"Voice From The Past," Erased And Restored

From p. 1 of this morning's "Register"

Quoted in a Jan. 4 article in the Orange County Register, 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. NARA 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.

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 tried to erase 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.

This week, a more knowledgeable scholar, Anthony J. Clark, author of a forthcoming book about presidential libraries, The Last Campaign: How Presidents Rewrite History, Run for Posterity, and Enshrine Their Legacies, brought the Nixon operative's whopper to the attention of Register 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 column, which appeared today. Here's our complete exchange:

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?

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.

I first met Tim when he and his boss at UVA'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.  

Overall and when all was said and done, was Naftali an asset to the library?

Naftali meets the press

He proved to be indispensable. Tim showed that the library could welcome Nixon critics such as Bob Woodward 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 campaign against a federal director -- ranging from disparaging him personally to enlisting Sen. [Lamar] Alexander to pressure Tim and filing FOIA requests so they could read his e-mails -- may be unprecedented in the history of presidential libraries.

Any regrets in recommending him? 

No.  

Was the Watergate exhibited far and unbiased? Were Naftali's efforts to present Nixon overall fair and unbiased?

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 guaranteed that the experts and media would be looking carefully to make sure the exhibit included warts and all, which it does.  

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?

It was Tim's job to be focused on Nixon's shortcomings, because the archivist of the U.S. and the Nixon foundation agreed 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.

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?

No, thanks, Mark

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 no longer allowed to use his name.)

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.

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.

The Full Story Hasn't Quite Registered

The Orange County Register hasn't caught up with what others are reporting about Saddleback Church's decision to cancel its presidential forum. Pastor Rick Warren strongly implied to the Register that he'd withdrawn his invitations to Barack Obama and Mitt Romney because of their campaigns' incivility. But CNN's reporting suggests that neither candidate was ever planned to attend. As of this evening, the Register article, not updated since this morning, says it hadn't reached the campaigns. Maybe tomorrow's edition will have a followup story.

Warren announced in July that the forum would take place this week. When CNN contacted Saddleback Church today to get a comment about the candidates' evident disinterest in journeying to Lake Forest, Warren's spokeperson referred them to the Register article, which is evidently serving as a reliable expression of Warren's point of view, if not necessarily the full story.

Third Eye Tie-Dyed

Erika Ritchie of the Orange County Register put out a call to readers for photos from last weekend's Fun with Chalk extravaganza in Rancho Santa Margarita, California. Here's my submission.

Perfect Joy

Jebb Harris

Tears roll down the face of Shelby Ely, 6, as she hugs dad, Army Sgt. Shane Ely, who surprised her Tuesday at an assembly at Rose Drive Elementary in Yorba Linda. Ely has spent the last seven months serving in Kabul, Afghanistan and is home for a two-week leave. At right mom Lindsey Ely reaches to touch her daughter. (Caption and photo by the Orange County Register)

Commie Girl Acquires Means Of Production

Rebecca Schoenkopf, who wrote the "Commie Girl" column at OC Weekly until 2007, has taken over from Ken Layne as editor, publisher, and owner of the sassy Washington, D.C. blog Wonkette. On Feb. 27 St. John's men's group speaker-turned-law student Frank Mickadeit devoted his Orange County Register column to Schoenkopf and hinted that the deal was in the works:

She's had spotty writing and editing employment over the last three years. She went back for a master's degree, though, and she's negotiating to acquire a very well-branded national blog, which, if she pulls it off, everyone will remark, Oh, this was what she was meant to do! To which I will say: No, this is what she's always done, better than anybody.

Maybe, but while the blog's subtitled "the D.C. gossip," Schoenkopf's first two posts were based on stories that appeared in the LA Times (about Gov. Jerry Brown, pictured here with rock stars, when he was cooler) and LA Weekly. She'd better move to Washington quick! To celebrate one of the nation's reddest county's new toehold in one of its bluest cities (and in the probably misguided hope that the new editor will discontinue her blog's tradition of sometimes putting swear words in headlines), I'm finally adding Wonkette to my blog roll.

Just A Little Nuance, Please, Gov. Romney

Did Mitt Romney even consider staking out a thoughtful position on this issue, decrying abortion, as he now does, but acknowledging PP's work in providing care to women who wouldn't get it otherwise? Here's just one example from this morning's Orange County Register, about an unemployed woman with no health insurance who learned that she could get a free breast screening at PP:

[Monique's] Benoit's mammogram led to an ultrasound and then more tests that found a benign cyst in her breast. That was followed by an operation to remove the mass. Her total bill for the entire process? A $30 lab fee. The rest was covered by Planned Parenthood with funds from the Orange County Komen affiliate.

