter on top of an overturned trashcan, found a chair, and made her deadline.<br />
<br />
Jean’s writing was economical and lively, whimsical, smart, and fresh, occasionally sentimental but never mawkish – always the right word, never a word out of place.
In 1965, Detroit civil rights worker <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Viola_Liuzzo">Viola Liuzzo</a> was murdered by a member of the Ku Klux Klan after the march from Selma to Montgomery. Jean visited the apartment Viola shared with her husband and children and described their small, neat bedroom and the family pictures, school books, and white-covered gold-leaf Bible that were arranged carefully on Viola’s desk. At the funeral in Detroit, Jean asked an African-American woman who didn’t know Viola why she was standing on the street in the rain, hoping to get into the church. “Because she died for me,” the woman said. These words ended Jean’s account of her city’s sad day in the next day’s paper.<br />
<br />
She was a single working mother of a ten year old. Imagine how she felt when we received death threats after the Viola Liuzzo stories appeared. These callers deplored my mother’s sympathetic coverage of Viola’s murder and warned that they knew where I went to school. One evening, I noticed a police car by the curb outside our apartment. It came back the next night, and the next. My mother didn’t say why, because the last thing she ever wanted me or anyone to do was worry.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDYBmhpu_qj1iy7dH8Zcw1ecHFQMWrWnMzmgNIjq3a6wMmciTqW5VItCAKl5uD5ry4gyncRa-GdDAb0OAyHsq2dVmj1-VFVqGsr-6iwT5OVvVZBUlmdxhK_OhoDvVz-oY2HW99yzCMM_I8/s1600/IMG_8827.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDYBmhpu_qj1iy7dH8Zcw1ecHFQMWrWnMzmgNIjq3a6wMmciTqW5VItCAKl5uD5ry4gyncRa-GdDAb0OAyHsq2dVmj1-VFVqGsr-6iwT5OVvVZBUlmdxhK_OhoDvVz-oY2HW99yzCMM_I8/s200/IMG_8827.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvey and Jean</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But it was inevitable that I would worry, especially when my mother seemed lonely or sad. My father, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/02/id-rather-be-ball-park-wiener.html">Harvey</a>, another brilliant newspaperperson, was the first love of Jean’s life. The only picture I have of them together, taken in the early 1950s, shows him in a blazer and tie, looking mischievously at the camera. Jean is sitting on the floor wearing a black cocktail dress and pearls, leaning on his knee and holding a drink, her happy face in profile, turned toward him.<br />
<br />
While Harvey was an alcoholic, I don’t believe Jean ever uttered that word and his name in the same paragraph. The marriage essentially ended when I was two, though for the next ten years, Harvey came over for dinner almost every Saturday night. He sat at the end of the couch, drank martinis, smoked Chesterfields, laughed quietly at the conversation, and occasionally got up and went to the piano to massacre Beethoven sonatas.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-HfGo2ZKlFxjyqZC3706XSDKhZ_FSmfDQFWSJBOCOMtuyKukG8q4-8gAYmQtjEDq7ImecvevZ8HjOjmj2pzQMOqPWuRXreqPlzo8E_GsxYcdYaH1xSDGHlGzIApt0eUTMHnvqykcXo-Sh/s1600/IMG_8829.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj-HfGo2ZKlFxjyqZC3706XSDKhZ_FSmfDQFWSJBOCOMtuyKukG8q4-8gAYmQtjEDq7ImecvevZ8HjOjmj2pzQMOqPWuRXreqPlzo8E_GsxYcdYaH1xSDGHlGzIApt0eUTMHnvqykcXo-Sh/s200/IMG_8829.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">In her office in Phoenix</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1967, Jean and 12-year-old John headed to Phoenix so she could go to work on the <i>Arizona Republic</i> as women’s editor. Her brilliance as a journalist and her courage persisted.
Her editor in Arizona was <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2005/nov/05/local/me-murray5">J. Edward Murray</a>. Their publisher was <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eugene_C._Pulliam">Eugene Pulliam</a>, uncle of a future vice president, Dan Quayle. One day, Mr. Pulliam told Mr. Murray that he had written an editorial in support of President Nixon’s actions in Vietnam and wanted it published on the front page. When Ed Murray told the owner of the newspaper that editorials went on the editorial page, Pulliam fired him.
Learning of this during a meeting, Jean stood up and said, “A paper that has no room for Ed Murray has no room for me!” and walked out into 110 degrees of Phoenix unemployment – which didn’t last long, thanks to offers from the Timeses of New York and Los Angeles.<br />
<br />
Tom has spoken beautifully of Jean’s years at the <i>Los Angeles Times</i>, Christle equally so about their adventures. Christle and my mother’s other close friends – Bobbie and Ed Justice, Bette Gillespie, George Mair, Miv and Alfred Schaaf, Frank Wylie and Judy Babcock, Sister Jenny, so many others – were all gifts to her.<br />
<br />
In 1978, Jean married that gracious gentleman Dick Lescoe, who lent her his three daughters, Linda, Donna, and Debbie. In retirement, with Tomasa’s help, Jean helped Debbie with her children, Stephanie and Ricky, and was a devoted grandmother to my children, Valerie and Lindsay, and to my wife Kathy’s children, Dan and Meaghan.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmktFlNXEaJraKod2TUjem6EyncnmuQyyfG0xnPlMD1AKUPByDnQXXFnIxRGUSJ7gMkz3vFH3u89OIy6TarPKI6a3lxFucl9fKCcHJ14ohhr_EbUmZ_2obWM1f1HlAaIZ65jpPKWj3Dja/s1600/IMG_8828.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjJmktFlNXEaJraKod2TUjem6EyncnmuQyyfG0xnPlMD1AKUPByDnQXXFnIxRGUSJ7gMkz3vFH3u89OIy6TarPKI6a3lxFucl9fKCcHJ14ohhr_EbUmZ_2obWM1f1HlAaIZ65jpPKWj3Dja/s200/IMG_8828.JPG" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Jean at the LA Times</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The most important thing to know about my mother is that she believed she was called to reflect God’s grace, make the world better, see ways forward that others couldn’t, and never stop striving, even unto exhaustion. She took in tenants for free and took Thanksgiving turkeys and green beans to Union Station here in Pasadena. She helped build the columbarium in this beautiful church where she and Dick will cohabitate. She sacrificed her comfort and security to take care of those she loved, especially her parents and then Dick when he was afflicted with Parkinson’s disease. If you had a problem, she had an answer or an idea, and always an encouraging smile.<br />
<br />
It made these gestures no less worthy or holy that Jean, even as she acted in love and justice, was observing and chronicling herself in the process. She was, after all, a reporter. She could have invented Facebook. I don’t know whether I’m curious or terrified about what might have happened if she had been healthy enough to establish an account. If my family and friends ever wonder why her son is a selfie junkie, now you know.<br />
<br />
Jean could be stubborn. Tom has mentioned my time as an aide to Mr. Nixon. Jean and he were a formidable combination. They first met in Washington in 1985. She was in town to hear his talk to the American Society of Newspaper Editors, and he asked me to invite her up to his suite so he could say hello.<br />
<br />
She told him that she had covered a stop he had made in upper Michigan during his reelection campaign in 1972. The record is abundantly clear that neither my mother nor the 37th president got anywhere near upper Michigan in 1972. But Jean held her ground.
Looking around frantically, Nixon saw a large box of Godiva chocolates that the hotel had given him. Pat Nixon preferred See’s. So he had suggested I take them home to the mother of my children. In the face of Jean’s intransigence, he grabbed Marcia’s chocolates, handed them to my mother, and bolted from the room. Nixon was less flummoxed by Mao and Khrushchev.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmaoXJuWba97lG7fh4uCTBiisOvxY0QldNyUzUxO37RYasgoRnXWnRzdURVPe0mnkk-MXsPdDYscdXlTw6ykpbXr987jcH9iutjUrYylMrtOB9Hq41uyTspUx-l_kOdVJl3fjj0LFgciT/s1600/jeanelizabeth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWmaoXJuWba97lG7fh4uCTBiisOvxY0QldNyUzUxO37RYasgoRnXWnRzdURVPe0mnkk-MXsPdDYscdXlTw6ykpbXr987jcH9iutjUrYylMrtOB9Hq41uyTspUx-l_kOdVJl3fjj0LFgciT/s200/jeanelizabeth.jpg" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Elizabeth, May 2015</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Jean’s willfulness and my immature frustration sometimes made our relationship difficult. But not so our last two years. Dementia is terrible. But for my mother, it was also a kind of gift. It took away her need to try so hard to help. For the first time in the 60 years I’d know her, she was content. In the home in Yorba Linda where Elizabeth and Linda took such good care of her, Jean sat in the garden with the sun on her face and arms without feeling that she should be doing something historic instead.<br />
<br />
I told her the stories, since she’d forgotten it all. I told her about Harvey and Dick and her grandchildren and about my godfather, Louis Cook, another handsome newspaperman who had <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2014/05/amid-crowd-of-stars.html">loved her desperately</a>. Hearing it all again, brand new each time, she’d always smile, and her blue eyes would gleam. And on a sunny Saturday morning last October – because she loved Saturday mornings best of all – she slipped peacefully into glory.<br />
<br />
<i>A Celebration of the Life of Jean Taylor Lescoe was held on April 16, 2016 at my mother's home parish, All Saints Episcopal Church in Pasadena. My fellow eulogists were Jean's friends Christle Balvin and former LA Times publisher Tom Johnson.</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com8tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-40964025944484279972016-07-28T17:45:00.001-07:002016-07-28T17:45:11.127-07:00Step Inside This House<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSVAxqYVLL3habznB9MfxKcTcfDLzv0QFCxKhYbkV4Ocz7JhpYmYre4w0U5t9wa3ktesGhsoV1pOMqeDLN4nQ3Fa_B7OONYbfDVn83ICb5m2pQPkhvH9XQZ_U935gO8pIWV6oCnW9h-nRs/s1600/IMG_8241.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgSVAxqYVLL3habznB9MfxKcTcfDLzv0QFCxKhYbkV4Ocz7JhpYmYre4w0U5t9wa3ktesGhsoV1pOMqeDLN4nQ3Fa_B7OONYbfDVn83ICb5m2pQPkhvH9XQZ_U935gO8pIWV6oCnW9h-nRs/s200/IMG_8241.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">David after his St. John's talk</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
If you get a chance, I highly recommend a visit to <i>Casa de Katalina</i>. It’s off Oso Parkway, in one of those neighborhoods that’s in Coto but not exactly <i>in</i> Coto. You’ll notice comfortable furniture, tons of family pictures, rooms full of light, and the calming vibe of the great American southwest.<br />
<br />
You are definitely going to hear some Texas music. The proprietor enjoys hard-bitten, desert-baked artists like Billy Joe Shaver, Joe Ely, and Nanci Griffith. Don’t be surprised if Springsteen or <span style="font-size: x-small;">OC</span>’s own Social Distortion makes the playlist, too. This dude feels just as at home with the punk rockers at the Doll Hut as with the cowboys at the Coach House and Swallows Inn.<br />
<br />
After soaking up the ambience, you’ll want to move on to the main event: A couple of hours of illuminating, Jesus-drenched conversation with your host, David Stevens. I call it the Stevens Salon. He’ll invite you to get something cold to drink from the fridge while he positions his wheelchair in the family room or, if it’s not too hot, under an umbrella out on the patio. Be prepared to cover a lot of ground – <span style="font-size: x-small;">U.S.</span> politics (if you really insist) and then on to the Anabaptists, the Baptists (who raised David up in his home town of Tulare), the Catholics, Dispensationalism, the Episcopalians (we’ve got him now, and he can help us grow and thrive), and right on through the entire disputatious ecclesiastical alphabet.<br />
<br />
Despite all the conflict and schism and hue and cry that usually go along with political and religious discussions, your host won’t ever speak an unkind word. You won’t want to, either. That’s also in keeping with the spirit of <i>Casa de Katalina</i>, named for David’s wife, Kathy Van Cott. They married in 2002. Their three great kids and all the good lessons they learned from their prior marriages -- and a love between them that seemed to verge on the transcendent -- made for a strong blended family and a joyous home.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqPHtNViJyQvM1TcUqQhAVIgMqTiiNoXytGB8SkRLUDbfaO4GtrabK3OqP0r74wYSr_zJAxckECRWEtssZcHqEmZvA7jh8D8UvcWvf1Ss_hT3S2GMh6j7TuPcysKgFrv9n0hwex_hV7krg/s1600/kathyanddavid.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqPHtNViJyQvM1TcUqQhAVIgMqTiiNoXytGB8SkRLUDbfaO4GtrabK3OqP0r74wYSr_zJAxckECRWEtssZcHqEmZvA7jh8D8UvcWvf1Ss_hT3S2GMh6j7TuPcysKgFrv9n0hwex_hV7krg/s200/kathyanddavid.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Kathy and David in 2002</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 2009, Kathy was diagnosed with a rare uterine tumor. Doctors thought she had just a year to live. Then lightning struck again. On a sunny morning in July 2010, while Kathy’s sister took her to chemo, David, an executive at the gas company, decided to ride his motorcycle to work. When a car pulled in front of him, he was thrown 55 feet, suffering a <span style="font-size: x-small;">C4</span> spinal cord injury that would confine him, for the time being, to a wheelchair.<br />
<br />
In that awful moment, he remembers praying the Eastern Orthodox prayer of the heart, sometimes called the Jesus Prayer: “Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner.”<br />
<br />
He spent weeks paralyzed and in incomprehensible agony at the <span style="font-size: x-small;">UCI</span> Medical Center. There was talk about letting him go until Kathy noticed that he was communicating by blinking. David said he wanted to stay. He needed to. His wife was sick, and he had to take care of her. To take care of David, Kathy added two and a half years of grace to the one year she had been promised by the hard reality of science.<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: right;">
</div>
David’s recovery was agonizingly slow, and he had moments of profound discouragement. Telling the story in mid-July at St. John’s Church at an event co-sponsored by our men’s and women’s groups, he proved to be the rare speaker who can get a laugh while describing being placed on suicide watch at the hospital. It turns out he wasn’t much of a risk, because he was completely unable to move.<br />
<br />
I first met David in 2011, at our midnight mass on Christmas Eve. My first visit to his and Kathy’s home a week or two later completed my theological education. He was a quadriplegic. Less than a year from death, she was in constant pain. And yet I have never visited a happier home. They knew what they were up against. But he was putting her first, she was putting him first, and they both put first whomever else was there. Just to be clear, there you have the gospel. Their personal spiritual journeys are David’s story to tell. Suffice it to say that it was a meeting in the sacred middle, the sweet spot of the soul, the true heart of love, hospitality, trust, and sacrifice.<br />
<br />
The world desperately needs more homes like <i>Casa de Katalina</i>. So if you get a chance, drop by one day. Be patient if no one answers the door. David might have wandered off with his therapist and walker, smiling as he thinks about the well-meaning souls who said he’d never get out of bed or make it out of the chair. When it gets a little tough, he might say the Jesus Prayer or hum a Billy Joe Shaver song. If you manage to get him back to the patio, and you ask him if he’s ever doubted, he’ll probably say yes. But as he told us in July at St. John’s, “I have seen, been touched, and been healed by Kathy. I believe in Kathy. So I believe in God.”<br />
<br />
<i>This post originally appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios<i>, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-23714138514464130912015-10-02T23:43:00.000-07:002016-08-07T19:36:23.596-07:00Dwight And Josh<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBtopTxHGrh0dLx9aJzFmhtljarHeFep_NsEAYoQC3iUoBgG3xhMaS8B101oVRHq508MAVFJQF29KzqfiohOpg2cmHKVqM3qqnSJsfV0kp2zhg7LPciyihyrcpuylkSU15lYVIDl-W_Dh3/s1600/IMG_0485.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBtopTxHGrh0dLx9aJzFmhtljarHeFep_NsEAYoQC3iUoBgG3xhMaS8B101oVRHq508MAVFJQF29KzqfiohOpg2cmHKVqM3qqnSJsfV0kp2zhg7LPciyihyrcpuylkSU15lYVIDl-W_Dh3/s200/IMG_0485.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Josh and Dwight</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Have you ever been at a party, enjoying a conversation with a friend while discovering that you are almost overwhelmingly curious about what two people are talking about just out of your hearing?<br />
<br />
It happened to me one recent Saturday morning at Isaiah House, Catholic Worker’s shelter for homeless women in Santa Ana. For over two years, Josh Bradshaw, one of our high school students, has organized our Isaiah House breakfast and fellowship ministry. It’s now scheduled almost every month on the second Saturday at 9:30 a.m.<br />
<br />
I was talking to one of the residents about her plans to move back east to rejoin her family. Over my right shoulder, I could hear Josh having an intense conversation with Dwight Smith, who has operated the ministry for nearly 20 years with his wife, Leia. I was dying to listen in.<br />
<br />
As the other members of our St. John’s contingent were leaving, I gave Dwight a blessing (he’s having back surgery in early October) and then sat at his knee for half an hour. Dwight’s an authentic prophet, living out Catholic Worker’s mission to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable. Reporters call him to find out what’s really going on around town. City hall officials see him coming and hide. One leaves a conversation with him feeling indicted, reconstructed, and energized.<br />
<br />
I also hoped he would give me a flavor of his conversation with Josh, and he did. I’ll leave it to them to tell you in more detail. But it’s no secret that Dwight thinks that people such as Josh who choose to serve the poor face to face occupy a privileged position in the heart and mind of God.<br />
<br />
Dwight and Leia work each day in the spirit of pacifist Roman Catholic laywoman Dorothy Day, who<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKeyq5Y56Og2SEuhOorWyFDMI38lp12yjoipwR2rK7Kcm5Y7OlGFG1A5IRBQCsQlYBBRXXNr7PL4r7tlFdsTpYAn4IpdEvYxqaGtUsrtmm3W6DIuf5WXww1gfzFMRSBBh9_dad5Uch8ziO/s1600/DorothyDay.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKeyq5Y56Og2SEuhOorWyFDMI38lp12yjoipwR2rK7Kcm5Y7OlGFG1A5IRBQCsQlYBBRXXNr7PL4r7tlFdsTpYAn4IpdEvYxqaGtUsrtmm3W6DIuf5WXww1gfzFMRSBBh9_dad5Uch8ziO/s200/DorothyDay.jpg" width="142" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dorothy Day</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
cofounded Catholic Worker in New York during the Great Depression. Isaiah House is one of over 200 such communities, mostly in the U.S., that practice hospitality for its own sake. In Orange County, if you’re a woman on the street, and Isaiah House has an opening, you can receive food and shelter indefinitely as long as you follow house rules.<br />
<br />
St. John’s has many historic links to Isaiah House. Our youth leader, Patti Peebles, takes our middle and high school kids regularly. When he was working as an attorney, Andy Guilford provided pro bono legal services. He still volunteers each month. We also make periodic financial contributions. Isaiah House depends on the kindness of its volunteers and donors as well as the faith, energy, and self-sacrifice of its proprietors.<br />
<br />
The Smiths (who promised in 1997 that they would give it five years) live upstairs. Leia is a cancer survivor, and Dwight had lost significant mobility because of back problems. Serving the poor every day of their lives, they have foregone most of the luxuries we take for granted. And yet they don’t sentimentalize the poor. Working with people on the street, many of whom are suffering from mental illness, is exhausting and sometimes dangerous. But their hearts compel them to remain in relationship with marginal people from whom most of us are tempted to avert our eyes.<br />
<br />
As it turns out, the purpose of Josh’s ministry isn’t to feed the women. If it were, we could take up a collection each month and have someone drop off 35 Big Breakfasts. Instead, Josh takes us there to meet fellow voyagers, sit across the table from them, shake their hands, learn their names, say ours, and ask the questions that always work. Where are you from? What were your parents like? Do you have any brothers and sisters? What do you love the most?<br />
<br />
These questions also work at the monthly Rancho Santa Margarita food pantry and anywhere else St. John’s people make personal (the Christian word is <i>incarnational</i>) contact with the poor. (The questions are just as helpful with newcomers at coffee hour.) An exciting new example of such a ministry is Laundry Love, coming together under Mo. Martha’s stewardship. You may have the mistaken impression (I certainly did at first) that the purpose of Laundry Love is to do poor people’s laundry. Its true, divine purpose is to enable new relationships among God’s people. It is from these gracious little miracles, one built on the other, that all good things come.<br />
<br />
<i>This post was originally published in the </i>Vaya Con Dios, <i>the parish newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-30748204035042742252015-06-26T23:45:00.000-07:002015-06-27T10:10:38.635-07:00Proximate Causes<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGHPQRrynqIJijBkOsyWtwfxrKC1MrIyzIYKD_6nq01DK05hUDIqMOpUSPrBdGfIUD9C4EHE6rKLn0wteGEvElY_Wb1WgmO07rYifHxfdg2RhUV_mAxjshgRYehyphenhyphenD8Ht9SucaLawl8kxUz/s1600/newyorker.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGHPQRrynqIJijBkOsyWtwfxrKC1MrIyzIYKD_6nq01DK05hUDIqMOpUSPrBdGfIUD9C4EHE6rKLn0wteGEvElY_Wb1WgmO07rYifHxfdg2RhUV_mAxjshgRYehyphenhyphenD8Ht9SucaLawl8kxUz/s200/newyorker.jpg" width="145" /></a></div>
Mike, a longtime friend of Kathy and me, is a respected general contractor. Not long ago, he was finishing up a job for an Orange County family. Walking through their kitchen, he happened to notice one of their kids standing at the sink, rinsing backyard dirt and sand off a bucketful of <span style="font-size: x-small;">LEGO</span>s.<br />
<br />
The next morning, Mike got a call from the homeowner, who asked, “What did you do to our garbage disposal?”<br />
<br />
“It happens all the time,” Mike told me. “I add a spare room or a dig a hole for a Jacuzzi, something breaks anywhere in the house two hours, weeks, or months later, and they blame me.” In this case, the chagrined client called back and said he’d found a <span style="font-size: x-small;">LEGO</span> block right where Mike promised he would: Trapped in the frozen jaws of their garbage disposal.<br />
<br />
At one time or another, each of us has indulged the temptation to assume that because A happened, then B did. The rational mind is on the lookout for what prosecutors and defense attorneys call the proximate cause – according to one online definition, “an act from which an injury results as a natural, direct, uninterrupted consequence and without which the injury would not have occurred.”<br />
<br />
While identifying the proximate cause can help measure accountability and assess penalties, the work can be tricky, especially when both sides are pointing the finger. If my car is struck at an intersection by a truck whose driver was exceeding the speed limit, I may try to convince the traffic judge that I wasn’t at fault just because I happened to turn left into its path. If I get caught smacking my little brother, I’ll probably try to get out of trouble by saying that he hit me first, when mom wasn’t looking. In each case, while I may have a legitimate grievance, I’m still going to lose the argument, since my own action, not someone else’s, directly caused my predicament.<br />
<br />
In the public sphere, when politicians and media figures identify what they believe is the proximate cause of an event, it usually means they want to either mold public opinion or leverage or prevent some policy outcome. White supremacist Dylann Roof’s murder of nine African-Americans during a church Bible study in Charleston on June 17 was an especially striking example. Was his racism the proximate cause of the murders? Some said it was America’s institutional racism, including some people’s sentimental allegiance to the Old Confederacy. Others insisted that we have to consider Roof’s easy access to a handgun or the possibility of his being mentally ill. One presidential candidate said Roof was attacking religious liberty. Others made even more outlandish assertions.<br />
<br />
Some talking heads accused others of politicizing the Emanuel <span style="font-size: x-small;">AME</span> Church massacre by stressing the wrong causes. In our polarized political and media worlds, these debates take on a wearyingly circular character. If I’m sure that I’m right, that I’m the one taking the morally superior stance, then I won’t necessarily be conscious of having political or tactical motives. When you disagree with my moral stance, I might be tempted to say that you’re the one who’s playing politics.<br />
<br />
It would help if those raising their voices in such certitude would be more mindful of their prejudices and open about admitting them. This is not to argue that there’s never a correct answer in the search for proximate causes. It’s just that human affairs tend to be complicated, and those who have something to prove, or political capital or power to protect, are bound to be the enemies of nuance.<br />
<br />
In Christian terms, of course, we might say that there is no nuance, only dark and light, death and life, evil and good. This frame of reference can lead to greater polarization when we insist that we are the ones on the side of the good. If we instead proceed out of humility, the Christian view promotes clarity and empowerment. June 17 was a day of ultimate darkness, an affront to the mind, heart, and spirit of God. Whatever we believe about its proximate causes, we can agree that it should never happen again. If we really want to do whatever it takes to prevent such horror, we should be willing to consider and work on multiple potential causes, even those that don’t match our predispositions. By definition, God’s love is wider than any horizon we may be able to glimpse. To see more of what God sees and desires, we may have to set out from the territory where we feel most at home.<br />
<br />
<i>This post originally appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios<i>, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church </i>Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-28636869493356225772015-04-25T15:20:00.000-07:002015-04-25T15:56:20.205-07:00Jesus and the Martian<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhvrzfBKDSnAvydu-LuWCXrdJrj_HkKNL4o9S1NLU77D_WLzsIWT-M27MTflWnNJtGZF-BoznIlgSuerhTiELzyKOluPUCKxS7-gYt0ocuOeCMYbi8wTcWTp7gmUf3O7hpHYAyaEfA8GXy/s1600/lbjtext.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjhvrzfBKDSnAvydu-LuWCXrdJrj_HkKNL4o9S1NLU77D_WLzsIWT-M27MTflWnNJtGZF-BoznIlgSuerhTiELzyKOluPUCKxS7-gYt0ocuOeCMYbi8wTcWTp7gmUf3O7hpHYAyaEfA8GXy/s1600/lbjtext.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">"A sad time for all people"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Imagine the world becoming obsessed with the survival of one person. Can you imagine anyone who would actually deserve it?<br />
<br />
For Christians, the answer should be easy, especially in this season after Holy Week and Easter Sunday. During those precious few days, our ritual and liturgy focused like a laser on the person of Jesus of Nazareth. We rejoiced while remembering his entry into Jerusalem and deplored his followers’ neglectfulness in the garden and his delivery into his tormentors’ hands. Especially if we re-watched Mel Gibson’s “The Passion of the Christ,” we winced as the whip tore the flesh from his back and the nails pierced his hands and feet. Finally, inevitably, all Christians shouted, “Alleluia, Christ is risen!”<br />
<br />
For us modern people, divided by language, creed, race, and station, by borders and ancient resentments and suspicions, it’s hard to imagine one person drawing the world together as Christ does his followers. Sometimes it does seem to happen, if only for a moment and almost always as the residue of tragedy. Those of a certain age remember the events of Nov. 22, 1963 as an outrage against all humanity. President Kennedy’s successor certainly did. During a recent visit to the <span style="font-size: x-small;">LBJ</span> Library in Austin, I saw the typescript of the brief remarks a staff member prepared for President Johnson to use when his plane arrived in Washington from Dallas with Kennedy’s body aboard. The aide wrote, “This is a sad time for every American.” Johnson crossed out the last two words so it would read, “[F]or all people.”<br />
<br />
And so it was, although our species’ sadness didn’t ameliorate our Cold War rivalries. It makes me wonder what we could accomplish if the fragile bubble of unity never burst, if two billion Christians acted together in the spirit of our common alleluia, if people could just agree on how to achieve peace, justice, and freedom for all.
