Posted on 12/24/2005 8:25:27 PM PST by GodfearingTexan
Please forgive me, but I need some assistance. I had lunch recently with a close family member who insisted that President Bush is leading the most corrupt admin in history. I countered that it wasn't, that in fact Clinton had easily a more corrupt admin and had more people indicted than any other. He replied, no, that was Nixon. I honestly just don't have time to research all of this, and I know that there are people on here that either know the answer off the top of their heads or can tell me exactly where I can look it up.
I'm trying to remember what evil doing Nixon did that LBJ and Kennedy did not - can you help?
Okay - I've had it with you! You're telling me that the program never existed - that I never saw what I saw. Well .. I'm telling you - I SAW IT!
If you don't like it - lump it - because this is a total waste of my time! I am done with this conversation.
Grant, Harding, Clinton and Carter.
Will you kindly name one historian who has said he believes that?
The only individual whom I know has suggested that Nixon authorized the break-in is Jeb Stuart Magruder, and he only said it about three years ago, after having said just the opposite for the preceding thirty years. I know of no professional journalist, author or scholar who gives credence to what Magruder claimed. Even Stanley Kutler, the virulent Nixon-hater who edits, sometimes quite creatively, the periodic publication of Nixon's White House tapes, is on record as saying that Magruder's claim is not credible.
I suggest two books that will answer your quandry. I don't recall the precise titles but I'm sure they're on Amazon. One is, I believe, ''The Imperial Presidency,'' and the other is a three volume sequence by Stephen Ambrose (the late, superb military historian and Pres. Eisenhower's official biographer). There are several others, but those are the ones I've read.
But neither can it be said that Nixon was guilty of unique crimes for which he deserved singular punishment.
More, in his Acknowledgements to his 3rd volume of Nixon biography, Ambrose wrote:
"...in volume 1 I developed a grudging admiration for the man (he had been right on the Hiss case, while I had been wrong, he was outstanding in his support for the Marshall Plan and for civil rights; he served Ike well and faithfully as Vice President), in volume two I came to have a quite genuine and deep admiration for many of his policies (detente and China most of all, but others as well), and in volume three, I found to my astonishment, that I had developed a liking for him."
More generally, if you will trouble to read Ambrose's Epilogue to his final (3rd) volume of Nixon biography, you will learn that, although Ambrose had not fully come to realize Nixon's greatness as a leader (for that, see Aitken's book, in which no effort is made to 'coverup' Nixon's dark side), Ambrose came to the conclusion, in the final sentence of his 3-volume biography:
When Nixon resigned, we lost more than we gained
I have come to the conclusion that you are rather like the scientist who proclaimed he did not believe that Einstein was correct when he claimed E=mc2. When asked why he did not believe E=mc2, he replied that he had read somewhere, but didn't quite remember where (you manifest all the failings of a political journalist and none of the makings of a competent historian), that Einstein behaved very badly toward his wife and was, in other ways, a very unsavoury character. Therefore, the disbeliever concluded, he could not accept that such a person could achieve great things; whence E does not equal mc2.
No post WWII U.S. president can claim a record of achievement that matches that of Richard Nixon. This is easily demonstrated by listing his achievements, but I shall not do so here simply because Aitken has done it so well in his Nixon biography. As I have noted previously, Nixon was a serious man who did more than any other U.S. president or vice president to 'tear down that wall' between the free world and the Communist tyrannies. While he gave his magnificent address to the people of the USSR on May 28, 1972, a single action that did more to bring about an end to the Cold War than any other single event -- by bringing a new generation of Gorbachev-like leaders to the fore in the USSR and generally giving glassnost the acceleration that was needed -- a group of bumbling, misguided minions were, completely unknown to Nixon, making their first illegal entry into the Watergate headquarters of the DNC.