Just a little nuance, Gov. Romney. A grownup's acknowledgment of the complexity of issues in a vast, diverse country. Or is that just too risky in this era of lock-step absolutism masquerading as conservatism?

The Romneys' past support for PP is detailed here.

Watergate Breakthrough

Kathy and I were in distinguished company tonight when Watergate journalists Bob Woodward and Ben Bradlee spoke at the Nixon library. At left is our St. John's friend Paul Reza, who came with his wife, Paula Neal Reza. Nearby was 24-year-0ld James Hohmann, Stanford-educated staff writer for Politico, who flew in from Washington to cover the man-bites-dog story of Woodward and Bradlee giving a talk (moderated by library director Tim Naftali) a few yards from Nixon's Yorba Linda birthplace. The Orange County Register's coverage is here. James' is coming soon, and mine as well.

Tolerance Of All People

Crystal Cathedral founder Robert Schuller has repudiated the "anti-gay covenant" promulgated by his successors, including his daughter, the current senior pastor. LA Times (relying, oddly enough, on a quote obtained by the Orange County Register):

On Wednesday, church founder Robert H. Schuller said he strongly disapproved of the covenant because it goes against what he has built his church upon.

"I have a reputation worldwide of being tolerant of all people and their views," he told the Orange County Register. "I'm too well-educated to criticize a certain religion or group of people for what they believe in. It's called freedom."

Breaking Some More Crystal

As a theological proposition, troubling; as a marketing move, disastrous. The already-troubled Crystal Cathedral demands that choir members sign an "anti-gay covenant."
Hat tip to Rick Whittaker

We Wins

Brooke Grogan (far right), a member of St. John's Church and an alumna of St. John's Middle School, is the youngest daughter of Sheryll and Tim Grogan. That's Sheryll with her parents, Haydie and Tom Tello.

Brooke's also a champion high school volleyball player. She and her teammates at St. Margaret's Episcopal School in San Juan Capistrano won the CIF-SS Division 4-AA title on Saturday by sweeping the valiant girls of Brethren Christian in Huntington Beach, 3-0.

Stay tuned, because the St. Margaret's Tartans, coached by Susie Maga, are expected to be a southern California Division 4 pick for the state championships. For now, a lesson from Miss Grogan in media relations. Her quote in the Orange County Register is below. Note the prevalence of "we" and the absence of "I." Note the authentic humility of early-season expectations. Note to whom she gives credit for the win (and the Tartans' 18-3 season record):

"We were definitely not expecting anything this year, but halfway through the season we thought maybe we could do this," Grogan said. "It feels amazing. We couldn't have done it without every girl."

Go Tartans! Go (St. John's) Cardinals! Go Grogans! Go Brooke!

And Yes, She Has A Tape Measure

A real estate wizard with whom I worship at St. John's, Leslie Eskildsen, performs a signal public service in her "Orange County Register" blog: Helping buyers and agents actually understand each other.

A New Voice

Journalist Noberto Santana, who left the Orange County Register this summer after he felt pressured by his editors to go easier on the sheriff (the new, honest one), is about to launch an investigative journalism website called The Voice of OC. Read about his odyssey (and the promise and pitfalls of non-profit journalism) here.

LLPOF

At age 50, Frank Mickadeit of the Orange County Register, one of the last of the big-city reporting columnists, reports on his first week at Chapman University's law school:

[W]e got a bracing talk from Assistant Dean Jayne Kacer, who illustrated with an anecdote just how small the seemingly vast O.C. legal community really is, and how knowledge is nothing without reputation. One O.C. judge she knows was taking over the case load of another judge and came upon an unfamiliar acronym in the notes the outgoing judge had made in one file – “LLPOF.” Ah, the old judge said, it was there to remind him about the character of the attorney who was trying that case. It stood for, “liar, liar, pants on fire.”

Barely Registering

Freedom Communications and the Orange County Register are reportedly about to file for bankruptcy.

The Bigspending 4

Paul Rosenberg on Presidents my old friend Ken Grubbs, who used to run the Orange County Register editorial page, called heterodox Republicans -- but surprise: One of Rosenberg's four is that serial tax-increaser himself, Ronald Reagan.

Powell At Intermission

In Orange County last Saturday evening to accept an award from Chapman University, Colin Powell was at his most energized while talking not about war and peace but education. He recounted a prior visit to Orange County to meet with students and teachers at Glenn L. Martin Elementary School in Santa Ana, where his sister, legendary teacher Marilyn Berns, who died in 2005, was working. Though Powell was chairman of the Joint Chiefs at the time, it turned out that not arriving by motorcade made all the difference. "The kids didn't know who I was or what I did," Powell told an audience of 600 at Chapman's gala banquet, "but they loved that helicopter." He also talked about America's daunting educational challenges, reminding us that a third of our young people (and half of all our minority students) still don't finish high school.