After all, writes novelist Andy Weir, “[E]very human being has a basic instinct to help each other out. It might not seem that way sometimes, but it’s true….This is so fundamentally human that it’s found in every culture without exception.”<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-eXsS8Ye9FsL4QKbF1RgBsMR3F9AHl4Nt_C0BnujXqouaAAqJx2ekpg6Om2dsuuErXmDmKFqDJA1JLjTcYagTTIlVjEDzz5Fphd2wYfDKndS9jRvIYETPfsbCpSxICrZjJnMd4UJm9dmH/s1600/IMG_7413.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-eXsS8Ye9FsL4QKbF1RgBsMR3F9AHl4Nt_C0BnujXqouaAAqJx2ekpg6Om2dsuuErXmDmKFqDJA1JLjTcYagTTIlVjEDzz5Fphd2wYfDKndS9jRvIYETPfsbCpSxICrZjJnMd4UJm9dmH/s1600/IMG_7413.JPG" height="200" width="131" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Left behind</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Actually, that’s not Andy talking but astronaut Mark Watney, a character in Weir’s book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Martian-Andy-Weir/dp/0553418025/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1430002548&sr=1-1&keywords=the+martian"><i>The Martian</i></a>. Mark is one of six <span style="font-size: x-small;">NASA</span> astronauts who land on Mars. When the mission is aborted because of a sandstorm, his colleagues leave without him because they mistakenly think he’s been killed. He has to survive using only the food, air, water, shelter, and transportation (two four wheel-drive rovers) left behind with him.<br />
<br />
The novel, which features no extraterrestrials, is a space geek’s dream. At first, no one knows Mark’s alive. Then a <span style="font-size: x-small;">NASA</span> staffer studying satellite photos of the landing site notices that someone has moved one of the rovers. Within hours, everyone realizes that Mark is puttering around on Mars, and it turns out that almost all seven billion people on the novel’s fictional but highly realistic planet Earth want him to make it home. The U.S. invests hundreds of millions of dollars in desperate rescue missions. Even our geostrategic rivals the Chinese decide to help.<br />
<br />
<i>The Martian</i> deftly invokes a unity of purpose that reminds me of Christians’ Easter acclamations, that laser-like fixation of ours on the miracle of Resurrection. We are prone to lose our unity all too soon, falling back on our enervating squabbles with one another at home, work, and church. By the same token, reading Andy Weir’s book, I had no trouble accepting that people would become fixated on an astronaut stranded 140 million miles away while overlooking the victims of injustice and circumstance on their own planet and even their own doorsteps. If God’s people ever gave full expression to the instinct to help each other out that Weir correctly identifies, then (<i>pace</i> Matt. 11:5) the blind would surely see, the deaf hear, and the lame walk, and good news would be continually proclaimed to the poor. <i>Alleluia! </i><br />
<br />
<i>This post first appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios<i>, the newsletter of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church. </i>Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-62975379299928088472015-04-09T07:30:00.001-07:002023-11-12T10:42:02.096-08:00I [Expletive Deleted] Up The End Game<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOI5GVeUYpo6g7FvNnbM_E6VFdfxUbNFgLcCpCA9mwnrbktCB4N-E7fTQ565Wu7HZ4I0bwFaCdoJkKqkD2jCC7mTnr7R8d8xGhbBg01r_529ljhDkDpeJFxEyo60MnFLwYYax4PANcItuL/s1600/rockwellnixon.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="126" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhOI5GVeUYpo6g7FvNnbM_E6VFdfxUbNFgLcCpCA9mwnrbktCB4N-E7fTQ565Wu7HZ4I0bwFaCdoJkKqkD2jCC7mTnr7R8d8xGhbBg01r_529ljhDkDpeJFxEyo60MnFLwYYax4PANcItuL/s1600/rockwellnixon.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Rockwell's idealized Nixon</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In his eulogy at Richard Nixon's Yorba Linda funeral in April 1994, Sen. Bob Dole (<span style="font-size: x-small;">R-KA</span>) called America's post-World War II epoch "the age of Nixon." Historian Richard Norton Smith, who wrote Dole's speech, had warrant for his ambitious claim. Nixon ran successfully for vice president twice and was elected president two out of three tries. He epitomized fierce anti-communism as well as constructive and world-changing engagement with the communist regimes in Moscow and Beijing. He ended the Vietnam war and made diplomatic inroads in the Middle East that set the stage for the Camp David Accords.<br />
<br />
At home, in many respects Nixon governed to the left of Barack Obama. His domestic and monetary policies -- establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, enacting wage and price controls, desegregating public schools in the deep south, adopting an anti-drug policy that stressed treating addicts, and trying twice to enact national health insurance reform -- neither impressed his more progressive contemporaries nor endeared him to his fellow conservatives. Only later, during the Reagan years, did he begin to attract plaudits from scholars ranging from Joan Hoff to Noam Chomsky, who each called Nixon the last liberal president. When he resigned, his biographer <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/11/25/books/books-of-the-times-nixon-in-the-aftermath-of-watergate.html">Stephen Ambrose</a> wrote in the 1980s, "we lost more than we gained." <br />
<br />
Nixon's centrist policies, draped in the disgrace of Watergate, made him an outlier among today's more conservative Republicans, who routinely exclude him from the honor roll of <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> presidents at their nominating conventions. And yet pundits still repeat, and Republican candidates usually obey, his famous dictum about running to the right in the primaries and back to the center in the general election. Party elites and their dutiful cable <span style="font-size: x-small;">TV</span> and talk radio amanuenses make our country look more divided than it is. Polls still show that we are a pragmatic, center-leaning, essentially Nixonian people. One recent example is a <i>New York Times </i>article revealing that Republicans who have opposed gay marriage for decades are now <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/01/19/us/politics/marriage-case-offers-gop-political-cover.html">relieved</a> that the Supreme Court may save them from having to continue to do so so stridently, since up to 60% of the American people now favor it. (Nixon <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/03/rich-arch-and-gays.html">predicted</a> it would be legal by 2000.)<br />
<br />
If being outlived by the salience of his governing principles is a measure of
a leader's greatness, then Nixon's smudged legacy could be in for a few coats of polish. It may yet be possible for a tough-minded foreign policy realist and domestic pragmatist to figure out how to be nominated and win -- someone in Nixon's mold such the late Sen. Henry Jackson (<span style="font-size: x-small;">D</span>-<span style="font-size: x-small;">WA</span>), Nixon's first presidential mentor, Dwight Eisenhower, or the subject of Richard Norton Smith's new <a href="http://www.amazon.com/His-Own-Terms-Nelson-Rockefeller/dp/0375505806/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1427318463&sr=1-1&keywords=richard+norton+smith">book</a>, the late Nelson Rockefeller, New York governor and then vice president under Nixon's equally pragmatic successor, Gerald Ford. Should that moment come, Nixon's political and policy playbooks will be waiting.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIFmtJFSXbGhIeo2hKPSk-zDQSe1oWRWBQz1bWGFEE4RUqQkK5Ui8hl8O-YeXCPk7Oc-a1inFi_7krCytFTYruQsqK7E1lnEfc-z3yy_oGIhyphenhyphengQ-R-hkfbH9CUmTHV2L0UZ90XDEo_TQ2R/s1600/IMG_4610.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhIFmtJFSXbGhIeo2hKPSk-zDQSe1oWRWBQz1bWGFEE4RUqQkK5Ui8hl8O-YeXCPk7Oc-a1inFi_7krCytFTYruQsqK7E1lnEfc-z3yy_oGIhyphenhyphengQ-R-hkfbH9CUmTHV2L0UZ90XDEo_TQ2R/s1600/IMG_4610.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Three heavyweights, and I</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
During the 11 years I worked for Nixon directly and the 19 I spent running his presidential library and foundation, I came to the conclusion that his most under-appreciated virtues were the steely substantiveness at the core of his being and the continued vitality of his non-ideological pragmatism. Speaking of men of substance, Nixon dubbed leaders he respected the most (they were usually men) as heavyweights, which meant they shared his qualities, or had qualities he wished he did. Sometimes he would use the expression <i>homme sérieux</i>. In Nixon's book, Dole and Ronald Reagan (more for his style than his substance, which Nixon considered to be scarce, especially when it came to foreign relations), <i>oui</i>; Ford and George H.W. Bush, <i>non</i>. In fairness to the latter two, Nixon's attitudes were colored by complicated personal considerations.<br />
<br />
For whatever reason he bestowed it, Nixon's heavyweight merit badge was a matter of its taking one to know one. I knew him only as a former president. I was a research assistant from 1979-84 and his chief of staff until 1990, when he sent me to the library. (His <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/refiners-fire.html">family</a> was surprised and hurt to learn that he also made me one of two co-executors of his estate.) While the stakes and dimensions of his work were smaller in retirement, his horizons never narrowed. After leaving office, Nixon wrote nine books and hundreds of memoranda to his successors. Rather than giving 100 speeches a year for money and getting rich, he gave one or two for free, always before prestigious audiences, labored for weeks over the content, delivered them without notes, and had them transcribed and distributed to the media, policymakers, and friends. Whatever he did, his laser-beam of a brain was always fixed on influencing his
successors' policies, especially relations with the Russians and
Chinese. <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQp4gr4ijylPk2fyU-93JyJ5MK55avTYk9YIfixKJHaONWVesUffTjmTuKbblrTcIF2LpiyxLwgKM-dQnOqoVv5BzZ9fG68xFoPZBqemd37qm9Osv-8h7tWNQyujQOpNm5CuTgGcsMD8Vm/s1600/dengnixon.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="136" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQp4gr4ijylPk2fyU-93JyJ5MK55avTYk9YIfixKJHaONWVesUffTjmTuKbblrTcIF2LpiyxLwgKM-dQnOqoVv5BzZ9fG68xFoPZBqemd37qm9Osv-8h7tWNQyujQOpNm5CuTgGcsMD8Vm/s1600/dengnixon.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Deng and Nixon, Beijing, 1989</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
Undertaking frequent trips to Beijing, Moscow, and dozens of other countries, he did his best to facilitate communications between their leaders and the incumbent president, usually briefing the White House privately instead of calling attention to himself with public pronouncements (which was not always easy, because Nixon loved being paid attention to, as long as he was being taken seriously). During his visit to Beijing in October 1989, a few months after the regime's Saddam Hussein-like slaughter of its own people in Tienanmen Square, I watched as Nixon put what remained of his reputation at risk to keep U.S.-China relations from going off the skids. In 1991, after we went to the Soviet Union, he <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1991/06/05/opinion/foreign-affairs-the-old-trickster.html">goaded</a> the George H. W. Bush administration into paying more attention to Boris Yeltsin as a potential successor to the last of the communist bosses, Mikhail Gorbachev.<br />
<br />
No matter what his critics said during those post-presidential years, he wasn't battling for his place in history, and he knew it. Nixon's historical legacy is inescapably subject to what scholars have found and will find in the vast record he left behind, including millions of pages of letters and memoranda and thousands of hours of tapes recorded in the White House between 1971-73. Because of the tapes, which if fully transcribed would fill hundreds of thousands of pages, he is probably the most copiously documented leader in human history. As almost everyone knows, he often sounds awful on the tapes. Sometimes his bigotry, anger, and desire for revenge are to blame, other times his <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/01/bring-on-nixon-psychobiographers.html">painfully introverted temperament</a>, still others his tendency to tease or provoke aides by suggesting outlandish schemes or maneuvers, some of which he wanted carried out, others not. He's frequently not at his best in his dictated memoranda, either.<br />
<br />
And yet the sheer intensity of his focus on the substance of policy, especially internationally, can't be denied, nor can his impact on politics, society, and culture. What other president has been the subject both of a <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7TlehfkRatY">Grateful Dead radio commercial</a> and a<a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/02/nixons-best-and-worst-presidents-days.html"> grand opera performed at the Met</a>? All in all, one can argue that he accomplished more under adverse political conditions (the Democrats held Congress for his entire five and a half years) than any other modern president.<br />
<br />
So when the centennial of his birth rolled around beginning in January 2013, you would think that his presidential library and foundation would have used the opportunity for a comprehensive look at Nixon's consequential times and legacy -- conferences, publications, speakers series, you name it. Nixon's foundation is well funded, with an endowment that should still stand at around $40 million based on its value when I left as executive director in 2009. As it planned a fitting Nixon centennial, the foundation had the capacity to throw open its doors to his friends and critics, to his policy partners and political operatives, and to scholars and journalists for a thoroughgoing assessment of his presidency.<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4tuMdEniPRoku1ma_cBGvx5ZDNfMcE33tinBGsl8U_fyGohBoINk9-3NnsoH9e3jYpgnJqXifaFx0-gRFrkJ7_kf0kOOEhmFnQMqFYn1eu6Mv8iPmvu48xDsM-StIoyXTEsEHaf21X4mA/s1600/coxcastimatidis.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="122" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj4tuMdEniPRoku1ma_cBGvx5ZDNfMcE33tinBGsl8U_fyGohBoINk9-3NnsoH9e3jYpgnJqXifaFx0-gRFrkJ7_kf0kOOEhmFnQMqFYn1eu6Mv8iPmvu48xDsM-StIoyXTEsEHaf21X4mA/s1600/coxcastimatidis.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Christopher and Andrea, Beijing, 2013</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The capacity, but as yet, not the will. Instead of any meaningful programming, the Nixon foundation held a <a href="http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2013/01/10/richard-nixon-s-100th-birthday-draws-kissinger-others-to-schmaltzy-bash.html">cocktail reception and dinner for his colleagues and staffers </a>at a Washington, D.C. hotel, sent Tricia and Ed Cox's son, Christopher, and his then-wife, Andrea Catsimatidis, <a href="http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2324004/Andrea-Catsimatidis-Christopher-Nixon-Cox-Heiress-wife-steals-China-visit.html">to China</a> with a retinue of ex-aides and library docents, and installed another museum exhibit about his life. For the single-minded, endlessly fascinating, paradigm-shifting architect of the age of Nixon, this was pretty much the extent of his centennial year. <br />
<br />
These days, the sleepy Nixon library's caretakers are Nixon's private foundation and the National Archives and Records Administration (<span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span>). The foundation's top executive, named last year, is former <span style="font-size: x-small;">CEO</span> of an investment firm and of a wholesale wine distributor. The <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/library-645380-nixon-ellzey.html">new federal director</a>, Michael Ellzey, is a former executive director of the Golden Gate Park Concourse Authority in San Francisco, where he oversaw the renovation of the park's arts and cultural district. Most recently, he ran the <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/08/parked.html">Great Park</a>, a<a href="http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/03/great_park_agran.php"> controversial municipal project</a> in Orange County, California. According to recent <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/ellzey-656035-audit-great.html">reports</a>, Great Park auditors give Ellzey credit for cleaning up some of the mess he inherited when he came on board in 2008. As the federal Nixon director, Ellzey is paid by taxpayers and reports to the archivist of the U.S., David Ferriero. But his appointment was blessed by Nixon's family and operatives.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRRbseY0a8_iLJRET-fy1NLZKSxDo16_B114S8n0TlEXfK6-eztc1FfA19hzTnBUSIhZBMwSUK1bB82oiC_Ayh-28O0sI-Fe3tpUqXiK6XEsCgPe6Hh5LZNHDvEjnnB9L195y4hDsWngxN/s1600/malek.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRRbseY0a8_iLJRET-fy1NLZKSxDo16_B114S8n0TlEXfK6-eztc1FfA19hzTnBUSIhZBMwSUK1bB82oiC_Ayh-28O0sI-Fe3tpUqXiK6XEsCgPe6Hh5LZNHDvEjnnB9L195y4hDsWngxN/s1600/malek.jpg" width="155" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fred Malek</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
While they may be able managers, neither the foundation nor library chief has any archival, curatorial, or national public policy experience. Especially with a non-historian running the library, some worry that a White House aide's-eye view of Richard Nixon will continue to predominate. One example among many should suffice. In 2011, Nixon's foundation <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/03/chapin-away-at-truth.html">tried to stop <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span></a>
from exhibiting excerpts of oral history interviews with Nixon White House operatives. In one of these, Fred Malek
talks about <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/order-better-not-followed.html">following Nixon's order </a>to count the number of Jews
who worked at the Bureau of Labor Statistics, one of the most notorious of the catalog of abuses of power known collectively as Watergate. (Reports of <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2002/03/nixon_and_the_jews_again.html">Malek's Jew-counting</a> drove him from George H.W. Bush's campaign in 1988.) Two years after it tried to keep Malek's reflections out of the Watergate exhibit, the foundation announced that it planned to raise $25 million to redo the library's museum exhibits. The lead fundraiser? None other than Fred Malek, now a rich businessman.<br />
<br />
It's worrisome when a political operative with a personal stake in what the public sees is helping pay for the exhibit cases and the fees of the consultants and scribes who will compose the museum's new narrative. In his new book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Last-Campaign-Presidents-Posterity-Enshrine/dp/1508409749/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1426890442&sr=8-1&keywords=the+last+campaign+how+presidents+rewrite+history+run+for+posterity+%26+enshrine+their+legacies"><i>The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run For Posterity, And Enshrine Their Legacies</i></a>, Anthony J. Clark explores how <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/02/library-lucre.html">money influences content </a>at all 13 presidential libraries. Soon after Ellzey's appointment, Clark <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/foundation-647019-nixon-library.html">told</a> the <i>Orange County Register</i>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
To have appointed someone with no experience or training as an
archivist or a historian creates serious questions as to how the Nixon
library will fulfill its duties. To have chosen a director without such credentials but apparently
with the strong support of the private Nixon Foundation is very
troubling and raises additional concerns. </blockquote>
Ellzey's predecessor, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/search/label/Tim%20Naftali">Tim Naftali</a>, whom I'd <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2014/08/serendipity-doo-dah.html">recommended</a> to the archivist of the U.S. for appointment as the Nixon library's first federal director, had the opposite problem. A respected Cold War scholar and expert on secret presidential tapes, his academic credentials were impeccable. Nixon's Watergate-era factotums, who seized control of Nixon's foundation after I left in 2009, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/hissing-and-moaning.html">despised</a> him -- proof, as far as I'm concerned, that he was the right choice.<br />
<br />
I suggested that <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> name an independent-minded scholar and tapes aficionado because I had a conception of the Nixon library's potential as a focal point for reassessing Nixon's life and times that, as it turned out, only a few colleagues and friends ended up sharing. After 37 died in April 1994, and I had overseen his funeral, I had what amounted to an epiphany. It didn't matter what we, his advocates, believed and said about him. The massive record Nixon had left couldn't be denied. It would smother all sycophancy. Since we couldn't keep the records closed, we obviously had to get them open as quickly as possible so historians could see Nixon at his worst and best and finally go to work on a truly balanced and complete view of this more complex of presidents.<br />
<br />
And yet from the perspective of the scholarly community, I probably appeared to be an unreliable advocate of an all-in view of Richard Nixon. As his aide and library director, I <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmSpectator-1995jan-00054?View=PDFPages">spent</a> the better of two decades arguing with journalists and historians.<br />
<br />
