This book on LBJ’s succession to John F Kennedy after the assassination was an eye-opener. I’m reading Nixonland by Rick Perlstein at the same time, and I can perceive the seeds of LBJ’s and the Democrats’ destruction in the character traits and deep suspicion and disunity Steven Gillon highlights in his book.
Certainly, the book conveys the panic and confusion and the horror of the event in Dallas.
One can almost, but only almost, forgive Johnson’s lies, ego, insecurity and manipulations (people management) in the extreme of trying circumstances. He sought to give the country a sense of immediate continuity in the aftermath, but that meant trampling on a few people’s feelings. Kennedy’s wife and his loyal aides had gut-wrenching adjustments to make — things we can only imagine.
As the reports about the assassin reached Johnson he asked about possible Soviet involvement. Was it a communist plot?
The reality would turn out to be less troubling, but no one knew it at the time. Oswald was a self-absorbed loner who had failed miserably at everything he had ever attempted in his life except assassinate the president of the United States. A troubled and belligerent child, Oswald underwent a psychological evaluation at age thirteen. Asked whether he preferred the company of boys or girls, Oswald told the psychiatrist, “I dislike everybody.” After dropping out of school at sixteen, he developed a fascination with Marxism, believing capitalism was the cause of his discontent …
Good book. I recommend it.
– P
* I mean to say ‘let’ in the title.
My take on the Kennedy assassination is that there was a lone gunman (Lee Harvey Oswald).
In terms of there being a conspiracy, I would say this is possible. Nonetheless, I suspect any conspiracy which occurred would be rather different from the Oliver Stone version. Although on balance I do not favour any of the conspiracy theories, a recap of Kennedy’s life makes it clear that a conspiracy was possible.
Joseph Kennedy always wanted one of his sons to be President (he actually preferred a different son to Jack, who unfortunately died). Jo made his fortune running booze during the prohibition, and later from insider trading on the sharemarket. Jo also made substantial amounts via his Mafia connections from the prohibition days.
Joseph Kennedy later became perhaps the most prominent Nazi supporter in the US. JFK’s father was not so liberal then?
Now to his son Jack Kennedy (facts taken partly from wiki).
In the 1950’s John F. Kennedy voted for the “Jury Trial Amendment”, which was effectively a vote against the Civil Rights movement. Staunch segregationists such as James Eastland, John McClellan, and Mississippi Governor James Coleman were early supporters in Kennedy’s presidential campaign. Senator Joseph McCarthy was a friend of the Kennedy family; Robert Kennedy worked on the staff of McCarthy’s committee, and McCarthy dated Patricia Kennedy.
With this support, he launched his famous campaign against Mr Nixon for the White House in 1960. It was the closest election in US history.
Sam Giancana was a famous and powerful mafioso and boss of the Chicago Outfit from 1957-66. At the time, the Mafia were the biggest Corporation in the US. They had their fingers in every pie – a percentage of virtually all construction, textile production, cleaning contracts, rubbish collection, and every other business you could think of, went to the Mob.
Joseph Kennedy recruited Giancana to help mobilise labour union voter and financial support behind his son, Senator John F. Kennedy. Indeed, both Giancana and Jack Kennedy shared the same mistress, Judith Campbell Exner. The Mafia then stuffed the voting boxes in Chicago, which resulted in Kennedy winning the election, by the tinniest of margins.
When John F. Kennedy was asked about the level of involvement and influence his father had held in his razor-thin presidential bid, JFK would joke that on the eve before the election, his father had asked him the exact number of votes he would need to win – there was no way he was paying “for a land-slide”.
The first squatter in the Whitehouse was JFK?
His first major policy was the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion. Of course, apologists say this wasn’t Kennedy’s fault. The Cuban Missile Crisis followed, which almost resulted in nuclear holocaust. The stich up Kennedy delivered to Khrushchev was one of the bravest (most reckless?) successful gambles in history. This finished Khrushchev’s career – I will leave you to read about Kennedy’s deceptions here.
To be fair, as a young President, Kennedy probably thought he had to show a greater degree of militarism than his predecessors. Nonetheless, it is my view that Kennedy was in fact very conservative and almost reactionary. To suggest that he was a “liberal” is in my view not supported by the facts. The historical revisionism regarding JFK is quite astonishing to me. Even worse is the revisionism with regards to Mr Nixon, although this can wait for another day.
