Here's some interesting reading:
Posted on 06/26/2008 9:32:41 PM PDT by gusopol3
The near simultaneous publication of historian Sean Wilentz book “Age of Reagan” and the publication of activist / reporter Rick Pearlstein’s “Nixonland”, previously praised on these pages, has caused a dust-up over who most personified and ultimately transformed the modern conservative age which played out on the New Republic website.
Although I am neither historian nor an unbiased reporter, I was a participant in the Nixon realignment which ultimately begat the Reagan revolution. .....
The change in Richard Nixon comes with Goldwater’s sweeping nomination and what Nixon then understands can be salvaged, even nurtured,in the ashes of Barry’s defeat. “You can’t win without the right, and you can’t win with just the right,” Nixon told me over a martini in his Saddle River, New Jersey home.....
Reagan was a staunch defender and bitter ender when Nixon got embroiled in the Watergate scandal and was forced to resign.
In the White House years, President Reagan was in constant touch with President Nixon almost always having Nancy Reagan on the bedroom extension so they all could talk and she could listen to the conversations.
(Excerpt) Read more at stonezone.com ...
Reagan was great. Nixon was a travesty to this country. Completely different situations.
I see that you have bought into the liberal propaganda. Nixon was guilty of excessive loyalty to his staff.
coming after embarassment JFK and criminal LBJ and before execrable Carter, a travesty is high ground.
And instituting price and wage controls. Seriously not cool.
Nixon begat Reagan... BULL! The money men behind Nixon got burned once in 1962. Many of us placed our trust in Nixon in 1968 and in the end, we got burned. If Nixon hadn't gotten himself fingered as a player in the Watergate Affair, good chance Reagan would have been elected POTUS in 1976. Only then, could Nixon receive some credit for Reagan's election. Btw, Nixon was no conservative, but he was a crook. And Reagan's successes had nothing to do with Nixon.
Nixon thought that the socialist democrats were a bigger threat to us than our foreign enemies.
And he was right, but the socialist/liberals/MSM got him before he could get them.
Nixon did some great things and laid the groundwork for future conservatives but it has all been erased by the medias constant drumbeat of watergate.
If Nixon hadn’t resigned, there would have been zero chance of a President Reagan. The GOP nominee in ‘76 would have been Nixon’s successor - perhaps John Connally or someone. And they probably would have won.
No he was not. His biggest mistake was taking the advice of his lawyer-the man behind the Watergate breakin- John Dean. John Dean was actually advising Nixon while in contact with investigating committees, and the advice he was giving was what got Nixon in trouble.
Watergate or no Watergate, Reagan was planning on running for the GOP nomination in 1976. He had made a stab at the GOP nomination in 1968 in an effort to stop Nixon. By default, Jimmah Carter turned out to be the anti-Nixon/anti-Watergate/anti-Vietnam War candidate. Had Nixon survived Watergate, the GOP would've been in decent shape for a serious effort by Reagan to become the nominee. Maybe with Connerly as his running mate.
NIXON WAS GUILTY OF EXCESSIVE LOYALTY TO HIS STAFF.
You are right, that’s was his downfall. I saw it happen to a Chief of Police once. Thanks for posting that.
The liberal establishment was out to get Nixon since he first ran for the House in 1946. Nixon supplied his enemies with the ammunition that lead to his resignation. I lived through Watergate and watched the Senate Congressional hearings. They were very popular in 1973. Nixon’s involvement in the Watergate cover up lead to his downfall. I supported Nixon in 1968 as a member of the Young Republicans club and found his behavior highly questionable. Nixon was a crook.
Nixon wouldn’t even make the list of the 10 worst presidents of the 20th Century.
1. Carter
2. LBJ
3. Wilson
4. Kennedy
5. Wilson
6. Roosevelt (F)
7. Ford
8. Clinton
9. Hoover
10. Bush
“Nixon wouldn’t even make the list of the 10 worst presidents of the 20th Century.”
I like your list. Is it your composition, or do you have a link to background on the selection process behind the list?
Thaks.
