Reflections on My Year (or More) of Nixon

Sometime in 2012, I got in the mail a book that I had ordered off of Amazon for a cheap price: Irwin Gellman’s The Contender, which was primarily about Richard Nixon’s years in Congress (both the House and the Senate).  I had seen the book years earlier at one of Columbia University’s libraries (I had library privileges there as a Jewish Theological Seminary student), and it intrigued me.  The book came across to me as a defense of Richard Nixon against detractors who claimed that Nixon ruthlessly and unfairly exploited anti-Communism to advance himself politically.  One of the book’s arguments was that Nixon was actually a level-headed voice of sanity on the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

When I received Gellman’s book in 2012, I had a thought: I knew that the centennial for Richard Nixon’s birthday was coming up—-for Nixon was born on January 9, 1913, and it would soon be January 9, 2013.  How about if I read Gellman’s book during the month of January?  But then I thought some more.  Richard Nixon had long intrigued me, for he was socially-awkward, introverted, resentful, and yet rather hard working, like me.  He had a kind side, and also there were liberals and conservatives who were claiming that he was politically progressive in areas, and that was of interest to me.  I had long noticed Stephen Ambrose’s trilogy about Nixon in libraries and I had wanted to read it, yet I did not feel that I had the time or the discipline for such a task.  But what if I were to devote an entire year, or even more, to reading about Richard Nixon?  Instead of just blogging about Gellman’s book in January 2013, perhaps I could devote all of 2013 to reading books by and about Nixon!

I had reservations.  For one, I feared that I would become bored with the topic.  Wouldn’t I be reading the same stories over and over, which would get old after a while?  Second, I feared that my blog stats would plummet because my readers would become bored with the topic, and potential readers would not read my blogs because they would see that I write primarily about Nixon.

But I decided to go ahead with the project.  On my fear of boredom, I reminded myself that I would read thirty pages of a Nixon book a day: I could handle that, even if I became bored.  On my fear of my blog stats plummeting, there was a part of me that said “So be it.”  I felt that I had to do this project for me, even if nobody else appreciated what I was doing.  If I could not blog about my own interests, then what was the point of me blogging?  But another part of me hoped that my posts on other topics would allow my stats to remain as high as they were, or to increase.

I went into the project with a list of books that I wanted to read.  Many of them, I read.  Some of them, I did not.  And there were books that I read that were not on that initial list.  My plan was to read Gellman’s book, the Ambrose trilogy, Monica Crowley’s books about her time working for Nixon, Richard Reeves’ book about Nixon, a psychological profile of Nixon that I saw at a Harvard library years before, all of the books that Nixon wrote, Theodore White’s books about the Presidential races in which Nixon ran, and others.  I read most of these.  I never got to Theodore White’s books, however, but I’ll probably read them during the next Presidential election (in 2016).  As I read Gellman’s response to Roger Morris’ book, and I noticed that I could get Morris’ book off Amazon for a cheap price, I decided to read Morris for My Year (or More) of Nixon.  I also added other books to the list in the course of the year.

I am proud of myself for sticking with this project.  I also think that most of my blog posts for it were good.  The project did not result in a drop in my blog stats.  On my blogger blog, my Nixon posts got the same amount of views that my other posts usually got.  (My hunch is, though, that the 200-plus views for one of my posts on Gary Allen’s Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask was largely due to spam or robotics!)  On my WordPress blog, my stats actually increased in 2013, but that was not due to my Nixon posts: I had a lot of views of posts that I had written in the previous years, or of non-Nixon posts that I had written.  But at least My Year (or More) of Nixon did not hurt my WordPress stats!

I think that I wrote a lot of good posts about life and social skills as a result of My Year (or More) of Nixon, but many might not read them because they don’t have a catchy title.  I titled my Nixon posts in reference to whatever book I was reading (i.e., “Six Crises 3), and that does not exactly catch readers!  I thought that a number of my posts were rather antiquarian, in that they discussed historical situations that many may think are not particularly relevant today.  I can understand why those posts would not attract people, but my hunch is that some of them eventually will.  I won’t be surprised if someone who is interested in learning the nuances of the Alger Hiss case will find my blog after doing a Google search!

Interestingly, I can’t say that I became thoroughly bored in doing this project, for I did it for a year, and there was enough material in the books that engaged me enough for me to write blog posts.  There were stories that crept up in most of the books that I read, but each book had a story or a take that was unique.  Still, I have to admit that I am itching to move on to another project!  I decided to end My Year (or More) of Nixon today because there are books that I want to read for Black History Month, which is in February 2014.

What was my favorite book about Nixon?  To be honest, I think that it would be Conrad Black’s Richard M. Nixon: A Life in Full.    It was far from being the best book about Nixon that I read, for there were other books that I found far more informative.  I was initially hesitant to read Black’s book because it seemed to me to rely largely on secondary sources, a number of which I had already read.  But I have pleasant memories of Black’s book, for a couple of reasons.  First of all, I loved the scene where Richard Nixon’s father was driving Richard and some of his schoolmates, and Black was talking about the improvements around them on this road-trip that were due to Franklin Roosevelt’s New Deal.  Second, I liked Black’s analysis of issues and his suggestions of what Nixon and others should have done.  Granted, Black did come across to me as somewhat of a know-it-all in these discussions, but I still liked them.

Irwin Gellman's The Contender has a warm place in my heart because it inspired this project and was the book that introduced me to prominent aspects of Richard Nixon's life----the controversy surrounding Nixon's activity at the 1952 Republican National Convention, for example. But, as I read books after Gellman, my conclusion was that he did not say much that was particularly new, that others (I think of Jonathan Aitken) had defended Nixon better than he did, that some of his arguments were not that good, that his representations of the other side sometimes amounted to being strawmen (for example, the biographers Gellman criticizes acknowledge that Helen Gahagan Douglas lost the 1950 Senate race not only on account of Nixon’s attacks of her), and that the authors Gellman criticized themselves presented a fairly decent case.