Anyway, next, Kennedy sent the CIA to Latin America, to take on the Communists there.
Kennedy followed this by with the fateful decision to launch an incursion into Asia against the Communists. JFK started the Vietnam War. Kennedy agreed the use of napalm, defoliants, free-fire zones and jet planes. U.S. involvement in the area continually escalated until regular U.S. forces were directly fighting the Vietnam War in the next administration.
Domestically, Kennedy distanced himself from the civil rights movement, partly because of Southern Democrat antipathy, and partly because he was a closet racist.
However, circumstances changed. Martin Luther King managed to get one million people to March on Washington in 1963, and delivered his famous “I have a dream” speech. Kennedy realised the winds had changed. He immediately reversed his previous support of racists, and became an advocate for Civil Rights in 1963.
JFK’s brother had been made Attorney General in 1960. I believe that he was quite impressive figure. Convictions against notorious organised crime figures rose by 800% during his term. Of course, the problem with this policy was that Jack Kennedy was only in power owing to the Mob, who felt betrayed. Both JFK and Bobby Kennedy were both later assassinated.
Did the CIA kill the Kennedy’s? I suppose you would have to ask – what would be the motive for this?
I think Mr Kennedy was the CIA’s man. Nothing he did in his Presidency was contrary to CIA policy.
Conspiracy theorists such as Mr Oliver Stone have a different view of Mr Kennedy, than I have. They seem his as a sickly liberal style President, whereas I see Kennedy as being militaristic, conservative and somewhat reactionary. He was a product of his time – a Cold War warrior.
I can see no good reason why the CIA would want Kennedy dead. Even assuming that they did want to get rid of Mr Kennedy, he would have been quite easy to discredit. The fact that he shagged every über babe he could get his hands on would have made it reasonably easy to get rid of him politically.
It is really since his death that the Kennedy popularity (and mystique) has been generated. The Lancelot myth is media created, at odds with many of the facts.
Of course, Oswald was an interesting character, with links from everyone from the Cubans to the Mafia. Jack Ruby was also a minor gangster. This supports the conspiracy theories.
The Mob definitely did have the motive to kill the Kennedy’s. Castro also had a motive I suppose (what with the Bay of Pigs et al) Whether they did this, or Oswald was just a random nutter, I don’t know.
For the record, I favour the nutter theory, but who can say for sure?
What is more important is the memory of what Mr Kennedy was about. This sickly liberal image is at odds with the historical record, in my view.
Maybe next post I will write an ode to Mr Nixon – one of the truly great Presidents of the 20th Century.
Rgds,
*poormastery*
Thanks for your treatise, poormastery — much of which I agree with … multiple possible ‘motivations’ for an assassination conspiracy when one sifts through the record.
Me, I’m a ‘lone nutter’ theory advocate too … although the rapidity/accuracy of the shots stretches my credulity, truly
Gillon’s book relays the eye-witnessed brutality of the assassination in a visceral way. Quite disturbing. Jackie Kennedy was astonishingly resilient in the face of such horror, and the devastation the Kennedy family, aides, and the country must have felt is hard to imagine.
At the weekend I flicked through Edward Kennedy’s ‘True Compass’ and read the section around where Ted learned of his brother Bobby’s assassination. He said he’d left a meeting where TV had been relaying the California results, got to his hotel ….
“I turned on the television news again. My mind went black.”
“Life and politics went on. But not in the same way. Not for me. I was shaken to my core.”
—
Nixon: not one of my favourite figures. Although his proclamation: “If the President does it, it can’t be illegal” popularised by the Frost/Nixon script bear uncanny relevance to Bush/Cheney and now the war in Libya, don’t you think?
– P
Hi,
http://www.jfk-online.com/jfk100portjfk.html
From this site:
“The central theme of Oliver Stone’s JFK can be summed up in a single statement made in the film by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison, played by Kevin Costner:
“I never realized Kennedy was so dangerous to the establishment.”
This is the core conviction in service to which all of Oliver Stone’s theories are mobilized. But is it true?
One of the ironies surrounding Stone’s film is that, thanks to the JFK Records Act of 1992, which was motivated by concerns about government secrecy inflamed by allegations made in JFK, a massive amount of information on the Kennedy presidency has unexpectedly come to light; but it does not support Oliver Stone’s portrayal of JFK as a threat to the establishment. Rather, it confirms what historians tended to think all along: that Kennedy was very deeply a part of that establishment.