Though he served four years as George W. Bush's secretary of state, Powell didn't mention him. When he did address global issues, they had to do not with the war on terror, in which he played a central role, but the end of the Cold War, where he was a supporting player under Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush. Accordingly I was honored to have on my arm my wife and successor at the Nixon Foundation, former Nixon chief of staff Kathy O'Connor, who once accompanied 37 when he called on Powell at the Pentagon.

Thanks to the presence of former Ambassador to Spain and former Nixon Foundation chairman George Argyros (one of the architects of a supercharged Chapman along with its visionary, marathoner president, economist Jim Doti), Powell reenacted the comic opera of Perejil Island, a uninhabited pile of rocks in the Strait of Gilbraltar claimed by both Spain and Morocco. One Saturday morning in July 2002, on the way to spend the day with his grandchildren, Secretary Powell kept the two countries from a full-scale confrontation by typing out and signing a peace agreement, faxing it from his home in northern Virginia, and pressuring the king of Morocco to accept the deal and remove his forces.

It was a wonderful story. I also would've liked to hear what it had been like on Sept. 11, how he feels about his controversial speech to the UN in the runup to the Iraq war, and what he thinks the U.S. should do to win in Afghanistan. My friend Don Will, professor of peace studies at Chapman, told me that some of these questions came up when Powell met with three undergraduates before dinner and that Powell had answered directly and graciously. This Orange County Register report has details about that conversation.

As charming and uplifting as his dinner talk was, I felt he was holding the larger audience somewhat at bay, as though he was still sifting through strong and perhaps conflicted feelings about the Bush administration. Whether or not he finishes that process, I'll bet there's a final act of public service to come, either appointive or elective. On Palm Sunday, the Episcopalian Powell will turn 72. Fit and ramrod straight, he looks and acts 60. On Saturday night, he made a lot of cracks about being comfortably retired, but I left the event thinking about a thoroughbred straining in the gate, unsure whether its next race would be six furlongs or a mile, on turf or grass, but almost beside itself with the power to run.

"Episconixonian" Hits The Big Time

Thanks to my bud Deb Zingales, whose daughter is somewhere in this scrum, one of my photos from the March 7 mesothelioma fundraiser at St. John's Episcopal School in honor of Ken Bendix made it into the on-line edition of the Orange County Register. Reporter John Crandall writes that the event raised nearly $3,200 to battle the disease. Crandall also relayed this wise teaching from the honoree:

"Remember to follow your dreams and don't be afraid to tell those around you how much you love them," Bendix said.

How Reporters Could Do Better

"Newsweek"'s Jonathan Darman visits Orange County, California, buys a copy of the Register, does a Google or two about the demographic and political changes that everyone in the world knows about, conducts one interview (at least, one that he produces a quote from), and writes, "Something is not right in Orange County, though at first it's hard to see." Among the findings of this relentless, sidewalk-pounding investigator:

On its front page, The Orange County Register announces a new arrival, John Yoo, distinguished visiting professor at Chapman University's School of Law. In blue enclaves, Yoo is reviled for his advocacy of torture during his time in the Bush administration's Office of Legal Counsel. At Berkeley, where he previously taught law, he clashed with "hippies, protesters and left-wing activists," he says. Orange County is different. Yoo loves the lifestyle, a "total change of pace."

But the Register itself, the nation's premier clearinghouse for Western conservative thinking, is losing money and readers.

Call the non sequitur busters! Irrespective of the kind of thinking that "Newsweek" and its parent, the Washington Post, are clearinghouses for, they're losing money and readers, too.

RN's Crimes Now Include Use Of Third Person

The owners of a home in a Dana Point neighborhood reveal why it was chosen as the set for the real-life (as opposed to the Ron Howard-staged) interviews between President Nixon and David Frost: Quiet toilet. Orange County Register reporter Vik Jolly also takes the time to disparage the tone and syntax of the inscription 37 left in the owners' guest book when the interviews were done:

In it, on April 20, 1977, using a distanced, third-person reference, Nixon wrote: "To Martha and Harold Smith with appreciation for their hospitality during the week I stayed in their beautiful home."

For the life of me I can't figure out what Jolly thinks the former President should've written to avoid using the third person: "Hey, you -- thanks for the hang. Dick"?

Today, The Edward Nixon Library

Go here for the Orange County Register's coverage of Presidents Day at the Nixon, including wonderful photography of Edward Nixon and our other guests by H. Lorren Au, Jr.