There were books that I liked, but my liking them had little to do with what they said about Nixon.  For example, Fawn Brodie had some interesting things to say about Nixon’s lying or embellishments of the truth early on in her book, but what she had to say about Nixon got pretty boring as the book proceeded.  But I was fascinated as she told the story about the Kennedys and how Joseph Kennedy had to struggle to become accepted in the United States on account of his Irish and Catholic heritage.  Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland told many of the same stories about Nixon that I had read elsewhere, but it had a number of interesting stories about other political figures, and it, more than any other book I had read, effectively told the story of the political developments and turmoil of the 1960′s-1970′s.

Did I learn more about Nixon as a result of this project?  Well, I learned a number of facts that I did not know before, but I can’t say that my conceptualization of the man is all that different from how it was before the project.  I will say that I am more familiar now with the arguments of those who do not feel that Nixon was overly progressive, with the view that Nixon was a calculating politician rather than a principled leader.

All of that said, I am glad that I did this project, and I hope that some of you got something out of it, or will get something out of it if you stumble upon my posts in the future.

Nixonland 12

I finished Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland.  In this post, I will discuss three items from the book.  In my post tomorrow, I will offer an overall reflection about My Year (or More) of Nixon.

1.  On pages 343-344, Perlstein tells an inspiring story about Edmund Muskie, who ran for the Democratic nomination for President in 1968 and 1972.

Muskie in 1968 was speaking before a crowd in Pennsylvania, and some long-haired college students were trying to disrupt his speech with chants to end the Vietnam War.  Such disruptions occurred at the speeches of other candidates, too, such as Vice-President and Democratic Presidential candidate Hubert Humphrey.  Rather than attempting to outshout the demonstrators, Muskie pursued another approach: he would allow the demonstrators to pick a spokesperson who would speak for ten minutes, on the condition that the demonstrators would listen to what Muskie had to say afterwards.  The demonstrators picked a spokesman, a nervous college kid, who would learn what it was like to try to speak when people were heckling!  But the spokesman’s essential message was that people should not vote in the Presidential election, for candidates George Wallace, Richard Nixon, and Hubert Humphrey were “no answer” (his words).

Muskie then spoke.  Perlstein states: “He reviewed his modest upbringing.  He described what the price of political apathy had been for the poor Maine region he came from: the special interests ran things and made the people poorer.  But once the people became engaged and started electing Democrats, things started getting better.”  Both hippie students and George Wallace supporters liked Muskie’s speech, and they began mingling with one another.  The Washington Post said that this event was “one of the spectacular performances of the 1968 political campaign” (its words).

I like this story for three reasons.  First, the sentimentalist in me appreciates the themes of different people coming together and listening to what each other has to say.  Second, the story makes me think about the issue of participation in the political process.  Is government too corrupt to be reformed, or should people at least try to reform it?  I’m not for utter naivety about the political system and the politicians within it, but I also don’t believe that sitting out of the political system is the way to make a difference.  When we participate, the politicians are more accountable to us than if we do not participate.  Third, the story came to my mind as I read other parts of Perlstein’s book, which discussed what happened when a number of New Left activists started to participate in the political process rather than shouting at it from the outside.  Nixon encouraged this in supporting the extension of voting rights to eighteen-year-olds, out of the alleged hope that this would divide the Democratic Party.  And it did, as young New Left activists were at odds with Democratic power-brokers and machines.

That makes me wonder: Do I prefer governance by mainstream politicians, or by outside-of-the-mainstream people?  My hope is that outside-of-the-mainstream people can challenge the powers-that-be and bring about reforms that previously were not even on the table.  The thing is, though, that the Tea Partiers were outside-of-the-mainstream, and their contribution was bringing the government to a screeching halt just because they were not getting their own way.  Standard, mainstream powers-that-be don’t act that way!  Maybe I would prefer the outside-of-the-mainstream left over the outside-of-the-mainstream right, but then I wonder if they themselves would stir the pot in disastrous directions!  Should I stick with establishment politicians and all of the problems that accompany them?  Is the devil you know better than the devil you don’t know?

2.  On page 660, Perlstein narrates the following about Arthur Bremer, the man who shot George Wallace:
“Bremer was an unemployed busboy whose only extended conversation with another friendly human in months was with a girl in a massage parlor whom he was disappointed to learn wasn’t a prostitute.  He had a plan, however, to get noticed: he would shoot the president of the United States and go down in a blaze of glory.”

Charles Colson of the Nixon Administration would try to portray Bremer as a leftist, but Perlstein was saying that the truth was different: Bremer was a lonely man who wanted attention.

This passage made me think about how many friendly extended conversations I have had with people.  I have often felt my share of loneliness and disconnection with others, but I cannot say that I was totally alone for any extended period of time.  I would go to church or support groups, or I would talk with people online, or I could talk with my family.  Imagine not having anybody.  That very thought scares me.

3.  On page 740, Perlstein quotes 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern saying: “We don’t have John Connally with us.  He’s with his rich oil-baron friends.  But we don’t need John Connally and the oil barons.  We’d rather have the oil workers.”

This passage stood out to me because it showed McGovern playing the anti-elitism card.  The point of Perlstein’s book, however, is that Nixon was a politician who often played the anti-elitism card: he appealed to the white middle class, many of whom felt alienated from the establishment and the educated elites.  The thing is, though, many have argued that Nixon himself was entrenched with elites, particularly big business.  Democrats have frequently made this charge about Republicans—-that Democrats are the party of the little guy, whereas Republicans are for the rich and well-to-do.  I guess that both sides play the anti-elitism card, because both sides have their share of elites, and thus one side can attack the elites of the other side.