As scholars like author Gus Russo have documented, Kennedy was not, as Oliver Stone claims, at war with his own Central Intelligence Agency. He maintained intimate ties with the men who ran the CIA, and with the assistance of his closest advisor — his brother, the Attorney General, Robert Kennedy — ran the Agency with an iron hand, particularly after the spectacular fiasco at the Bay of Pigs, for which the President and the CIA must share the blame. Rather than stomp down on CIA covert operations, as Stone would have us believe, Kennedy became one of their most enthusiastic behind-the-scenes advocates and instigators.(2)…
Oliver Stone’s unapologetic romanticism of John F. Kennedy reaches its climax during JFK’s trial scene, in which, through the mouth of actor Kevin Costner, the filmmaker states:
We have all become Hamlets in our country — children of a slain father-leader whose killers still possess the throne. The ghost of John F. Kennedy confronts us with the secret murder at the heart of the American dream”
So be it.
JFK was very conservative?
Rgds,
*p*
Ted Kennedy? Ha!
I suspect that my view of him is probably about the same level as your view of Nixon…
Rgds,
*p*
re Edward Kennedy: Possibly you do. My own half-formed views are along these lines:
http://www.thepaepae.com/moral-authority/390/
but I raised Ted Kennedy only in the context of the brutality of the assassination and the trauma it must have had on those close to the Kennedys.
As a young child I wept at the news of Bobby Kennedy’s assassination in 1968. He had been such an inspirational figure … a bigger influence on me than his brother the President, someone whose words in speech and transcript, whose courage in the face of the vendettas you mention, was extraordinary.
President Nixon is perhaps the most underrated President in history.
He had the highest IQ of any US President, so Democratic jibes about stupid Republicans did not wash in this case… Bush. Quayle. Palin. Okay Palin is stupid. Anyway, the Democratic response was – switch to corruption allegations!
Yet was Nixon more corrupt than Kennedy or Clinton? Hmm…
Of course, Nixon was far more liberal than his reputation.
From wikipedia:
“Nixon is noted for his diplomatic foreign policy, especially détente with the Soviet Union and China, and ending the Vietnam War.
He is also noted for his middle-of-the-road domestic policy that combined conservative rhetoric and, in many cases, liberal action, as in his environmental policy.
As president, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, indexed Social Security for inflation, and created Supplemental Security Income (SSI). The number of pages added to the Federal Register each year doubled under Nixon. He advocated gun control and eradicated the last remnants of the gold standard. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program.”
Read the entire article for Nixon’s amazing list of achievements.
But what about the Watergate scandal, that ended Mr Nixon’s career?
My take is that this affair is largely a storm in a teacup. Presidents Reagan, Clinton, George Bush I and George Bush II have probably done far worse things in office than Mr Nixon ever managed.
The different treatment meted out to Mr Nixon compared to the others, as I see it, was a result of a couple of vital factors:
1. The Nixon tapes – these tapes proved limited wrongdoing by Mr Nixon. There wasn’t much of a “smoking gun”, unless you are a Democrat supporter. Nonetheless, these tapes were crucial in causing the downfall for Mr Nixon. The main reason for this, I believe, is that Mr Nixon was heard on the tapes swearing all the time. He made anti-Semitic comments. Americans can be quite puritanical. Mr Nixon’s bad language did not go down well with the public. I wonder how other Presidents since Mr Nixon would fare if all their private conversations were taped and then released to the public in this manner? Every US President may have faced impeachment?
2. One impressive aspect of Mr Nixon’s career is that he grew up on the wrong side of the tracks, to eventually lead the Republicans. The old blue blooded Republicans never really supported Mr Nixon – they would have preferred one of their own wealthy established families (eg. Mr Bush I and II). Mr Nixon had few allies amongst wealthy and influential Republicans – many were actually hostile towards him. Mr Nixon gave the Democrats a few good kicking’s, so they hated him as well.
Nonetheless, history is written by the winners.
Mr Richard Milhouse Nixon eventully lost. So be it.
Rgds,
*p*
My parents subscribed to TIME magazine in the early 70s and it was almost comical how far the then right wing rag went to see things from Nixon’s side … until even they had to admit he was a crook.