OldB, you are so right about Nixon, ‘Nixon thought that the socialist democrats were a bigger threat to us than our foreign enemies. And he was right...the Communist/Left never forgave Nixon just like they hated Tailgunner Joe and possibly also Robert Kennedy who I seem to remember, had a strong anti-Communist stance. One day History will reveal that most of the problems we have in this country have originated from the domestic Left with hand in glove support by our worst external enemies...IMO we have reached a point where we now face a distinct possibility of a Government that has become the enemy of America, Progressive Fascism or Tyranny.
Truman should be on that list.
Nixon was the first competent president in decades and he assumed the presidency in the middle of a full-up Vietnam War, the Middle East crises - which begat the Oil Embargo, and the stunningly expensive Apollo space program. Despite this tough ground, he reenergized the country and for a while at least, wrested control back away from the Left and gave us some pride in our country.
His approaches to the Soviet Union and China were masterful and began the process that ended the nuclear brinksmanship that every other administration kept increasing and gave Reagan the opening he needed to finally finish off Soviet Communism.
The picture this generation gets of Nixon is furnished by the same pro-communist twits that thought the Viet Cong were "freedom fighters".
Nixon was great man and a fine president and the real tragedy was that JFK was elected instead of Nixon in 1960 - the Vietnam War would most likely never occurred and we would have seen the fall of Communism - and saved hundreds of thousands of lives - much earlier.
You must not have lived through that period to be buying the Left’s propaganda on Nixon..
I was born May 1969 so I know very little except for the impeachment.
Needless to say, the histories written by the people that succeeded in overthrowing Nixon will be somewhat biased. It took several attempts at "scandals" (the "secret bombing of Cambodia", the Milk Fund Scandal", etc.) before the Left finally got traction through their instrument, the media, to overthrow Nixon.
Consider this: The North Vietnamese violated the Peace Accords and went for a direct armor-supported invasion to overthrow the South Vietnamese in the Easter Offensive 1973. Nixon stood solidly in their path and ordered B-52s and carrier bombers to attack the NVA columns to stop the assault. He also supported Israel directly and warned Brezhnev off during Sadat's attack on Israel in 1973.
The enemy knew that they had to get rid of Nixon to win - so the American Left pulled out the stops to come up with any reason possible to eliminate him.
They were successful, and Vietnam fell while our country was led by a treasonous Democratic Congress and the hapless Jerry Ford.
Quod Erat Disputatem
Thank you for the post. I just love FREEPERS because of the information learned. Do you know that I went to a Catholic School and still mentioned impeachment (even though that was the extent of the history lesson on Nixon).
I learn something new everyday on this website full of FRiends!!!
Interesting piece and I’m sure some of Stone’s points are very good, but Reagan was unique and his instincts were completely “Un-Nixon-like”.
And I’m sure Stone was very close to both men and all their insiders, so I would have expected him not to misspell Mike Deaver as “Mike Beaver”.
I agree there . Wilenz on Reagan is like Rove on Kerry, only less fair.
One of the biggest points made, and one I had forgotten over the years was that Reagan , unlike Goldwater,was a strong supprorter of Nixon at the depths of Watergate. If past associations and continued relationships are revealing of proclivities and values, ala Obama-Wright, Obama-Ayers, then you have to look at Reagan -Nixon and ask, what did he see in him?
you know, I’m finding spelling slips through the years (I’m not as good a speller as I once was and I know I have a harder time looking at words and deciding “that’s right” or “that’s wrong”)
Off the top of my head in the middle of the night. I surprised myself at how well Clinton came out - perhaps because he didn’t accomplish much.
I give him a lot of points for ending World War II in a way that minimized US casualties. He also inherited a bad hand in Europe, but stepped up to the plate to hold the line with the Reds where he could. (Most notably the Berlin airlift, also Greece.) And don't forget his quick action to recognize Israel. Again, making the best of a mess created by others.
Domestically, most bad policies were carryovers, not new.
That is also what I have always thought about Nixon. I bellieve - after the Watergate breakin became news - that if he immediately fired all involved, he would have survived it. I never believed he was a crook. I do believe he was paranoid but with good reason. After tagging Alger Hiss the leftists had him in their sights. They tried to get him in the 50’s but failed. And then considering the press he had to endure leading up to and including his Presidency, who wouldn’t be paranoid.