When author Raymond Bonner<i> </i>accused Nixon of giving President Ferdinand Marcos the green light to declare martial law in the Philippines in 1972, for instance, I <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1987/05/17/world/nixon-denies-he-backed-marcos-s-72-takeover.html">demonstrated</a> that there was no proof, compelling Bonner to print a grudging footnote in the paperback edition of his book.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimGb1PjXA9GH6hav3RDRPmNkllVqHqfhztQgVSwTAi3fpOSTf2pZexVnXSAxppkSe7XAGSR-aOmtLVuMSNOrlq5nyUEPnjUW5XieqqgWEOXtn0mpfbUd0jS398mRT9OSfi0j103aKoP_HW/s1600/ceausescus.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEimGb1PjXA9GH6hav3RDRPmNkllVqHqfhztQgVSwTAi3fpOSTf2pZexVnXSAxppkSe7XAGSR-aOmtLVuMSNOrlq5nyUEPnjUW5XieqqgWEOXtn0mpfbUd0jS398mRT9OSfi0j103aKoP_HW/s1600/ceausescus.jpg" width="168" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Romanian uniforms</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
In 1984, two of Nixon's former colleagues, ex-attorney general and campaign chief John Mitchell and former military aide Jack Brennan, asked him to endorse a bizarre deal in which the regime of Romanian tyrant Nicolae Ceausescu (later executed for crimes against humanity) sold military uniforms to Iraq's Saddam Hussein (ditto). It would make a good plot for "The Interview II." When <i>U.S. News</i> found out, I persuaded them to print a letter stressing that Nixon had no financial stake in the deal and that he had just signed bread-and-butter letters for old friends. I continued to defend the boss when the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/1990/06/01/us/cameo-players-in-an-84-deal-with-iraq-nixon-agnew-ceausescu.html">covered</a> the story again in 1990, after Brennan and Mitchell sued for $3 million each in lost commissions. Court records included Nixon's letters and revealed that his corrupt ex-vice president, Spiro Agnew, had also been involved.<br />
<br />
I also got letters defending Nixon into the <i>Times</i>, <i>Wall Street Journal</i>, <i>Time</i>, and other publications. Writing unctuously to anchorman Brian Williams, I persuaded <span style="font-size: x-small;">NBC</span> News to retract an erroneous Vietnam story. I <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1989-06-04/entertainment/ca-2517_1_nixon-lawyer-nixon-aide-john-taylor-final-days">protested</a> <span style="font-size: x-small;">ABC</span>'s 1989 film adaption of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's <i>The Final Days</i> and <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/1996-01-10/entertainment/ca-23137_1_nixon-library-john-h-taylor-oliver-stone">Oliver Stone's 1995 movie "Nixon."</a> I chided scholar <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/02/kutlering-nixon-tapes.html">Stanley Kutler</a> (who <a href="http://www.jsonline.com/news/obituaries/uws-stanley-kutler-forced-release-of-nixon-records-b99477084z1-298981241.html">died</a> this month) for publishing an unreliable Watergate tape transcript, Rick Perlstein for <a href="http://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2008/07/perlstein-and-the-ellsberg-break-in/">slipshod use of a secondary source</a>, Don Fulsom for <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/richard-and-bebe-inside-story.html">claiming</a> that Nixon had beaten his wife and conducted an affair with his best friend, Bebe Rebozo, and Robert Dallek for <a href="http://nixonfoundation.org/news-details.php?id=454">accusing</a> Nixon's men of being behind a 1960 break-in at John F. Kennedy's doctor's office. Operative Jeb Magruder's claims notwithstanding, I <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2008/11/missing-tapes.html">argued</a> that Nixon hadn't known about the Watergate break-in in advance. I <a href="http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/history_lesson/2002/03/nixon_and_the_jews_again.html">tried to argue away</a> Nixon's antisemitic comments and <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/12/hiss-or-history.html">defended</a> him and Henry Kissinger when a newly-released White House tape made it appear that they would have tolerated the Soviet Union massacring all its Jews.<br />
<br />
Because of all that, and more, I earned the reputation of being blind to Nixon's faults. In November 1999, <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">OC</span> Weekly </i>published an article containing the tortured explanations it imagined "chief Nixon apologist John Taylor" would manufacture if asked about Nixon's most outrageous taped comments. One example from the <i>Weekly</i>'s full-page article, now framed on the wall of my study: "<i>Nixon says</i>: 'You know what happened to the Romans? The last six Roman emperors were fags.' <i>What John Taylor should say</i>: 'The president was a learned man, and like all learned men, he knew that the first definition of "fag" in the dictionary is someone who works himself to exhaustion. The president had great admiration for hard workers.'" A considerable and unexpected blessing is that <i><span style="font-size: x-small;">OC</span> Weekly</i> and I are experiencing what one of its veteran investigative reporters, R. Scott Moxley, called a <a href="http://blogs.ocweekly.com/navelgazing/2015/03/john_taylor_richard_nixon_reverend.php">detente</a>.<br />
<br />
While I usually based my arguments on the facts as I knew them, I regret the times I questioned people's motives without evidence, especially the archival professionals working faithfully with Nixon's records at <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span>. On occasion, my assertions were rendered inoperative, as Nixon press secretary Ron Ziegler might've said. In an <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmSpectator-1996mar-00022?View=PDFPages">article in the <i>American Spectator</i></a>, I insisted that Nixon had never used an obscenity also known as the first word of the title of an <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cocksucker_Blues">unreleased Rolling Stones documentary</a>. It was true he'd never said it in thousands of hours of conversation with me. But when newly released White House tape showed that he had used the word in the White House, I made sure to include it in a subsequent <a href="http://www.unz.org/Pub/AmSpectator-1998mar-00046?View=PDFPages">piece</a>, requiring the<i> Spectator</i>'s copy editors to expend what probably amounted to a month's supply of expletive-obscuring hyphens.<br />
<br />
I also made a point to come clean, so to speak, in my 2014 novel, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Jackson-Place-John-H-Taylor/dp/1499530838/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426890269&sr=1-1&keywords=jackson+place"><i>Jackson Place</i></a>, in which a fictional 37 refuses to resign. When an aide (a fictional Ron Ziegler, as a matter of fact) suggests that "Nixon" solve a delicate <span style="font-size: x-small;">PR</span> problem by going to church, "Nixon" says, "So that I can sit there while some sanctimonious c--------- preaches at me about reconciliation and peace and justice and all that crap?"<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuW8_XVzFBgO0G-t7wl35Sfs4l9pT3Zgbzp98nlG7hvbnI12CzRFl5kEFTFH1kHZy4bcPIMwaHiMvN-Rcs7N2f3T8NgbPrdwyiW6xQutujuGodQO7AXnMwguuMELPqjfyuH9JK6HpxNDss/s1600/JacksonPlaceFC.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="143" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhuW8_XVzFBgO0G-t7wl35Sfs4l9pT3Zgbzp98nlG7hvbnI12CzRFl5kEFTFH1kHZy4bcPIMwaHiMvN-Rcs7N2f3T8NgbPrdwyiW6xQutujuGodQO7AXnMwguuMELPqjfyuH9JK6HpxNDss/s1600/JacksonPlaceFC.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">What might have been</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
As I said, it's a <a href="https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/john-h-taylor/jackson-place/">novel</a>. He never said that, but he sometimes talked that way. Thousands of hours of tapes prove it. His former associates can pretend the record doesn't exist. But before long, we'll be silent and gone, while Nixon, on tape and paper, will be talking forever.<br />
<br />
So while I kept tilting at Nixon's critics, I became an equally persistent advocate of opening records. Under my watch at the private Nixon library, we <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/12/pink-lady-and-i.html">launched an archive</a> of pre-presidential materials that won some praise from scholars. In negotiations that began soon after Nixon died, I participated, as co-executor of his estate, in an agreement with <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> and the late Stanley Kutler, who had sued the agency, that was designed to enable the opening of all of Nixon's non-classified <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/03/not-new-graboske.html">tapes</a> by 2000. (It took <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> until 2013.) While some who were understandably cynical about Nixon and Nixonites <a href="http://blog.nixonfoundation.org/2008/02/welcome-to-the-new-nixon/">were accusing</a> us of covering up, we were actually preserving and protecting. The Supreme Court had ordered <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> to return to Nixon, and later his estate, all papers and hundreds of hours of tapes related to his political, as opposed to policy-making, work as president. The court said such records were his private property thanks to his constitutional right to private political associations. When we had the right to seal them forever and even destroy them, in the late 1990s I vowed that we would preserve them. When we <a href="http://www.archives.gov/publications/prologue/2007/fall/nixon-lib.html">handed the library over to the government</a> in 2007, we deeded the whole collection to <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span>.<br />
<br />
As library director Tim Naftali was starting work on his new Watergate exhibit, I gave him access to the briefing books Nixon had used to prepare for his 1977 <span style="font-size: x-small;">TV</span> interviews with British personality <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2008/12/frostnixon-defrosts-historical-nixon.html">David Frost</a>, which gave Tim insights into how 37 had prepared to talk about the scandal for the first time as well as structure the massive Watergate sections of his 1978 <a href="http://www.amazon.com/RN-The-Memoirs-Richard-Nixon/dp/0671707418">memoir</a>. In a January 2015 Facebook exchange with historian <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/02/canon-according-to-david-greenberg.html">David Greenberg</a>, Tim wrote, "<span data-ft="{"tn":"K"}" data-reactid=".2t.1:3:1:$comment10153500405599746_10153500629319746:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body"><span class="UFICommentBody" data-reactid=".2t.1:3:1:$comment10153500405599746_10153500629319746:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0"><span data-reactid=".2t.1:3:1:$comment10153500405599746_10153500629319746:0.0.$right.0.$left.0.0.1:$comment-body.0.$end:0:$0:0">Although
complicated at the time, and a friendship now, my relationship with
John from the start in 2006 produced agreements that led to more
archival releases."</span></span></span><br />
<br />
As I've already <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/05/friendly-fire.html">written</a>, after we handed library operations over to <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> and Tim in 2007, our relationship suffered as a consequence of him taking such decisive steps to show that there was a new sheriff in town and of me having trouble letting go after running the library for 17 years. During the two years I continued as foundation chief, we had a series of wearying procedural skirmishes over consultation on programming, space, and budgets. Our disagreements never became public, and as Tim made clear in his comment to Greenberg, they didn't keep us from cooperating.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7mFbygLcbbe4T8qkMjkkQc8pmpJQ7WtFA2AJo-c_JwQZxr6fzN6_4UVmEn7ROnZWirtV9z2CL-Kxa4SWfe9DlWaZkgwrv34Nemn1oNFcdSrPQTfc9AxYfprYRlKaEQ9rxJbthvKphFRz/s1600/timkathy.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7mFbygLcbbe4T8qkMjkkQc8pmpJQ7WtFA2AJo-c_JwQZxr6fzN6_4UVmEn7ROnZWirtV9z2CL-Kxa4SWfe9DlWaZkgwrv34Nemn1oNFcdSrPQTfc9AxYfprYRlKaEQ9rxJbthvKphFRz/s1600/timkathy.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tim Naftali and Kathy O'Connor</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
In February 2009, I left the Nixon foundation to work full time as priest in charge of a church and school in south Orange County, where I'd been serving on an ostensibly part-time basis since 2004. My successor, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/separating-woman-from-boys.html">Kathy O'Connor</a>, was one of Nixon's most loyal and competent aides. She was his confidential secretary for ten years before becoming his last chief of staff in 1990. She had been my friend since 1980 and my wife since 2002. No one outside his family knew or had served Nixon better. She saw him at his noblest and pettiest. She traveled around the world with him, assisted with seven books, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/08/bending-notes-and-constitution.html">stood up to him</a> when necessary, and held his hand as he died. As a Nixon foundation executive since 1995, she had spearheaded a $14
million expansion and helped maneuver the library into federal hands.<br />
<br />
In Kathy's first weeks heading the foundation, while she lost no ground in negotiations with the federal library, she developed a friendlier relationship with Tim than I had managed and began to solve the relatively trivial first world problems that had plagued us. On her watch, prospects began to improve for making the library the focal point for lively debate and inquiry about Nixon's life and times that Kathy and I had worked toward for years and that, we believe, Nixon himself would have wanted.<br />
<br />
But that Nixon library wasn't to be. The late Rep. Charlie Wilson (<span style="font-size: x-small;">D-TX</span>) is famous for helping arm the Afghan resistance to the Soviet Union in the 1980s. After Moscow withdrew, Congress ignored his pleas to rebuild the shattered country, which soon became al-Qaeda's home base. "These things happened," Wilson said about defeating the Soviets. "They were glorious, and they changed the world. And then we f----- up the end game." And so it was with Kathy and me.<br />
<br />
Remember that we only knew Nixon as a former president, Kathy beginning in 1980, I a year before. It's true we hadn't been with the old man in the White House when it
really counted, as some of his family members and White House aides would grumble. By the same
token, we hadn't organized any dirty tricks, ordered any burglaries,
participated in any coverups, counted the number of men and women with Jewish surnames in any federal agencies, tried to have the taxes of any political enemies <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/12/shultz-dean-has-problem-with-me.html">audited</a>, had any <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/08/signs-of-times.html">anti-Nixon demonstrators roughed up</a>, or <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/08/bending-notes-and-constitution.html">sicced the FBI on an</a><a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/08/bending-notes-and-constitution.html">y journalists</a>. <br />
<br />
Members of Nixon's White House cohort sometimes seemed more focused on themselves and their personal interests than on Nixon's legacy. Some were hungry to be in
charge, settle scores, or receive the payoff they felt they'd been
denied because of Watergate. A few of Nixon's lower-level associates had
been maneuvering for years to get close to the library safe. One asked
in on our security business. Another wanted to be hired to invest our
endowment. Still another, with the support of some
in Nixon's family, pressured us to contribute to a secret fund to
help pay the personal expenses of a pro-Nixon scholar. <br />
<br />
As a post-presidential johnny-come-lately, which is what Nixon son-in-law Ed Cox dubbed me in an angry e-mail to Tricia's uncle Ed Nixon, I was naturally less concerned with the agendas of resentful former operatives than with the old man's peacemaking legacy and ongoing elder statesmanship. When running the Nixon foundation and after helping found the Nixon Center, Kathy and I and our colleagues cultivated excellent institutional relationships with such high-level Nixon policy partners as Henry Kissinger, Jim Schlesinger, George Shultz, and Brent Scowcroft. Seeing Nixon and them at work, and coming to appreciate the liveliness of his pragmatic policy and political principles, made it easy for us to think that his reputation would withstand Watergate. We even permitted ourselves to believe that Nixon's historical standing would
rebound as historians weighed the good against the bad and the ugly in the massive record we had helped
open and bring to his library in Yorba Linda. If it took 50 years, or even more, that was okay. It wasn't so much about us, we had realized. It was
about Nixon and what history would decide.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizmzRsvrXIruBUya_o7Kal6gR5dWMO-y96bgUPQndxCiByVQCp7pjRo54rJIvkLakVYRHSWyIU3m9zONjHwtvFlqQ_KVJZ1fh6923Y-G4Ol4Q6w7GUIcDTES8YZeHI949VI1Evq-nzy5_S/s1600/Bob+Haldeman.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizmzRsvrXIruBUya_o7Kal6gR5dWMO-y96bgUPQndxCiByVQCp7pjRo54rJIvkLakVYRHSWyIU3m9zONjHwtvFlqQ_KVJZ1fh6923Y-G4Ol4Q6w7GUIcDTES8YZeHI949VI1Evq-nzy5_S/s1600/Bob+Haldeman.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Patron saint of Haldeman foundation</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But Nixon and ex-chief of staff Bob Haldeman's non-policy campaign and political aides, some of them associated with Watergate or Watergate-related abuses, took a different view. These revanchists finally had a chance to mass in Yorba Linda in mid-2009 after Naftali invited former White House counsel and famed Watergate plea-copper and whistle-blower<a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/dean-haters-society-thanks-senator.html"> John Dean</a> to give a speech on the 37th anniversary of the Watergate break-in. While Dean is a significant historical figure, the Haldeman tribe hated him for helping send their friends to jail for their Watergate crimes. "Don’t rub it in my face by inviting John Dean on the anniversary of Watergate," <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/nixon-647703-naftali-taylor.html">complained</a> one, as though public history were a matter of not hurting his feelings. They would no doubt have preferred keynote remarks by one of their own -- perhaps <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/search/label/Dwight%20Chapin">Dwight Chapin</a>, organizer of Nixon's 1972 campaign dirty tricks -- or no speech at all. That summer and fall, in the wake of the Dean invitation, they seized control of Nixon's foundation and launched a full-scale war against Naftali, questioning his professionalism and ethics, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/dean-haters-society-thanks-senator.html">using</a> a Nixon-staffer-turned-U.S. senator, Lamar Alexander (<span style="font-size: x-small;">R-TN</span>), to try to get him fired, and making disparaging remarks about his sexual orientation.<br />
<br />
Here's where the Charlie Wilson analogy comes into play. Haldeman's loyalists wouldn't have been squatting so securely on their nine acres of Nixon purity in Yorba Linda without insider help. Their apparently unwitting accomplice, Orange County printer Kris Elftmann, was an institutional creature of Kathy's and my own making. On the advice of the late Mary Muth, a longtime supporter of Richard Nixon and the Nixon foundation, we had cultivated Elftmann for membership on the foundation board and soon elevated him to chairman.<br />
<br />
In early 2009, after I said I was quitting after 19 years as executive director, the foundation's executive committee offered Kathy two years as my replacement. Though she was reluctant, two longtime board members, foundation chairman Don Bendetti and treasurer John Barr, persuaded her to accept the offer. But Elftmann had another plan. When the full board met, he proposed making Kathy a one-year caretaker and called for a national search for the best-possible candidate. He and the foundation hired headhunters at Korn/Ferry to perform the search. Korn/Ferry is popular in Nixon circles because former Nixon advance man and National Park Service director Ron Walker is one of its former executives. (Walker will also be remembered for telling muckraking Nixon
biographer Anthony Summers that he had enlisted off-duty police officers
and firefighters to rough up anti-Nixon demonstrators and for <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/08/signs-of-times.html">bragging</a> about having protest signs ripped from free citizens' hands.) In a conversation during the summer of 2009 at La Casa Pacifica, the Nixons' old home in San Clemente, Walker told me he was keeping close tabs on the search and promised to pass on any concerns I had. (Kathy had already opted out.) When Korn/Ferry presented their candidates that fall, Elftmann proposed giving the job to Walker. The Nixon board
agreed. <br />
<br />
To attract the quality candidates that Elftmann had said he was looking for, he and the board had changed the job title from executive director to president and increased the salary. An additional possible motive for these enhancements emerged in the fall of 2010. First Walker stepped up to foundation chairman. Then according to a board member who was present, Elftmann, the volunteer chairman, had his own name put forward for president. It had all the hallmarks of a Putin-Medvedev job swap. Unfortunately for Elftmann, it didn't go down that way. He had helped all the president's men to seize power in Yorba Linda. Now that they were in charge, they essentially showed him the door.<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGF15u4VRKsrV4RONcqXbpPBFJbK8EKhXWmv50QZxhExCMb6F4-stGyImSXFUbi_MCFM-CDomW2qdeRU0GkL8rBRSXFOwHUBL5Hm6koLUvEtfXCHB_fuV7CHZlUhhMAMv7EayuN8HhrBjB/s1600/nixonkathy.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiGF15u4VRKsrV4RONcqXbpPBFJbK8EKhXWmv50QZxhExCMb6F4-stGyImSXFUbi_MCFM-CDomW2qdeRU0GkL8rBRSXFOwHUBL5Hm6koLUvEtfXCHB_fuV7CHZlUhhMAMv7EayuN8HhrBjB/s1600/nixonkathy.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With Kathy in Hangzhou, 1993</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
