My favorite member of Congress, Oregon's Peter DeFazio (and I'm not saying this because I'm hoping to interview him for my book, though I am indeed hoping for this), says he'll "make the president act like a Democrat."
Well, for Christ's sake someone has to do that. At this point, I just don't care about Obama's insiders whining about criticism from the left; when you have a Democratic president with policies well to the right of Richard Nixon, that's fucked up.
The wire-taps are the least controversial part of the Watergate scandal. Nobody condemns Nixon for the wire-taps. They condemn him for the constitutional abuses, the paranoia, the attempts to use his authority to ruin his opponents, and the illegal effort to cover up an absurd break-in.
Kathy at Edge of the American West puts together some of the finest bits from the Nixon recordings. Some highlights of the highlights:
3. On Jews and pot (May 26, 1971)
Richard Nixon on the cover of Esquire, May 1968. One of the legendary George Lois covers for that magazine.
I had this written to post on Saturday, but I have been at a conference in Denver that I assure you included no drinking of delicious Colorado beers, and I didn't have time to post this.
On October 10, 1973, Spiro Agnew, Vice-President of Richard Nixon, resigned in disgrace under investigation for a variety of crimes, including tax evasion, extortion, bribery, and conspiracy.
Of course, Agnew had always been a class act. The only reason he was on the presidential ticket in the first place was his first-rate race baiting, under the euphemism of law and order. He was the perfect compliment to Nixon's Southern Strategy and politics of white resentment. He served his four plus years as Nixon's attack dog. Not that Nixon wasn't good at that himself. But Agnew had a great way of hurling insults, insulting hippies and black people, and becoming a hero of the rising conservative movement.
Agnew would have been a tremendously successful politician in the modern conservative movement. Almost totally without scruples except for self-promotion, Agnew almost reads as a precursor for Sarah Palin. Both had meteoric rises to nomination in a position for which they were completely unqualified to serve. Both rose politics of resentment to the top. Both relished personally attacking their opponents. Both had absolutely no clue about foreign policy, much to the worry of the top of the ticket. Both did not get along with the presidential candidate. While we don't know much about Palin's opinions of Jews, Agnew was a virulent anti-Semite. And both were corrupt to the core.
After Agnew's disgraceful resignation, he wrote a memoir published in 1980. In it, he claimed that Nixon and Al Haig planned to assassinate him if he refused to resign from the vice-presidency. While one hardly wants to put anything past Nixon or Haig, in this case, those guys seem pretty above board. Compared to Spiro Agnew, anyone sounds good!
Like a lot of bad things, it was tinged with good. Maybe it was a good day when Agnew resigned. Because I sure would rather have had Gerald Ford take over the Oval Office upon Nixon's resignation than Agnew.
This week's images will concern American-African relations.
Richard and Pat Nixon at Ghana's independence celebration, 1957
This is the seventeenth installment in the 20 part series Rob Farley and I have commenced to review George Herring's From Colony to Superpower: U.S. Foreign Relations since 1776. See the Herring Review tag below for previous entries.
This week Herring talks about Nixon. I like this chapter because Herring is morally outraged, which always makes writing more lively. Herring clearly has little but contempt for Nixon and Kissinger. I agree, but Herring differentiates between Nixon and other presidents in ways that I am not really comfortable with.
Nixon's foreign policy successes are of some legend--opening up China, beginning arms negotiations with the Soviets. His failures are equally legendary--his invasion of Cambodia, his support for Pinochet and other South American dictators. Herring provides a nuanced discussion of these events. I found the Chinese issues particularly interesting, including that Nixon involved Reagan by sending him to Taiwan in order to settle them down. The repercussions of visiting China in the rest of Asia was also quite fascinating. The Japanese were extremely unhappy and it led to a low point in postwar U.S.-Japan relations. I also thought that Nixon's lack of policy toward Europe was interesting because it created a vacuum ably filled by West Germany's Willy Brandt. I wonder if there's been a president in postwar America less concerned about European issues (outside of the Soviets) than Nixon?
Herring also details how Israel joined Iran and Saudi Arabia as the third pillar of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. The long term benefits of this decisions have been minimal to say the least. Nixon was less favorable to Israel than Johnson, being an anti-Semite and all. But under Kissinger's guidance, the U.S. allowed Israel to further their cause in the Yom Kippur War by delay the cease fire and then did everything he could to stick it to the Arabs and their Soviet allies in coming days. Where was Nixon during all of this? Drunk apparently, at least when Kissinger presided over an emergency National Security Council meeting which moved military forces to DefCon 3.