Nixonland 11

On pages 739-740 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein tells the following story about George McGovern, the 1972 Democratic Presidential candidate:

“‘In a recent month,’ McGovern intoned in a radio ad, ‘a quarter of the wounded civilians in South Vietnam were children under twelve.  As we vote November seventh, let us think of Tanya and all the other defenseless children of the world.’  The candidate was howling, howling into the wilderness.  If he was going to lose, he would lose his way.”

Tanya was a twelve-year-old girl whom Richard Nixon mentioned in his 1972 acceptance speech before the Republican National Convention.  She lost her family in World War II, and Nixon exhorted, “Let us think of Tanya and the other Tanyas and their brothers and sisters everywhere—-in Russia, in China, in America, as we proudly meet our responsibilities for leadership in the world in a way worthy of a great people.” McGovern was turning Nixon’s reference to Tanya on its head: Sure, lets think of Tanya and people like her, but let us remember that defenseless people like her are being wounded due to the war in Vietnam.

I like what Perlstein says on pages 739-740 because it is about transforming a loss into an opportunity.  If McGovern was going down, he was going to go down making an important statement.  Granted, people were seeing him as a cliche of himself.  He himself was much more moderate than many believed him to be: he wasn’t in favor of drug legalization, abortion-on-demand, or many of the radical or controversial groups at the 1972 Democratic National Convention, but many people thought that he was, one reason being that a number of his prominent supporters had those stances.  When McGovern tried to explain that he wasn’t for putting half of the country on welfare whether the recipients wanted to work or not, but instead wanted for everyone to have a job, many did not believe him.  They thought he was flip-flopping.  McGovern was on the defensive and was trying to explain himself, and, as someone Perlstein mentions in the book asserted, when you’re explaining, you’re losing.  (Well, not always: there was Nixon’s Checkers Speech, and Arnold Vinick’s exhaustive response to reporters’ questions at the nuclear power plant on The West Wing!)

Maybe McGovern had been caricatured and his loss was certain.  But he was still going to make a clear statement.  He was still going to call out evil when he saw it.  He would appeal to people’s moral sensitivity.

Nixonland 10

On pages 674-675 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein tells a story about Shirley MacLaine’s campaigning for Democratic Presidential candidate George McGovern in 1972, and the disconnect between her and some of her audiences:

“Shirley MacLaine’s alienation from her audiences was never plainer than when she addressed a black women’s luncheon and fashion show in Pittsburgh during the Pennsylvania primary.  She spoke extemporaneously, as she always did, and said underprivileged women like them understood, as she and McGovern understood, that material things didn’t matter, that too many Americans cared about the wrong things.  The response was stony silence.  The wealthy movie star was baffled.  A young black man had to explain it to her: ‘You can’t tell those women that stuff.  You can’t tell them they don’t have much.  They’re proud people.’  They ‘want the things—-those very things—-you think are useless.’”

As I read this, I thought about the attraction of a number of African-Americans to the prosperity Gospel, a Gospel that promises health and wealth.  See here for search results about this.  I was one time standing behind two African-American gentlemen in the post office, and they were chatting about religion and their desire for God to bless them with riches.  They agreed that God waits to bless people with lots of money until God knows they can handle it.

I’m sure that a number of Christians would snub their noses at that.  After all, shouldn’t we prioritize spiritual riches over material riches?  I think so, but who am I to judge people who desire material prosperity?  When white people have jobs, work their way up, and get to enjoy the comforts and luxuries of life, that’s the American dream.  Why should we look down on African-Americans desiring this?  I would also like to note that having material things does not have to be inconsistent with valuing what’s important in life: faith, family, good morals, giving to charity, and the well-being of one’s community.

Nixonland 9

On page 656 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein quotes a conversation between President Richard Nixon and John Connally.  Connally is urging Nixon not to worry about killing civilians in Vietnam.  People already thought that Nixon was doing so, Connally argued, so Nixon had might as well do so.  Nixon’s response was “That’s right.”  Earlier in the book, on page 649, Perlstein quotes a similar conversation between Nixon and Henry Kissinger.  Nixon said that he thought it was time to “take out the dikes” and asked if that would “drown people”, and Kissinger replied that it would drown approximately 200,000 people.  Nixon then said he’d prefer to use a nuclear bomb, and Kissinger retorted that this would be “Too much.”  Nixon then said that he wanted Kissinger to “think big".

Perlstein draws both conversations from the Nixon Library Tapes, and Perlstein is the one transcribing them.  They appear to me to differ from what Nixon says in his memoirs and in No More Vietnams.  In his writings, Nixon affirms that he did not deliberately bomb dikes, and that America bent over backwards to avoid killing civilians, which was why American soldiers were taken as POWs: in their attempts to avoid killing civilians, they left themselves more vulnerable than they would be if they did not care.

Perhaps one could argue that the tapes do not contradict Nixon’s books, that the tapes present Nixon talking big about what he could or should do, whereas the books are about what he actually did as President.  Perhaps.  I can see Nixon’s point in his memoirs that, had he wanted to kill innocent civilians, he would have waged the Vietnam War much more aggressively than he did; still, one cannot deny that many civilians died in the Vietnam War.

(UPDATE: Later in the book, Perlstein talks about the American bombing of Vietnamese dikes.)