The year before, Elftmann had leveraged a small group of foundation trustees associated with the Washington-based Nixon Center against Kathy. During that abysmal spring and summer, she was repaid for 30 years of confidential service to Nixon and his family with acts of savagery and sadism. Worst of all was when her antagonists pressured her to sign a multimillion-dollar lease for new Nixon Center offices in Washington and embroiled her in a Kafkaesque nightmare of bogus job reviews when she refused to do so without consulting the foundation board.<br />
<br />
You read that right. Kathy's unyielding insistence on taking the Nixon Center's proposed lease contract to the Nixon foundation board, which was legally responsible for Nixon Center finances, was actually construed as evidence of poor performance. Imagine the irony of someone affiliated with a Nixon operation being punished for insisting on fiduciary probity. During those hellish months, Bendetti, Barr, and our other erstwhile friends on the board fretted and stewed but did nothing to stop the abuse. Finally Kathy and I acted to extract her. <br />
<br />The long knives were now wielded against the backstabber. Elftmann must have assumed that the Beltway insiders at the Nixon Center, including former <span style="font-size: x-small;">NATO</span> Ambassador Bob Ellsworth, who had helped Elftmann batter Kathy over the Center's lease, had enough clout in Yorba Linda to make him foundation president. But they'd never had much influence on the board, and now they had none. Walker and the board spurned Elftmann and gave the job to one of their own. After he lost, a board member told me, Elftmann quit and stormed out, later <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/simes-times.html">muttering</a> darkly, and ironically, to a reporter about the foundation's questionable management practices.<br />
<br />
Within a year, the Haldeman tribe had cut the Nixon Center loose, too. <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/simes-times.html">News reports</a> suggest that it got millions from the foundation endowment for agreeing to stop using Nixon's name. Now called the <a href="http://www.cftni.org/">Center for the National Interest</a>, it will be lucky to outlive its current management and contributors. I suspect Nixon would have been gravely disappointed. He had said explicitly that he wanted his foundation to operate a nonpartisan center in Washington that would address ongoing foreign policy challenges. He understood that any president or his heirs and aides could get rich friends to pay for a high-tech museum celebrating themselves and their achievements for the sake of a few thousand weekly tourist visits. Nixon always thought bigger than that. As a disgraced former president, he never stopped wanting to have what he called "an impact on the course of events." He hoped for no less when it came to the foundation bearing his name.<br />
<br />
After settling scores with the Nixon Center, the foundation's operatives were in a position to turn their full fire on Tim Naftali, the federal library director. Their goal was no less than the final coverup: Blocking the warts-and-all Watergate exhibit that the archivist of the U.S. had assigned him to install and that the Nixon foundation, when Kathy and I were running it, had agreed was the price of admission to the federal library system. This time, all their spirit-of-Watergate moves were <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/08/they-got-just-exhibit-they-bargained-for.html">impotent</a>. Withstanding one of the most systematic assaults ever mounted against a public historian, Naftali thwarted them at every turn,<a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/03/naftali-doctrine.html"> successfully installing the exhibit </a>in March 2011. <br />
<br />
Haldeman's loyalists will tell you their enemy was Naftali. But they also shrink from the uncompromising judgement of history -- about Nixon, but also about themselves. Otherwise they wouldn't have tried to keep Naftali from using their own oral history interviews, called on him and <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> to be kinder to Bob Haldeman, and tried to <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/04/bad-boys-of-watergate.html">narrow the definition of Watergate</a> in the new museum exhibit so that the principal villains would have appeared to be their <i>bete noire</i> Dean, political counselor Chuck Colson (never a Haldeman insider), and, of course and always, Nixon himself. Otherwise a heavyweight's centennial wouldn't have been lighter than air. Otherwise they wouldn't have held out for a successor to Naftali whose resume is empty of curatorial, archival, or public policy substance. Otherwise, to paraphrase Nixon's so-called last press conference in 1962, they'd invite one lonely professor onto the campus from time to time, just to report what people were thinking, feeling, and saying about Richard Nixon in arenas other than panel discussions and cocktail parties for former aides.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9aKgzLTOY8KwL1e67PTw2fcVo2Qc-XmumtuO9Dqz0NxtSXOx_og84FguIx9rWXZelYp4oylmmBH1ufPsuP-Ocrl5jJJ-DN93trUlF8n0vUiiftqMYny4W3V2Vi8-hhypzFKILqNgd6PX4/s1600/lawrencecover.jpg" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg9aKgzLTOY8KwL1e67PTw2fcVo2Qc-XmumtuO9Dqz0NxtSXOx_og84FguIx9rWXZelYp4oylmmBH1ufPsuP-Ocrl5jJJ-DN93trUlF8n0vUiiftqMYny4W3V2Vi8-hhypzFKILqNgd6PX4/s1600/lawrencecover.jpg" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not in Yorba Linda</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It was over three years between Tim Naftali's resignation and the appointment late last year of the Great Park's Michael Ellzey. The feds had trouble finding someone who matched the Nixon foundation's particular standards. It had effectively vetoed <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA's <span style="font-size: small;">preferred candidate</span></span>, University of Texas scholar Mark Atwood Lawrence. Lawrence's 2010 book, <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Vietnam-War-Concise-International-Introductions/dp/0199753938/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1426913098&sr=1-1&keywords=the+vietnam+war+a+concise+international+history"><i>The Vietnam War: A Concise International History</i></a>, is a balanced if blunt study by a younger scholar
who seems unburdened by the intestinal biases of those who
lived through the Vietnam years. Lawrence is reasonably fair to Nixon's policies in Indochina, though he doesn't shrink from highlighting 37's temperamental shortcomings. How could he? Remember those tapes, playing forever, never to be silenced. Lawrence earned the operatives' particular ire for this passage, describing Nixon's attitude toward the antiwar movement: "Exhausted and often alcohol-fogged, Nixon lashed back furiously at his critics." It isn't what I would've written. But by and large Lawrence accepts the proposition that it was American politics -- Watergate plus massive congressional cutbacks in U.S. aid to its ally in Saigon -- that doomed South Vietnam, not the superior ability or moral standing of communist North Vietnam. As a matter of fact, that was Nixon's view as well.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuFiUyXs0sN1I-2vzSpaHzivsbcox-XhQZcw2dl3POxCV2UZMyDQgRZrYdwHDbVgta_UqTVi8gzap9rQMbw-saKmPs3lZ3alMIWbbl9j56Xry9eX5Np9y9bKCRwDCoBThjCTwagvSAOMQg/s1600/evanthomas.jpg" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuFiUyXs0sN1I-2vzSpaHzivsbcox-XhQZcw2dl3POxCV2UZMyDQgRZrYdwHDbVgta_UqTVi8gzap9rQMbw-saKmPs3lZ3alMIWbbl9j56Xry9eX5Np9y9bKCRwDCoBThjCTwagvSAOMQg/s1600/evanthomas.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">I'm doubting Thomas will return </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Vietnam, Watergate, and Nixon's complex temperament also received the attention they deserved late last year at an excellent Nixon library <a href="http://events.r20.constantcontact.com/register/event?oeidk=a07ea582heu9e175480&llr=9xrl66dab&showPage=true">program</a> on Nixon's 1974 resignation featuring journalist and historian Evan Thomas, who is at work on a Nixon biography. Invited by federal library executive Greg Cumming, whom I lured to Yorba Linda from the Reagan library many years ago, the panelists were respectful of Nixon without being uncritical. I left thinking that Thomas would write a fair and important book about Nixon. It's just the kind of program the library should offer all the time. But the Nixon-Haldeman foundation publicly ignored it. What remains to be seen is whether, under the library and foundation's new management, Greg's event ends up being the high water mark of true inquiry in the public programs of the Nixon library, which has become a thoroughly uninteresting place dedicated in the name of one of the most interesting people ever.Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-64149962052627401612015-03-20T13:57:00.000-07:002015-03-20T13:57:33.510-07:00The Honeymoon's Over<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrWl-aBxOXw2JYaOssufCbX85fqS-sDWyHvz3iCYy3fntCvZhINW1PM-n9jaBCAIvxkECM5yj_Dy3RdGXdOzPV4pzSpMahq7eOMxHaTd9CQRFSVbRXFHr3Mw500U1XD7sXdWORYzxXEeIH/s1600/bibiobama.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgrWl-aBxOXw2JYaOssufCbX85fqS-sDWyHvz3iCYy3fntCvZhINW1PM-n9jaBCAIvxkECM5yj_Dy3RdGXdOzPV4pzSpMahq7eOMxHaTd9CQRFSVbRXFHr3Mw500U1XD7sXdWORYzxXEeIH/s1600/bibiobama.jpg" height="115" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">He can't fire Bibi</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My comment on Thomas Friedman's <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/19/opinion/thomas-friedman-bibi-will-make-history.html?smprod=nytcore-ipad&smid=nytcore-ipad-share&_r=0">column</a> about the Israeli election yesterday was one of 21 designated as "<span style="font-size: x-small;">NYT</span> Picks":<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
Bibi can afford to be honest thanks to the sea change in U.S. attitudes.
Israel's historic left-leaning U.S. supporters cared more about
democracy for democracy's sake than do her new friends on the right, who
don't seem to worry much about disenfranchised Palestinians on the West
Bank. With a <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span> Congress and a better than even chance for a <span style="font-size: x-small;">GOP</span>
president, Bibi's sitting pretty for the time being as far as keeping
the U.S. is concerned.<br />
<br />
At home, if he's being honest about
abandoning two states, he probably envisions a plan along the lines of
Naftali Bennett's -- annexation of the West Bank with a glacial phasing-in of Palestinians' rights. Meanwhile the Palestinians will continue to lobby
in international forums for <i>de facto </i>statehood. These visions will
inevitably and perhaps violently clash. Maybe that's just what Bibi's
evangelical end-time friends in the U.S. want. <br />
<br />
Israelis can run
their country however they want. But I'm feeling more and more like
Israel is morally equivalent with China, Germany, and Japan as far as
U.S. policy is concerned. Relations among countries need to be
reciprocal and mutually beneficial. Since 1948, our main interest in
Israel has been that we loved her for the sake of who she was and what
she stood for. I still respect that, but the honeymoon's over. I don't
have to love Israel's democracy if Israel doesn't. And I am not going to
favor a Mideast policy driven primarily by end-timers. I don't like
their influence in Iran, and I don't like it here.</blockquote>
Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-82921209442979131262015-02-20T20:12:00.001-08:002015-02-20T20:18:40.714-08:00Their Lady, And Ours<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJbwpmBgEXM3Ro7vslE_jqn-i182XvuR8P-2E9wjBd1cHbMbonEwCp_RG0p1Rw5Kv1JGpM8o_zkA9peYoVz6-73UYO2_y8CIoauL2-PtEGnWOBcLyy1dAJ1zhuNECOoT33G_6SmdBLbhF_/s1600/IMG_5703.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgJbwpmBgEXM3Ro7vslE_jqn-i182XvuR8P-2E9wjBd1cHbMbonEwCp_RG0p1Rw5Kv1JGpM8o_zkA9peYoVz6-73UYO2_y8CIoauL2-PtEGnWOBcLyy1dAJ1zhuNECOoT33G_6SmdBLbhF_/s1600/IMG_5703.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Harvesting holy water</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
As our flight from Mexico City to <span style="font-size: x-small;">LAX</span> was about to
take off, two women sitting next to me crossed themselves. Visiting Cuernavaca’s
Roman Catholic cathedral a few days before, I had seen a mother and two
children filling containers from the baptismal font and putting them in a
shopping bag. I don’t know if they planned to sell it or put it to some
sacramental use. Either way, tap water wouldn’t do. They wanted the holy
article and plenty of it.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
During our two-week pilgrimage, we Diocese of Los
Angeles laypeople and clergy, led by Bishop Mary Douglas Glasspool, observed many
more overt expressions of piety than we’re used to seeing in the U.S. Nearly
100 million Mexicans, 83% of the population, are Roman Catholic. Curious about
how many were practicing as opposed to nominal Catholics, we asked one of our
Spanish language teachers to tell us who actually goes to church on Ash
Wednesday. “<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Todos</i>,” she said with a
smile. “And even more go on <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Pascua</i>
(Easter Sunday).”</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
Some of us attended a Saturday morning mass with
at least 3,000 souls in Mexico City’s Basilica of Our Lady of Guadalupe, the
world’s third most visited sacred site. I found myself in a clutch of
communicants near the altar. I passed <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">la
paz del Se</i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="mso-ascii-font-family: Cambria; mso-hansi-font-family: Cambria;">ñ</span>or</i> with a dozen men, women,
and children. After the consecration, as a parade of priests and deacons plunged
into the crowd, I hesitated, unsure of the protocol. I felt hands against my back,
turning me and gently pushing me toward a priest standing nearby.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
As far as I could see, everyone was served. Later,
I lit candles for my ailing mother and for Kathy, who cared for her while I was
away. I have never been more moved in church. Surely God’s spirit was there, if
anywhere. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
And yet 20 minutes before, our guide for the
morning, Francisco Guerrero, one of the founders of the newspaper <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">La Jornada</i> and a nephew of Nobel
Prize-winning novelist Octavio Paz, had said that just being there made him
feel depressed. Francisco is an expert on the indigenous people of Mesoamerica
-- Aztecs, Mayans, and myriad others who thrived before Spain’s conquest in
1521. After briefing us as we stood on the plaza outside the basilica, he sent
us to explore by ourselves. He refused to set foot inside. He said he could
never forgive the church for exploiting the Mexican people, from the 16<sup>th</sup>
century until now, when, he told us, the basilica alone takes in $1 million each
day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj89Zf9A6-WBfWBDlx1Ka6blDi6StYWQvy25rv72Uy9oLL73lzorQJKyhaQMm-SSlQ31G3N77-i1E1mDdZLx7Mt4Tt_Ea33uk_zg1cpIyuRLqBDrQlvlfTnUiZoNjOX9EWN6zlnNWXCyPH3/s1600/IMG_5202.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj89Zf9A6-WBfWBDlx1Ka6blDi6StYWQvy25rv72Uy9oLL73lzorQJKyhaQMm-SSlQ31G3N77-i1E1mDdZLx7Mt4Tt_Ea33uk_zg1cpIyuRLqBDrQlvlfTnUiZoNjOX9EWN6zlnNWXCyPH3/s1600/IMG_5202.jpg" height="200" width="150" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Our Lady at home</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpFirst">
At the heart of such passions and debates about
the church’s role in Mexican society is the story of Our Lady of Guadalupe. Official
doctrine holds that a maiden appeared to peasant Juan Diego in 1531, a decade
after the Spanish conquest. Speaking in the Aztec tongue of Nahuatl, she sent
him to pick flowers on a hilltop where a temple to the goddess Tonantzin had
stood until the Spanish destroyed it. There he found not indigenous Mexican
flowers but Castilian roses. He arranged these in his coat, or
<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:10.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
</style><i>tilma</i>. Appearing before the Catholic archbishop, Juan found
that the image of a woman with brown skin had been burned into his <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tilma’s</i> fabric – a Virgin Mary custom-made
for the new world. Our Lady’s basilica stands near the hilltop where Juan is
said to have found the Spanish roses. His <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">tilma</i>
is displayed in a climate-controlled enclosure high above the altar where the
mass we attended was celebrated.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
Did it really happen? Or did the Spaniards concoct
the story to legitimize its conquest and sweep away the vestiges of indigenous
religion? We heard these points of view and others from scholars such as Francisco
as well as clergy in the Anglican Diocese of Cuernavaca, our host. Whatever the
story’s origins, when Mexicans threw off Spanish rule in the 19<sup>th</sup>
century, Our Lady inspired them. Today she is a symbol of national identity for
the faithful and nonbelievers alike in a country whose public institutions are
often obdurately corrupt. Francisco’s uncle, Octavio Paz, famously said, “[T]he
Mexican people, after more than two centuries of experiments, have faith only
in the Virgin of Guadalupe and the National Lottery.“</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
Yet many Mexican Protestants believe they should
offer worshipers an alternative to myths and magical thinking, especially when they
have been used exploitatively. Some Anglican priests won’t display Our Lady in
their churches even when their congregants want them to. A few we met during
our visit were surprised to learn that some U.S. Episcopal churches with
Anglo-Catholic leanings and Spanish-speaking congregations make a point to
honor her. In the U.S., such gestures are the essence of our inclusive Anglican
identity. Our Mexican colleagues tend to stress the exclusivity of Anglican
identity. Such differences in perspective are in themselves emblematic of the
richness of the tradition that those north and south of the border love in
equal measure.<br />
<br />
<i>This post originally appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios, <i>the newsletter of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church. </i></div>
Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-69201119896658995622015-01-12T15:49:00.000-08:002015-01-13T07:58:55.437-08:00"Voice From The Past," Erased And Restored<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-LJnZwH0_C6VsEe2VvzlbU8RfXODf6hOhIgMjrIiruYCpF9kvus89N_zwmuqcZ_QoujECYZ85FGrVjPhKkb8WkI5Qq2KXQ-8P4te6Bt040WdZ5E_1QOS4VSpoaRjLrx1EweZsF18DOiP/s1600/IMG_4289.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhE-LJnZwH0_C6VsEe2VvzlbU8RfXODf6hOhIgMjrIiruYCpF9kvus89N_zwmuqcZ_QoujECYZ85FGrVjPhKkb8WkI5Qq2KXQ-8P4te6Bt040WdZ5E_1QOS4VSpoaRjLrx1EweZsF18DOiP/s1600/IMG_4289.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">From p. 1 of this morning's "Register"</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Quoted in a <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/foundation-647019-nixon-library.html">Jan. 4 article </a>in the Orange County <i>Register</i>, a Richard Nixon-Bob Haldeman operative claimed that the Nixon foundation, which I ran for 19 years beginning in 1990, had no role in naming Tim Naftali as the first federal Nixon library in 2006. Actually, Naftali's was the only name we submitted to the National Archives. <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> loved the idea -- he was a foreign policy scholar and an expert in secret presidential tapes -- and hired him within days of my phone call.<br />
<br />
It wasn't the first time someone had written me out of the history of the Nixon wars. In their recently published book of White House tapes, Douglas Brinkley and Luke Nichter <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2014/08/serendipity-doo-dah.html">tried to erase </a>one of mine by writing that Naftali's Yorba Linda appointment was "serendipitous," as if it had been a rare and wonderful example of immaculate bureaucratic conception.<br />
<br />
This week, a more knowledgeable scholar, Anthony J. Clark, author of a forthcoming book about presidential libraries, <i>The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity, and Enshrine Their Legacies</i>, brought the Nixon operative's whopper to the attention of <i>Register</i> political reporter Martin Wisckol, who'd written the Jan. 4 article. Wisckol graciously modified the on-line text and e-mailed me questions for a follow-up <a href="http://www.ocregister.com/articles/nixon-647703-naftali-taylor.html">column</a>, which appeared today. Here's our complete exchange:<br />
<br />
<i>Can you tell me how you became aware of Naftali? I'm told the foundation brought him in to speak in May 2005. Were you involved in that decision or was that your first exposure to him? Also, [operative Ron] Walker told me this morning, "The (Nixon) girls were upset that they were never involved in the selection. I heard it from them." Care to respond to that?</i><br />
<br />
If by "the girls," Walker means Mr. Nixon's daughters, I can't recall precisely whom I talked to among my Nixon foundation colleagues about Tim, but I consulted pretty widely, and people seemed to agree that he was a good fit because of his unique standing as a non-ideological Cold War scholar and an expert on presidential tapes. If Tim and President Nixon had ever had a chance to sit down and talk, I don't think they would have disagreed about very much. He might even have understood why, if his library was to be part of the federal system, it would probably be necessary to have speakers such as John Dean and a more thorough Watergate gallery.<br />
<br />
I first met Tim when he and his boss at <span style="font-size: x-small;">UVA</span>'s Miller Center, Philip Zelikow, later executive director of the Sept. 11 commission, reached out to me in the hope that Mr. Nixon's estate (of which I was co-executor) would enable them to have access to White House tapes that hadn't yet been opened to the public. I visited them in Charlottesville. That would've been in the early 2000s.