I remember the photograph of his secretary (Rosemary?) trying to demonstrate how she had accidentally deleted 20 mins of WH tape while interrupted by a phone call when transcribing it. Oh yeah, right.
That was Nixon’s (and not just Nixon, obviously) main sin: he made people into liars. Enough that he was a chameleon on policy: telling the public what he thought they wanted to hear, enough that he was so polarised: Nixon’s enemies were America’s enemies.
Sorry. From my POV he was like a terrible rotting corpse.
You are also right about the frequency of the [expletive deleted] in the transcripts having a real impact on his reputation. But another huge factor was his orders to one govt agency to impede an investigation by another, his sacking of Archibald Cox the special prosecutor… the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Archibald_Cox#Watergate_special_prosecutor
… these were actions of someone with McBeth-scale meglomania and were perceived as such.
re leading the Republicans .. read Perlstein’s ‘Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America’ . He presents a great model of Franklins and Orthogonians … a good read. I’m still going on it.
– P
“…uncanny relevance to Bush/Cheney and now the war in Libya, don’t you think?”
I think that the world is a better place without Saddam (and sons), Osama Bin Laden and (hopefully) Gaddafi.
I am not buying the arguments of the appeasers, pacifists, bunny lovers and tree huggers who imply that non intervention is somehow a morally superior position from actually trying to do something.
As for Nixon deleting 20 minutes of conversation – I suspect that if you had taped every conversation Mr Clinton ever had in office, he might have needed to delete more than a meagre 20 minutes to avoid impeachment…
I personally think there was very little substance with the Watergate circus. How many wire taps has Obama authorised? Thousands I would guess. Nixon lied but so have all the Presidents(“I did not have sexual relations with that woman”).
Nixon may have been paranoid, but everyone was indeed out to get him. And they did.
The bottom line is that Nixon achieved far, far more than a Carter or a Clinton. Both domestically and especially in foreign policy. In my view.
Our politics are, I think, on opposite ends of the spectrum?
Another day! Time for bed for me.
Kind Rgds,
*p*
Hey! Some of my best friends are “appeasers, pacifists, bunny lovers and tree huggers” (Oh, and religious … ) I’m none of those. Although I like trees.
A lie about clandestine sex is, don’t you agree?, different by an order of magnitude from a lie about a clandestine break in! And it wasn’t the 20 mins, it was what it represented.
I heard born-again Chuck Colson speak and read his book … politics is a dirty business is an understatement.
Obama, as I indicated in http://www.thepaepae.com/this-is-a-serious-disappointment-i-have-to-say/14994/ has some serious questions to answer wrt ‘freedoms’ …
As you say, till next time.
cheers, P
As for “How many wire taps has Obama authorised? ”
What? Against The Republican National Committee? Not too many, I suspect. – P
Peter,
My guess is that amongst the presumably thousands of wire taps Obama has authorised, some of the unfortunate recipients are probably political opponents. We will probably never know for sure?
Irrespectively, you seem to eulogise Teddy Kennedy, and demonise Richard Nixon?
Personally, I would say that the Chappaquiddick incident was 100 times worse than the Nixon wire tap:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chappaquiddick_incident
Regarding Clinton, he was a moral slopjar. But it wasn’t just about Monica Lewinsky. There were a lot of financial and other allegations, as well as the better known sexual scandals.
I personally think Mr Nixon was generally far more honest than say Mr Clinton, so there you go…
On your Mrs Thatcher quote, you have been very naughty, and quoted half a sentence completely out of context. The extreme left have been doing this since 1987, when she made the speech. Here is what she actually said:
“I think we’ve been through a period where too many people have been given to understand that if they have a problem, it’s the government’s job to cope with it. ‘I have a problem, I’ll get a grant.’ ‘I’m homeless, the government must house me.’ They’re casting their problem on society. And, you know, there is no such thing as society. There are individual men and women, and there are families. And no government can do anything except through people, and people must look to themselves first. It’s our duty to look after ourselves and then, also to look after our neighbour. People have got the entitlements too much in mind, without the obligations. There’s no such thing as entitlement, unless someone has first met an obligation.”
Hmm. It sounds pretty reasonable to me, when you read the sentence in context…
Finally, a brief word on the healthcare debate in the Ted Kennedy blog.
The UK has the Soviet inspired NHS (government funded and run), and it is in my opinion completely and utterly useless. Switzerland has compulsory health insurance, and it is first class. Switzerland health costs are far lower than Britain’s.
