Blogtente

"Nixon goes to China" was an unpredictable move. "Maarja goes to 'The New Nixon'" was a courageous one.

I Guess They Burned Their ACLU Cards Already

Authoritarians dancing chic t0 chic: Pat Buchanan wants to throw Pastor Jones in jail before his burns the Koran, while Marty Peretz, editor-in-chief of "The New Republic," isn't sure Muslims "are worthy of the privileges of the First Amendment."

Talk About A Specter

As Pennsylvania waxed Democratic, Sen. Arlen Specter was facing another primary challenge from the right. He probably would've prevailed, but at 79, why bother? Why battle in a rightward-tending party for the privilege of representing your constituents and honoring your centrist principles? So today, he switched parties.

Lots of Republicans will say good riddance. Ed Rollins hinted last year that a John McCain defeat would be good for the GOP, since being relegated to the wilderness would accelerate the party's return to its true, Goldwater-Reagan roots. So I imagine Rollins is among those exulting today as the wilderness express picks up steam. Assuming Sen. Al Franken (that was hard to type) is seated, then President Obama and the Democrats will have the makings of a filibuster-proof majority. Yessir, Ed -- we've got 'em right where we want 'em now!

Even the smartest conservatives seem to have trouble seeing what's happening, such as Josh Trevino, who writes today at The New Nixon:

Specter’s party switch is the latest in a long trend of ideological party-sorting, in which the Republicans get the conservatives, and the Democrats get the leftists.

Uh, no. The Specter move means that the Republicans are keeping the conservatives, while the Democrats are keeping the liberals and getting the moderates. Let's do the math together.

Dick Cheney: Elusive Scapegoat

At The New Nixon, reflections on Cheney, Nixon, and scapegoats. From my reply to historian and former archivist Maarja Krusten:

On leaving office, GWB obviously decided to play it old school, letting his successor have his 100 days and assuming, no doubt, that Obama would give him the same cover that RN gave LBJ by not overtly scapegoating him. The preponderance of Obama's public comments makes clear that this is where his heart is. But with the left (significantly abetted by the world's most influential blogger, Andrew Sullivan) defying him and demanding torture prosecutions, I think Cheney heard the rumble of footsteps heading for the Bastille and decided that he was not about to sit meekly and wait for the knock on the palace door.

Have his sometimes aggressive-sounding interviews encouraged his critics? Maybe just a little. And yet by the same token, by essentially saying, "You want a piece of me?", he's rallied both the right and the pragmatic middle (including people such as I, not that anyone's listening) and thus increased the political danger to Obama if he permits a witch hunt. Right now I hear official Washington -- government and media elites alike -- concurring 1) we need to get to the bottom of torture but 2) without legally scapegoating individuals in the prior administration, which would tear the country apart....

Richard Nixon ended up being a perfect scapegoat for Vietnam. In a way, his resignation helped us avoid ever having to come to terms with the war. My guess is that Cheney has decided he doesn't want to go gently into the San Clemente sunset.

Texas Songs: "Did You Ever See Dallas From A DC-9 At Night" (1972)

Joe Ely, May 1980, Lubbock, Texas. Written by Jimmie Dale Gilmore, the song was first recorded by the Flatlanders in 1972. Read more about Joe Ely here, thanks to The New Nixon's Frank Gannon.

Wonder White House Years

The New Nixon's Frank Gannon on Stevie Wonder's recent appearance at the White House. Here's the video, which, though it says "Superstitious," actually is a performance of "Signed, Sealed, Delivered" and "Superstition."

Seeing all those officials rocking out reminded me of the episode of "West Wing" where James Taylor appears at the White House. But if history is repeating television, it's also repeating Nixonian history, since thanks to the President's daughters the first White House rock and roll occurred under RN, who invited the Guess Who and the Temptations to come play.

Just Another Hollywood Nixon

At The Ticker, published by Baruch College in New York City, Alfonso Guerriero shares comments on "Frost/Nixon" from an authoritative source, Ray Price (shown at right in the photo with other members of RN's interview prep team, Diane Sawyer and Ken Khachigian; missing is The New Nixon's Frank Gannon, who was probably either playing the piano or taking the picture):

Price, 78, knew President Nixon for 27 years while working as one of his speechwriters. He wrote both of Nixon’s inauguration speeches, and he helped write Nixon’s resignation speech in 1974. When Nixon resigned from the presidency, Price continued being a loyal friend and collaborated with the president on two of his 10 books before Nixon’s death in 1994. He also helped Nixon prepare for Frost’s interviews, along with...Sawyer and other aides.