I know Herring likes dishing the dirt on Nixon with stories like this. But the evidence doesn't suggest that Nixon was that much worse than Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, or Johnson on the issues Herring attacks him over. Imposing a Cold War mindset on Latin America and South Asia? How is this different than the previous 4 presidents exactly? Nixon did a terrible thing when he invaded Cambodia, but does anyone think Johnson wouldn't have done the same thing if he thought it was necessary? Supporting Pinochet was disgusting, but the CIA had been undermining Chilean democracy since at least the mid 60s. Plus was it any worse than what Eisenhower did in Guatemala? Nixon's biggest sin probably comes in Vietnam, where he eventually negotiated American withdrawal for basically the same effect that he could have achieved when he took office in 1969. How many American, Vietnamese, Cambodian, and Laotian lives were lost because of Nixon and Kissinger's policies? But that's almost standard U.S. foreign policy in the Cold War.
None of this excuses Nixon and Kissinger. They were bad men. But they also acted in the same universe as both previous and future presidents. Their actions aren't that much worse than Reagan or Johnson. Herring is disgusted by Nixon's personal behavior and of course Watergate. Moral condemnation is a proper response to Nixon, but he takes it too far in analyzing Nixon's foreign policy, slamming him for policies that fit very comfortably within the Cold War context.
Much more to talk about, including India and Pakistan, but I'll send it to Rob now.
When compared to its more unstable neighbors, Chile prided itself on its rich democratic tradition. Since declaring independence in 1818, Chile had seen some political turbulence, but not with the frequency of dictatorships, monarchies, and overthrows witnessed in places like Argentina, Bolivia, and Brazil. Indeed, since 1932, Chile had not seen its democratic processes interrupted. This rich tradition and national pride has made the overthrow of democratically and constitutionally-elected Salvador Allende on September 11, 1973, and the establishment of Augusto Pinochet's seventeen-year dictatorship of Augusto Pinochet, that much harder to swallow. By the time Chileans realized that there would be no quick return to democracy like many of them had imagined when Allende was overthrown, Pinochet's repressive apparatus would be in place, greatly quashing any resistance to his rule.
Since 1932, Chile had operated on a system in which the population voted for one of any number of candidates, and the Chilean Congress would then ratify the winner of the plurality. This latter step was generally little more than a formality, no matter how low the plurality. Thus, when Jorge Alessandri, a center-right candidate, defeated Salvador Allende in his first presidential run in 1958, Alessandri only garnered 31% of the vote (versus Allende's 28.9%), and was ratified by Congress.
After his 6-year term was up, the center-left Christian Democrat coalition, led by Eduardo Frei, won the presidency, defeating Allende and Julio Durán, the center-right coalition's candidate. While a member of the center in Chile's political spectrum, Frei's six-year term witnessed an increasing progressiveness. During his administration, Frei initiating limited land reform, promoted neighborhood associations, and pushed for social justice, even going so far as to grant the Rapa Nui of Easter Island full citizenship for the first time since Chile had acquired the island in 1888.
By the time the 1970 elections rolled around, the atmosphere was increasingly polarized. While Frei had endeared himself to many on the left, they also felt that his reforms were not enough, while many on the right who were initially open to his administration were incresingly fearful of Chile's leftward shift, fearing a turn to "communism" or becoming "another Cuba." Nor were Chileans alone in this. President Richard Nixon, together with National Security Advisor Henry Kissinger, authorized spending millions of dollars for the other candidates in an effort to prevent Allende's victory. Unfortunately for Nixon, when the votes were tallied, Allende won the plurality with 36.3% of the vote over previous president Jorge Alessandri (35.7%) and Christian Democrat Radomiro Tomic (27.8%). Many thought the congressional approval would once again be a mere formality. However, Allende's opponents quickly mobilized in an effort to prevent his approval, thereby throwing his presidency in doubt, and even the CIA launched a major propaganda campaign in an effort to sway the outcome. Only after Allende signed a statute guaranteeing he would defend Chile's constitution did Congress approve Allende's election 153-35.
