A Modified Olympian Hangout

Long before realizing he would be prematurely retired in San Clemente, Richard Nixon envisioned spending the last summer of his presidency presiding over a bicentennial Olympics in Los Angeles.

In this January 1970 memo from his national security adviser, Henry Kissinger, Nixon orders Secretary of State Bill Rogers to go all out getting the '76 games and promises to support a Moscow games in 1980 if the Soviets would back the U.S. bid. The Russians got 1980 anyway, and LA hosted in 1984.

The Nixon library has more documents at its Facebook page.

No Buildings Burned At Occupy Wall Street

Some survivors of the Kent State shootings in May 1970 believe there's evidence that the Ohio National Guard was ordered to fire on the unarmed antiwar demonstrators. Four people were killed and nine injured. Richard Nixon called it the worst day of his presidency.

Providing historical context in the Los Angeles Times, David Zucchino sounds an odd note:

For many Baby Boomers now in their late 50s and 60s, the so-called Kent State Massacre was a searing and, for some, life-altering event. It came at the height of the antiwar movement and set off a renewed spasm of opposition not only to the Vietnam War but also to the Nixon administration, the Pentagon and other symbols of authority.

The shootings hold far less resonance for today’s college-age Americans. For them, the 42-year-old event might best be described as a particularly demonstrative Occupy rally featuring extreme violence.

No, it mightn't. The shootings were an inexcusable tragedy. But "particularly demonstrative" doesn't accurately describe the protests. Here's Wikipedia's account of events at Kent State two days before:

The decision to call in the National Guard was made at 5:00 p.m., but the guard did not arrive into town that evening until around 10 p.m. A large demonstration was already under way on the campus, and the campus Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) building was burning. The arsonists were never apprehended and no one was injured in the fire. More than a thousand protesters surrounded the building and cheered its burning. Several Kent firemen and police officers were struck by rocks and other objects while attempting to extinguish the blaze. Several fire engine companies had to be called in because protesters carried the fire hose into the Commons and slashed it. The National Guard made numerous arrests and used tear gas; at least one student was slightly wounded with a bayonet.

Modified Limited Contrition

Chuck Colson went to jail after pleading guilty to one felony count related to Nixon administration efforts to discredit Daniel Ellsberg, who leaked the Pentagon Papers to the newspapers. The AP reports that Colson's amends were not extended to all his Watergate adversaries:

Ellsberg, for his part, said in an interview that Colson never apologized to him and did not respond to several efforts Ellsberg made over the years to get in touch with him. Ellsberg said he still believes that Colson's guilty plea was not a matter of contrition so much as an effort to head off even more serious allegations that Colson had sought to hire thugs to administer a beating against Ellsberg — an allegation that Colson states in his book was believed by prosecutors despite his denial.

"I have no reason to doubt his evangelism," Ellsberg said of Colson. "But I don't think he felt any kind of regret" for what he had done, except remorse that he had been ineffective and got caught.

Colson's conversion notwithstanding, I'm sure he never changed his basic outlook on Ellsberg or his actions.

The Other Watergate Break-In

Nixon scholar Luke Nichter thinks that we might learn more about the motivation for the June 1972 Watergate burglary, which destroyed the Nixon presidency, if he can pry loose secret records about a May 1972 Watergate burglary that most people don't even know about. The Washington Post:

During that break-in, a wiretap was placed on at least one phone. It was during a second burglary more than two weeks later that the group was caught with additional bugging devices. Information about the contents of the initial wiretaps, which played a role in prompting the second burglary, were sealed and never revealed.

“These and other sealed materials may be the key to determining why the Watergate break-in occurred, who ordered it, and what the burglars were looking for,” Nichter wrote in asking the chief judge of the federal court in Washington to unseal the materials.

A Pox On Both Your Posts

On Dec. 3 Fred Clark questioned evangelical leader and former Nixon aide Chuck Colson's motives for accusing those who want to raise taxes on the rich of class envy:

During every day that [Colson] worked in the White House as one of the most powerful men in the executive branch, the wealthiest Americans were charged double the rate of income tax that they pay today....

[T]he top marginal income-tax rate today is half of what it was during Colson’s service at the top levels of the Nixon administration. And the capital gains tax today — the tax that matters more to the wealthiest Americans who make money from money rather than from work — is even lower. The capital gains tax rate is just 15 percent, which is why Warren Buffett pays a lower rate than his secretary does.

When Chuck Colson was working alongside the president, revenue as share of GDP was 17.6 percent. Today it is 14.4 percent — historically low, the lowest it has been since 1950.

So according to the standard set by his column, Chuck Colson and the rest of the Nixon administration were a bunch of soak-the-rich radical redistributionists driven by socialist envy.

