From Expansion To Retraction

President Nixon meets Deng Xiaopeng at the Carter White House

According to the Chinese media, PE Obama is definitely the new Nixon. This unsigned commentary was published by the official Xinhua New Agency, which means it's either what the government thinks or what the government wants the world to think the government thinks:

I believe that Obama's government will very likely pursue a strategic retraction, meaning the U.S. will very likely enter a period of strategic adjustment.

The last time the U.S. underwent a strategic retraction was in the early 1970s. The starting signals came in then President Richard Nixon's address to the nation on the war in Vietnam on Nov 3, 1969 and the annual foreign affairs report his administration submitted to Congress in Feb 1970.

Nixon said back then the U.S. would still honor its obligations spelled out in the treaties it had signed with its allies, but it was impossible for the U.S. to defend all "free countries" in the world and those under security threats should rely on themselves more than on any other nation, because the U.S. would not plunge into another protracted conflict like the Vietnam War ever again.

That is the so-called Nixon Doctrine, of which the gist is to pursue a strategic retraction by reducing the defense obligations the U.S. had to fulfill around the world. Between then and the early 1980s the country basically remained in strategic retraction, mostly because the U.S. was sinking deeper in the swamp of Vietnam War with the society bitterly split.

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.

They Probably Didn't Call It "Doubt" For Nothing

Is this a perfect movie combo or what? Written by the great John Patrick Shanley ("Moonstruck"). The great Phillip Seymour Hoffman as a priest under a cloud, and the great Meryl Streep as the nun who accuses him. Plus the whole church thing. Watch the trailer and ask yourself, "Did he do it?" Then find a friend to bet.

How Palin Becomes The New Nixon

I was sort of hoping someone would notice this, from Nov. 14 on The New Nixon. Even less chance that someone will notice it over here, huh? (Hi again, Valerie!)

A friend asked what I meant suggesting that Gov. Palin could be the new Nixon instead of the new Reagan. Here are the two scenarios:

New Reagan: Several weeks before the election, GOP insider Ed Rollins said, somewhat chillingly, that some didn't think Sen. McCain was the right candidate to rebuild the party, an echo of those who felt the same about President Ford in 1976. During 1977-80, Jimmy Carter made such a muck of the economy and foreign policy that a Republican victory was almost inevitable. Having challenged and weakened Ford in the '76 primaries, Ronald Reagan earned the '80 nomination, which was tantamount to winning the election.

Palin and her advisers can't help but have grasped the possibility that Obama will falter or that the sheer magnitude of our economic and international challenges will overwhelm him. Every leading Republican has as well. The internecine sniping at Palin has nothing to do with '08 postmortems and everything to do with '12 prepositioning.

The fallacy is that the party needs a new Reagan -- a candidate with special appeal to social conservatives -- to beat the new Carter. The moderate, pro-choice John Connally or George H. W. Bush would almost certainly have beaten Carter had one of them been nominated. For '12, the GOP doesn't need a far-right champion. It needs an agonized reappraisal of what makes it necessary and viable. Delaying that work in order to coalesce around the present Palin would be a disastrous mistake, as would her hurling herself against an Obama juggernaut in '12 unless she had a reasonable chance of success. From the moment Lehman Bros. failed in mid-September, she and McCain became sacrificial lambs. One self-sacrifice per career is sufficient.

New Nixon: RN would begin with the assumption that Obama will probably not fail. An incumbent is likely to be reelected, and Obama will probably not make Carter's mistakes. Because circumstances may nonetheless hobble him, however, Mr. Nixon would advise Palin to keep her '12 options open, but he'd urge her to fix her attention on '16.

As for the present Palin, he would have enormous respect for the potential she embodies. She has an astonishing reservoir of political capital. But he would have some significant concerns. And so he would almost certainly write her a "Dear Governor Palin" letter beginning, "I am sure you are receiving a great deal of free advice from well-meaning fans and self-appointed advisers around the country. While you are of course under no obligation to give it any consideration whatsoever, I have taken the liberty of enclosing a memorandum containing just a few..." In such circumstances, his insights were usually based in the reliability of his own experience. He would make points such as this:

Take some time off the national stage. The temptation will be to accept too many of the invitations that are flowing in and to go out and challenge her critics. We've probably seen too much of her already just this week. Better to be a little scarce and mysterious. As RN liked to say, it never hurts to leave them wanting more.