Price did not hesitate when offering his thoughts on Frost/Nixon and Frank Langella’s portrayal of the President saying, "[the film] grossly distorted the facts and reduced his character to a Hollywood caricature."

Obama To Marines: "You Got The Job Done"

The New Nixon's Frank Gannon likes what he heard from the President at Camp Lejeune.

The Cambodia Surge

Roger Morris, who resigned from Henry Kissinger's NSC staff at the Nixon White House in protest over the 1970 Cambodia incursion that President Nixon ordered, has written two long posts for the New York Times blog comparing Vietnam with the two wars the Obama administration has inherited. At The New Nixon, Robert Nedelkoff analyzes Morris's posts and ends with this observation:

It’s worth mentioning that at one point Morris remarks that the Cambodian invasion of 1970 was “what a later era might call a ’surge.’” That may be more telling than he knows. The “surge,” widely denounced by Democrats (and some Republicans) at the time, was the key to gaining the degree of peace Iraq enjoys now. The Cambodian incursion, hated though it was by antiwar activists, did neutralize the supply lines and gave a breathing space to American and South Vietnamese forces at a time when it was needed.

Act Stupidly, And Serve In The Cabinet

Former Senator Tom Daschle, paid $2 million to help a fat cat, also got free use of a car and driver worth $128,000 over three years but didn't tell the IRS until President Obama tapped him as secretary of health and human services. He also failed to declare $83,000 in consulting income and claimed too many charitable gifts. On TV last week, Watergate reporter Bob Woodward intimated that there was another tax scandal coming for Obama. Presumably this is it. Why didn't Woodward just report it instead of teasing viewers? In any event, referring to the first one, the New York Times reports this morning:

It was not immediately clear whether Mr. Daschle’s tax problems would derail his nomination. The confirmation of Treasury Secretary Timothy F. Geithner was held up only briefly after the disclosure that he had failed to pay more than $34,000 in taxes owed to the federal government.

Friends in the administration say Daschle made "a stupid mistake" but shouldn't be penalized, since he told the Senate about it himself -- the old "turn yourself in, son, it'll go easier on you" rule. At least, that's what they always say. However the word has gotten out, tax scandals are generally expected to be devastating for Republicans, not to mention for those such as you and me who are not needed in the Cabinet.

Tax scandals have inconvenienced Democrats as well, though in other ways. When an accountant stupidly backdated the deed of President Nixon's tax-deductible gift of his pre-Presidential papers, it ended up wasting a lot of the House Judiciary Committee's valuable time during the 1974 impeachment hearings. It was after the tax story broke that President Nixon, deeply wounded by the charge of personal financial impropriety, made the famous declaration of his innocence to a group of editors in Orlando, Florida in November 1973.

But in these anxious times, we don't want hardworking politicians to have to say, "I am not a crook." We want them to be able to say, "I am in the Cabinet." My New Nixon colleague Frank Gannon sees it strictly in terms of the old partisan double standard and Democrats' knack for raising taxes without, as in these notable cases, paying them. Hasn't he heard that we've evolved beyond that kind of divisive rhetoric? We're in a era of new thinking and ideas.

As a matter of fact, the Times is definitely onto something by suggesting the "Cabinet penalty box" approach. Geithner's stupid mistake cost us $34,000, so his nomination was held up "only briefly." What was it, a week? For riding around in a free car for three years stupidly failing to realize it was taxable income, Daschle boosted the deficit at almost four times' Geithner's rate, so he should sit out for at least a month. With the deficit already running over a trillion a year, it might be the best thing that could happen for health care policy. By the same token, since Obama appears to be flirting with protectionism, he may decide to delay choosing a trade representative for another two or three months, so he should find someone for that job who's stupidly cheated us out of half a million or so.

My "New Nixon" Archives

Mainly as a placeholder for my own reference, here's a link to my posts at The New Nixon since we launched it a year ago next month.

The Worst Day Of The Year

Feeling especially blue today? My New Nixon colleague Frank Gannon explains why.

Franked Male

Charles McGrath, going deeper with "Frost/Nixon" actor Frank Langella that most reporters, reveals the key role played by a fellow Frank at The New Nixon as he prepared to portray 37:

To prepare for the role Mr. Langella visited the Nixon Library in Yorba Linda, Calif., spent hours watching tape at the Paley Center for Media, the broadcasting museum in Manhattan and interviewed Mike Wallace, Barbara Walters, Frank Gannon — anyone he could think of who actually knew Nixon.

Read about Langella's visit to the Nixon Library here.