The issue is rather more subtle and complicated than you imply in your article, in my view.
Kind Regards,
*p*
PM: Minimising Nixon’s ‘sin’ (sorry, do you prefer ‘malfeasance?’) to a ‘wiretap’ as you appear to misses the point and really won’t wash. Hunter S Thompson’s eulogy for Nixon, which I have in my archive because I’ve been a fan of Thompson for decades, is worth reading:
poormastery, you genuinely are the first person I have met who professes to be inspired positively by Richard Nixon.
More honest than Clinton? What a low bar, that is! I’m not aware I’ve offered Clinton as a golden example …?
While I don’t gloss over Chappaquiddick, I think it has been grasped and used as a club with relish and a dedication that verges on the desperate and with some kind of irrational ‘Never forget! It doesn’t matter what good he did, or tried to do, look at that black spot in his life’ prejudice.
Thanks for the Thatcher quote. Excellent to read that.
NHS = Soviet inspired? So who inspired Canada?
Seriousy, Healthcare is the crucible on which some democracies will founder and some fracture, in my view. The baby boomers wave is just starting …
“poormastery, you genuinely are the first person I have met who professes to be inspired positively by Richard Nixon.”
Indeed, poormastery dares to dance a different dance.
The liberal media is not always correct, and it is not always tolerant.
The extreme left has campaigned against Nixon for decades, to besmirch his public record. This propaganda eventually becomes “conventional wisdom”, much like the Kennedy “Lancelot” nonsense.
Look at the fuss the numerous lefty news channels make about the one and only right wing news channel (Fox). What a performance!
Richard Milhouse Nixon was a “crook”?
Nixon had a poor, Quaker upbringing, and led a pretty austere life, by all accounts.
Unlike say Tony Blair or Bill Clinton, he didn’t seem to use his office to enrich himself. I do not get the sense that Nixon was motivated particularly by money.
Hunter S Thompson is a funny guy, and painting Richard Nixon as Darth Vader makes good copy. But is this analysis really fair and balanced?
No, I don’t think so.
Years later, it is a good opportunity to look back on what Mr Nixon actually did while in office. His record stands up to scrutiny. He won the
19681972 election by a landslide for a reason.You have to ask yourself – are you really being fair and balanced in your view of the man? What are your views based upon?
On healthcare, I agree that it must be universal. However, I prefer private provision, rather than public provision of the service.
Kind Regards,
*p*
Your contrarian view is what makes you valuable.
I agree that a retrospective look is worthwhile on any period as tumultuous as the Kennedy/Johnson/Nixon years. You’re preaching to the converted on that score, my dear boy. Same with WWII.
Seriously, that’s why I’m still reading. I’ve read Gillon’s book on LBJ’s first 24 hours, (as well as Kennedy bios — Hamilton’s JKF: Reckless Youth was brilliant and very ghastly about Joseph Kennedy and the corruption in politics). I’m reading Perlsteins’s Nixonland which provides a plausible premise of factors responsible for the Nixon landslide — just
fourcorrection EIGHT years after the LBJ landslide, remember? — the quagmire of Vietnam being primary but (and this is his point): a ‘fracturing’ of US society, a gut reaction, a myriad resentments felt by ‘the silent majority’, a move by America back towards Conservatism as a pendulum swing reaction to the upheaval of the race and New Society reforms of the 1960s and sustained political violence. (I recommend you read this book. I haven’t finished it so I hope my precis above doesn’t do him injustice.)Nixon’s strength was in sniffing the shift to Conservative values, tapping the unease, posing as a Conservative but not too conservative — e.g. never spelling out his ‘real’ view of the Vietnam war but twisting and using code language to hammer whatever position LBJ took and masterfully position himself as the ‘logical’ choice for the Republicans… even those who wrote his off as ‘dead’ after his whisker thin loss to Kennedy.
His Foreign Policy focus was just politics — it made him look like a statesman. He was clear about that to members of his team, according to Perlstein.
Please don’t expect me to be impressed with his Quakerism. ‘By their fruits you will know them.’
I agree with Thompson, who was far more than ‘a funny guy’, but opinions are free.
Here’s mine: Nixon was a monster. Fair and balanced.