Get back to work. Her critics say she's a lightweight fashion plate. Confound them by being an effective governor (or senator).

See the world and meet leaders. RN would consider this crucial -- first, because she's justifiably seen as weak in foreign policy, and second, because it would help her prepare to be in power.

Do favors. Some of RN's most important political work was done in 1964, when he campaigned loyally for the hopeless Goldwater candidacy, and in the midterm elections of 1966, doing favors that were repaid in 1968. In 2012, assuming she doesn't run, Palin should be the most loyal and committed advocate of whomever does. Purely in terms of her own political interests, the worst than could happen is that he would win and she'd have her pick of jobs.

Don't let your enemies define you. Palin provoked panic among abortion rights advocates. The weekend after she was named to the ticket, Andrew Sullivan republished a lie about her son Trig's parentage on his Atlantic Monthly-owned web site that obviously still rankles. Yet Palin would close herself off from growth as a leader by taking it personally. If some people despise her because of her pro-life views, what might she learn from their passion? Some women experience the possibility of restrictions on abortion as an existential challenge. She is comfortable seeing the issue almost solely in terms of the rights of the unborn. What about the rights of the half of the population that wasn't permitted to vote until 1920? Hillary Clinton did herself a tremendous favor three years ago with a speech in which she spoke respectfully of those who hate abortion. Palin should consider making an analogous gesture, both on the abortion and the gay rights fronts.

Read and think. At least from afar, Palin doesn't seem curious or self-critical. Confidence is good in a leader; smugness is not. Mr. Nixon read hungrily all his life and spent long hours in Socratic dialogs with experts, advisers, and aides. While his core principles didn't waiver, his approach to great issues changed with the times. The anti-communist of the 1940s became the internationalist of the 1950s, the course-changing peacemaker of the 1960s and '70s, and the elder statesman of the '80s, respected by all his Democratic and Republican successors in spite of the circumstances of his administration's end.

As Palin matures as a potential national leader, her views will, one hopes, become more moderate and nuanced. Her New Reagan advisers will caution her against permitting this to happen. Lost in the fantasy that Reagan's conservative bona fides (rather than the "R" after his name) won him the '80 election, they'll urge her not to tamper with the time-tested Palin brand. But if she thinks she's fully formed and ready to be President, she'll never make it. She'll fade away prematurely or, at best, squander her potential on a quixotic '12 bid that would probably relegate her to oblivion and her party to another generation in the wilderness. If she uses the next eight years wisely, focused more on substance than on politics, she could truly be the new Nixon, and a winner.

Why Being A Pastor Is Wonderful

Perfect little faces:

Kindle Size That

As long as I'm reprising my interests for the sake of my reader (hi, Valerie!), I'll mention my quasitheological faith that the Amazon Kindle will rescue text in general and newspapers in particular. Here's a New Nixon post from March; and here are all my posts on Kindling and the dying newpaper industry. Since I wrote this, the price has come down about $50; there are now roughly 200,000 books available; and the newspaper whose executives I urged to go Kindle have done so (though not, I trust, because of anything I said).

In Border’s last night I picked up a copy of Richard Price’s new novel, Lush Life — but then I put it down again. The discounted price was $25. Amazon’s tempting hardcover price is $15.60, but I’ll keep resisting until I can get it on my Amazon Kindle for $10. Egon in “Ghostbusters” was right: Print is dead. Text isn’t. The Kindle’s going to save it.

Like a true zealot, I want to hold you by the shoulders and make you understand. Every morning before I awaken, the New York Times downloads to my Kindle — every word, sans advertising. It’s 1000% easier to read than on your BlackBerry and 500% easier than nytimes.com on your computer. You can’t balance your computer on your knee and turn pages with one finger while you drink your coffee. You can’t prop your computer on the edge of a book and read it while you’re eating your Cheerios. Your computer doesn’t let you carry around several daily newspapers, the five blogs you’re reading (constantly being updated), and 15 (or 25, or 50) books in a leatherbound package the size of a trade paperback. Your computer doesn’t automatically download beautiful at-rest screens depicting Jane Austen and Alexandre Dumas nor let you change the font size with one button and a click. Addicted to newspapers since I was 16, I’ve picked up the paper Times twice since Christmas (when the Kindle arrived through the blessed agency of my wife). I also feel good about paying for my paper, which I don’t do directly on the BlackBerry or the Internet. Maintaining great newspapers’s correspondents and bureau chiefs in the style to which they have become accustomed is essential to the future of democracy. I’m willing to pay my fair share