Sadly (for your own enlightenment), you persist in focussing your attention on the perpetrators of one of the hundreds of cheap burglaries that occurred in Washington on May 28th, 1972 and ignoring an event of truly historic proportions that was taking place in the USSR when a U.S. president, for the first time, addressed the public of the USSR. It was Nixon's single greatest achievement that he brought about an end to The Age Of Anxiety and the fear of the The Bomb that had plagued the globe for more than a quarter century following WWII.
Sanctimonious outrage is a devalued currency that you would be well to discard.
What in the wide, wide world of sports are you talking about? I'm neither your history professor nor your librarian to look up things for you. I read the books and told you where you could find a response your question. I appreciate your vigor about Nixon but I don't recall arguing or issuing a diatribe. Congratulations on your rant; if only I understood it.
How soon we forget? The Clinton years were lined up with scandals like dominoes one after another. All the 'gates, controversial cabinet picks, sex scandals, Vince Foster and Ron Brown deaths, impeachment etc....Slick Willie's legacy is rather putrid indeed.
I did not ask you a question and I seriously doubt that you have ever read a book.
Politicians are corrupt.
That is just the way that it is.
Please visit your private mail
I seriously doubt your lucidity and thus invite you to refrain from contacting me. To state it in terms that you'd be more likely to understand: Pound sand!
Do you seriously think the message quoted above had to be sent by private mail? You implied in this thread that a notable historian, Stephen Ambrose, had written 'something somewhere' that supported your general view, expressed in this thread, that Nixon's transgressions were more serious than those of his White House predecessors. For the reasons I explicated in post #127 -- by quoting from Ambrose's published words -- this was demonstrably not the case. I hope this is lucid enough.
I have often been startled to find that some of the most ardent Nixonophobes have minimized the significance of Nixon's unacceptable and imprudent behaviour in connection with Watergate. You might be interested in reading an article by Gore Vidal -- surely one of Nixon's most ardent opponents when Nixon was in office. It is titled Not The Best Man's Best Man. It is very well-written, humorous, and is contained in his collection of U.S.A. essays. Vidal not only asserts that Nixon's 'crimes' were petty when compared with those of LBJ or JFK, but that Nixon would be seen, by history, as the greatest U.S. president of the last half of the 20th century. The article originally appeared in Esquire in 1983, more than a decade after Watergate.
Of course, at your request, I shall not, in future, address you or your posts in either the FR or (as I never have and never would because I don't subscribe to private communications in public forums) by private mail. A Happy New Year to you.
truthfulnow
Nothing in post #132 indicates that Nixon ever ordered a break-in at the DNC, and I know of no credible sources (Magruder is not credible) who claim that Nixon had fore-knowledge of the Watergate break-in or that he ordered that it be undertaken. Indeed, Stanley Kutler was one of the first to cast doubt, publicly, on Magruder's afterthought about Nixon having had fore-knowledge of the break-in. Being a card-carrying Nixonophobe, Kutler's opinion did much to discredit Magruder's claim. If you can provide quotations to the contrary, I should be indebted if you would present them in this forum. On the contrary, there are several credible sources (Stephen Ambrose included) who have noted that LBJ gave direct orders to J. Edgar Hoover to place a bug on Nixon's election-campaign plane in 1968, but admittedly, I have never found that information in any "lefty source" for the simple reason that it would dwarf the significance of Nixon's complicity (unquestioned by me) in covering up the crimes of his subordinates. I have never questioned that Nixon was complicit in the coverup from the outset. I had believed this to be the case from the moment CREEP and Mitchell were moved out of the White House, long before Watergate became a cause celebre. As I indicated in my first post in this thread (#64), Nixon's complicity in the coverup was likely owing to his certain knowledge that his own general attitudes, which were well-known to his subordinates, had inspired this sort action -- however distant the actions were from anything he himself would have sanctioned if he had known in advance exactly what they were planning to do (especially at the DNC in the Watergate).
All differences of opinion aside, I am pleased to wish you all the best in the New Year.
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.