PM, you know I like you a lot, and respect your intellect and power of analysis (said without irony, I assure you). As a pal, can I say painting those with whom you disagree as ‘The extreme left’, as you’ve implied twice now, isn’t a good argument. I know I’m not extreme left, so why suggest it? It doesn’t offend me in the slightest, but it’s glaring.
Likewise, I think you must be amusing yourself with your comment about Fox News. OK. Hahahahaha. The best line re Fox News was recently from Rolling Stone:
http://www.thepaepae.com/another-unflattering-profile-of-propagandist-roger-ailes/16918/
Healthcare reform is a big question that needs its own website. It is a bellwether issue, like gun control, abortion and gay rights.
Go well, – P
Peter,
I don’t generally read book about politicians, although on WW2, I have read a vast amount. I would agree with you that the history of this conflict has suffered from revisionism (in large part due to the Cold War).
I would agree with the authors reason for the Nixon landslide in 68 [CORRECTION: 1972] – the people wanted to move “America back towards Conservatism as a pendulum swing reaction to the upheaval of the race and New Society reforms of the 1960s and sustained political violence.” So be it.
Opinions are indeed free, but you don’t really explain why you believe “Nixon was a monster.” Perhaps you were against the Vietnam War? If so, alas, we would probably have to agree to disagree yet again. Although the US lost, confronting the totalitarian communists everywhere and anywhere was the right thing to try to do, in my view. The good guys won in the end? Anyway, we will never agree on this one, so it is time to move on!
My comment that “The extreme left has campaigned against Nixon for decades, to besmirch his public record” was not meant to imply that you are extremely left wing – just that many of the people who have campaigned against him are. This is, of course, quite ironical, because although Nixon’s rhetoric was very conservative, his policies were much less so.
Fox news is complete drivel, as you imply, and almost cartoonishly biased. There is a constituency it is aimed at (the flyover States). If you are liberal and it disturbs you, it is rather easy to find a (partisan if you wish) liberal news channel. By the way, I am a liberal on all social issues, so I don’t actually agree with the editorial line of Fox News at all.
I do, however, like the fact that Fox News exists – because it is a voice for a sizeable minority of people who deserve to be heard.
I quite like partisan media. I read both the Guardian (openly left wing) and The Telegraph (far right). I distrust the BBC, who pretend to be neutral (they aren’t and can’t be). I like media that puts their cards on the table.
By the way, I wouldn’t actually even count myself as a Republican supporter, because George W Bush was the most economically irresponsible President of them all.
Obama is doing little better. I am left thinking that they are all hopeless.
Hope all is well with you, and my rather forthright views are not ruining your blog!
Kind Regards,
*p*
Ruin my blog? Far from it.
If the urge takes you, feel free to contribute some thoughts of your own — right wing, left wing, third way, wherever on the spectrum — by starting a thread with a post/article.
You’ve certainly earned my trust and respect (whether we see eye-to-eye on everything) and a soap box here at ThePaepae.com if you want it. I have always enjoyed how you express your reasoning. We don’t have to agree. That’s dialogue.
OK, yeah, let’s leave Richard Milhous for now. You’re right. The ‘truth’ (a slippery concept, no?) about Nixon probably lies somewhere between your ‘most underrated president in history’ and my ‘corrupt/monster/rotting corpse’.
Politics is a dirty, dirty business — one of my Politics lecturers at Victoria put me on to the thought: Why do we call the craven scramble for power ‘Politics’ when, really, it’s just the craven scramble for power? (Or words to that effect.)
… I’ll review Perlstein’s book when I’ve finished it. It is very good.
Consider my invitation, if you can be bothered.
Regards, P
Peter,
The problem with biographies about extremely polarising political figures (Richard Nixon, Roger Douglas, Mrs T, Geoege W Bush et al) is that the authors who are particularly interested in these politicians find it difficult to write a “neutral” account of their motivations. My taste tends towards viewing motivations as shades of grey, rather than cartoonish black and white assessments of character. Let me know whether this Nixon book is balanced, or just another cartoonish caricature.
On Friday I was discussing US politics with an elderly US tax lawyer /theologian / all round renaissance man (formerly a Republican). His parents were fundamentalist Christians, and he has an almost pathological dislike for Christianity – to such an extent that he learnt Aramaic to debunk the Bible. He is concerned that the Christian Right could form a Nazis style govenment in the US. He despairs at his Mother country, which is as he sees it is completely polarised between a rabid Christian right and an incompetent liberal left.