Even if Nixon’s words on the tapes contradicted his actions, his words are really cold.  It is one thing to wage a war that one thinks is necessary and that may entail the deaths of civilians; it is another thing not to have second thoughts about this, or not to think about how horrible civilians’ death is—-these are people trying to live their lives, many of whom have families.  Of course, one could argue that these two things are not significantly different in terms of the civilians themselves, that they are still getting killed.  That would be a fair point, but it would be part of a broader conversation about if and when war is necessary.

Should Nixon’s character be judged on the basis of these sorts of statements on the tapes?  Well, I would hate for my entire character to be judged on the basis of things that I have said here and there.  I have been more compassionate than I have sounded to others, and perhaps that was the case with Nixon, too.  Jesus said that out of the heart the mouth speaks, but I have a problem going from there to saying that everything I say manifests the sum total of my character.  At the same time, I do believe that what I say reveals elements of my character, some of them bad.

Nixonland 8: Violence

A recurrent topic in Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland is violence, for the time period that Perlstein covers in this book was a time of significant upheaval.  Perlstein, in fact, dedicates the book “to the memory of the dozens of Americans who lost their lives at the hands of other Americans, for ideological reasons, between the years of 1965 and 1972."

Perlstein talks about riots and protests, trigger-happy and repressive law enforcement authorities, and average Joes and Janes in America who actually cheered on the tragedies at Kent State and in My Lai.  The shape of the Second Amendment debates was rather different back then than it is today.  Perlstein mentions a conservative in California who proposed a gun control measure in order to suppress African-American militants, African-American militants who appealed to the Second Amendment as something necessary for their self-protection, and whites who liked the Second Amendment because they believed they needed guns to protect themselves from criminals and rioters.

The book is very sobering when it talks about violence: when it tells the story of an African-American male who was taking his pregnant wife to the hospital and got shot by a white cop, as well as the stories of people with families who got killed for being in the wrong place at the wrong time while a riot was occurring.
Nixonland‘s narration of the Kent State tragedy is perhaps the best part of the book, for I was impressed by its balance and the way that it highlighted the human dimension of the tragedy.  When I read about the Kent State tragedy, I usually see a pattern (which is probably not absolute, but I’m just saying what I see): Conservatives tend to defend the National Guardsmen who shot the students, noting that  students in the crowd were committing provocative and antagonistic acts against the National Guardsmen, whereas liberals tend to demonize the National Guardsmen while bemoaning the tragedy of students being killed.  Perlstein is rather liberal, but he acknowledges that some of the students were committing provocative and antagonistic acts.  Perlstein also characterizes the National Guardsmen as either people who envied the students because the students could get out of the Vietnam War on an easy path, whereas they could do so only by serving in the National Guard, or as people who had fought in the Vietnam War and were now trigger-happy.

But what is interesting about Perlstein’s narration is that he talks about National Guardsmen and Kent State students becoming friends.  It’s almost as if Perlstein believes the whole tragedy could have been averted, had the Governor not decided to talk tough against the protesters.

Nixonland 7: Plain Speech vs. Eloquence

On page 224 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein quotes George Wallace’s comments about riots and lawlessness in the late 1960′s:

“You people work hard, you save your money, you teach your children to respect the law.  Then when someone goes out and burns down half a city and murders someone, swaydo-intellectuals explain it away by sayin’ the killer didn’t get any watermelons to eat when he was ten years old….The Supreme Court is fixing it so you can’t do anything about people who set cities on fire.”

Perlstein then remarks: “It sure made Nixon look respectable when he couched the same sentiments in four-syllable words.”

Perlstein makes this point more than once in his book: that Nixon was expressing George Wallace’s sentiments in refined, eloquent language.  That makes me wonder: What is the better means of communication?  Is it plain speaking, or are eloquence and big words the way to go?

I recall a scene on The Cosby Show, which I watched years ago.  Rudy had a friend over, and this friend’s father was the editor of a newspaper.  Rudy and her friend were bothering Theo, who was working on a paper about his first day of school.  Theo was writing was he was at the brink of his destiny, and Rudy’s friend did not know what that meant.  Theo explained that it meant he was scared.  “Then why don’t you just say you were scared?”, she asked.  Theo responded that his teacher would not like his paper as much if he did that.  Rudy’s friend then shared with Theo her father’s wisdom: “My Dad says keep it simple: Only people with small minds use big words.”

And, in the newspaper business, keeping it simple is the way to go.  Granted, newspaper articles don’t express things quite like George Wallace did, for newspapers have to sound objective and respectable.  But they try to explain current events and ideas in easy-to-understand language.

But there is an appeal in eloquence and big words, within certain contexts.  While what George Wallace said undoubtedly resonated with a number of voters, Nixon sounded more like a statesman with intelligence.  When writing academic papers, plain speaking is not necessarily the way to go, for I have to sound like I’m smart and have a grasp of complexity and nuance.  I will say, though, that there are plenty of times when academics don’t want to sound abstruse, when they express their thoughts in a down-to-earth, accessible manner.  This is helpful to me, not because I can’t understand them when they are abstruse, but rather because their plain, down-to-earth language reminds me that their ideas are part of the real world and relate to the real world, not some inaccessible world that is above most people’s heads.

Nixonland 6: A Free Press

On page 438 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein contrasts the criticism of the media by Richard Nixon’s Vice-President, Spiro Agnew, with Thomas Jefferson’s approach:

“A querulous American press—-far more opinionated, nasty, and partisan than anything Nixon would have to suffer—-predated American government.  Thomas Jefferson used to lay out the most scabrous articles about him in the White House antechamber where emissaries of foreign potentates waited to be received by him.  They would stride forth, waving the pages: Mr. President, are you aware of the things they’re writing about you?  Jefferson found nothing so delightful.  Yes, he would reply, and they’re welcome to say it, and there’s nothing I can do about it.  This is what America means.  But Agnew argued these gentlemen of the media were a usurping cabal.”

