Jane Fonda remained free after her acts of treason while Nixon was President.
Too bad Nixon did not think our POW/MIA's deserved that same Freedom.
He ignored the 55% Silent Majority that supported the war and caved into the 45% that did not.
I thought it was interesting, since Ari is about to give Clinton a flunking grade in foreign relations.
Clinton never did figure that out.
I thought this was the essential point, although Nixon has much else of interest to tell us here. Clinton's foreign policy is a case study in how not to fight wars. Every conflict he involved us in was either pointless or fought on the wrong side. That's what happens when your foreign policy is run on a basis of blinkered political correctness, popularity polls, and wagging the dog to take people's minds off serial misbehavior in office.
Nixon was a serious statesman. Clinton was a clown by comparison. I think Nixon misreads the Yugoslavian situation here, but that was before things unfolded. If he had been in charge he would have quickly changed course according to our national interest, which, as he says, must always be the first consideration.
Today the problem is not an excessively strong presidency, but a hobbled one. Obsessed by the danger of an imperial presidency, many seem oblivious to the dangers of an imperial Congress. There are now more than 25 subcommittees in the House and Senate dealing with foreign policy. Foreign policy cannot be conducted by committee. Meanwhile Presidents, with their limited terms, are more accountable to the electorate than an imperial Congress, to which incumbents are re-elected as much as 98% of the time. The President is subject to impeachment, congressional power over the purse, and other political and congressional constraints. And Presidents, particularly conservative ones, will always be restrained by an adversarial media.
Nixon was a very smart man.
"Rosebud"?
Absolute hogwash. This is putting the cart before the horse.
But it is the no-longer-presidential voice. The emphasis on America's vital interests is consistent with the old Nixon, but the admonitions against tough talk with the Chinese, is not. Nixon always talked tough with America's enemies, because he understood that they would respect (or, at least, fear) him the more for it.
Nixon's call for reducing middle-class entitlements is likewise the product of a post-presidential epiphany. He did nothing to curtail them during his presidency.
He was our most brilliant, sober student of foreign relations. But as another FReeper noted, he underestimated the Moslem threat. And he overestimated the possibility of our playing "honest broker," a line that Pat Buchanan surely got from him. We are not Switzerland. The sort of aggressive foreign policy Nixon pursued, and the aggressive one he advocates here, both require our entering into many alliances. That means that we would have a dog in most fights. So much for the "honest broker."
I think in his basic conceit, "beyond peace," Nixon got a little soft. The old realpolitiker would have been the first to note that in foreign relations, there is no "beyond" beyond. Power will not tolerate a vacuum, which means that before long, some player will try and slit the Big Dog's throat.
The one issue on which Nixon is surely wrong, is the role the Founding Fathers foresaw for the president. Nixon is projecting his own penchant for an imperial presidency onto men, most of whom sought to prevent such an accretion of executive power from undermining their legislative-driven republic.