<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>Overall and when all was said and done, was Naftali an asset to the library?</i><br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1XzW9I0uVDnhaH3NOZdCFb-nOUAs-tikers1yq9qqwgDMBLiEeG-mfKG8lqKEUXhxOlol6fC4lb2lZ0RHEOi8ik4z5n2d9cUdfrN1xJ7xeXYveCWU4S-opiibjIn2aLvfoTlEVrrL9WTj/s1600/naftaliinexhibit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh1XzW9I0uVDnhaH3NOZdCFb-nOUAs-tikers1yq9qqwgDMBLiEeG-mfKG8lqKEUXhxOlol6fC4lb2lZ0RHEOi8ik4z5n2d9cUdfrN1xJ7xeXYveCWU4S-opiibjIn2aLvfoTlEVrrL9WTj/s1600/naftaliinexhibit.jpg" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Naftali meets the press</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
He proved to be indispensable. Tim showed that the library could welcome Nixon critics such as <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/nixon-library-still-standing.html">Bob Woodward</a> and John Dean without the world coming to end. He also took on the harrowing assignment of installing the comprehensive Watergate exhibit that was a condition of the agreement whereby the government took over the library. Given the intense pressure placed on him by those now running Nixon's foundation who were outraged by the Dean invitation and wanted to stop the exhibit, I don't know if very many others in his position could have stayed the course and succeeded as he did. President Nixon prized toughness. Tim was tough indeed. Their <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/05/friendly-fire.html">campaign</a> against a federal director -- ranging from <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/hissing-and-moaning.html">disparaging him personally</a> to enlisting <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/dean-haters-society-thanks-senator.html">Sen. [Lamar] Alexander</a> to pressure Tim and filing <span style="font-size: x-small;">FOIA</span> requests so they could read his e-mails -- may be <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/06/in-ring-with-duke.html">unprecedented</a> in the history of presidential libraries.
<br />
<br />
<i>Any regrets in recommending him? </i><br />
<br />
No.
<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>Was the Watergate exhibited far and unbiased? Were Naftali's efforts to present Nixon overall fair and unbiased?</i><br />
<br />
The exhibit is an unblinking and comprehensive look at a dark chapter in American history and President Nixon's legacy. If the Nixon foundation had worked collegially with him, the exhibit might have ended up with softer corners. Instead, his critics <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/08/they-got-just-exhibit-they-bargained-for.html">guaranteed</a> that the experts and media would be looking carefully to make sure the exhibit included warts and all, which it does.
<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>What do you think of Ron Walker and the Nixon daughters who felt that Naftali was unduly harsh and too focused on Nixon's shortcomings?</i><br />
<br />
It was Tim's job to be focused on Nixon's shortcomings, because the archivist of the U.S. and the Nixon foundation <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/12/fingers-in-watergate-dike.html">agreed</a> that he would have to create a Watergate exhibit. The then-archivist, Allen Weinstein, told Tim he wanted a thorough exhibit, and the government was paying for it.<br />
<br />
Some people do continue to insist that Watergate was overblown, even that President Nixon did virtually no wrong. But every fifth grader knows (and I've asked a lot of them!) that Richard Nixon was the only president to resign and that he did so because of Watergate. When students visit the Nixon library, they see the great achievements as well -- China, detente, reorienting the Vietnam War, and President Nixon's pragmatic politics and domestic policies. What message would we send schoolchildren, not to mention the museum's other visitors, by minimizing what they already know is one of the most important events in modern political history?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGZ31WZYXt4aQSdJBFzS8cYLknnYWHloGE-HU7gh0HrF291IloQeYdfYoYaSF0v8sd4sS6D7FSYuJqCMu-iGY3lzV9u3dtbbw1yurFCShAeWiwANV9FBpVQXPHxVCKufMVOFzN1j1vcI1Z/s1600/lawrencecover.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhGZ31WZYXt4aQSdJBFzS8cYLknnYWHloGE-HU7gh0HrF291IloQeYdfYoYaSF0v8sd4sS6D7FSYuJqCMu-iGY3lzV9u3dtbbw1yurFCShAeWiwANV9FBpVQXPHxVCKufMVOFzN1j1vcI1Z/s1600/lawrencecover.jpg" height="200" width="132" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">No, thanks, Mark</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
The wiser course is to stipulate the tragedy of Watergate while focusing attention on Mr. Nixon's globe-transforming achievements and enduring principles. That's one reason President Nixon and we launched The Nixon Center in 1994. (Sadly, it is <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/simes-times.html">no longer allowed to use his name</a>.)<br />
<br />
As for the apparent continued attacks against Tim that you mention, it's obviously not just about him. The Nixon foundation successfully scuttled [University of Texas Vietnam scholar Mark Atwood] Lawrence's appointment because it wouldn't brook his criticism of President Nixon, either.<br />
<br />
So now both the foundation and federal library are in the hands of chiefs, handpicked or anointed by Mr. Nixon's White House associates, with little apparent background in museum or archival work, academia, or national public policy. The question remains whether Yorba Linda will be a place where President Nixon and his tumultuous times can be explored and understood in all their dimensions or a hermetically-sealed bubble for loyalists. When those of us who knew and served him pass from the scene, the tapes and other records stored at the Nixon library will speak more loudly than our advocacy or self-defensiveness. The reason we brought the library into the federal system to begin with was so we could be part of that conversation, not muffle our ears.Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-23691918672915590392014-12-08T07:08:00.002-08:002015-01-23T14:33:34.940-08:00Making Room<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7TZgsP1aH4JHyDCRBGkujFYEohEsqqLX3XLr7epcJI2SNkarsB_dCM5AEfw5PsQGW8_mN_JcVhFBVleZfzy9afYIK1hHTc4vnncjEgFG55I8kTNAPdWkLWKbFmZHeX0bm-HAIH912Vj6/s1600/IMG_3380.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhv7TZgsP1aH4JHyDCRBGkujFYEohEsqqLX3XLr7epcJI2SNkarsB_dCM5AEfw5PsQGW8_mN_JcVhFBVleZfzy9afYIK1hHTc4vnncjEgFG55I8kTNAPdWkLWKbFmZHeX0bm-HAIH912Vj6/s1600/IMG_3380.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></div>
During Advent, we await Christ by preparing our busy hearts to accommodate the incalculable abundance of God’s love for the world and all of us, God’s beloved.<br />
<br />
The image that keeps occurring to me is a tiny, cluttered apartment suddenly having to accommodate a building-sized, heart-shaped pillow. The pillow’s so big that its unyielding, irresistible cuddliness flattens the furniture against the walls and then, like rising Tollhouse cookie dough, oozes through every door, window, and crevice.<br />
<br />
There’s so much pillow that there’s no room for anything else.<br />
<br />
Such is the gift of Christmas, if fully accepted – ours heart so full of joy, forgiveness, and a yearning to love God and others that there’s no room for the familiar old furniture.<br />
<br />
We will always resist being rearranged to that extent. And why shouldn’t we? What’s at risk of being moved out of the way usually isn’t anything so bad as the opposite of the godly virtues, which is to say despair, vengefulness, and all consuming regard for ourselves. We’re entitled to like our furniture. We inherited some of it. As for the claw and ball table leg where we keep stubbing our toe in the dark -- well, we do manage to avoid it most of the time. Moving things around just creates new ways to risk getting hurt.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-wZt8PT1xF_k0YmaIiCJfs9uR4t7fk8Ito4b07ILiDAxG1f1wnVrHTHyJnwe7EqeALTMMUK6xPZE4ld-wD3ULEbxLI1-wifa4IrXzXrh_1CdaNyVnR_R1rxtHf1Hn0J-LkBQObO7IO71V/s1600/IMG_2119.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-wZt8PT1xF_k0YmaIiCJfs9uR4t7fk8Ito4b07ILiDAxG1f1wnVrHTHyJnwe7EqeALTMMUK6xPZE4ld-wD3ULEbxLI1-wifa4IrXzXrh_1CdaNyVnR_R1rxtHf1Hn0J-LkBQObO7IO71V/s1600/IMG_2119.JPG" height="186" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bishop Bruce with food bankers</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We might be so content with the status quo that we’ll figure out how to confine the giant heart pillow to the spare bedroom. Instead of letting Christ consume us, we’ll coexist. We’ll spare our Lord a ventricle and a few subsidiary veins and arteries, just occasionally letting him flow into the whole expanse, such when we’re holding a baby, listening to Handel, or seeing a sunset -- or on Saturday evenings or Sunday mornings, when we’re in church.<br />
<br />
If our hearts are prone to constrain Christ’s abundance, so are the churches we build in his name. We set them up just the way we like them, fill them with nice people such as ourselves, and then do things the same way over and over again.<br />
<br />
Make no mistake: If you’re like me, church’s congeniality and predictability help make the experience holy. Just to expose the limits of my metaphor, I don’t propose moving any of our beautiful furniture. But how could we throw our doors open wider and let more of the giant pillow out? Could we do even more to turn our community’s face to the world?<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbHtJfZt4m0MHwmuVwdSnFe7_-sKdWGcDLX22tTmRqJ8tfvpYGo9plwxOExnQ4u_cS7RpTYuhkzylocbKmKxxgiWf5oSkS4jFfACabhrYTS1TyFUtwmB84Y9QsvdYDaul_j2h0SpnnSffz/s1600/IMG_2137.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhbHtJfZt4m0MHwmuVwdSnFe7_-sKdWGcDLX22tTmRqJ8tfvpYGo9plwxOExnQ4u_cS7RpTYuhkzylocbKmKxxgiWf5oSkS4jFfACabhrYTS1TyFUtwmB84Y9QsvdYDaul_j2h0SpnnSffz/s1600/IMG_2137.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Bishop Bruce and Roger Bradshaw</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Bishop Diane Jardine Bruce posed this question to your parish leaders during her visit in October, when she invited us on a neighborhood walkabout followed by a conversation about what we had observed. Our group included Mother Martha, People’s Warden Gregg Stempson, Bishop’s Committee members Phil Bowman, DJ Gomer, Dave Nichols, Paula Neal Reza, and Erin Schwarz, and me.<br />
<br />
We explored neighborhoods within walking distance of our church and talked about how their residents would love St. John’s if they gave it a try. But standing on the sidewalk looking across at our beautiful campus, we wondered how we appeared to them. It’s the church with the expensive private school, someone said. “What does ‘Episcopal’ even mean?” someone else said jokingly. “Is it hard to get in? What are the requirements?”<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22nSIntU0Vj0pGNtDyID5uyEkZJswGaHq6Ctcfmn8uhNkEzuQsQhXpdMvszM-cZqgGz3WshhqG7eKFwGqr6V23fCxUa6b8esmkBIyg3KGIejS1CO-PGvmws1MXelyTZB1iLAU6QGzKQO1/s1600/IMG_2962.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj22nSIntU0Vj0pGNtDyID5uyEkZJswGaHq6Ctcfmn8uhNkEzuQsQhXpdMvszM-cZqgGz3WshhqG7eKFwGqr6V23fCxUa6b8esmkBIyg3KGIejS1CO-PGvmws1MXelyTZB1iLAU6QGzKQO1/s1600/IMG_2962.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a>Bishop Bruce was delighted to see St. John’s outreach in action. She consecrated our School’s new “Seeds of Hope” garden, where we’ll grow produce for those in need, and dropped by the Rancho Santa Margarita food bank, where Roger Bradshaw and his St. John’s crew comprise the core volunteer group every third Thursday.<br />
<br />
These new outreach and community ministries (others are Happy Hour, St. John’s Moms Club, and Caregiving Mosaics) naturally suggest others. Demographic data that Bishop Bruce provided revealed that 15% of our city’s population is Hispanic. Our walkabout group wondered how welcome those neighbors feel at St. John’s. What if we provided a translation of our services into American Sign Language? An obvious reply is that no one in our congregation is a member of the Deaf community. But that might change if we provided the service.<br />
<br />
Your parish leaders were amply inspired by Bishop Bruce’s visit. Still, we all have more than enough to-do lists this time of year. Advent is less about doing than being – being ready, open, and vulnerable. Advent people and churches will inevitably be changed by Christ’s love. I can’t wait to find out what St. John’s becomes in the new year. I can’t wait to see who we really are.<br />
<br />
<i>This post was originally published in the </i>Vaya Con Dios<i>, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church. </i>Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-86439658948836767902014-11-27T17:44:00.001-08:002014-11-27T19:07:49.678-08:00Fatal Overreach<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Pp0Mz_8PyKIf7jc0i31QqcIfvvYf0HW611sBw5-7aMqlJv0zxoNTkigXnqiegPtP8QRusXOlvWHC8ngDzJhkxvbbH9blBv1hVeBmFPPqLt15H2TEqNDn9dUD6wu7KvchqjRm8XTWe-Nx/s1600/michael.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi4Pp0Mz_8PyKIf7jc0i31QqcIfvvYf0HW611sBw5-7aMqlJv0zxoNTkigXnqiegPtP8QRusXOlvWHC8ngDzJhkxvbbH9blBv1hVeBmFPPqLt15H2TEqNDn9dUD6wu7KvchqjRm8XTWe-Nx/s1600/michael.jpg" height="133" width="200" /></a></div>
Writing and talking about Michael Brown, whom police officer Darren Wilson killed on Aug. 9 in Ferguson, Missouri, people have a tendency to leave out one of two details: Either that he had just committed a robbery or that he was unarmed. Wilson's critics describe Michael as an unarmed teenager. Wilson's advocates say robbery suspect. It's harder to argue that Michael is an innocent victim if you mention that
he was the criminal suspect about whom Darren had just heard from his
dispatcher. Saying Darren's innocent is a harder sell if you acknowledge that Michael
wasn't carrying a deadly weapon.<br />
<br />
Put the two together, and you get "unarmed robbery suspect." Google it and see how few hits you get. There's too much ambiguity in the phrase given the emotional freight that's being conveyed by the preponderance of the commentary about the case. We're naturally tempted to overlook gray areas while using a narrative to prove a larger point. It's especially in the nature of politicians, pundits, and interest groups to turn
those caught in tragedies such as Michael's and his grieving family's into object
lessons. But Darren Wilson didn't deserve to be indicted because of the existence of institutional racism. By the same token, he doesn't deserve to be absolved just because most police officers do the best they can under difficult conditions while running the risk of being turned into scapegoats for broad inequities and injustices for which virtually none of them is individually responsible.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuAISn_hlVarc2UcPOw1li-ldktN2FJNU5-kTdI1ezu3TydusXnLK5_Gf9AfshVz_2eKQfJftWusMRrAfVWs_ZGnDklrXUVq3aozZ3IQqONVlKm4iVlktJa_cDIFeVcopqP1ZKV5GsE-2P/s1600/wilson-1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiuAISn_hlVarc2UcPOw1li-ldktN2FJNU5-kTdI1ezu3TydusXnLK5_Gf9AfshVz_2eKQfJftWusMRrAfVWs_ZGnDklrXUVq3aozZ3IQqONVlKm4iVlktJa_cDIFeVcopqP1ZKV5GsE-2P/s1600/wilson-1.jpg" height="149" width="200" /></a>At the core of our common life is the principle that a person suspected of committing a crime is judged strictly by the facts. In this case, after an a violent struggle over Wilson's weapon in his car, Michael fled and then turned and lunged toward Wilson. Was the officer expected or entitled to shoot him? That would seem to be a question that any number of police academy instructors should be able to answer. If I were writing the rule book, I'd be inclined to say, "Do whatever you can to avoid discharging your weapon until you see that the suspect is armed." Of course I've never been in such a situation myself. The experts, many of whom have been, disagree with me. Wilson probably shouldn't have confronted Michael while he was still seated in his cruiser. He should've made sure he had access to mace or a Taser before trying to detain Michael.<br />
<br />
But once the confrontation reached the street, even the <i>New York Times</i> <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/27/us/ferguson-experts-weigh-darren-wilsons-decisions-leading-to-fatal-shooting-of-michael-brown.html?hp&action=click&pgtype=Homepage&module=first-column-region&region=top-news&WT.nav=top-news&_r=0">called</a> Wilson's use of deadly force "standard police procedure." If that's really the case, it's hard to second-guess the Ferguson grand jury. If Wilson had been tried, he probably would've been acquitted. Michael's advocates might have been less outraged by an unfavorable jury verdict than they were by the grand jury's decision. But again, the facts of the case, not the motive of managing public moods and opinions, are supposed to govern whether someone is charged or convicted.<br />
<br />
Still, I'm troubled by something that Wilson claimed in his <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2014/11/25/us/darren-wilson-interview/">interview</a> with <span style="font-size: x-small;">ABC</span> News: That he saw Michael reach inside his waistband. The youngster had no weapon. Pretending to go for one while moving toward an armed officer whom you've already assaulted would be tantamount to committing suicide.<br />
<br />
So we should consider another possibility. In the <span style="font-size: x-small;">ABC</span> interview, Wilson said he wouldn't have done anything different. It would be reckless to say otherwise with a federal civil rights lawsuit pending. But a normal person would be prone to anguished second thoughts, wondering if his ten shots were justifiable. The St. Louis County <span style="font-size: x-small;">DA</span> claims that those who testified that Michael raised his hands
over his head in a gesture of surrender were misremembering, their imaginations stimulated by
their anguish at the tragedy of his death. It seems more likely that Darren similarly imagined Michael's threatening gesture than that the college-bound young man committed suicide by cop.<br />
<br />
By speculating as I have, I'm not accusing Wilson of lying. Just of having a heart in pain.Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-32149228919280937422014-10-28T15:00:00.000-07:002014-10-28T15:04:59.297-07:00Brittany, Deb, And Cindy's Story<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfpEIhMnZlmCzcmz6uByRncCs2U9ts5ZzzdioXPRb08mgqlPCeiR5LZXePtuuV1T2SBEVYX4Iv5H-OrmYdiKDbCCNyqc5qXo0CJWMvTvkb3CurPw3pGu_u1pJRKk1wZ7ZO7v3kLFvg03jN/s1600/brittany.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfpEIhMnZlmCzcmz6uByRncCs2U9ts5ZzzdioXPRb08mgqlPCeiR5LZXePtuuV1T2SBEVYX4Iv5H-OrmYdiKDbCCNyqc5qXo0CJWMvTvkb3CurPw3pGu_u1pJRKk1wZ7ZO7v3kLFvg03jN/s1600/brittany.jpg" height="200" width="166" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brittany</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Cindy Campbell and Deb Ziegler of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal School in Rancho Santa Margarita once compared notes as neighbors, parents, and teachers. Soon they may have something else in common: the incalculable pain of losing a child.<br />
<br />
Ziegler's daughter is Brittany Maynard, the 29-year-old Southern Californian and St. John's School alumna who moved to Oregon this year to take advantage of its right-to-die law. Diagnosed on Jan. 1 with terminal brain cancer, not long after her marriage to Dan Diaz, Maynard announced that she would end her life once her symptoms, including seizures and searing headaches, become unbearable. While she has chosen Saturday, Nov. 1, she reserved the right to delay her death depending on her illness's severity.<br />
<br />
By going public with her decision and associating her name and story with <a href="http://episcopalnews.ladiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3168201#.VFAMgFt8HdQ">Compassion & Choices</a>, a right-to-die advocacy group, Maynard has sparked a heart-wrenching debate in churches, workplaces, homes, and the media about doctor-assisted suicide as a last-ditch expedient for those who are hopelessly ill. It is legal in four states besides Oregon: Vermont, Washington, Montana, and New Mexico.<br />
<br />
At St. John's, we're praying for Brittany, giving thanks for her courage, and faithfully joining in the national conversation she has inspired. (As one of my colleagues pointed out, no less an authority than Anderson Cooper of “60 Minutes” erred in his pronunciation of our famous alumna's name. For the record, she is Brittany me-<span style="font-size: x-small;">NARD</span>.)<br />
<br />
Cindy Campbell, our middle school principal, is preparing for the far more difficult work of consoling a grieving mother, should Brittany die as she has planned. Cindy has known Deb and Brittany since 1987, when they and the Campbells became neighbors in a development near St. John's called Robinson Ranch.<br />
<br />
Ziegler soon distinguished herself at St. John's as a superstar middle school science teacher. Colleagues say she was ahead of her time. Under the leadership of head of school Michael Pratt, in 2014 St. John's adopted the innovative, interdisciplinary <span style="font-size: x-small;">STEAM</span> curriculum, combining science, technology, engineering, arts, and math. “In a way, Deb was doing <span style="font-size: x-small;">STEAM</span> before <span style="font-size: x-small;">STEAM</span>,” said Sheryll Grogan, a St. John's faculty member who worked closely with Ziegler.<br />
<br />
Among her innovations was the Invention Convention. Campbell said that Brittany invented a device users could wear while applying hair spray so it wouldn't get in their eyes. “If she'd patented it, it may well have found a market,” Cindy says.<br />
<br />
A straight-A student at St. John's, Brittany graduated from Santa Margarita Catholic High School and from UC Berkeley.