Nixon and Kissinger were appalled at the approval of Allende's election, fearing Chile was about to become another Cuba in the Western Hemisphere. In an effort to destabilize the situation, Nixon cut nearly all U.S. funding to Chile in an effort to undermine stability. They also took far more covert measures to try to remove Allende. Kissinger and the CIA were constantly trying to find military leaders who would perform a coup against Allende upon Allende's victory. Unfortunately for them, the chief of the Army, Gen. Rene Schneider, supported the Constitution, and would not support a coup against the constitutionally and democratically elected Allende. However, an anti-communist general, Roberto Viaux, who had also attempted a coup against Frei in 1969, tried to kidnap Schneider in October 1970 in an effort to prevent Allende's inauguration. Viaux botched the attempt, though, and Schneider ended up dead, resulting in the Chilean military and people supporting Allende heading into the inauguration. While no documentary evidence has demonstrated that the U.S. was involved in this attempt, it had previously had contacts with Viaux. Due to the botched kidnapping, though, the U.S. lay low, being forced to wait.
Being finally approved, Allende was inaugurated on 3 November, 1970. Aware that he had only 6 years to implement his reforms, Allende began setting about trying to show the world how to establish a "peaceful path to socialism." Allende nationalized the copper industry in Chile (something also begun under Frei, when Chile became a 51% holder of the El Teniente copper mine, one of the largetst in the country), as well as nationalizing health care. He also established several wage increases that benefitted Chile's workers in his first two years, as well as launching more comprehensive land reform and educational reform. In his first year, his economic plan actually led to a reduction of Chile's inflation, and it witnessed remarkable growth.
These efforts left many on both the left and right dissatisfied. Conservative sectors of society, fearful of things such as "nationalization" and reform, and disheartened by the economic growth under Allende in that first year, began actively mobilizing against him. They also tried to disrupt the economy, often reducing production of basic goods and foodstuffs or hoarding these items in warehouses in order to drive demand and prices up and create market instability. The U.S. also withdrew much of its funding to Chile upon Allende's election. Independently of internal factors, as well, the economy began to take a beating in 1971, as copper prices dropped globally, greatly impacting the Chilean economy. The right used these instances to try to further stoke discontentment, and even many moderates in Chile became disturbed by the leftward path Allende was taking. However, many on the left were equally dissatisfied, feeling that Allende was not moving fast enough. Many of his more radical and poorer supporters tried to force his hand by performing land and factory occupations and expropriations in large numbers. Many intellectuals argued that the only way true reform could happen would be if the entire system was overthrown and Chile started over. Entire sections of his coalition, such as the Socialist Party, were leery that Allende could really implement the revolution they desired.
Matters in Chile really began to deteriorate in 1973. That year, the mid-term elections were held, and the Popular Unity actually increased its presence, winning 43% of the seats. To the right and many in the center, this was too much, and they began taking to the streets to protest the encroaching "Communism." Sectors of the military also were beginning to take notice of the growing instability and political division of Chile, and feared that the entire country would be torn into civil war if things continued down that path. Meanwhile, the Popular Unity's supporters, encouraged by the election results, continued to rally for Allende in the streets and push for more land and factory takeovers. Allende, a cosummate politician in terms of playing the game smartly, was increasingly finding himself pushed towards a path he was hesitant to fully embrace for practial political reasons.
In the meantime, the Chilean economy in 1973 continued to worsen, as income from exports continued to decline. The economy was also finding itself wracked by the emergence of the first petroleum crisis. Inflation was rampant and only picking up steam, and bread-lines at supermarkets were getting longer and longer, leading to dissatisfaction among middle-class and workign-class housewives who were responsible for groceries and cooking. Strikes had also been breaking out since 1972, when truckers went on strike to protest against Allende, crippling the supply system in Chile. Soon, small business owners, copper workers, and other went on strike in protest of Allende, while the left launched counter-strikes for support. Additionally, the far-right paramilitary group Patria y Libertad ("Fatherland and Liberty"), with support from the CIA, had begun attempting to sabotage Chile's infrastructure in order to further weaken Allende, and the CIA continued exploring options for launching a successful coup. In August, Chile's chamber of deputies passed a resolution that openly asked the military to intervene and restore "order" to the country. In another major blow, Allende lost one of his major supporters, the constitutionalist head of the Army, Carlos Prats, who resigned when officers' wives protested in front of his home, calling him a "coward" for failing to help Chile emerge from the morass. His replacement as Commander in Chief of the Army was his second-in-command, Augusto Pinochet, a general many believed was, like Prats, loyal to Allende.
