I've recently watched PBS' "Presidents" series on John F. Kennedy, Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon. Oh, the memories of the sixties and seventies! The JFK program affirmed my admiration for the man whose presidency and influence were cut tragically short. The LBJ series made me want to go back and re-read all four volumes of Robert Caro's extraordinary biography of Johnson, one of the most influential and tragic of presidents. I had commented in the past about what President Obama could learn from LBJ, who knew how to cajole members of Congress to pass his tectonic civil rights legislation.
The segment on Nixon brought back so many memories of the early 1970s, when I was working in Washington, Nixon was in the White House and the "plumbers" were in the Watergate offices of the Democratic National Committee. I've always thought that Nixon's problems as president were the result of his own paranoia, his distrust of everyone and his resentment of people born wealthier and luckier than he. The PBS segment bolsters that impression but also gives credit to Nixon's visionary foreign policy. Under Nixon there was a global strategy for building peace through alliances with other nations. His opening to China, his Middle East negotiations, and his arms accord with the Soviet Union were portions of an overall strategy to balance global interests and power for peaceful progress. Even his Vietnam strategy, although never successfully implemented, sought a peaceful, political exit from a military stalemate.
In an election year, it would be comforting to think that our presidential candidates have a grand strategy for balancing trade, military power and national interest. I'm not hearing that from either national candidate this year, so we might well stumble into another war or a disastrous series of protective tariffs that cripple world trade and the global economy.
Showing posts with label Nixon. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Nixon. Show all posts
Monday, August 22, 2016
Wednesday, July 6, 2016
Best qualified presidential candidate ever?
President Obama said it during the Hillary Clinton campaign stop in Charlotte Tuesday. He said Hillary Clinton is the best qualified person ever to run for president. That sort of thing has been claimed before with surprisingly little contradiction -- No one has ever run for president, they've claimed, with more experience than Hillary Clinton.
I beg to differ, not to dispute that HRC has experience or that she is qualified for the presidency, at least in terms of experience. But the most qualified ever? Really?
A few candidates from the not-too-distant past had experiences that could match or surpass the former one-term senator and secretary of state. Franklin Roosevelt had been governor of a large state (New York) and had served as secretary of the Navy. Lyndon Johnson had served in the House and the Senate, had been on congressional staff, and had been perhaps the most effective majority leader of the Senate in the upper chamber's history. He also served nearly four years as vice president. George H.W. Bush had been a member of Congress, ambassador to China, director of the CIA and vice president for two terms. Dwight D. Eisenhower was light on Washington experience, but he had successfully managed the largest, most complex and probably most difficult military alliance in history. Richard Nixon had been a member of the House and the Senate and held key congressional leadership posts, and he served two terms as vice president. (All of which goes to prove that experience isn't everything.)
Some presidents' successful terms help prove that experience isn't everything. Harry Truman had little to recommend him in 1945, when he inherited the presidency after FDR's sudden death. He had been a machine politician from Missouri with a slim record of congressional accomplishments. He had served only a few months as vice president and had been so out of the loop that he didn't even know about the atomic bomb. He was not a college graduate. But many historians now consider Truman one of our best presidents.
And then there's Abraham Lincoln, a one-term congressman and failed candidate for Senate. He was elected president only because of a catastrophic split in the Democratic Party and was so detested by many of his countrymen that they withdrew from the Union before he was even inaugurated. His strategy to keep the country united failed and resulted in a tragic, four-year war that killed 600,000 or more. He second-guessed his generals and frequently fired them. He was expected to lose his 1864 re-election bid (against a general he had fired) and was saved only by a change in battlefield success. Despite all the failures and lack of solid experience, Lincoln is considered one of the two or three best presidents in history.
Let's grant Hillary Clinton the fact that she has experience as a cabinet secretary, a senator and as first lady (which should count for something). But is she the "most experienced ever"? Not by a long shot.
I beg to differ, not to dispute that HRC has experience or that she is qualified for the presidency, at least in terms of experience. But the most qualified ever? Really?
A few candidates from the not-too-distant past had experiences that could match or surpass the former one-term senator and secretary of state. Franklin Roosevelt had been governor of a large state (New York) and had served as secretary of the Navy. Lyndon Johnson had served in the House and the Senate, had been on congressional staff, and had been perhaps the most effective majority leader of the Senate in the upper chamber's history. He also served nearly four years as vice president. George H.W. Bush had been a member of Congress, ambassador to China, director of the CIA and vice president for two terms. Dwight D. Eisenhower was light on Washington experience, but he had successfully managed the largest, most complex and probably most difficult military alliance in history. Richard Nixon had been a member of the House and the Senate and held key congressional leadership posts, and he served two terms as vice president. (All of which goes to prove that experience isn't everything.)
Some presidents' successful terms help prove that experience isn't everything. Harry Truman had little to recommend him in 1945, when he inherited the presidency after FDR's sudden death. He had been a machine politician from Missouri with a slim record of congressional accomplishments. He had served only a few months as vice president and had been so out of the loop that he didn't even know about the atomic bomb. He was not a college graduate. But many historians now consider Truman one of our best presidents.