After Deb Ziegler left the St. John's faculty in the early 1990s, she and Cindy Campbell remained friends. In 2009, she consoled Cindy over the death of her and Gregg's eldest son, Joey. Cindy never wanted or expected to have the opportunity to repay Deb's kindness. Now both mother and daughter have asked her to do just that.<br />
<br />
“She has reached out to me as a mother who has lost a child and asked that I help her with this,” Cindy said last week. “Brittany has also asked me to be there to help her mother with the reality that Deb will be living without her.”<br />
<br />
I thought of asking Cindy what she thought about Brittany's decision to end her life. I didn't, and I won't. It would be logical enough journalistically, but it seemed inappropriate pastorally, like an invasion of a friendship's privacy and a distraction from the ministry of love and support Cindy will undertake regardless of her feelings about Brittany's choice.<br />
<br />
We have been talking openly about it at St. John's Church, however, both informally in the hallways and in two ministry settings: our monthly support group for caregivers, and our periodic “Sunday News” current events discussion.<br />
<br />
Our members' reactions tend to match the national mood. According to a Pew Research Center survey conducted in the spring of 2013, 49% of U.S. adults disapprove of physician-assisted suicide and 47% approve. In contrast to other social and cultural issues, such as same-gender marriage, the numbers are relatively unaffected by age. Fifty-four percent of those ages 18 - 29 and 56% of those over 65 disapprove. The most amendable cohort is people ages 50 - 64, of whom 44% disapprove and 51% approve.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDMHfBOFbKEWbpM6iJlMcAcRmYOt4SEvD7aG2VsSvz8EwSSw3S0SZQtvdq_UNwE8IR8A_KmN77_iB2I_11MowxF82A87wkA4-ZW3Lw8NB6iOtpshfF2KSC2D3516S-8bMRcPtRhP8mOMys/s1600/brittanydanwedding.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDMHfBOFbKEWbpM6iJlMcAcRmYOt4SEvD7aG2VsSvz8EwSSw3S0SZQtvdq_UNwE8IR8A_KmN77_iB2I_11MowxF82A87wkA4-ZW3Lw8NB6iOtpshfF2KSC2D3516S-8bMRcPtRhP8mOMys/s1600/brittanydanwedding.jpg" height="131" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><i>Brittany and Dan at their wedding last October</i></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Brittany Maynard recoils from the word suicide, which normally denotes a dark and sometimes inexplicable act. She says she loves life and doesn't have a suicidal bone in her body. Advocates prefer the phrase “death with dignity,” which is, after all, their mission. Virtually no one who advocates for the right to die has motives other than compassion for those who suffer. Such compassion is a core ethic of our faith and practice. It's also hard to imagine looking someone in the face who is experiencing hopeless, unbearable pain and urging her to endure even more for the sake of a principle.<br />
<br />
Still, the issue entails considerable tension and even paradox, and we've touched on these in our parish conversations. What if doctors can reliably promise patients that palliative care will protect them from the worst ravages of disease while giving them even a little more time to enjoy sunsets, Mozart, the Rolling Stones, and fellowship with loved ones and friends? Should those suffering hopelessly from the agony of schizophrenia or depression be empowered to end their lives? Are physicians being asked to compromise their often praiseworthy and even vital impulses to extend life?<br />
<br />
On the other side of the debate, some ethicists argue that human freedom includes the right to decide whether to live or die. Besides, surely no one of right mind wants to die when the possibility and anticipation exist of some decent quality of life. Right-to-die states take special care to ensure that doctors not collaborate with patients who aren't thinking clearly or rationally.<br />
<br />
Our church is debating these questions nationally as well as locally. In a 1994 resolution in Indianapolis, General Convention said that while euthanasia was “morally wrong and unacceptable,” doctors should be allowed to administer extra painkillers, even if it hastens death, as long as they intend to relieve pain rather than end life.<br />
<br />
Addressing the related issue of physician-assisted suicide, our church's End-of-Life Task Force, reporting to 2000's General Convention in Denver, recommended that the church oppose the practice because it “sets ourselves up as gods in the place of God,” marginalizes the role of caregivers at the end of life, erodes our faith in physicians, and risks tempting sufferers to think they should die to avoid burdening others.
Reflecting on the task force's work and acknowledging her own ambivalence and discernment, Bishop Suffragan Mary Douglas Glasspool of the Diocese of Los Angeles wrote last week to colleagues and friends that Brittany Maynard's experience gives communities of faith an opportunity to discern God's will - “not just an opportunity, but an obligation.”<br />
<br />
At St. John's, we agree. As a first step, we are renewing our efforts to make sure our members have looked ahead to their own and their loved ones' last months, days, and hours. For instance, everyone should study and fill out "Five Wishes," an easy-to-use anthology of end-of-life instruction forms first published by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation and now available in 26 languages, thanks to a grant from the United Health Foundation. Each of us should also fill out a Physician Orders for Life-Sustaining Treatment (<span style="font-size: x-small;">POLST</span>) form; California's is available <a href="http://capolst.org/">here</a>.<br />
<br />
We'll do this good, necessary, difficult work in thanksgiving for own Brittany Maynard, who, with her devoted mother, excelled at science and now calls society to be relentlessly discerning about its end-of-life ethics even as it continues to advance in life-saving medical technology.<br />
<br />
<i>This article was originally <a href="http://episcopalnews.ladiocese.org/dfc/newsdetail_2/3168201#.VFAMgFt8HdQ">published</a> by</i> The Episcopal News <i>at the Diocese of Los Angeles. </i>Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-60258583753006697662014-09-30T15:00:00.000-07:002016-08-16T09:39:32.023-07:00It Takes A Parish<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZbvsp9bP8iLfEvc1E8iWHQ1VYNg89cl5d5e2BAUt-aVtxjiGc9F4obF5bly4r-WXvKSFz2pDZaEQj4PPkcmNfUhJWrRH8EwGxuHtGQJO6kQ4PFpPlcYG38naL-EibYaHr6ftjn86L2T6E/s1600/maxandelizabeth.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjZbvsp9bP8iLfEvc1E8iWHQ1VYNg89cl5d5e2BAUt-aVtxjiGc9F4obF5bly4r-WXvKSFz2pDZaEQj4PPkcmNfUhJWrRH8EwGxuHtGQJO6kQ4PFpPlcYG38naL-EibYaHr6ftjn86L2T6E/s1600/maxandelizabeth.jpg" width="133" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Max and Elizabeth</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I’ve never been prouder of a thumb’s up.<br />
<br />
Early this year, I asked our Max Mizejewski, who died Sept. 19 when his Cessna 162 crashed near Borrego Springs, to read the manuscript of my political novel <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Jackson-Place-John-H-Taylor/dp/1499530838/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1471365552&sr=8-1&keywords=jackson+place"><i>Jackson Place</i></a>. Max was a war hero who barely survived the 1967 crash of the Huey he was piloting.<br />
<br />
Much of the book concerns the Vietnam War. Since I didn’t serve, I feared writing inaccurately or blithely. Two weeks later, Max handed it back with a smile, a few words of encouragement, and a thumb’s up. That was all I hoped for. Max used language carefully. He didn’t gild the lily or stop to smell the roses unless there was time on the schedule and the olfactory episode had been thoroughly mapped out.<br />
<br />
Sometimes he didn’t have to speak at all. St. John’s friends sitting in pews behind him say they’ll never forget the Sunday we celebrated the 200th anniversary of the “Star Spangled Banner.” He stood ramrod straight for all three verses, facing the front of the church and saluting. Then he hugged Rebeca and their daughter, Elizabeth.<br />
<br />
It was five days before his death. May they always remember the deathless energy of his embrace. May we all remember the energy with which he lived and his example of uncompromising devotion to those he loved.<br />
<br />
Max wasn’t the only St. John’s resource I tapped. I invited Trinh Hinson, who was born in Vietnam, and her family to point out any egregiousness in my descriptions of Vietnamese society and places in and around the city that was once called Saigon. Gerry Larson, internationally noted scholar and Presbyterian pastor, asked incisive questions. Our meticulous head of school, Michael Pratt, who has a PhD from Harvard, said he was pleased to have caught relatively few punctuation errors and then wrote a generous review on Amazon. Fellow Detroiter and thriller aficionado Tom Tierney thought I got both the politics and the Motown scenes right.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgulIyzWn9juIP4-L9ekfrDd6921Y6U33mOpa5S_ASGkItkEGIa3MRKvg-a7CKv_ytIMSQsJBtCUgTozoYBGFIthNpotF8_VVF7MyRj67BDh6r294Q3t1JejCw6iohfhNDa5NEmXF0JcbFz/s1600/JacksonPlaceFC.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="228" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgulIyzWn9juIP4-L9ekfrDd6921Y6U33mOpa5S_ASGkItkEGIa3MRKvg-a7CKv_ytIMSQsJBtCUgTozoYBGFIthNpotF8_VVF7MyRj67BDh6r294Q3t1JejCw6iohfhNDa5NEmXF0JcbFz/s1600/JacksonPlaceFC.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Cover painting by Robin Rogers Cloud</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Andy Guilford was patient indeed, permitting me to feed him chunks of text as they came off the printer and making more great suggestions than I can count. I wrote three drafts of one section before getting a favorable ruling from the bench. He did question why I missed no opportunity to portray Richard Nixon sitting in an easy chair, his feet on an ottoman, while he twirled and chewed on his reading glasses. Had I forgotten writing about the eyeglasses just five pages before? If I may, Your Honor, we call that a <i>leitmotif</i>, I said carefully.<br />
<br />
All their good advice notwithstanding, considerably better than the text is the cover, which is based on the work of Robin Rogers Cloud, acclaimed plein air painter, associate professor of art at Saddleback College, and member in good standing of the St. John’s Altar Guild. If you’re Robin’s friend on Facebook, you’re enjoying her exquisite paintings, including those she made during her summer in Montana with the St. John’s Swansons.<br />
<br />
After finding the courage to ask an artist of Robin’s stature to help, I suggested a pretty painting of the leafy row of townhouses in Lafayette Square opposite the White House, where much of my story’s action occurs. Robin asked what the book was about. I told her Nixon doesn’t resign in August 1974 and moves into 716 Jackson Place so Acting President Ford can use the White House. In that case, Robin said, it should be scary: “Think Edward Gorey.” Of course, it’s perfect.<br />
<br />
The contributions of <span style="font-size: x-small;">LEM</span> coordinator and former Nixon chief of staff Kathy O’Connor are also too numerous to mention. I borrowed a description of a child's first glimpse of a baseball diamond from one of my own <i>Vaya</i> columns last year (thanks, editor Linda). I fretted over a paragraph in which Mitch realizes that Emily loves him. Finally, I tried the passage out on participants in one of our Tuesday evening Bible Fellowship meetings.<br />
<br />
My fellow pilgrim Gene Giordano gave me permission to use his last name for Nixon aide Ron Ziegler’s bartender at the Carlton in Washington. Gene will forgive me for saying that Mizejewski would also have suited my tough, fiercely loyal character.<br />
<br />
I also consulted authorities in the outside world, including famed Watergate reporter Bob Woodward. But I couldn’t have done it without St. John’s. One is blessed to have such collaborators, in ministry and in life. Someone said it take a village to raise a child. It took a parish to write a book.<br />
<br />
<i>This post originally appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios<i>, the newsletter of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church.</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-71030642791249761682014-08-14T22:42:00.003-07:002016-08-16T09:38:34.322-07:00Serendipity Doo-Dah<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzRQEtIgcNBBhmtuxa0kRVh7WfOzq5ohO1UZaqc_ICN9D2p8yQlw6f7kxmBD_twV33qD58O_eunm3sDvLlWNGXwY6x0JKnZ2D77T9xu5hBFFxoHa7xk5bT5TcloXu2cBYSRy33ZUcxEauf/s1600/THE_NIXON_TAPES.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzRQEtIgcNBBhmtuxa0kRVh7WfOzq5ohO1UZaqc_ICN9D2p8yQlw6f7kxmBD_twV33qD58O_eunm3sDvLlWNGXwY6x0JKnZ2D77T9xu5hBFFxoHa7xk5bT5TcloXu2cBYSRy33ZUcxEauf/s1600/THE_NIXON_TAPES.jpg" width="131" /></a></div>
It was a Cinderella story.<br />
<br />
We dedicated the old, private Nixon library, where I served as director beginning in 1990, on an oppressively hot day that July. We had four presidents at the dedication ceremony, including Richard Nixon and the incumbent, George H. W. Bush. We threw a glittering fairy tale ball at the Century Plaza in Los Angeles with an open bar, attended by the noblest political hacks from every corner of the kingdom.<br />
<br />
We called what we had constructed in Yorba Linda, around Nixon's humble <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/06/red-light-green-light.html">birthplace</a>, a presidential library. It had gleaming new galleries, shiny terrazzo floors, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-yorba-linda-plumbers.html">exquisite bathrooms</a>, and a stately reading room for scholars. It cost a then-princely sum of $25 million. The epic buildings and grounds definitely looked presidential. But the shoe didn't fit, because we were a stepchild, reaching for a birthright to which we weren't entitled.<br />
<br />
It wasn't hard to see why. Within our heavily fortified walls, in all our 13 acres, there wasn't a presidential document to be found -- not a memo, a letter, a scribble, a tape, or even a tape gap. Someone <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/01/alien-secrets-buried-here.html">claimed we had secret <span style="font-size: x-small;">UFO</span> records</a>, which would've been useful if it were true. But Nixon's White House records, including the infamous secret tapes, were all back in Washington.<br />
<br />
We opened an <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/12/pink-lady-and-i.html">archive with pre-presidential records in 1991</a>, but it didn't convince scholars that our hearts were pure. Besides, the phone book didn't say we were the Nixon pre-presidential library. As at all new libraries, our museum put the best face on our man's legacy. But unlike our better-heeled cousins, we couldn't say that scholars and the public could walk around the corner and get the straight story of Nixon's presidency in the records. To see those, people had to visit a National Archives and Records Administration (<span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span>) facility in Alexandria, Virginia or, later, College Park, Maryland.<br />
<br />
We buried Mr. Nixon on the grounds in 1994, beside his first lady, who had died the year before. In the years that followed, as his co-executor I helped settle two pieces of federal litigation that had kept the Yorba Linda stepchild from joining the libraries which, beginning with Herbert Hoover's, are all run by <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span>. One lawsuit had to do with access to Nixon's tapes, the other compensation for Congress's taking of all his White House records.<br />
<br />
That done at last, we notified Uncle Sam that we were prepared to receive callers. But he was a reluctant suitor. For several years, the phone never rang on Saturday night. If you think I'm about to stretch the metaphor to include a dowry, you're right. We finally had to pay a lobbyist with ample Democratic bona fides $1 million to get legislation written in the House permitting <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> to ship Nixon's records out of Washington to Yorba Linda and paying for an archives wing for the documents, gifts, and tapes. <br />
<br />
Along the way <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/refiners-fire.html">we withstood Nixon's fractious family </a>(which torpedoed my first effort to federalize the library in 1996-97 because they thought, wrongly as it turned out, that there would be a bigger pot of gold if we kept fighting in court) and political hacks hanging around at court who were mad that we were paying big bucks to fancy Democratic lobbyists instead of good Nixon cloth coat lobbyists. <br />
<br />
Finally, it all came together. By the spring of 2006, our courtship was on the brink of consummation. The glass slipper was tickling our toes. All we needed was a federal director -- somebody who was, frankly, not I. Archivist Allen Weinstein and his deputy, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/turning-on-fawcetts.html">Sharon Fawcett</a>, asked me for names. I gave them just one: Timothy Naftali, a Cold War scholar who had run a groundbreaking presidential tapes project at the University of Virginia's Miller Center. Within days, they'd offered him the job. In an article announcing the Naftali appointment, the LA Times' Christopher Goffard <a href="http://articles.latimes.com/2006/apr/11/local/me-nixon11">wrote</a>:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
John H. Taylor, executive director of the Richard Nixon Library &
Birthplace Foundation, called Naftali "an independent-minded straight
shooter" and "an ideal choice" for the job.<br />
<br />
Taylor said Naftali's
work with presidential recordings was particularly relevant, because the
National Archives plans to transfer nearly 4,000 hours of Nixon's
presidential tapes to the library, many of which are difficult to hear.</blockquote>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaCHvqyxWLxZFm_0nbySJ2Lu6h8K44AIFsmCsNjXEHlD49lgCafhzu4FvR6B8abagBtCHCmZbM3rE4v8lDPh841IcZR6BRKbqM2Y9KJtBzihmtqgFq_YjAVFVCpAV6HMsR9jzjYZU-r6Da/s1600/naftaliinexhibit.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiaCHvqyxWLxZFm_0nbySJ2Lu6h8K44AIFsmCsNjXEHlD49lgCafhzu4FvR6B8abagBtCHCmZbM3rE4v8lDPh841IcZR6BRKbqM2Y9KJtBzihmtqgFq_YjAVFVCpAV6HMsR9jzjYZU-r6Da/s1600/naftaliinexhibit.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Tim meets the press</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
After we handed the library over to the feds in 2007, I remained as Nixon foundation chief. Though friends now, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/05/friendly-fire.html">Tim and I had our ups and downs</a>. When I complained about Tim to Allen Weinstein, he reminded me that Naftali had been my idea. When I complained to Naftali, he reminded me that I'd asked him to take the job. Weinstein compared us to squabbling brothers. Our skirmishes were trivial compared to the <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/06/in-ring-with-duke.html">systematic although impotent assault</a> that the <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/dean-haters-society-thanks-senator.html">John Dean-hating disciples of disgraced Nixon aide Bob Haldeman </a>mounted against Naftali to<a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/04/hissing-and-moaning.html"> try to stop his new Watergate exhibit</a>, which <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/03/naftali-doctrine.html">opened in 2011</a>.<br />
<br />
I left the library in 2009, pleased, at least, that it was safely in federal hands. I never expected anyone to celebrate my years in Yorba Linda. Tim and I both are here to say that if you want to make friends, don't be director of Nixon's library. My able successor at the Nixon foundation, former Nixon chief of staff Kathy O'Connor, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/12/separating-woman-from-boys.html">who also ran afoul of the good old Haldeman boys</a>, can sympathize.<br />
<br />
And yet I write today to battle for my footnote in Nixon library history. Two weeks ago, from their publicist at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, I received a complimentary copy of<a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Nixon-Tapes-Douglas-Brinkley/dp/0544274156/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1408078767&sr=8-1"> </a><i><a href="http://www.amazon.com/The-Nixon-Tapes-Douglas-Brinkley/dp/0544274156/ref=tmm_hrd_title_0?ie=UTF8&qid=1408078767&sr=8-1">The Nixon Tapes</a> </i>by Douglas Brinkley and Luke A. Nichter. Their 758-page book of transcripts is a vital addition to the Nixon bibliography. In the acknowledgements, the authors mention Naftali's work with presidential recordings at the Miller Center and then write:<br />
<blockquote class="tr_bq">
[S]o it was serendipitous that the National Archives selected him in 2006 to be the first director of the federalized Richard Nixon Presidential Library...</blockquote>
Serendipity is chance, accident, or coincidence. Naftali's appointment was none of these, and saying it was not only obscures my role, incidental though it may have been, but also suggests that the then-archivist of the U.S., no mean scholar himself, had blundered into a smart pick, like Percy Spencer's <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serendipity">accidental discovery of the microwave oven</a>.<br />
<br />
I actually thought that this was a small thing among gentlemen of the realm. I have a passing acquaintance with Brinkley. He reached out to me when it seemed the Nixon estate might be in the position to help with access to the tapes. I've also known Nichter for several years. I admired his efforts to make the Nixon tapes more broadly available to the public. We had lunch a few months ago. Last week in Washington, <a href="http://nixonara.wordpress.com/2014/08/13/most-fascinating-and-important-recordings-of-our-time/">he graciously acknowledged the <span style="font-size: x-small;">NARA</span> archivists </a>who faithfully cared for and processed the Nixon records while absorbing undeserved, politically inspired criticism, <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2011/03/not-new-graboske.html">including from those of us on the Nixon side</a>.<br />
<br />
So I wrote them both an e-mail praising their work but saying that I felt as though I'd been written out of the story. I asked that they alter the wording in subsequent editions. I didn't suggest how that might be done, but as I look at their phantasmagorical sentence, it seems to me that just changing "serendipitous" to "appropriate" would do it.<br />
<br />
Brinkley didn't reply, but Nichter did. Rejecting my claim, he plunged his lance in deep. "This is the first book of its kind," he wrote. "We expected that one of the criticisms we would get is that we didn't do enough in some shape or form. That often happens to those who are trying to start an entirely new conversation." So I'm not only out of line with my request. I'm nipping predictably at the heels of courageous visionaries. It's after midnight, anyway. I'll just head back to my pumpkin.Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com7tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-36702710257221507232014-07-24T21:01:00.002-07:002014-07-25T11:24:05.780-07:00Counter-Reformation<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:10.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
</style>
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBZrhNS3_BAOOGn7exMmXiQS0ZFDlG_RX8Fiv55AugiIKQtmOGQsMduRQDU3E9o8Q3BKQPAYGuJ5NO5K0oC8thMFdJF1EQNtQSxyIKUQTV5uNiuh_LrDSMkNXiu7IDEeZ1jbW8OSFniu1/s1600/IMG_0157.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhtBZrhNS3_BAOOGn7exMmXiQS0ZFDlG_RX8Fiv55AugiIKQtmOGQsMduRQDU3E9o8Q3BKQPAYGuJ5NO5K0oC8thMFdJF1EQNtQSxyIKUQTV5uNiuh_LrDSMkNXiu7IDEeZ1jbW8OSFniu1/s1600/IMG_0157.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a>We think, and rightly so, that we have a lot to