I thought of the miniseries John Adams as I read this.  In one scene, Secretary of State Jefferson has a hard time getting interested in a cabinet meeting.  He had just been in France, where revolutionary fervor was in the air.  Because he was so excited about the movements against French authoritarianism, the tedious day-to-day details of running the American government were not of particular interest to him.

Jefferson valued the American experiment and the freedom that accompanied it.  Consequently, he loved freedom of the press, even when the press was attacking him.  I admire Jefferson for this.  But I can also understand Agnew’s criticisms of the media.  Here President Nixon would be, laying out an agenda before the American people, and, before the American people could even digest it, the pundits would be nitpicking what Nixon said and saying that Nixon was wrong.  I don’t think that the media should be an arm of the government, as exists within many dictatorships.  But I do believe that people should be exposed to different perspectives when they turn on the news.

Nixonland 5: A Godly Leader?

On page 173 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein states the following about Republican politician George Romney, who was the father of Mitt Romney, the Republican who lost the 2012 Presidential election:

“[George] Romney, a Republican who kept on getting elected in a Democratic state (he called America’s cult of rugged individualism ‘nothing but a political banner to cover up greed’), was a media darling.  The Mormon bishop with what Jules Witcover joked was a ‘full head of silvering Presidential hair’ made great copy: he didn’t work on Sundays.  He fasted before big decisions.  His granddad had fled with three wives one step ahead of the polygamy laws.  A new book of personal reminiscenses of JFK had just come out.  ‘The fellow I don’t want to run against is Romney,’ it reported him saying.”

What tanked George Romney’s Presidential ambitions was his statement that he had been brainwashed into supporting the Vietnam War.  Not only did that make him look weak, but many people may have thought that Romney was a phony after they heard that statement.  After all, one observer noted, Romney continued to publicly support the Vietnam War even after the time that he said he had concluded that he had been brainwashed about it!

But I can identify with why Romney was such a darling, and with how his religiosity actually contributed to his political stature.  My guess is that, in the eyes of many, being religious is an indication that one takes matters seriously—-that one takes morality and human worth seriously.  That is very attractive to me.  And yet, I can’t say that all politicians’ religiosity is attractive.  For example, I do not care for how many evangelical conservatives seemed to equate genuine Christian commitment with political support for George W. Bush.  George W. Bush said that he looked to his heavenly Father rather than his earthly father for advice on Iraq.  In my opinion, he should have consulted his earthly father rather than giving the impression that God was the source of his decision to wage the Iraq War.  Moreover, the haste with with he got us into Iraq arguably contradicts the virtues that one can associate with religiosity: gravity and carefully weighing one’s options in prayer before God so as to make the best decision and to minimize harm to human beings.

Jimmy Carter’s religiosity was attractive when he first ran for President.  Here the country was, recovering from the stench and corruption of Watergate, and this church-going man came along and gave the impression that he would clean up Washington.  But his religiosity may have gone sour, a bit.  I think of his sermonizing against greed.  People in those hard times did not want to hear a sermon, but rather they longed for hope and encouragement.

In 2008, I thought that Republican Mike Huckabee’s religiosity was attractive.  He appeared to be a kindly man.  He was a pastor.  And he manifested a concern for the poor and illegal immigrants, something that I did not see too often among Republicans.  But, in my opinion, Huckabee became a right-wing shrill, one whose religiosity amounted to encouraging evangelical conservatives’ whiny persecution complex more than empathy or concern for the marginalized.

Personally speaking, I would like a President who fasts and prays—-not to the exclusion of learning, mind you, but as a way for that President to humbly acknowledge his or her limitations and the gravity of decisions.  But something else that attracts me is intelligence: I like for Presidents to display some intelligence on the topic of religion.  I don’t know if President Barack Obama fasts and prays, but I have been impressed by his thoughtful insights about religious issues.

Nixonland 4: The Diverse Media

On page 183 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein discusses the role of different publications in influencing opinions about the Vietnam War:

“An argument proliferated on the right: that winning would be easy—-only, Reader’s Digest argued, ‘Our government has not permitted it.’  A woman reading that in a dentist’s waiting room might sink down into the chair a confirmed hawk.  But if she happened to choose Ladies’ Home Journal instead, she might read this letter to the editor: ‘Before I went to Saigon, I had heard and read that napalm melts the flesh, and I thought that’s nonsense, because I can put a roast in the oven and the fat will melt but the meat stays there.  Well, I went and saw these children burned by napalm, and it is absolutely true.’  That might make you a dove.”

On pages 206-297, there is a similar passage: Reader’s Digest was talking about how Americans in Vietnam were visiting orphanages and reconstructing schools, whereas the “prestige press” was painting a picture of American soldiers wrecking South Vietnamese hamlets and killing inhabitants.  But Perlstein goes on to say that even Reader’s Digest readers were wondering what the Vietnam War was for.

I one time read an article for an American Government class about the diversity of media, and how Americans nowadays listen to viewpoints that agree with their own ideological persuasions.  I’ve heard more than one liberal hearken back to the good old days when there were three networks, and most people got their news from one of those three networks.  At least there was a commonality among Americans back then, as opposed to people getting their “information” (true or not) within their own little worlds.  Or so the reminisce goes.

Actually, there were diverse media outlets during the so-called good old days.  Sure, there were three networks that many Americans watched, but there were also local newspapers, many of which were conservative.  There was Reader’s Digest.  And a number of doctors and dentists had John Bircher publications on their waiting room tables.