Personally, I can feel some sympathy with the Tea Party – even though their social programme has no resonance with me. The mythology of the US is the lone cowboy meting out justice to the bad guys – independent, free and maverick. Becoming a Western Europe style welfare State with huge government is not part of the US culture – and hasn’t even worked in Europe. Of course, Palin comes across as an ignoramus, and some of the Tea Party views are just frightening. Nonetheless, there is a clear urge to go back to simpler, more stable times – much like 1968?
My view is that ideologues are indeed a big problem in the world at the moment. Although not a Christian, I cannot abide Richard Dawkins, in essence because he is so sure that he knows everything, so he does not bother to show respect for other people’s views.
Perhaps the most problematic ideologues of them all at the moment are the Politburo Kommissars of the EU. I predicted upon inception of the mad euro experiment that it would prove to be a disaster. What sort of drugs would you need to take to believe that Greece and Germany should share the same exchange rate?
Of course, the mad experiment was conceived as a political ideology, rather than an economic policy. The politics of the EU does not concern itself much with what the pesky public wants.
Western Europe, the US and Japan could all be looking into the economic abyss in the next few years. Let us hope that your rather gloomy asssessment of politicians proves unfounded.
Politics is the art of the possible (Bismarck)?
Rgds,
*p*
I’m enjoying Nixonland. It’s more than biography, as the subtitle suggests:
Nixonland: The Rise of a President and the Fracturing of America.
I’m at p 400 of more than 800 so far… just at chapter 19 about Chappaquiddick…
I’ll go back and correct my earlier comment — the book is about how US society changed between the landslides of 1964 (LBJ) and 1972 (Nixon) — not 1968. 1968 was actually a very slender win:
Wikipedia reports: “Nixonland was named one of the three best books of the year by the editors at Amazon.com and a New York Times notable book for 2008, and has been named on year-end “best of” lists by over a dozen publications.”
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nixonland:_The_Rise_of_a_President_and_the_Fracturing_of_America
It’s critical of Nixon, for sure.
It’s also a who’s who of the Conservative movement with Republican activists’ and figures’ names popping up. And some good analysis of the shifting political landscape and the backlash against civil rights and protest against the war.
—
re The Christian Right: yes, I think your friend is right to be distrustful, even afraid of their influence. Their zealotry, their one-eyedness and (I’m sorry, but it’s how I see it) frequent willingness to let the end justify the means, to block vote, and promote effectively a slide into corruption and an acceptance of hate speech and sometime violence against ‘alternatives’ — iI’s horrible.
The EU stuff is amazing. Did you read Michael Lewis’s Vanity Fair piece about Greece? Wow.
– P
Peter,
Yes, of course the Nixon landslide was in 72, after Nixon had already served a term. This in itself is quite interesting. Thank you for the correction. Of course, 1972 probably marked around the time of a new economic cycle (recessionary), with the oil crisis in 1973. Ford and Carter followed and were poor Presidents, by most accounts. I am not surprised that Republicans appear prominently in the book criticising Nixon – many of them hated him as much as the Democrats did.
On the Christian right, what is curious is that the US doesn’t have much of libertarian right. Last election, Fox news did not want to include Ron Paul in their Republican election debate, because they said that he wasn’t a conservative. Quite bizarre, I thought.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ron_Paul
The desire of the Christian right to have a smaller State is secondary to their desire to pursue a rabidly and essentially immaterial agenda involving a variety of fringe issues (anti-abortion, gun rights etc). “It’s the economy stupid” as James Carville would say…
I don’t think your summary of the Christian right is wrong, but I do think simply dismissing them as nutjobs is not enough given the growth in their influence. I suspect that some of their (more rational) concerns need to be addressed.
Yes, I read the Michael Lewis piece on Greece. Roubini also wrote a good article.
Greece should default and take a 70% haircut on their debt, go back to the drachma, and devalue their new currency 50%. The IMF has used a variant of this formula in implementing every successful recovery from bankruptcy (e.g. Argentina). The fanatics in the EU are preventing the Greeks from making the logical policy decisions for political, rather than economic, reasons.
Portugal, Ireland, Spain, Belgium and Italy will also be economically destroyed if this mad experiment is allowed to continue.
The US economic issues magically don’t appear so bad…
Rgds,
*p*