teach our young people. But just as often, as our wonderful St. John’s youth
leaders will tell you, the wisdom flows the other way around.<br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
The photo shows eight-year-old Sierra Schwarz at a
recent meeting of the St. John’s Parish Council, on which her mother, Bishop’s
Committee member Erin Schwarz, serves. Sierra just happened to be reading a
biography of Elizabeth the Great, founder of the Anglican Church and royal
protector of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Book of Common Prayer</i>,
which unites Episcopalians to this day.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
In a just few years, Sierra will be eligible for
youth group – whose middle and high schoolers recently gave me a lesson of
their own in Anglican theology.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
For a couple of years, I’ve experimented with a
deconstructed Holy Eucharist service that puts enormous emphasis on
congregational participation. I first used it when Thom’s, Orange County’s so-called
emergent community, worshiped at St. John’s. For the 2013-14 year, I adapted it
for our monthly Youth Eucharist services.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
If you listen carefully to the Eucharistic prayer
on Wednesday, Saturday, or Sunday, you’ll hear the whole history of human
experience. The wording varies from rite to rite, but the story’s always the
same. God’s creation began in unity and love and fell into disunity and sin, to
be called back to oneness in Christ. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
During my deconstructed service – you might have
called it a messy mass -- I closed Elizabeth’s prayer book and invited worshipers
to retell the creation story in their own words. They took turns elevating the
bread and wine, and we said the prayer of consecration together. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">By your Holy Spirit, make this bread and
wine into your body and blood</i>. (Don’t worry. I had a bishop’s permission!)</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
I thought that by stepping back from the familiar
liturgy and celebrant’s role, I was giving people a renewed sense of ownership and
individual involvement in a powerful sacrament that Jesus Christ gave not to
the church but to the whole people of God. Hoping to attract a younger generation
of skeptical seekers, many churches are experimenting with this kind of
liturgical democratization, giving congregations a larger voice in worship,
deemphasizing the ordained orders, and setting aside the old prayers and music.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
But as it turns out, my experiment wasn’t that popular
with the new generation at St. John’s. During their postmortem meeting at the
beginning of the summer, our young people said they wanted the old service back.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
Don’t get me wrong: Before last year’s experiment,
Youth Euch was hardly the drill from Sunday morning. Using music and other
means, I did my best each month to vary the first part of the service, the
Ministry of the Word, when we hear scripture, share a homily, and pray for our
needs and those of others. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
But when it comes to the second half, the young
people missed the solemnity, piety, and predictability of the prayer book mass,
the words we all know and the traditional roles we play. Whatever we’ve
experienced in the course of our day, whatever sadness or joy, we come together
and bind ourselves to Christ and one another just as we have for 2,000 years. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Lord be with you. And also with you.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
Patti Peebles, our chaplain and youth leader, put
it best when she gave me the kids’ verdict on my messy mass. “They’re
Episcopalians,” she <span style="font-size: small;">said.</span></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: small;">Elizabeth would be proud. And so am I. </span><br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: small;"><i>This post first appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios<i>, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.</i> </span></div>
Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-33059971929626556352014-06-26T16:59:00.000-07:002014-07-11T13:03:41.951-07:00"Jackson Place," Ch. 1: Just Watch<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3pi7RCoG-K87UzTd4sNk-YzdC3AR6WfEAANBbt6Ow5h4AfBKlZ2xXbdRP-zhB-8x1bPa4YM7KlC1Z5dI99D1-vqGn4Jw5ou0a1of0qRyCCQxoVpVkum7tFfoXru42U8sFRIdQLk8Oezj/s1600/jacksonplacecoverpainting.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEij3pi7RCoG-K87UzTd4sNk-YzdC3AR6WfEAANBbt6Ow5h4AfBKlZ2xXbdRP-zhB-8x1bPa4YM7KlC1Z5dI99D1-vqGn4Jw5ou0a1of0qRyCCQxoVpVkum7tFfoXru42U8sFRIdQLk8Oezj/s1600/jacksonplacecoverpainting.jpg" height="272" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Painting of 716 Jackson Place by Robin Rogers Cloud</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div style="text-align: left;">
</div>
People sometimes tried to sneak into the White House. Tonight, Emily was sneaking out.<br />
<br />
As she opened the door of the northwest gate, the one closest to the West Wing, she smiled guiltily at Carl, the handsome uniformed Secret Service agent who always flirted with her. She only had trouble with high heels when she was nervous, and she had never been more nervous in her life. Stepping over the threshold of the little guardhouse, she tripped and almost fell flat on her face.<br />
<br />
“Are you okay, Miss Weissman?” he said, jumping to his feet and peering over the reception desk. As she recovered her balance, he looked at her calves and ankles with an expression of deep concern.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9VinmCgwooOiCwm5njc-VeXDVh1J2EDyqsp7P534n_P4rvfQCr6Q1ofmHZxDkwCSM4EGPPeJT-w5C7cNvQcPnfsNsKrhRPoymtSdTewWYzEv2pFjP3oUQZ0_WR-cU0Bctln7n9Zrhyphenhypheneb_/s1600/matulicphoto.png" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9VinmCgwooOiCwm5njc-VeXDVh1J2EDyqsp7P534n_P4rvfQCr6Q1ofmHZxDkwCSM4EGPPeJT-w5C7cNvQcPnfsNsKrhRPoymtSdTewWYzEv2pFjP3oUQZ0_WR-cU0Bctln7n9Zrhyphenhypheneb_/s1600/matulicphoto.png" height="200" width="149" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Photo by Paul Matulic</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
“Eyes front, officer,” she said, smoothing her pleated skirt down the front of her thighs. Carl studied this maneuver as well. “I’m just going out for a second. Be right back.” She opened the door facing Pennsylvania Ave.<br />
<br />
He called after her. “Strange night to go out,” he said.<br />
<br />
“Strange night, period,” she said, waving so Carl could see she had her wallet and <span style="font-size: x-small;">ID</span>. The door clicked shut behind her. The sidewalk was crowded with protestors and tourists, who were all dappled with long summer sunset shadows. The mood was momentous and festive at the same time. She felt dozens of eyes glance at her for a minute. Nobody recognized the short redhead in the navy blue dress.<br />
<br />
She smiled to herself. Maybe they wondered if she was the secret love child of the president and his notorious redheaded secretary, Rose Mary Woods.<br />
<br />
Then she realized that in two and a half hours, they would know exactly who she was.<br />
<br />
It was 7 p.m. on Thursday, August 8, 1974, the day the White House had reliably informed its press corps and the world that President Richard Nixon would announce his resignation.<br />
<br />
She turned east, crossed 15th St., walked half a block south, and entered the Old Ebbitt Grill, inhaling air conditioning and the smells of cigar smoke and frying cheeseburgers. She walked quickly along the bar, hoping she didn’t run into anyone from the office. A flight of stairs at the back led down to the rest rooms and a small row of phone booths.<br />
<br />
She entered one of the booths, closed the folding door, and took a deep breath. Then she dialed home, reversing the charges. Her father answered, which he only did when he was expecting a call or was worried about something. Otherwise it would ring until Elijah came back or her mother finally picked up. He told the operator he would pay for the call.<br />
<br />
“I’m sorry I didn’t call for your anniversary on Tuesday,” she said.<br />
<br />
“Your mother was a little disappointed,” he said in his kind voice. Emily could picture him in his plaid sweater and corduroy slacks as he sat at the kitchen table with the <i>Detroit News</i>. Her mother was probably still at the sink, washing the dinner dishes. “I told her you were busy, getting ready for tonight.” <br />
<br />
She closed her eyes. Busy didn’t quite capture it. She had been conspiring fiendishly to shatter her colleagues’ lives and plunge the nation into chaos. She wondered if her parents would ever speak to her again. She said, “Did you guys have fun? I hope you took mom out.”<br />
<br />
“Top of the Pontch, after work,” he said proudly. They couldn’t quite afford it, but Emily’s mother loved the view of the Detroit River from the restaurant in the Pontchartrain Hotel.<br />
<br />
“Well done, dad,” she said. When he didn’t respond right away, she said, “I wish I could tell you more about what I’ve been up to.”<br />
<br />
They had gotten used to Emily not being able to talk about work. “We trust you,” he said. “At least it will be over soon.” Sidney and Marian Weissman had despised Richard Nixon for their entire adult lives. They’d voted for John F. Kennedy in 1960, Hubert Humphrey in 1968, and George McGovern in 1972. In 1969, they’d even gone to a demonstration against the Vietnam war at Wayne State University, during the October Moratorium. She had been in college in Ann Arbor and had called her father and asked if the Revolution offered a senior citizen discount.<br />
<br />
She’d always been more conservative than her parents. They had raised her with a heart for justice and those in need. She’d just drifted toward the political center. They’d finally come to terms with it. But they couldn’t hide their disappointment when she told them she was going to work in the Nixon White House at the beginning of the Watergate summer of 1974.<br />
<br />
Emily heard Marian say something. Her father said, “Your mother asked about Irwin. When does he plan to take the bar? You still seeing him?”<br />
<br />
Sitting in the darkness, twirling the phone cord with her free hand, she smiled. Sidney’s Irish Catholic bride had become a card-carrying Jewish mother, always wondering about her boyfriends and their professional prospects. Her last year of law school in Cambridge was a breeze. Irwin Fried had been a pleasant distraction. But he was too serious and not sexy, and he didn’t like the Rolling Stones or baseball. “Tell mom sorry,” she said.<br />
<br />
“I didn’t like him, either,” he said. “So we’ll see you soon? I assume you’ll get some time off.”<br />
<br />
Emily said, “Dad, I need you and mom to watch tonight.”<br />
<br />
“Like we’d miss it? Your mother and I have been waiting to see Nixon get what he deserves ever since Alger Hiss.”<br />
<br />
Emily and her father had been having this argument since she was in high school. Hiss was a New Deal-era diplomat whom a friend, Whittaker Chambers, had accused of being a Soviet spy. As a young congressman from California, Nixon had ridden the case to political superstardom. “Nixon was right,” she said. “Hiss was guilty. Besides, you were grateful for Vietnam. Remember we said a prayer for the president because of the draft, because Bennie didn’t have to go.” Benjamin was her little brother, now in his last year of college.<br />
<br />
“He should’ve ended it four years ago,” he said.<br />
<br />
She pressed. “He ended it.”<br />
<br />
He relented. “Blessings on him for that. Blessings on you, too. You’ll come see us soon?”<br />
<br />
“Please, dad. Just watch.”<br />
<br />
Jackson Place, <i>a novel, will be published on July 21 in print and e-book at Amazon.com.</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com9tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-47392361844184419792014-05-20T15:09:00.001-07:002014-05-29T08:43:00.210-07:00Amid A Crowd Of Stars<style>
<!--
/* Font Definitions */
@font-face
{font-family:Cambria;
panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4;
mso-font-charset:0;
mso-generic-font-family:auto;
mso-font-pitch:variable;
mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;}
/* Style Definitions */
p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal
{mso-style-parent:"";
margin-top:0in;
margin-right:0in;
margin-bottom:10.0pt;
margin-left:0in;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:12.0pt;
font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:Cambria;
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;}
@page Section1
{size:8.5in 11.0in;
margin:1.0in 1.25in 1.0in 1.25in;
mso-header-margin:.5in;
mso-footer-margin:.5in;
mso-paper-source:0;}
div.Section1
{page:Section1;}
</style> <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">When you are
old and grey and full of sleep,</i><br />
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And nodding
by the fire, take down this book,</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And slowly
read, and dream of the soft look</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Your eyes
had once, and of their shadows deep;</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PAgXMLe7sGfEPYKKuC5QTu6n4JsgtZezPIg7UnXZTOC7MRyRDp72A738KNAEKfeANHRp9I3M5-ZmsMGkchGbEpfFiS6k7gGoJwifh5AHEFe7F0i3T8mxsyUBUnZqc6sDLsKTASfV6kD-/s1600/IMG_8570.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6PAgXMLe7sGfEPYKKuC5QTu6n4JsgtZezPIg7UnXZTOC7MRyRDp72A738KNAEKfeANHRp9I3M5-ZmsMGkchGbEpfFiS6k7gGoJwifh5AHEFe7F0i3T8mxsyUBUnZqc6sDLsKTASfV6kD-/s1600/IMG_8570.JPG" height="150" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">With my mother at Easter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<span style="font-size: x-small;">W.B.</span> Yeats’ “When You Are Old” appears in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">A Little Treasury of Modern Poetry, </i>published
in 1952 by Charles Scribner’s Sons. My copy has an inscription on the endpaper:
“To Harvey on Christmas 1955 with deepest affection from Louis.” Harvey Taylor was
my father, Louis Cook my godfather. Handsome Detroit newspapermen, for years
they competed for the affections of my lovely newspaperwoman mother, Jean. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
I was 14 months old that Christmas. Louis’s
inscription expresses magnanimity in defeat. Still, he had probably guessed
that alcoholism would destroy my parents’ marriage. Louis told me years later
that he’d driven my father to more than one <span style="font-size: x-small;">AA</span> meeting. Six-foot-five in his
stocking feet, gentle and strong, winner of the Bronze Star in World War II, Louis
was biding his time.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
In November, my mother moved to Yorba Linda,
leaving behind the Pasadena house she bought half a lifetime ago when she got a
job editing the old “View” section of the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Los
Angeles Times. </i>A few years later, she became associate editor and one of
the nation’s top female journalists. Kathy and I have been cleaning out her
house, the work of many middle-aged children. There isn’t much left. Needing
homes are the wrought-iron coffee table she loved and a long, Ponderosa-style
dining room table and chairs she had made for the dinner parties she loved to
throw. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
All I really care about are the things she wrote. A
commencement address she delivered at Mount St. Mary’s College. An article
entitled “What Is An Episcopalian?”, which she wrote for the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Detroit Free Press</i> in 1961, when our
General Convention was called in Motown. Her elegiac features about the 1965
murder of civil rights worker Viola Liuzzo. Diary entries, including one on the
date of my birth saying I weighed eight pounds, and it hadn’t gone
easily. About a year ago, her advancing dementia robbed her of the pleasure of
reading these aloud to visitors. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
And then there are the letters. Especially Louis’s.
</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">How many
loved your moments of glad grace,</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And loved
your beauty with love false or true;</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">But one man
loved the pilgrim soul in you,</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And loved
the sorrows of your changing face.</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
My mother wouldn’t marry Louis, which I always
wanted her to do, since he was my father for all intents and purposes. She
never really explained why, and now, she can’t. Her eyes sometimes glimmer when
I mention him or my father. She doesn’t remember her devoted second husband,
Richard Lescoe, at all. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
The surpassing gift is that she saved about twenty
of Louis’s love letters. They’re all written on old-fashioned newspaper copy paper.
He never dated them. He wrote one, addressed “Dearest,” during his first visit
to New York City, where it appears he was attending the famed Al Smith politicians’
dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria as a member of a <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Free Press</i> delegation. It must’ve been about 1966, when he and Jean were in their forties. </div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
“I have at last found the milieu for which I was
born,” he wrote. “Nowhere in Manhattan can be found a gayer, more suave, more
sophisticated man of the world than I. Especially since I stumbled out of a bar
taking with me somebody’s Kuppenheimer overcoat. Unfortunately my victim’s
gloves don’t fit me but they are Sak’s gray suede and I cut quite a figure
dangling them carelessly in my left hand as I saunter down Park Ave.”</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
My mother loved John F. Kennedy, and at the black
tie dinner at the Waldorf, lifelong labor organizer Louis encountered <span style="font-size: x-small;">JFK</span>’s
nemesis and my future boss. He wrote, “I hesitate to mention this, darling, but
Nixon is a fairly engaging character at close range.” Later, my mother managed
to convince herself, but not me, that she had voted for Nixon, which made it
easier to accept that her son was helping write his books. Her willfulness and my
immature frustration made our relationship difficult. The dementia has taken
all that away, too. I don’t think she’s ever been happier, nor have we ever
been so close. And that is Easter.</div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And bending
down beside the glowing bars</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Murmur, a
little sadly, how love fled</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And paced
upon the mountains overhead</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormalCxSpMiddle">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And hid his
face amid a crowd of stars.</i><br />
<br />
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">This post appeared originally in the </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Vaya Con Dios, <i>the newsletter of St. John Chrysostom Episcopal Church.</i></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i></div>
Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-81355217175471429722013-12-20T07:30:00.000-08:002013-12-20T07:30:38.461-08:00The Cafe At Two Rocks<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpdCCL3qEVEf4DTdOzsT41f9Clo6rJb4-x2cnuicq2z-GI2_BbutfY3BGLBvMIh97d-dFQram-9xD0SixuEXnuJZoIPL0DTs7DlkYQXp5w5BylrhqTz8LLuh0L6PkbseYNcvDlgwfkfxHW/s1600/tworocks.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="148" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjpdCCL3qEVEf4DTdOzsT41f9Clo6rJb4-x2cnuicq2z-GI2_BbutfY3BGLBvMIh97d-dFQram-9xD0SixuEXnuJZoIPL0DTs7DlkYQXp5w5BylrhqTz8LLuh0L6PkbseYNcvDlgwfkfxHW/s200/tworocks.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The cafe at Two Rocks</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
When Lisa worshiped with us for the first time a few weeks ago, I placed my accustomed phone call to suggest that we meet for coffee so I could learn about her journeys of life and faith and tell her more about St. John’s. Hearing people’s stories is one of the greatest joys of ministry, so I always wait eagerly for a reply.<br />
<br />
Lisa wrote quickly to say that she’d gotten my voice mail message. She suggested we meet the next morning, a Friday, “at Stbx. in the Lowe’s Center.”<br />
<br />
John sent back a friendly message saying Lisa’s proposed time wouldn’t work because he conducted a church service each Friday morning. He mentioned other possible times and added, “Sorry! I don’t know where the Lowe’s center is or what Stbx stands for. It’s my age!!...God bless. John.”<br />
<br />
Lisa had undoubtedly heard that some pastors were out of touch, but what was with me? Granted, the Lowe’s reference was a little obscure, at least if I wasn’t into home improvement. (I’m not. Just ask Kathy.) But even a non-stockholder ought to know what Stbx means.
Lisa was beginning to think that I lived in a monastery or maybe a cave under the St. John’s altar. Even at this point in the correspondence, a person would be excused if she went looking for another church. But Lisa’s kindness and patience held fast. She wrote, “Stbx is short for Starbucks and it’s the one in the Lowe’s shopping center in RSM.”<br />
<br />
One more aspect of the reply bugged her. She had heard me make a big deal about our new weekly fellowship ministry, but I didn’t even know where it met. It was obvious I wasn’t paying attention to what was going on in my own church. She wrote, ”I think it’s where St. John’s has Happy Hour on Fridays.”<br />
<br />
She asked if I was free the following Wednesday. The next reply she received fell into the category of one step forward, one step back. Her befuddled prospective pastor said that he’d be free anytime after noon. That was progress. But then he added, “So it would just be getting wherever RSM is? Let me know what time and the where and we will be on to meet. It will just be how long it takes to get there from Yanchep. Blessings. John.”<br />
<br />
“Yanchep” might have been a hint that Pastor John really was living on another planet, or at least another continent. Lisa’s reply is my favorite in the whole thread: “RSM is Rancho Santa Margarita. I think Wednesday at 12:30 wld be great. If I’m late it’s because I’m coming from Yanchep to the Lowe’s Stbx.”<br />
<br />
John was the first to punt to Google. “I think we have got each other confused with different people,” he wrote. “I am in Yanchep Western Australia and Rancho Santa Margarita is in America. If not and you’re in the same Yanchep why not meet at the Lagoon or the café at Two Rocks?”<br />
<br />
My address is revjht@msn.com. Lisa had written to revjt@msn.com and reached, it was now obvious, a different Pastor John. When she shared the e-mail thread with me, Lisa suggested that the title of my next sermon – or <i>Vaya</i> article, I hope she’ll allow -- might be “the Misfortune of Misunderstanding.” Because it entailed waiting for understanding and connection, it’s a great Advent story. Lisa’s gifts of patience and good humor despite Pastor John’s moments of cluelessness and John’s own unstinting, cheerful hospitality are all essential virtues for dealing with those we love at Christmas. So good on them both!