As September dawned, the prospects for Allende were increasingly diminishing. He was simply losing control of the country. Into this growing vacuum, a military junta composed of the heads of the Navy, Air Force, and Army decided to act. Navy chief Jose Toribio Merino planned the coup, and on the morning of September 11, 1973, the Navy captured the coastal port-town of Valparaiso, only 74 miles from Santiago. The national police went to the presidential palace, La Moneda, to defend Allende, who held out hope that Pinochet was still loyal to him. By mid-morning, though, it was clear that he had no military support, and that all of Chile outside of Santiago had fallen. General Gustavo Leigh, the head of the Air Force, ordered La Moneda to be bombed by aircraft. Allende refused to resign, though, and issued an address to the nation via radio. The military arrived at La Moneda and stormed the palace, with Allende dead inside in what was probably a suicide. By the end of September 11th, the military junta, led by Pinochet, was in control, with open support from a Nixon administration that was proud of the role it had played in the overthrow of a democratically and constitutionally elected president, support the new Chilean government would continue to enjoy by such dignitaries as Kissinger, Milton Friedman, and Jesse Helms.
And so, on September 11th, 1973, many Chileans went to bed satisfied with the end of Allende and pleased with the military intervention. While those Chileans slept, that new military government that had already begun rounding up, torturing, and murdering leftists and other "subversives" that it felt had put Chile in such grave danger. Augusto Pinochet shored up control of the junta, becoming the sole leader of Chile. Thus was established Chile's first military dictatorship, which would last another 17 years and would oversee the deaths of over 3000 of its own citizens in Chile, aid in the deaths of many others throughout South America, torture tens of thousands more of its own civilians, launch its own terrorist action in Washington D.C. in 1976 that left two dead, and leave millions affected by its actions.
I find this furor over John Dean having his role in Watergate sanitized as perhaps the least surprising thing ever. Dean was a close adviser to Nixon and there's no way he is as innocent as he has always claimed. Give Colson, Ehrlichman, Haldeman, Mitchell, and the rest of that crew credit. They believed in what they did and didn't apologize for it, awful is it may be. Meanwhile John Dean has tried to weasel his way out responsibility ever since 1973. The most absurd and egregious instance of this was in Oliver Stone's Nixon film, where David Hyde Pierce played Dean as a man trying to do the right thing who was caught up in Nixon's shenangians. I was watching this thinking, you have got to be kidding me. Then I'm watching the credits, and low and behold! John Dean served as an advisor on the film!
About Stanley Kutler's alleged fooling with the evidence, I have no comment except to say that I hope it is not true. And there doesn't seem to be any hint that a relationship betweeen Dean and Kutler led to this happening. However, the Times article doesn't state there is no relationship between the two men and if Kutler did in fact sanitize Dean's role, there must be a reason why. Knowing the career of John Dean, I'd be surprised if his hand wasn't in this cookie jar somewhere.
Watching the Obama half-hour program tonight, I admit, I was pretty excited, not that he's going to be president (we still have to vote), but that there's any politician like him right now. I'm far from a giddy, emotive person, yet I've been excited about Obama, as a politician and then as a candidate, since his 2004 Democratic Convention address. I have repeatedly admitted that this is the first time in my life I've ever been excited about voting for anybody, and it will be the first time that I vote not against a candidate, but for one.
Tonight, hearing just the first two minutes, where Obama expressed how people still have hope, in spite of the economy and the wars and all the things facing the country, a thought crossed my mind. Is it possible that Obama, or any other politician, may be able to "de-Nixon-ify" the U.S. public's attitude towards politics? What I mean by this is, ever since Watergate, the public attitude towards American politics and politicians has been one of cynicism, skepticism, sarcasm, whereas that hadn't always been the case. For all the legacies Nixon left, no doubt the most impressive one to me is how his administration fundamentally shifted the way we the American people view politicians today.
Will it be that any politician, Obama or somebody else, might be able to reverse the damage that Nixon to our image of politics and politicians? What do others think - will Watergate be "undone" somewhere down the line? Or are we too partisan at this point for anything to be "undone" or improved?
My prediction:
No matter what Palin says tonight, good or bad, at least 1 conservative commentator will call it her Checkers speech and say that it saved her candidacy. I guarantee you that comparison will be made.
The unfortunately but perhaps appropriately named Earl "Rusty" Butz was a true American bastard. Not only was he a complete asshole and racist, but he has contributed more than any single person in American history to the obesity epidemic in the United States today.
Butz was the Secretary of Agriculture under both Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford. I know you are surprised that an appointee of Nixon would make Bastard Blogging, but sometimes shocking things take place. Butz was born in beautiful Albion, Indiana in 1909. In 1932, Butz graduated from Purdue University, which by chance will be losing to the University of Oregon in a football game this fall. In 1935, he received a Ph.D. from the same institution in Agricultural Economics.