And, nowadays, while people may read or listen to things that agree with what they already believe, there is more opportunity for different people to come together and discuss issues.  This happens on the Internet.
I wouldn’t say that things are rosy right now, however, for there is still suspicion of the “other,” and thus a reluctance to read an alternative point-of-view in an open-minded manner.  There are plenty of good discussions on the Internet, but there is also a lot of people talking past each other.

A professor once told me that he had a solution to all of the acrimonious political discussions that students were conducting online: put them into a room in a library, and have them read only the opposite point-of-view.  I think there’s something to this proposal, and yet it’s far from perfect.  I may have been an acrimonious conservative back then, but I shouldn’t have been put into a room where I’d read only liberal thought.  I hadn’t been exposed to the best of conservative thought!  I hadn’t mastered the conservative perspective!  Consequently, I believe that people should read as many perspectives as they can.  A helpful resource can be the Opposing Viewpoints series, or similar series: the types that include different perspectives on controversial issues.  In my opinion, that can provide people with a fuller picture of how things are: not a perfect picture, mind you, since different “sides” in America may share presuppositions that someone outside of America may disagree with, but a fuller picture—-at least fuller than reading only one side would get a person.

Nixonland 3

On page 164 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein states regarding Nelson Rockefeller’s brother Winthrop:

“Nelson’s brother Winthrop beat Justice Jim in Arkansas—-on a platform of school prayer, opposition to the 1964 Civil Rights Act, and excoriation of HEW education commissioner Harold Howe II.”

That made me wonder if Withrop Rockefeller, in contrast to his controversial brother Nelson, was a conservative Republican, a black sheep of the Rockefeller family, if you will.  In reading wikipedia’s article about him, it seems that he was like Nelson: a moderate liberal Republican.  But Withrop was politically active in Arkansas, so perhaps he had to put on a conservative front on some issues.  The wikipedia article states, for example, that he was instrumental in racially integrating Arkansas’ public schools as Governor, yet he did so quietly.

Nixonland 2

On pages 208-209 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein quotes the 1953 memoir of screenwriter Ben Hecht, who was describing Hollywood standards:

“Two generations of Americans have been informed nightly that a woman who betrayed her husband (or a husband his wife) could never find happiness; that sex was no fun without a mother-in-law and a rubber plant around; that women who fornicated just for pleasure ended up as harlots or washerwomen; that any man who was sexually active in his youth later lost the one girl he truly loved; that a man who indulged in sharp practices to get ahead in the world ended in poverty and with even his own children turning on him; that any man who broke the law, man’s or God’s, must always die, or go to jail, or become a monk, or restore the money he stole before wandering off into the desert; that anyone who didn’t believe in God (and said so out loud) was set right by seeing either an angel or witnessing some feat of levitation by one of the characters; that an honest heart must always recover from a train wreck or a score of bullets and win the girl it loved; that the most potent and brilliant of villains are powerless before little children, parish priests or young virgins with big boobies; that injustice could cause a heap of trouble but it must always slink out of town in Reel Nine; that there are no problems of labor, politics, domestic life or sexual abnormality but can be solved happily by a simple Christian phrase or a fine American motto.“

Perlstein goes on to contrast these standards with the 1967 movie Bonnie and Clyde, which glorified outlaws while portraying the establishment as corrupt and morally bankrupt.

As I read Hecht’s description of the older standards, however, I thought, “Man, I actually believe some of those things.”  Maybe it’s because of all the Little House on the Prairie and Touched by an Angel that I watch.  That makes me wonder if what I believe is actually true in real life, or is rather somebody’s value system that he or she is trying to propagate.

There is a significant part of me that likes to be inspired and uplifted, and so I tend to prefer the sorts of movies that Hecht talks about over movies like Bonnie and Clyde.  I don’t like movies that are too corny and cheesy, mind you, but movies that have values while still being believable, on some level.  Of course, what is believable to me may be corny and cheesy to someone else.

Nixonland 1

I’ve been reading Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland for some time now.  What has especially stood out to me in my reading of that book has been Perlstein’s discussion of the inner-cities, where there were riots.

The inner-cities had problems, to put it mildly.  The housing was old and dilapidated.  Unemployment was high.  And African-Americans could not really move out of the inner-cities to someplace else on account of racial discrimination.  According to Perlstein’s narration, anti-discrimination laws and government programs were not sufficiently ameliorating these problems.  Moreover, I recall reading in other books that businesses were reluctant to set up shop in the inner-cities, due to apprehensions about crime.  Imagine being trapped, with no way to move up and out of one’s predicament.  That’s what I imagine it was like for a number of African-Americans who lived in the inner-cities.  It may still be like that.  (I speak here from my limited knowledge and experience.)

One of the Democratic candidates for President in 1968—-it may have been Eugene McCarthy—-proposed mass transit as a way to give African-Americans in the inner-city mobility so that they can find work in other areas.  That sounds to me like a good idea.

Kennedy & Nixon 2

On page 20 of Kennedy & Nixon, Chris Matthews states regarding Richard Nixon: “Lacking a distinctive charm, he made a virtue of his regularness, offering himself as champion of the squares.”

Rick Perlstein makes a similar point in his book, Nixonland: that Nixon, who could not join the elite Franklins, became the champion of the regular Joes who were not Franklins.

If one does not fit into the popular club, one may decide to make friends with the so-called regular Joes.  Of course, this statement is rather simplistic, for it’s not necessarily the case that a person tries to join the popular club, fails, then decides to become friends with the regular Joes.  A person may never have officially tried to join the popular club but simply finds herself outside of it, and thus gravitates towards regular Joes (or, in this case, Janes).  Maybe the person does not see the regular Joes as Plan B but actually likes certain regular Joes: they have a connection, a real friendship.

