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To: middie
Perhaps you don't realize it, but Stephen Ambrose's most important biography was not about Ike, but rather, it was his 3-volume biography of Richard Nixon. Germane to your post, let me quote from the Epilogue of Ambrose's 3rd volume of Nixon biography:

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.

127 posted on 12/30/2005 1:00:07 PM PST by I. M. Trenchant
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To: I. M. Trenchant

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.


128 posted on 12/30/2005 5:24:44 PM PST by middie
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