He quickly rose in the farm world. By 1948, Butz became vice-president of the American Agricultural Economics association and in 1954, President Eisenhower named him Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. He served there until 1957. He resigned that year and went back to Purdue, becoming a member of the school's administration. Occupying high posts in a university administration is a pretty good reason to make Bastard Blogging but that is not the reason we are discussing Butz today. He also served on the board of directors of several food companies, including Ralston Purina.
In 1971, Butz became Secretary of Agriculture under Nixon, a position he served in until 1976. This is where he really earned his bastard stripes. First, he was an incorrigible racist. He made fun of Pope Paul VI's Italian accent publicly, which was bad enough. But in 1976, he was on a flight to the Republican National Convention with Pat Boone and John Dean. Boone asked why black people didn't vote Republican (um, perhaps because the Republican party of 2008, er, 1976 was openly racist). Butz responded:
"the only thing coloreds are looking for in life are tight pussy, loose shoes, and a warm place to shit."
John Dean leaked this to Time magazine, which jumped on the story. Perhaps they also explained the loose shoes reference, which makes absolutely no sense to me. Anyway, Butz was forced to resign.
Classy, eh? I'll bet Nixon and Butz had a good ol'time telling racist jokes in the Oval Office.
Butz also served time for tax evasion in 1981, though all but 30 days of his 5 year sentence was suspended. Typical. You know, if we threw wealthy tax evading criminals into real prison for their offenses and made them serve their sentences, I bet we'd see a lot less tax evasion.
What I really hate Butz for is his role in spurring unregulated corn production. You might ask how corn production is worse than a racist joke. Certainly his racist joke is reprehensible, but it doesn't make him any different than just about anyone else in the Nixon administration. But his corn policies are a major reason for the food problems we have today.
In 1972, the Soviets were suffering from bad harvests. The US offered to sell the Soviets all the grain they needed. From a geopolitical perspective, this was a sensible move. It was a nice peace gesture to the Soviets and saved people from dying. It was also intended to undermine support for George McGovern in farm states that fall. This turned out to be an unnecessary worry.
According to the environmental writer Michael Pollan, the problem with the grain sell off is that it took place at the same time that bad weather undermined the nation's grain crops, sending food prices spiraling up and leading directly to the big inflation problems that began in 1973. Butz, a free market fanatic, responded by encouraging farmers to grow all the grain they could. He dismantled the New Deal program of price supports for farm goods and replaced them with direct payments to farmers. Butz believed that the New Deal was nothing more than socialism that hurt American farmers because its programs didn't allow them to grow all the crops they wanted. Nevermind that the New Deal agricultural programs worked pretty well before Butz' time and had helped end the continual farm crises that plagued the nation throughout its history. Butz was a true believer in the free market. Reality be damned.
The transition from ending price supports to paying farmers directly sounds minor, but as Pollan explains, what this did was end the price floor for corn. When corn prices got low, the government subsidized farmers to ensure they still would keep growing up. The American taxpayer picked up this cost. American consumers would have cheap food. Agribusiness could handle the cost of low-priced corn. Small farmers got squeezed pretty hard by this and were forced to keep growing corn (and then soybeans for the same reason) because it became the only cash crop to sell, despite the abysmal prices.
The effect of Butz's policy was to make it in farmers' interests to grow as much corn as possible. This led to an immense amoutn of corn. The food industry began inventing ways to use that corn. The most profitable and widespread was high fructose corn syrup. This was invented in 1980 and today makes up an enormous part of our diet. Corn syrup replaced sugar in many products, most notably soda. And when just changing from sugar to corn syrup wasn't enough to consume all that corn, the soda companies just made their products bigger. Americans liked that a lot. High fructose corn syrup found its way into many other foods as well, from hot dogs to ketchup to chips to bread. All of this corn-based sugar that Butz and his agribusiness friends forced us to eat has led to not only high levels of obseity but also the epidemic of Type 2 diabetes that we are now only coming to terms with.
Perhaps Earl Butz doesn't deserve all the blame for this transformation. Agribusiness would have found some other tool to make massive crop production and low prices happen anyway. But Butz did start the process, changing the way Americans farm, eat, and live. And all for the worse. Combine this with his racism, tax evasion, and just general bad nature, and you have yourself one fine example of an American bastard.
I consulted Michael Pollan's The Omnivore Dilemma and this Tom Philpott post from Grist, which goes into more detail on the changes to farming.