The first-generation Kindle costs $400, but that’s got to come down. A friend recently got the comparable Sony reader as a giveaway for flying first class. The Sony doesn’t have the Kindle’s free Internet connection. Still, getting the devices into people’s hands will enable them to begin having the kind of influence on text markets that will give publishers the information they need to plan for the inevitable revolution in how we read. Kindle now offers nearly 110,000 books, virtually all for $10 or less. The offerings are irritatingly spotty — where’s Lush Life? — but they’re getting better every day. Once you’ve bought a Kindle book, you own it forever. The system keeps all your notations, and you can store them on Amazon’s server when you don’t need them on your Kindle. If you’re into the look and heft and smell of books, if it’s reassuring to line then up and gaze at them, let me help you get over that. I used to feel the same way about CD jewelcases. I wanted the cover art, lyrics, and production credits. Then I went to iTunes and paid $10 for music for which Tower Records was charging $16 or $18. Tower Records has taken its jewel cases and gone home.

The miracle of the iPod and Kindle has as much to do with reforming and, one hopes, revitalizing markets for content as with the convenience and fun of the gadgets themselves. When I hear that educated young people are too cool for newspapers, first I feel old. Then I realize that I’m reasonably cool, too, since I probably know more than they do about how China is dealing with political dissidents in the runup to the Olympics just because I saw the Times this weekend. If they read about China on MSNBC or a blog, that source probably got a lot of what it knew from the Times. We need great newspapers because they cover the world with depth and discernment that takes a load of money in a culture that seems to believe that knowledge really is free. So get a Kindle and help reform the text market. Give a Kindle to a kid and make good old-fashioned journalism cool again.

It Takes A President

Great secretaries of states work for strong Presidents, says the CBC's Henry Champ:

It is hard to find a truly successful secretary of state who served a president weak in international affairs. Certainly in the modern era, two generally regarded as successful — Henry Kissinger and James Baker — served tough, experienced leaders.

Whatever you think of Richard Nixon or George H.W. Bush, both were skilled in foreign policy. Their pairings were built on loyalty and consensus, at least in public.

It's true these matches were also based on close personal relationships not apparent between Obama and Clinton. But then again, the closeness between current Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and George W. Bush did not improve a State Department legacy that is likely to be rated by historians as below average.

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Nixon In 2012

Tony Campbell joins the new Nixon bandwagon:

The bottom line is that the Republican Party needs to forget Sarah Palin and find a Richard Nixon-type candidate in 2012. Richard Nixon was a pragmatic conservative and was able to win two national elections when the electoral map was in a state of flux due to an increase of new minority voters, African-Americans. Richard Nixon used his presidency to add teeth to Affirmative Action policies and to begin Minority and Women Business initiatives in the federal government. Nixon made inroads to this new voting block while keeping his conservative principles of small business growth and development.

Can we leave behind the non-policy ideologue that is embodied by Sarah Palin? Or are we destined to repeat this failure of leadership in the 2012 election cycle? Finding this Nixon-esque balance is not only possible and achievable, with the changing demographics of the electoral map, this balance will be necessary to win back the Congress and the White House.

Liberals Winning In Church, Too

The London Times on next year's scheduled meeting of the Anglican Consultative Council:

In [an] indication that the liberals are winning the Anglican wars, The Episcopal Church of the US, which was suspended at a previous meeting, is expected to be welcomed back into the fold after sticking by its pledge not to consecrate any more gay bishops.

Richard Nixon Is The New Mike Wallace

Peter Morgan (left) questions former Nixon chief of staff Kathy O'Connor; Ron Howard listens

Peter Morgan, author of “Frost/Nixon,” quoted in the LA Times:

Morgan says that, for a writer, it's liberating to see historical characters in a different light. "It had become almost a sin to think of Nixon as anything less than a villain," he [said] Friday. "And strangely, that aroused my indignation. I thought it was time to move on from seeing Nixon as the boogeyman of American politics. He's not the skulking Herblock cartoon version of the man, with the ski-jump nose and perspiration and five o'clock shadow. I admit to having great sympathy for him."

Morgan proposes that the two pivotal characters of "Frost/Nixon" were actually miscast in real life. "It was Frost who had the sunny personality of a politician and Nixon who would've been a truly great investigative journalist--a Mike Wallace type," he says. "That was his persona, rigorous and analytical, like a journalist...."