One of my issues is that, when I am around regular Joes, I wonder if I am their Plan B, and if they would prefer to be around someone cooler than me.  I know, it’s been years since I’ve been in high school.  On some level, the situation has changed since then.  But, on some level, it has not, for cliques still exist.
Another point that I want to make is that I don’t see regular Joes as ordinary or boring.  I may not find every regular Joe’s life interesting, but I do admire anyone who is able to socialize and to do small talk, and that includes a number of regular Joes.  Many regular Joes are able to make themselves appear interesting to enough people that they are able to make friends, or to get married.  I respect them for that.  I envy them for that.

Another point: There are some elite Franklin types who are down-to-earth, accepting people.  They may be rich or educated, but they don’t put on airs.  They don’t give off the impression that you have to impress them for them to accept you.  They’re nice to you, if you’re nice to them.

The Final Days 13

On page 404 of The Final Days, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein depict a conversation between White House Chief of Staff (under President Richard Nixon) Alexander Haig, and White House Counsel for Watergate J. Fred Buzhardt.  They are discussing whether or not Richard Nixon will commit suicide under the pressures of the Watergate scandal.  Haig fears that Nixon might, whereas Buzhardt doubts that Nixon will, saying that Nixon was a tough and a religious man.

In this telling of the conversation, Haig brings up a movie in an attempt to shed light on the situation:
“Haig said the President was a battered man, strained to his limit.  He compared Nixon’s behavior to that of Captain Queeg, the erratic naval officer in The Caine Mutiny.  Queeg had been relieved of duty by his second in command because he was unable to function as his ship swirled out of control in a typhoon.  Buzhardt thought the analogy argued against a suicide.  Queeg was a fighter.  He had fought to the end.”

It’s easy to look at this interaction about Captain Queeg and to ask, “Who cares?”  How is Captain Queeg even relevant to Richard Nixon’s situation?  Nixon is not Captain Queeg, but is Richard Nixon.

But my impression is that reference to movies, TV shows, and books occurs often when people try to understand and to navigate their way through real life.  You’d think that people would see this as a no-no, realizing that stories are fictional and do not always portray things as they really are.

In some cases, though, people might be inspired by something they see on television to go out and to try to make the world a better place.  On page 8 of Nixonland, Rick Perlstein refers to a white minister from Boston who went to Selma to help out with the Civil Rights movement.  He had just watched the movie Judgment at Nuremberg, which was about people doing nothing while the Nazis committed their atrocities.  He decided that he would not sit back on the sidelines during one of the greatest struggles for justice in the twentieth century, so he went to Selma.  Unfortunately, he was beaten to death by local thugs.  He took his stand, and his stand was righteous.  But his own life was not the sort of happy ending that one often sees in stories.  But he may have known the risks when he went into the situation.

No More Vietnams, by Richard Nixon

I finished Richard Nixon’s No More Vietnams.  In this book, Nixon defends the Vietnam War as a noble cause.  He critiques how his presidential predecessors conducted the war, defends his own approach, and blames the Democratic U.S. Congress’ failure to continue providing support for South Vietnam for Communist North Vietnam’s takeover of that country.  Nixon in later years would express regret for the title of this book, No More Vietnams, saying that he should have entitled it A Noble Cause.  Nixon’s argument in the book was not that the United States should be paralyzed from intervening in other countries out of a fear of another war like Vietnam, but rather that, if the U.S. had to intervene, it would do what it takes to win—-that it would not lose, as it did in Vietnam.

I was initially hesitant to read No More Vietnams because I had already read other books that discussed Nixon’s stances and strategies regarding the Vietnam War.  I read his memoirs, and his criticisms of President Johnson as well as his own approach to the war were significant elements in the narratives of some of the biographies about Nixon that I had read.  But I am glad that I read No More Vietnams because, overall, Nixon goes into more detail in that book in terms of defending his own point-of-view.  I wouldn’t say that this is the case regarding his explanation for why the United States entered the war, for, on this, he simply states that “The United States intervened in the Vietnam War to prevent North Vietnam from imposing its totalitarian government on South Vietnam through military conquest, both because a Communist victory would lead to massive human suffering for the people of Vietnam and because it would damage American strategic interests and pose a threat to our allies and friends in other non-Communist nations” (page 152, in an edition in which No More Vietnams is attached to another book by Nixon, Real Peace).  Nixon believes that the answer to why the U.S. was in Vietnam is “simple” and “apparent.”

But Nixon does go into detail when he defends his point-of-view on relevant issues: why he believed that Ho Chi Minh was a Communist rather than merely a Vietnamese nationalist; how we can know that Nixon’s military strategy was not targeting civilians; why Nixon did not believed that most young people were against him; and the list goes on.  When defending his decision to intervene in Cambodia, where North Vietnam supposedly had bases from which it was channeling supplies to the Communists in Vietnam, Nixon responds to the charge that he was violating Cambodia’s neutrality under a Geneva agreement by quoting the agreement itself: it said that the U.S. did not have to honor a country’s neutrality if its enemy was using that country as a base.  Nixon also argues that, under President Lyndon Johnson, there actually was a Gulf of Tonkin incident, contrary to the claims of some that the U.S. made that up as a pretense to escalate its involvement in the Vietnam War, for Nixon states that the North Vietnamese account of the war assumes that the Gulf of Tonkin incident occurred.  And, while Nixon seems to acknowledge that the Tet offensive was on some level a loss for the U.S., he also notes that it severely damaged the Communist forces in Vietnam and set them back significantly. There were often times when I wished that Nixon would document his claims, either through footnotes, or by referring to sources within his text.  There were times when he did, but I wished that he had done so more.  Overall, however, I found his arguments to be detailed and thoughtful.