Why is Wilson listed twice? Did you mean Harding? If not, where is Harding?
After that, the GOP rode to power on the coalition of cultural populists and economic elitists.
Reagan tapped into the newly arrived cultural populists with the cultural imagery of the "shining city on the hill".
Unfortunately for the GOP, this coalition of cultural populists and economic elitists is dissolving.
They both deal with the broad subject of the GOP becoming the Populist Party.
BTW, Mike Huckabee said that the Reagan coalition(or Nixon coalition) between cultural populists and economic elitists was over, but that he could build a new GOP coalition between the economic populists and cultural populists.
The reality is found in the 2006 elections where cultural populists were helping to elect economic populists(dems) such as Shuler, Testor, Allen, McKaskill, and others.
we wish; Webb
I'll pay attention to your thesis
There are three political dynamics in play.
This rising tide of populism which is affecting both parties. When the US switched from an ag economy to an industrial economy, there was a strong wave populism. Today's populism is a result of shifting from an industrial economy to an information/services economy. It is more complicated today because both parties have populists and elitists. The dems are economic populists and cultural elitists while the GOP is cultural populists and economic elitists.
The left versus right dynamic has changed into radical left versus radical center versus radical right.
Paleos versus Neos.
Here's some interesting reading:
For starters, Goldwater was envious of Reagan’s success. Some say he hated Reagan. Goldwater also didn’t like Nixon and called him the most dishonest man he’d ever met. Truth was, many people continued to support Nixon during the Watergate hearings. Until it no longer made any sense to. Reagan and Nixon did have an odd relationship. Reagan knew that Nixon was a smart politico, but a seriously flawed man. Nonetheless, Reagan was also loyal to old friends and had a soft spot for the Eisenhower Era, when peace and prosperity reined.
Thank God Fat Teddy K never became POTUS.
God bless Ronald Reagan.
Semper Fidelis!
I’m seen various freepers and GOP presidential candidates and conservative writers make pro-Truman comments that shock and disgust me. Because he nuked Japan he gets a pass on being a leftist product of a corrupt political machine. What is your opinion of the man?
I’ve written about it from time to time. I also approach the topic from a personal standpoint because the most prominent member of my family was a high-profile Missouri politician from the Truman (and pre-Truman) era, albeit a dozen years older. He should’ve been precisely the kind of individual that should’ve gone on to the White House. Instead, he ended his career losing to a legacy kid instead of taking his rightful place in the U.S. Senate in 1932 (where he would’ve served alongside Truman 2 years later). We hear about the corrupt rodent-infested Kansas City of Boss Tom Pendergast, but we never hear about St. Louis’s Republican Mayor Henry William Kiel (my cousin). Kiel who presided over the 5th largest city in the nation (largest city west of the Mississippi, even larger than Los Angeles) during World War I and for 12 straight years, then the longest-serving major-city Mayor in the country and record-holding Mayor to this day. Kiel, the builder who made St. Louis the premier city of the midwest (in stark contrast to the corruption-riddled Chicago)... Grr...
Anyway, back to Truman. Removing the family jealousy and annoyance for a moment, I will say he is a complex man like many others. I don’t believe him to be a bad man, but he did have a considerable streak of arrogance and stubbornness (without some of those qualities, however, it’s unlikely he would’ve become President). He went out of his way to get into military service when his poor eyesight should’ve kept him out, and he distinguished himself during WW1 (then, of course, so did my teenage grandfather serving in the British Army in the Middle-Eastern theater, who got to crawl on his belly ahead of his battallion searching by hand for landmines — and then having to disarm them).