Clark uses the word "socialist" several times, as if Colson had used it against those who wanted to raise taxes on high incomes. But neither that word nor "radical" comes up in Colson's column, which substantially detracts from the irony that Clark claims exists. Colson may well have thought taxes were too high in 1969-73; many conservatives such as he did, but they couldn't do anything about it since the Democrats controlled Congress throughout the Nixon administration. For his part, Colson errs in accusing those who favor higher taxes of falling prey to the sin of envy. Many experts sitting in cushy think tanks who aren't acting out rage akin to that of Russian peasants nonetheless believe that a sensible fiscal solution requires more revenue from the wealthy (whom else? Russian peasants?) than Republican obstructionists are willing to consider.

Neither putting words in an opponent's mouth nor questioning his motives is a good idea, especially in the name of our LORD. Let us reason together, brothers!

Ready Hearts

Thanks to the vision of our next-door neighbor Art Simonian, the former city manager, Yorba Linda has a network of walking and riding trails that run up and down the rolling foothills where a future President and his brothers ran and played. Kathy and I partook liberally of Art's handiwork during a five-mile walk today, also enjoying perfect weather and late-autumn color. Heading down to Yorba Regional Park, which runs along the north bank of the thoroughly domesticated Santa Ana River, we spotted a flock of geese which I was tempted to frighten so I could get a shot of them majestically taking wing. I was glad I didn't, not only for their sake but that of the more serious photographer I spotted on the opposite bank (you can see his pickup truck in the photo) who got out his long lens and pointed it at the watchful birds as I walked back up the embankment. Maybe they'll show up soon on an inspirational poster or blog entry about dreams taking flight.

Kathy and I hadn't been in the park for years. We were almost by ourselves today. A man was taking a picture of his sports car, so look for that on-line, too. A family of three were fishing and enjoying the quiet. It used to be a lot busier (and will be again on the next long weekend). Until his death in 1858, Bernardo Yorba, namesake of our town, operated a 13,328-acre land-grant rancho here, running cattle, growing corn, beans, and watermelon as well as grapes for wine-making. His father, Jose Antonio, had an even bigger spread on the south side of the river. As we walked, we thought of our late friend Jo Lyons, a knowledgeable local historian who probably could have told us where Bernardo Yorba's two-story adobe hacienda had stood before being torn down in 1926. I was pleased to read later that the regional park was the good work of the Nixon administration, which provided Orange County with a grant to build it in 1972.

Walking back up Fairmont Blvd., we passed a Lutheran church I've driven by a thousand times. Viewing the marquee from the sidewalk, we learned that it is part of the conservative Wisconsin synod, the third largest Lutheran denomination. Founded in 1850, it has about 400,000 baptized members. An an Episcopalian, I feel a kinship with small sects, although it's yet another reminder of how fractured the body of Christ has become. Near home, we spotted our first East Lake Santa, one thing we all may agree about. On a peaceful, sunwashed day, the heart feels ready for Advent and Christmas.

Another Nixon-Era Scandal?

The moon rock that Neil Armstrong and his fellow Apollo 11 astronauts gave the Dutch turns out to be a piece of petrified wood. I'm assuming from the article that the possibility we discovered petrified wood on the moon has been ruled out.

Young Man Blues

George Will turns a nice phrase about Sen. Kennedy:

In the Senate, as elsewhere, 80 percent of the important work is done by a talented 20 percent. And 95 percent of the work is done off the floor, away from committees, out of sight, where strong convictions leavened by good humor are the currency of accomplishment. There Ted Kennedy, who had the politics of the Boston Irish in his chromosomes, flourished.

Since I read newspapers on-line (and on-Kindle, where I proudly pay for content), I rarely see the marvelous way great papers still express themselves in page layout and headlines. Here in a Starbucks in San Diego, I caught a glimpse of a grandiloquent banner headline in the New York Times: "Senator Kennedy, Battle Lost, Is Hailed as a Leader."

I wonder who wrote that: A baby boomer authentically mourning the end of an era, or a younger editor who had gotten himself or herself into the spirit of the moment. While the "battle lost" bit is elevating, it's a battle many of us will join as well. I'm in San Diego to conduct a committal service for a less-well-known man who battled cancer no less bravely, as millions do and shall. So perhaps that element could have been skipped, at least in the headline.

As for Kennedy as a great leader, all notable people should be given their due in the wake of their deaths, as the Boston Globe's Jeff Jacoby does. But Jacoby's summary of Kennedy's foreign policy legacy is startling:

Abroad, he failed to take seriously the stakes in the Cold War. “Today, with the exception of East Germany, Russia has no more satellites,’’ he wrote in 1968, the year Soviet tanks invaded Czechoslovakia. He hailed Leonid Brezhnev, the Soviet dictator, as “a warm individual . . . completely committed to peace.’’ He fought to cut off aid to South Vietnam and Cambodia in 1975 - aid that might have prevented a communist bloodbath. In recent years he was willing to consign millions to Saddam Hussein’s tyranny, opposing not only the 2003 liberation of Iraq but even the 1991 campaign to undo the occupation of Kuwait.