And then there's Abraham Lincoln, a one-term congressman and failed candidate for Senate. He was elected president only because of a catastrophic split in the Democratic Party and was so detested by many of his countrymen that they withdrew from the Union before he was even inaugurated. His strategy to keep the country united failed and resulted in a tragic, four-year war that killed 600,000 or more. He second-guessed his generals and frequently fired them. He was expected to lose his 1864 re-election bid (against a general he had fired) and was saved only by a change in battlefield success. Despite all the failures and lack of solid experience, Lincoln is considered one of the two or three best presidents in history.
Let's grant Hillary Clinton the fact that she has experience as a cabinet secretary, a senator and as first lady (which should count for something). But is she the "most experienced ever"? Not by a long shot.
Friday, August 8, 2014
I remember the end of the Watergate scandal
Forty years ago today, I was on vacation in North Carolina, far removed from my subscription to the Washington Post, where I had followed faithfully the reporting about President Nixon's "second-rate burglary."
Instead of being among the throngs who waited outside the White House or who went about their business in the nation's capital while a president resigned for the first time in American history, I sat on the floor of my father-in-law's house and watched Richard Nixon announce that he would resign. I would have preferred being in Washington, reading in minute detail the Washington Post's reporting and hearing the talk of Washingtonians all around me.
As mesmerized as I was by the Watergate scandal and the persistent, detailed reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, I did not despise Nixon, as so many of my generation did. I recognized his political skills and even admired the boldness of his foreign policy. But by 1974, after two years of watching the administration crumble under the weight of its own paranoia, deceit and disdain for the law and the Constitution, I was contemptuous of Nixon, who thought he was invulnerable after his 1972 landslide.
As I watched his speech on television, as he spoke of sacrifice and family and his own betrayal of American principles, I felt sorry for the man. I remarked that if he had given that speech two years earlier, at the beginning of the scandal, he might have avoided impeachment.
When Nixon flew off from the White House lawn, days before I returned to my job in Washington and my apartment in the suburbs, I felt a sense of relief that the nightmare was over. Gerald Ford, whom few (including Nixon) ever considered presidential material, turned out to be a reassuring father figure when America needed one. At Jimmy Carter's inauguration, after Ford's crushing and narrow defeat, the new president graciously acknowledged Ford's "healing" of America.
Forty years after Watergate, lesser scandals seem larger, public scorn of elected officials is more widespread and political anger is never-ending. Many pundits in 1974 celebrated by saying "the system worked" — Nixon resigned because the news media performed its watchdog role, the Senate was ready to remove him from office, and a new president took office without a military coup or an insurrection. But the legacy of Watergate is a different outlook from the American public. Politics is seen not as a means of running a democracy but as a slimey, crooked business. The news media, certainly one of the heroes of Watergate, suffer from a distrust almost as deep as the public's scorn for politicians.
Watergate is history, as distant in the past as Spanish Civil War had been when I was a young man in Washington. Like war, its impact lingers long after the big guns have been silenced.
Instead of being among the throngs who waited outside the White House or who went about their business in the nation's capital while a president resigned for the first time in American history, I sat on the floor of my father-in-law's house and watched Richard Nixon announce that he would resign. I would have preferred being in Washington, reading in minute detail the Washington Post's reporting and hearing the talk of Washingtonians all around me.
As mesmerized as I was by the Watergate scandal and the persistent, detailed reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, I did not despise Nixon, as so many of my generation did. I recognized his political skills and even admired the boldness of his foreign policy. But by 1974, after two years of watching the administration crumble under the weight of its own paranoia, deceit and disdain for the law and the Constitution, I was contemptuous of Nixon, who thought he was invulnerable after his 1972 landslide.
As I watched his speech on television, as he spoke of sacrifice and family and his own betrayal of American principles, I felt sorry for the man. I remarked that if he had given that speech two years earlier, at the beginning of the scandal, he might have avoided impeachment.
When Nixon flew off from the White House lawn, days before I returned to my job in Washington and my apartment in the suburbs, I felt a sense of relief that the nightmare was over. Gerald Ford, whom few (including Nixon) ever considered presidential material, turned out to be a reassuring father figure when America needed one. At Jimmy Carter's inauguration, after Ford's crushing and narrow defeat, the new president graciously acknowledged Ford's "healing" of America.
Forty years after Watergate, lesser scandals seem larger, public scorn of elected officials is more widespread and political anger is never-ending. Many pundits in 1974 celebrated by saying "the system worked" — Nixon resigned because the news media performed its watchdog role, the Senate was ready to remove him from office, and a new president took office without a military coup or an insurrection. But the legacy of Watergate is a different outlook from the American public. Politics is seen not as a means of running a democracy but as a slimey, crooked business. The news media, certainly one of the heroes of Watergate, suffer from a distrust almost as deep as the public's scorn for politicians.
Watergate is history, as distant in the past as Spanish Civil War had been when I was a young man in Washington. Like war, its impact lingers long after the big guns have been silenced.
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