Something that interested me in reading No More Vietnams was that Nixon, although he criticized his predecessors for not being tough enough in their prosecution of the war, acknowledged that he himself was limited in terms of his ability or willingness to be aggressive.  Nixon said that President Johnson was reluctant to be too tough because that could anger the Soviets and the Chinese, but Nixon indicated that he himself had similar concerns when he was President.  Another factor was the lack of popular support for the war, which Nixon apparently found to be constrictive.  Overall, I found Nixon’s discussion of the Vietnam War in No More Vietnams to be open and honest about its challenges, at least in comparison to what he wrote in his memoirs.  Nixon, in both his memoirs and No More Vietnams, portrays the South Vietnamese army as brave and heroic, against detractors who considered it to be a lost cause.  But Nixon in No More Vietnams acknowledges that his policy of Vietnamization (which is having the South Vietnamese army take up more of the slack of fighting the war) took a while to be effective.

There is a lot more in No More Vietnams than what I mention in this blog, but I will stop here.  I found a lot of what Nixon said to be persuasive, but I should probably read a source that is more critical of his policy on Vietnam.  I’m hoping that Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland can be that source.  I have already read some critiques of Nixon’s policies: Jerry Voorhis had his criticisms in The Strange Case of Richard Milhous Nixon, Joan Hoff was rather critical, and, in biographies about Nixon, there is often a summary of the arguments that certain Nixon aides were making when they were suggesting that the President not attack Cambodia.  But, overall, I have not found their arguments to be persuasive, for, if Cambodia was being used by North Vietnam as a base for supplies, then it makes sense for the U.S. to attack the North Vietnamese bases in Cambodia.  The only anti-Nixon or anti-Vietnam War argument that makes sense to me is that the war was taking the lives of many innocent civilians, and that makes me second-guess whether the war was worth the effort, even if I can understand the rationale for it.  Consequently, while I accept Nixon’s portrayal of North Vietnam as a brutal Communist country, I am open to hearing whatever pacifist arguments there may be as to what alternatives there were to war: was there a way to stop Communist North Vietnam’s expansion, without military force?  I am skeptical, but I am open.  The issue is relevant even today, as the U.S. continues to debate military interventions, whether in the form of drones, troops, or bombs.

President Nixon: Alone in the White House 12

On pages 378-379 of President Nixon: Alone in the White House, Richard Reeves talks about the issue of I.Q.  Reeves quotes a memo to President Richard Nixon by Pat Buchanan, which was attached to an article by Richard Herrnstein in the Atlantic Monthly.  Herrnstein's article argued that heredity, not environment, determined a person's intelligence.  Buchanan sought to apply this idea to debates regarding racial integration:

"Every study we have shows blacks 15 I.Q. point below whites on average....If there is no refutation, then it seems to me that a lot of what we are doing in terms of integration of blacks and whites----but even more so, poor and well-to-do----is likely to result in accommodation than it is in perpetual friction----as the incapable are placed consciously by government side-by-side with the capable."

Pat Moynihan, who advised President Nixon on matters of domestic policy, had different advice.  Moynihan stated:

"It seems to me essential for you to proceed on the assumption that the scientists have not proved their case....Herrnstein is probably right that the world's work is done by persons of talent, but the world is kept together by the decency of quite ordinary people...."

Nixon denied the existence of inherent equality.  Actually, Reeves states that Nixon told him in a 1982 two-hour conversation that he (Nixon) believed that Asians were intellectually superior to Caucasians, and Caucasians were intellectually superior to blacks.  But Nixon ended up agreeing with Moynihan on how to respond to the Herrnstein article.  Nixon said: "It's clear that everybody is not equal, but we must ensure that anybody might go to the top."

Here are some thoughts:

1.  On the issue of I.Q. and race, I linked in my post here to a column by African-American conservative Thomas Sowell arguing that I.Q. is not based on race.  Sowell cites examples of African-Americans doing better on I.Q. tests than whites.  Moreover, others have argued that I.Q. tests are culturally biased.

2.  I disagree with the notion that one racial group is superior to another racial group, but I still appreciate a point that Moynihan made: that even people with average I.Q.s can contribute to society.  It wouldn't be that good of a society if only those with high I.Q.s could make contributions, while everyone else was deprived of opportunity.  It's a better society if everyone is involved and makes a contribution.

3.  I think that Buchanan's comment is sad.  Buchanan is a mix, in my opinion.  On the one hand, you find tragic comments like the one in that memo.  On the other hand, I read him in another memo encouraging Nixon in 1968 to reach out to African-Americans.  Buchanan has also expressed admiration for African-Americans' religiosity, and he has argued that free trade is bad because it takes away jobs from African-Americans.

4.  Overall, at least in my reading thus far, Reeves' portrayal of President Nixon's record on civil rights is not particularly glowing.  Reeves quotes racist things that Nixon allegedly said.  He cites a memo in which Nixon shamelessly advocated criticizing judicial activism with a wink-wink to the South.  He talks about segregationists whom Nixon wanted to appoint to the U.S. Supreme Court, including the attorney who "represented Little Rock in its 1957 efforts to maintain segregated schools" (page 382).  Reeves treats Nixon's Philadelphia Plan to increase African-American employment in construction as an attempt by Nixon to "deflect criticism on racial matters" (page 376).  And yet, there are times when President Nixon listens to progressive advice.  On one occasion, Nixon listened to Vice-President Spiro Agnew on the issue of housing.  (UPDATE: In Nixonland, however, Rick Perlstein says that Agnew argued that the cuts Nixon was thinking about would hurt white suburbanites.) And Nixon agreed with Moynihan's advice to ignore the Herrnstein article.