On domestic affairs, Kennedy used most of his influence promoting ways to spend other people's money. While Kennedy has been hailed this week for his courage, in politics, being a big spender is courageous only to the extent of sometimes exposing one to being voted out of office, which would have caused no meals to be missed in Kennedy's household.

As for the issue with which he is most closely associated, in 1971 he missed a chance to provide health insurance to virtually all Americans when he opposed President Nixon's national health insurance plan. His subsequent efforts amounted to de facto acts of expiation for failing as a young man to exhibit the bipartisan temperament for which he being so fulsomely if selectively praised today. The thing is, 38 years ago, he actually could've pulled it off. So whose fault is it that 43 million Americans remain uninsured?

The Hot, Messy Battles In The Cold War

A newly declassified White House memo reveals 1971 discussions between President Nixon and Brazil's military leader about getting rid of Fidel Castro in Cuba and Salvador Allende in Chile (shown at right).

U.S. policy toward communists and socialists in Latin America during the 1960s, 1970s, and 1980s is one of many subjects deserving some next-generation scholarship, which is to say scholarship uncolored by Vietnam-era passions and grievances. For instance, what did the Nixon Administration really do in Chile, especially in connection with the 1973 military coup in which Allende lost his life, and what didn't it do? Wikipedia seems to weigh the available evidence fairly. It will undoubtedly be a hot topic when the records of the Nixon White House arrive at the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda next year.

As for the bigger picture, Central and South America are now predominantly free. The West won the Cold War without a nuclear war. If these outcomes are deemed salutary, let's at least keep them in mind while probing the seamy aspects of the tactical skirmishes over Cuba, Chile, El Salvador, and Nicaragua.

All The Archdioceses' Men

From two former White House aides, including Nixonian Chester E. Finn, Jr., a cri de coeur for Catholic schools, which are closing their doors at an epidemic rate all over the country:

The Obama administration could help turn this fatal tide. Stimulus funds could be used to shore up schools on the brink, provide assistance to their teachers and administrators, or expand and replicate promising local strategies. The president could support education tax credits or scholarships, which would help needy students and stabilize school enrollments. By simply underscoring his support and concern for these schools, he would indicate the bipartisan nature of this issue, thereby providing cover to others eager to act but wary of the political implications.

The authors say that local solutions aren't the answer -- though it's not as though the Nixon faithful haven't been laboring in those vineyards as well, especially Peter Flanigan, founder of New York City's Student-Sponsor Partnership program, which raises private funds to help inner-city kids pay their tuition.

Ron Howard And I, Molding Young Minds

Occasionally I get questions about President Nixon from middle- and high-school students. In the interests of transparency, and so people don't think we're too cravenly exploiting such access to impressionable young minds, here's the latest exchange:

How did the complications after the burglary affect Nixon's presidency? Please Explain.

The Watergate burglary on June 17, 1972, was solved pretty quickly. The burglars were arrested and put on trial. The problem for President Nixon was the appearance that he had participated in a cover-up of the degree to which people working at his re-election committee and in the White House itself were involved in the burglary by knowing about it in advance and even planning it. There is no evidence that President Nixon knew about the burglary ahead of time. Until his death in 1994, he never really understood why it had even taken place. But he did acknowledge after his resignation in 1974 that he had not worked hard enough to get to the bottom of it. On the White House tapes in June 1972 and again in March 1973, he is heard seeming to agree to a cover-up. I don't believe that he had criminal intent. But many people believe he did.

If the Watergate never happened, how do you think history would have judged Nixon's presidency?

Without Watergate, Richard Nixon's Presidency would be remembered as a great success because of his opening to China, improved relations with the Soviet Union, nuclear arms limitations, ending U.S. involvement in Vietnam and return of our prisoners of war, and course-changing policies in the Middle East, plus his progressive domestic policies including the war on cancer, establishment of the Environmental Protection Agency, and peaceful desegregation of public schools in the deep south.

How badly did Nixon damage the country? How long did the country take to heal?

The United States suffered because of President Nixon's actions during Watergate as well as the severe cultural, social, and political strains placed on it during the late 1960s and early 1970s, especially our argument with ourselves about the Vietnam war, which he inherited from the Johnson and Kennedy administrations. In a way, the argument over Vietnam continues, as you perhaps have seen in the debate over the Iraq war.

What problems occurred in the economy after the burglary? How did they resolve the problem?

While Watergate had no direct economic consequences, the deteriorating economy in 1973-74, especially rising gasoline prices and a recession, made President Nixon more unpopular than he would have been if Watergate had unfolded in good economic times.