Anyway, Truman likely would never have gotten to the U.S. Senate (indeed, his jump from being a lower-level county judge/executive to a major-state Senator was pretty astonishing — actually, Mitch McConnell made a similar jump in 1984, but he didn’t rise from a corrupt machine) had it not been for the fact the Republican brand in 1934 was toxic (he knocked off a sitting GOP incumbent from the SW part of Missouri, Roscoe Conkling Patterson, who had rode in on Hoover’s coattails — 4 years later, my cousin ran AHEAD of President Hoover’s showing in Missouri, but still lost). Truman did scant little during his first 6 years and only barely won reelection in both the primary and general of 1940 (the MO GOP was already in recovery mode at that point and would have a good chunk of the Congressional delegation for the ‘40s). Truman ostensibly did better in his 2nd term by rooting out corruption (wasteful spending or outright fraud) in the WW2 Defense Industry (at first, FDR wasn’t happy with this little pissant Senator, but as soon as Truman began to draw national attention and positive press — well, you can guess how FDR felt THEN).
Truman came at a great time for FDR, they were needing to dump the pro-Soviet Vice-President Wallace and Truman fit the bill (came from the Midwest, a rep as a corruption-fighter and cost-saver), absent him, I’m not sure whom the Dems would’ve turned to in ‘44.
As for his time as President, it, too, is a mixed bag. To say he had a steep learning curve when he became President was an understatement. He literally was kept in the dark (being VP in those days was largely a worthless position, you could just be kept on ice most of the time — nobody cared. Nearly 2 decades later, LBJ so detested the job he was prepared to leave it in 1965 had things not changed for him). He then, in a very short period of time, had to make snap decisions at a critical juncture with information that FDR had been sitting on for a long period (especially with respect to the atomic program). So, yes, I do think he deserves accolades and credit for presiding over the end of WW2. Lesser men or hacks (or Lord help us, Henry Wallace) could’ve made the kind of decision that would’ve led to perhaps the worst cataclysm of the entire modern era — the Battle of Japan carried to their shores by our troops, fought to the point of hand-to-hand combat to the last man, woman, and child. Millions more people would’ve died beating Japan into submission. That outcome was unimaginable, and Truman had to make a terrible decision. In doing so, he spared untold numbers of lives, of our troops, and of Japanese civilians.
Personally, I wish Truman had retired in 1948, that way he could’ve gone out on top. I think his last term (1949-53) was a fiasco, both domestically and abroad. I personally wish he had taken a different course in the Korean War and followed MacArthur’s suggestion to take it to China (although you could also understand why he was war-weary and not wanting to wage what would’ve been another all-out war, but if we could’ve used limited tactical atomic weaponry to restore Nationalist control of Mainland China, we’d have been far better off today).
Truman was also well aware of the Communist infiltration of our government (I would say he was NOT sympathetic to it — but that he was frustrated by it, and tended to show more anger towards critics that pointed out the fact of the matter than he did towards those seeking to undermine the government — indeed, when Sen. McCarthy made the charges in his much-misunderstood 1950 Wheeling speech, he was only repeating what were KNOWN facts by the State Department). Truman was also desperately looking for a legacy by 1952 and instead had massively high disapproval ratings (worse than the current President’s) and he was frustrated and bitterly angry that he couldn’t persuade Eisenhower to accept his offer to run as the Democrat nominee that year (and spent the rest of his life badmouthing Ike and repeating nasty rumors and innuendoes about him — including the one about his having an affair with Miss Somersby, which Ike’s official biographer said was a steaming load). It was an unfortunate way to exit office in 1953, in stark contrast to 1949.
Well-stated. In a way, Truman’s renomination in 1940 was a sign of things to come later. He was challenged in the primary by Governor Lloyd Stark, who Roosevelt privately favored, and U.S. Attorney Maurice Milligan (whose brother had run lost the Democrat primary against Truman in 1934). On primary night, it looked like Truman had narrowly lost. In fact, a major paper announced that Stark had won the primary. But a surprisingly strong showing in St. Louis gave Truman a 7,000 vote victory. But behind this triumph is the fact that Truman would certainly have lost to either in a two-man primary.
That November, he won a 51% to 49% victory over Manvel Davis, a popular state Senator from a Democrat-leaning legislative district in Kansas City. In contrast to the combative Democrat primary, the general election was very polite, in part because both candidates were Masons with a number of mutual friends.
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