"Frost/Nixon" Praised By Close Nixon Colleague

Over at The New Nixon, the discerning and thoughtful Frank Gannon -- who sat at Richard Nixon's bedside taking notes when the former President thought he was dying in 1974 and, a few years later, helped him write his memoirs -- gives "Frost/Nixon" TNN's highest (and indeed first) movie rating of "five Checkers":

Frank Langella gives a serious and stirring account of RN. He wisely eschews imitation, much less impersonation. Aside from some of the obviously applied physical characteristics, and the adoption of a recognizably husky vocal timbre, Mr. Langella’s Nixon is convincing not because it is derivative, but because it is complete. In fact, quite unlike RN whose locution was formal and whose diction was precise, this Nixon speaks casually and colloquially and often even drops his “gs.” Mr. Langella uses his brain (and undoubtedly his heart) to embody the balanced elements of confidence, formality, toughness, shyness, insecurity, and vulnerability, and then renders them into a character that must move and compel even the people who knew RN, and have that high standard of comparison. Of course, that’s what acting at this exalted level is all about.

And Ron Howard, much of whose work has been open and optimistic and straightforward, has turned out to be the ideal director for this complex, essentially cerebral, and decidedly dark two finger exercise. He is above all a story teller, and he keeps his eye on Frost/Nixon’s clear, compelling, and chronological story line. And while he knows how to keep the story moving forward, he also shows a willingness —and the confidence— to slow things down and take the time it takes to let the story also sink in. This is brilliant directing — authoritative and unobtrusive.

The Twin Pillars Of The New Nixon

This post was originally published at The New Nixon on Dec. 25, 2008:

In the ongoing Bush vs. Nixon debate, Veteran political reporter Jules Witcover draws a distinction:

[T]hrough it all, Nixon’s image has managed to survive the kind of assault on his intellect to which Bush has had to suffer. Nixon continues to be widely regarded as having had a shrewd political mind, sustained perhaps by the books he wrote on foreign policy in his post-resignation years.

I’ve long believed that the two pillars of the restoration of Richard Nixon’s reputation in history are the recognition of his seriousness of purpose when it came to the pivotal issue of East-West relations and his effectiveness as a wartime commander-in-chief. More than a keen political mind, Mr. Nixon had a reconciling vision that contributed to a reduction in tensions between Moscow and the U.S. as well as the end of the Cold War. As for Vietnam, he and Gen. Creighton Abrams managed to turn a sure loser into a possible winner, and do so against titanic political odds.

By all accounts, “Frost/Nixon” takes Nixon seriously as an intellectual. One down. A few good books on Vietnam will help with the second pillar.

Cheney Ends Up As The New Nixon, Anyway

The VP was evidently so grateful to Chris Wallace of Fox News for defending the Bush Administration against comparisons to Richard Nixon that he agreed to give Wallace an “exit interview” — ironic, since Mr. Cheney’s interview with Wallace has itself drawn a comparison by Matt Corley to RN’s famous assertion to David Frost about the President’s latitude during a national security crisis.

As TNN’s Robert Nedelkoff has noted, when Frank Langella, portraying RN, says that when the President does something, “it’s not illegal,” the script makes it appear as though he’s talking about the Watergate break-in and cover-up. In real life, Frost and the former President had been talking about the Huston Plan for wartime intelligence-gathering about domestic radicals. The plan was approved and later rescinded by the President.

It’s hard to defend illegal activity by the government under any circumstances. But it would be interesting to know how much latitude the American people would give it in the event of an imminent threat. At his appearance at the Nixon Library on Friday, Bill O’Reilly said that arguments against extreme measures would lose much if not all of their salience if the U.S. is hit again as on Sept. 11.

That doesn’t justify such actions, either. But journalists should not assume that Americans are of one mind on the subject. That’s why, at the start of the new administration, debate and dialogue would be better than the legal scapegoating of Bush Administration officials which is so intensely craved by the President’s and VP’s political opponents.

As for “Frost/Nixon” director Ron Howard and playwright-scriptwriter Peter Morgan, it would be interesting to know why they chose to misconstrue RN’s quote. Without knowing their motives, its likely that most theatergoers are more appalled by the “not illegal” formulation when it’s applied to political shenanigans as opposed to wartime national security policies.

No Room At The Inn

Over at The New Nixon last week, I posted this photo by Mike Boster of the LA Times. Then this week, I heard from Yorba Lindan Liz Fitkin:

That is my nativity set that was uncovered in our rubble by my 18-year old-son two days after our home burned to the ground. It was the only thing that remained and had a lot of sentimental value attached to it as it was a gift from my late mother.

It was stored on the second story in the attic and the roof fell on it yet many of the pieces are perfectly in tact without a scratch on them.

Thoughts on if it has a meaning behind it?

I'd say that's a big yes.