<i> </i><br />
<br />
<i>This post first appeared in the</i> Vaya Con Dios, <i>the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.</i>
Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-89852040676340680362013-10-28T19:38:00.001-07:002013-10-28T20:03:11.990-07:00Fun Is Good<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Ys5veqXK-zpRBlWcy852wgtwduNXc9ez8XspvVV0RDJbBwJdwUGY3oPZUAETp7ygx_6Ml-9ejKz96WWXkeKjDQRY_Vj-KEeWX-NYdE5HFKvCRmGQ6OAHU9ryJ_0bxNNU_THiM4sSjaRR/s1600/IMG_3251+(2).jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi9Ys5veqXK-zpRBlWcy852wgtwduNXc9ez8XspvVV0RDJbBwJdwUGY3oPZUAETp7ygx_6Ml-9ejKz96WWXkeKjDQRY_Vj-KEeWX-NYdE5HFKvCRmGQ6OAHU9ryJ_0bxNNU_THiM4sSjaRR/s200/IMG_3251+(2).jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John, Susan, Mary, and Michael</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
We were 28 deacons and priests, aged 55 and up. It was a brisk, exquisitely clear night amid the ponderosa pines of Prescott, Arizona. We’d already spent many hours in plenary meetings on big subjects such as vocation (the Church’s word for where and how we serve and work in Christ’s vineyard), personal health and finance, and spirituality.<br />
<br />
According to our schedules, this was a “a night of creativity.” But nobody had asked Fr. James, chaplain of St. George’s Independent School in Memphis, or me to bring our guitars. Instead, as we stood in the lobby awaiting instructions, we could hear Wilson Pickett singing “In The Midnight Hour.”<br />
<br />
Through the glass doors, we could see that our <span style="font-size: x-small;">CREDO</span> team had replaced the U-shaped conference table with two dozen smaller ones covered in yellow and red butcher paper. There were stacks of magazines, baskets of colored feathers, and an abundance of Elmer’s Glue-All, two-sided tape, and colored pipe cleaners.
I shot a glance at Eric, a vocational deacon from New Jersey who runs a social justice ministry for young adults in the Diocese of Newark. With a nod, he confirmed what I’d feared. “Arts and crafts project,” he said tersely.<br />
<br />
To borrow the circumspect language we try to use on the diocesan Commission on Ministry, arts projects are not my gifting.<br />
<br />
And yet within minutes I was cutting letters and images from magazines and gathering supplies while singing along with my sisters and brothers to Stax Volt, Motown, and the Doobie Brothers. The <span style="font-size: x-small;">CREDO</span> faculty didn’t tell us what to make. Our conference director, LA’s own the Rev. Hartshorn Murphy, said, “Let the materials choose you.” Entering the festive space, I had suddenly thought about afternoons and evenings in Yorba Linda when everyone’s over for dinner. One might say that the Holy Spirit, right on cue, had sung me a song of abundant joy. So I fashioned a household god for our big mixed family, including ten feathers in ten colors and earrings that say “life is good” and “best day ever.”<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdkT8n_oq22JbrPFmPxt9MG-n_K4dq2aDL7zA4C_266R8qvQmT-nVGgsgGRhQ3v4g2JfZH5IFvV7e_D6j3Iz0z4zMzEUOGHxTO0nuwUlwqoXZs23_W_FdNO-d406pwJbalPvPkP2I_DwR1/s1600/IMG_3232.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhdkT8n_oq22JbrPFmPxt9MG-n_K4dq2aDL7zA4C_266R8qvQmT-nVGgsgGRhQ3v4g2JfZH5IFvV7e_D6j3Iz0z4zMzEUOGHxTO0nuwUlwqoXZs23_W_FdNO-d406pwJbalPvPkP2I_DwR1/s200/IMG_3232.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Local diety</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Knowing exactly what I was supposed to do during our evening of creativity was the fruit of discernment. Discernment usually doesn’t mean choosing between right and wrong. It’s the tool we use when, as one of our faculty members said, “there are many right answers.” The purpose of our mid-October conference and retreat was to help us use the gift of non-anxious discernment in aspects of our lives and ministries that really matter, even ones that entail risk, hardship, and loss.<br />
<br />
The Episcopal Church’s periodic <span style="font-size: x-small;">CREDO</span> conferences are organized by the Church Pension Group to help clergy get and stay healthy. St. John’s paid $500 for me to attend. <span style="font-size: x-small;">CPG</span> paid $5000, which shows how seriously the Church takes the well being of its pastors. Some of us received insights about how to plan for retirement, others about whether to open their ears to calls to new positions. <span style="font-size: x-small;">CPG</span> gave us practical advice about taxes and investments. We worshiped, prayed, meditated, went on dawn walks and did dawn yoga, and encountered God in many other ways, including small-group fellowship, where I made new friends in Mary (Utah), Michael (Monterey), and Susan (New Hampshire).<br />
<br />
<div style="text-align: left;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_JFqRXHG4LkbsVLY8GmBP2uuVnN19dYh33LtuyCb8Wm0A5SLk_N20NaCBhhR2nhkfy3GuzY7DRJXxXHatkgZeBRFgjCqfqXsdjwlrBYxWySIk-zk8f7v8AxadBG4TZpgzD2FQzeZz9ffb/s1600/IMG_3271.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg_JFqRXHG4LkbsVLY8GmBP2uuVnN19dYh33LtuyCb8Wm0A5SLk_N20NaCBhhR2nhkfy3GuzY7DRJXxXHatkgZeBRFgjCqfqXsdjwlrBYxWySIk-zk8f7v8AxadBG4TZpgzD2FQzeZz9ffb/s200/IMG_3271.JPG" width="200" /></a></div>
And yet all week I was thinking, “I wish Kathy could come; I wish <i>everyone</i> could come,” because most core <span style="font-size: x-small;">CREDO</span> teachings belong to all God’s people. One example was faculty member Priscilla Condon’s prophetic ministry about eating to honor the fleshy temples we have the privilege of occupying (also the theme of seminarian Robyn Henk’s early-2012 class at St. John’s). We left resolving to exercise more, drink more water, cut out the margarine and artificial sweeteners, and above all remember, as Priscilla taught us and Dr. Oz confirms, that Trader Joe’s coconut oil and raw honey are good for what ails you.<br />
<br />
"Credo," incidentally, means “I believe.” We each left Prescott with a three-part <span style="font-size: x-small;">CREDO</span> plan and many <span style="font-size: x-small;">CREDO</span> resolves. One of mine is to continue to live into a teaching we were also offered in Latin by another faculty member, the Rev. Canon Matthew Stockard: <i>Felicitas es bonam, </i>which means “Fun is good.” Amen!<br />
<br />
<i>This post original appeared in the </i>Vaya Con Dios, <i>the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-22782175277326013592013-10-01T13:05:00.000-07:002013-10-01T13:05:02.185-07:00They Have 24 Hours<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdo1MfwHUgRPyEYATcmrGkWs4HZ-SV5Lod89tKNPVf5vp9augSfgBXwasd2AK8PUyf2Rt4bHHe4N1k0QWJiYtp7c0wlPilBBRBF-9eaiLqnTnXgHa9itwp8_aa_MSk7tqtihGWuVphExHL/s1600/IMG_3084.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjdo1MfwHUgRPyEYATcmrGkWs4HZ-SV5Lod89tKNPVf5vp9augSfgBXwasd2AK8PUyf2Rt4bHHe4N1k0QWJiYtp7c0wlPilBBRBF-9eaiLqnTnXgHa9itwp8_aa_MSk7tqtihGWuVphExHL/s320/IMG_3084.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>
Otherwise, one less Republican.Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com4tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-48681168118176388552013-09-17T07:43:00.000-07:002013-09-17T14:28:55.791-07:00The View From Jackson Place<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiztZZkSWrxp7UVVpV1fadHQrLlNtWb0bLIO07cXhkNzAbJOsp9bZ4gMC7ZzrN-M86dlXu6cgBv6tYPUO6hOuWl5xmlFTlviIEEX8M2iM-g-v_wSdxGMiubKg0FhbNSOI8zrhCrWPijwGbd/s1600/jacksonplace.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiztZZkSWrxp7UVVpV1fadHQrLlNtWb0bLIO07cXhkNzAbJOsp9bZ4gMC7ZzrN-M86dlXu6cgBv6tYPUO6hOuWl5xmlFTlviIEEX8M2iM-g-v_wSdxGMiubKg0FhbNSOI8zrhCrWPijwGbd/s200/jacksonplace.jpg" width="150" /></a></div>
It's exciting to see the view counter near 250,000. Thanks to those who are still checking in at the rate of about 120 a day. I'm not posting much, but I'm writing like mad off-line, three pages a day until Christmas or bust. As for what continues to drive readership here, the <i>Episconixonian</i> proudly retains its status as the universal authority if you need an <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/02/aunt-ednas-prayer.html">accurate transcript</a> of Clark Griswold's interfaith prayer for his wife's aunt from the movie "National Lampoon's Vacation." If you don't believe me, Google or Bingle "Aunt Edna's Prayer." <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2010/08/alger-hiss-is-daniel-galt.html">This post</a>, about a Nixon/Alger Hiss-themed episode of "The West Wing," gets about a hundred readers a month.<br />
<br />
The photo shows Jackson Place, the townhouse in Lafayette Square across from the White House, which the Nixon administration first set aside for the use of former presidents. In March 1994, after former President Nixon's last trip to Russia, my wife and Nixon's last and best chief of staff, Kathy O'Connor, were there when he gave a bravura off-the-record presentation to a high-ranking audience of sitting and former national security officials. It was the last time I saw him alive. More to come.Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-81697810935231256342013-08-22T22:29:00.000-07:002013-08-26T10:29:10.053-07:00Calling On Angels<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAau0GC9kfanoFeQxaWOoX0cYpmcUamgtMjvbPieetTjhW_Zphm5mZYoqb_XwKE04WULaQ9Bt9Qeu_kLuQD_pI6R6VY22E0ECQTOEQ9QYhDdWmmm2TnplELDIQvdIcqjHwpuCXVKEtQL7/s1600/alkaline.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="156" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiUAau0GC9kfanoFeQxaWOoX0cYpmcUamgtMjvbPieetTjhW_Zphm5mZYoqb_XwKE04WULaQ9Bt9Qeu_kLuQD_pI6R6VY22E0ECQTOEQ9QYhDdWmmm2TnplELDIQvdIcqjHwpuCXVKEtQL7/s200/alkaline.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Al Kaline at Briggs Stadium, 1957</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I left my heart in two places (outside of home) in my hometown. The Cathedral Church of St. Paul on Woodward Ave., where I was baptized and confirmed in The Episcopal Church, remains. The other, gone since 2009, was old Briggs Stadium, ancestral turf of the Detroit Tigers, who baptized me into baseball.<br />
<br />
Though my mother and godfather usually took me on weekends, my first game was on a weeknight. I was about six. Along with millions of boys and girls, I have an inner YouTube video of that first walk along a darkened passage toward a light-soaked space -- the long white lines, the emerald grass, the clay-red diamond after it had been raked and hosed down, just before determined figures in brilliant raiment would surge from the home dugout, scattering the dirt with their cleats.<br />
<br />
Starring in my field of dreams were sluggers Al Kaline and Willie Horton, now in their 70s and still active in the front office. After my mother and I moved to Phoenix in 1967, when I was 12, I kept my Tigers by the tail by clipping box scores and taping them in a scrapbook. When they beat St. Louis in the 1968 World Series, my godfather, who worked at the Detroit <i>Free Press</i>, mailed me the cardboard mat the pressmen had used to make a plate for the front page the next morning. The headline shouted <span style="font-size: x-small;">“WE WIN!”</span> to a town that was already experiencing harbingers of last month’s bankruptcy.<br />
<br />
In the late 1960s in Arizona, the diamondbacks’ only prey was mice, rabbits, and gophers. While in college, experiencing vocational foreshadowing, I rooted for the Padres. I never cottoned to Yankees or Mets during ten years in New York. But <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2013/07/nixons-no-hitter.html">I was in old Yankee Stadium</a> (brilliantly portrayed by old Briggs in the 2001 movie “61”) with Richard Nixon and his son-in-law David Eisenhower on July 4, 1983 when lefthander Dave Righetti pitched a no-hitter against Boston.<br />
<br />
Many years later, Kathy and I took Eisenhower to the Big A. He looked around the house that Disney <br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXjqIWKFfvj-h9lFocgTvrOnwAER9m2KT5JoEE5UPwhI7GYaB73HwI5SBcCCyxQbx_0KtRF7zTnQhHR-qZ-tLDQ17cNtSqyZygP9ZAIqOpwzM2Etl78-bdb6vk-dt2fjk-b12kzNZ746gS/s1600/IMG_1612.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjXjqIWKFfvj-h9lFocgTvrOnwAER9m2KT5JoEE5UPwhI7GYaB73HwI5SBcCCyxQbx_0KtRF7zTnQhHR-qZ-tLDQ17cNtSqyZygP9ZAIqOpwzM2Etl78-bdb6vk-dt2fjk-b12kzNZ746gS/s200/IMG_1612.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">John and Andy at the Big A, 2013</td><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br /></td></tr>
</tbody></table>
renovated and said, “I envy you living so close to a major league ballpark.” But I was a utility fan at best until something flipped a switch a few weeks before the end of the Angels’ unremarkable 2012 season. I couldn’t wait for opening day. I’ve already been to the ballpark eight times this year. Kathy graciously watches more games than she would prefer. I use an iPhone app to listen to play-by-play from all over the country.<br />
<br />
I’ve resisted using my phone to research whether a sudden spike in childlike enthusiasm says something I should but don’t want to know about my aging brain. While I’ve also resisted Googling “Jesus and baseball,” I wonder about the theology behind all the things we love with innocent abandon – from sports and music and painting to bridge and quilting and fishing and reading and all the hobbies and avocations in between. In March David Ferguson wrote in <i>The Onion</i>, “Find the thing you’re most passionate about, then do it on nights and weekends for the rest of your life.” I suspect most of us indulge our non-remunerative passions not to escape reality but to reveal our true selves to others and even to ourselves.<br />
<br />
As people of faith, do our greatest passions also signify something about our conceptions of the sacred?
Think about Angels fans wearing Holy Spirit red while celebrating and (so far this season) mourning as one. Children have more fun at baseball than at football and basketball games, and that’s also a holy thing. Others have written more eloquently than I possibly can about the game’s intricacy, its sights and strangely comforting sounds, its history, symmetry, and beautiful displays of athleticism. I enjoy the fellowship in the stands and the comradeship among the players, their youthful quirks and superstitions. I love winning and having faith that we’ll eventually stop losing. Baseball is tidier than everyday life and doesn’t matter anywhere near as much – until it does, when it’s almost like heaven.<br />
<br />
<i>This post originally appeared in the </i><a href="http://www.stjohnsrsm.org/clientuploads/Vaya/Summer%20Vaya.pdf">Vaya Con Dios</a><i>, the newsletter of St. John's Episcopal Church.</i> Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5668712602334003954.post-11988323544872540222013-07-04T15:12:00.001-07:002013-07-06T07:05:24.595-07:00Nixon's No-Hitter<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4nDpo5sEZI7PEsaikuGXX3SVehaU9HHY4pLmr3fwqq1IBF2A6mnd3nIZdjZTYEBvWtn6JmVz1HKGzCmK4RQn6rQf2L37cxL-4nXRG7C2wdsVcllLTX3iNVLMc2SaNv5dVVxuZSpvrrwu/s576/righetti.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="134" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhU4nDpo5sEZI7PEsaikuGXX3SVehaU9HHY4pLmr3fwqq1IBF2A6mnd3nIZdjZTYEBvWtn6JmVz1HKGzCmK4RQn6rQf2L37cxL-4nXRG7C2wdsVcllLTX3iNVLMc2SaNv5dVVxuZSpvrrwu/s200/righetti.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Dave Righetti strikes out Wade Boggs</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Richard Nixon was heading to Yankee Stadium on July 4, 1983, and it was going to be a great day. The Yanks were playing their arch rivals from Boston. His son-in-law and fellow baseball obsessive David Eisenhower was along. It was the 47th anniversary of Nixon's first major league game (Yankees v. Senators) and the 44th of <span style="font-size: x-small;">ALS</span>-stricken Lou Gehrig saying that he was "the luckiest guy in the world" as he bade farewell to Yankees fans in their hallowed cathedral in the Bronx.<br />
<br />
Nixon had hinted he would have big news for his writing bench, Marin Strmecki and me, and that was exciting, too.<br />
<br />
It was also a special day because Nixon said no one had to wear a coat and tie. He wore them almost everywhere, and when we were along, so did we. We would be in Yankees owner George Steinbrenner's box, where an under-dressed Nixon usually wouldn't have been caught dead. The photo below shows him and me at a game the prior September, also in Steinbrenner's box and dressed as though we were attending a funeral. But since it was going to be about 90 degrees in the Bronx that July afternoon, he didn't want us to be uncomfortable, and he especially didn't want to look less formal than his son-in-law and aides.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9bcKdEKXMZH4iMbMM3yAENMcdN9iOhbwP3DJ0l41xrBIBVtTkpwBG1hPfuSH3INEhKDn7M1kyvtWzGW1bPjPGH5sE5qxohVQLXKlwttWObKCfSe3ELsegx_xmHVHhh3gY9k0km22w9Kff/s1600/IMG_2018.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj9bcKdEKXMZH4iMbMM3yAENMcdN9iOhbwP3DJ0l41xrBIBVtTkpwBG1hPfuSH3INEhKDn7M1kyvtWzGW1bPjPGH5sE5qxohVQLXKlwttWObKCfSe3ELsegx_xmHVHhh3gY9k0km22w9Kff/s200/IMG_2018.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Not as much fun as the no-hitter</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
But I said it was a <i>great</i> day, and if you're a baseball fan, you know why: Yankee left-hander Dave Righetti's no-hitter, the first that megafans Nixon and Eisenhower had seen live.<br />
<br />
The seats were great, too, but they would have rather been in the stands. Two years later, Nixon gave up his Secret Service protection, one reason being that the bodyguards on his payroll instead of the Treasury department's were less resistant when he said he wanted to sit among the<i> hoi polloi</i>. In the owner's box, Yankees executives, former players, and journalists had a tendency to drop by to say hello, and while Nixon was gracious, he just wanted to watch the game.<br />
<br />
When we reached the seventh inning without a Boston hit, Nixon told us to make sure he was left alone. Baseball people are even more superstitious than politicians, so everybody understood. He spent the time whispering to Eisenhower, who later recalled a boisterous top of the ninth because of some concerns about manager Billy Martin's defensive moves. Marin and I were sitting right behind Nixon, and I remember him being absolutely still during all three outs, as though any wrong move would jinx it. When Righetti struck out Wade Boggs ("with a high inside fastball," Nixon remembered when writing about it seven years later; Righetti <a href="http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/twenty-five-years-later-dave-righettis-no-hitter/">says</a> it was a slider away), he jumped to his feet, cheered, and gave us all high fives (a presidential first and last for me).<br />
<br />
His sweaty face glowed with perfect joy as he turned to leave. But then it was back to business. Taking Marin and me aside, he handed us a yellow legal pad with a handwritten outline he'd completed the day before. We would spend the rest of the summer turning it into prose. Nixon self-published it that fall as <i>Real Peace, </i>a diplomatically worded but unmistakeable repudiation of Ronald Reagan's ideologically inflexible policy toward the Soviet Union and on arms control. Soon after that project, Marin went to work for Jimmy Carter's <span style="font-size: x-small;">NSC</span> chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and then with the <i>mujaheddin</i>. During the second Bush's administration, Donald Rumsfeld asked Marin to reassess and realign the Pentagon's <a href="http://www.the-american-interest.com/article.cfm?piece=914">Afghanistan</a> tactics and strategy.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNsl6ruLVXKFvFOsGpdokHaP53qdSieqXmkzb1QMOHrWCjTjOQXGVmBZLH3vo6VHzti0F2Wn-igx94BxUx_7eYqc6QnjFwcvsjyanfkauHOfe6JrxkVYRiYuQFUnfQ6emD_xJPOsm1y3xc/s767/kathyandarthur.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="178" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjNsl6ruLVXKFvFOsGpdokHaP53qdSieqXmkzb1QMOHrWCjTjOQXGVmBZLH3vo6VHzti0F2Wn-igx94BxUx_7eYqc6QnjFwcvsjyanfkauHOfe6JrxkVYRiYuQFUnfQ6emD_xJPOsm1y3xc/s200/kathyandarthur.jpg" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Arthur and Honey</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
My gifts being humbler, I remained on the fan-in-chief's squad many more years, as did his last chief of staff and my future wife and <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2013/07/the-yorba-linda-plumbers.html">co-author</a>, Kathy O'Connor. Our brushes with baseball greatness continued. Kathy became friends with Steinbrenner's affable associate, former sportswriter Arthur Richman ("Do you need any money, honey? Can I send you some money?"). They're shown in <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2009/03/arthur-lover.html">Anaheim in 1997</a>, when the Yankees were visiting for one of their periodic drubbings by the Angels. A few years later, Richman invited Kathy and me to dinner, when he told us about being on the road with the Mets' Darryl Strawberry as he battled addiction.<br />
<br />
Back in 1983, just a few weeks after Righetti's no-hitter, Billy Martin accused Kansas City Royals slugger George Brett of having<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pine_Tar_Incident"> too much pine tar on the handle of his bat</a>. No, we weren't there for that one. But when umpires sided with Martin and gave the Yankees the game, Nixon sent Brett a letter <a href="http://episconixonian.blogspot.com/2012/03/who-you-calling-ambassador.html">bucking him up</a>. Notoriety gave Nixon deep reserves of empathy for the notorious, and in this case, his instincts were sound. The <span style="font-size: x-small;">AL</span> brass sided with Brett.<br />
<br />
Nixon wrote hundreds of letters to athletes. He didn't mind that they often didn't write back. What young man constantly on the road without a social secretary actually knew how to? A couple of months after the pine tar incident, I answered the phone while working late in Nixon's Manhattan office. "President Nixon sent George a nice letter, and I don't think he replied," said Ethel Brett, his mother. "Would you please tell him thank you?"Fr. Johnhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09974142521713230215noreply@blogger.com2