This is not the first time I've complained about this on the blog, but some things must be repeated.
One of the most frustrating things that you hear as an environmental historian is that Richard Nixon was a good environmental president. He signed a lot of environmental legislation, including the bill that formed the Environmental Protection Agency. All of this is true, making the false claim about Nixon a bit difficult to refute. You see, Nixon simply didn't care either way. He hated environmentalists, as he hated all liberal activists. But he wanted to fight in Vietnam and focus on foreign policy. He didn't want fights over domestic policy to get in the way of his agenda. And of course, Nixon was an amazing politician. He could read the writing on the wall. He knew that the nation in 1970 was very pro-environmental legislation. Nixon then decided that this was not the battlefield he was willing to die on. So he signed this legislation. While I guess he deserves a slight bit of credit for not acting like Bush would have, he still never would have signed such legislation in a different political climate.
Rick Perlstein has a good post on this very issue. Writing the introduction to a new collection of Nixon's writings and speeches, Perlstein writes:
His policy preferences also indicated a conflicted eagerness to please opinion-making elites. They praised his establishment of an Environmental Protection Agency, launched with an inspiring speech: "the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debts to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water, and our living environment. It is literally now or never." But he shared his true opinion of the issue in an Oval Office meeting auto executives: that environmentalists wanted to "go back and live like a bunch of damned animals." Throwing conservationists a bone also suited another political purpose: the issue was popular among the same young people who were enraged at him for continuing the Vietnam War. In the end, the EPA was a sort of confidence game. The new agency represented not a single new penny in federal spending for the environment. It did, however, newly concentrate bureaucracies previously scattered through vast federal bureaucracy under a single administrator loyal to the White House—the better to control them.
Time for another selection from Paul Harvey's classic text, You Said It, Paul Harvey. Complied by Mrs. Paul Harvey.
Liberals Trying to "Capture" Nixon
"When Conservatives lose an election they rush to congratulate the victor, retreat to lick their wounds, and wait until next time.
When Liberals lose an election, they "offer every assistance" and try to stake out for themselves at least one corner of the White House desk from where they exert continuing influence on the incumbent.
As they moved in on Eisenhower, they are now seeking to "assist" President Nixon in his appointments and decisions.
Traveling, it is difficult for me to pass a news stand without perusing the editorial pages to see what issues are of most local concern.
Inevitably I peek at my own column to see my name in print. Recently, characteristically, these columns have subscribed to the President's suggestion that we "pull our country together."
But elsewhere on the editorial pages and in prominent national periodicals I read so many liberal pundits who are already hard at work trying to pull Mr. Nixon over into their corner.
This is not intended as criticism of colleagues; I am criticizing me. So starting now I'm going to be a little less pull-together and a little more pull-away from those sore losers.
Mr. Nixon owes the Rockefeller-eastern-liberal-establishment nothing! They fought him at the Convention and they helped him not at all during the election. Nixon lost New York, and New England this election by a greater margin than when he lost it to John Kennedy.
On the other hand, those Conservatives who did deliver Ohio and Illinois and all those southern border states to Mr. Nixon--those to whom he truly owes his selection--deserve much consideration.
Recent days I hear and read so many seeking to convince the new President that he "has a mandate to adopt many Humphrey programs"--and perhaps appoint Humphrey to his official family--"because the election was so close." Rubbish. Kennedy "squeeked" in and nobody questioned his "mandate."
"Nixon must shift to the left," another insists.
Significantly, many demand that Nixon turn his back on the Deep South which voted against him but none I have read says he should reject the Manhattan Islanders who rejected him.
The post-convention Nixon-Rockefeller shotgun wedding was an understandable political expedient.
Indeed, I am sure Mr. Nixon is genuinely determined to try to keep his party together and pull our country together.
This will necessarily require some accomodation. [sic]
My fear now is that he will listen to the concerted voice of his enemies to the subsequent neglect of his friends.
It is because Mr. Nixon's historic image is "conservative" that the liberals are now making such a concerted effort to influence him thataway.
It will be easiest for him to yield rather than suffer the criticism which the eastern liberals are able to mobilize against any who dare to oppose them.
Mr. Nixon, therefore, is going to need all the encouragement he can get to stand by what most voters considered to be his own personal principles.
Whatever other interpretation anybody tries to put on the returns from the recent election, this fact is incontrovertible: The liberal ism was rejected. In fact, by the combined Nixon-Wallace turnout, it was overwhelmed."
Good Day!
