The secrecy, manipulation and deceit of the Nixon years had no larger foci than the two consuming topics of Vietnam and the Kennedys, and for President Richard M. Nixon those two topics were joined. Watergate stemmed from them.

Nixon knew how unpopular the Vietnam War was, and against this backdrop of Vietnam as well as the larger backdrop of the Cold War, Nixon was secretly pursuing détente with Russia and China. In his strategizing, Nixon, who would have been happy to get off the hook for Southeast Asia himself, wanted to paint Vietnam as the Democrats’ war. Setting ...   more »

Iraq escalation benefits Jeb Bush

It is difficult to imagine the sane person who could imagine that supporting the Bush escalation in Iraq will benefit John McCain politically. Even the cleaned-up language in which the president dressed his presentation last night (January 10, 2007) makes clear that he expects further carnage. Chilling, and chillingly offhand, suggestions that the troops have had "too many restrictions," that armed forces will have the "green light to enter" neighborhoods, and that they will be "going door to door” – “to gain trust" -- show us a Baghdad like the world ...   more »

Diaries of White House Chief of Staff H. R. Haldeman, kept during the Nixon years, demonstrate again that Nixon was fully aware in election year 1972 that the Vietnam War was not popular. The White House turned a paranoiac, watchful eye ever outward, constantly alert, scanning the political zodiac for any sign that the Democrats were going to capitalize on the unpopularity of the war.

Nixon came into office knowing that he would not have won the White House in 1968 had Robert F. Kennedy, his campaign rocket-propelled by opposition to the war as well as by the Kennedy ...   more »

Quick post here: Yesterday’s handing over of the gavel to Nancy Pelosi, Democrat of Baltimore and California, first woman Speaker of the House, was historic. But it was not – as in the insta-myth du jour – “raucous.”

I was there. I opted to stand a few feet away from the press balcony, just inside the glass doors to the Gallery, but the audios and visuals were ample. Pelosi did indeed get a standing ovation (mostly), but there was nothing more raucous about it than about any other standing ovation.

In a curiosity of congressional tradition, children and ...   more »

Two books are particularly valuable resources on the Nixon presidency and Watergate. One is a little paperback, newspaperman Jimmy Breslin’s How the Good Guys Finally Won (1975). The other is a copious hardback, The Haldeman Diaries (1994), which reinforce with depth, detail and context everything condensed by Breslin. Haldeman himself worked on the diaries for publication, to his credit, although they were published shortly after his death, and they are a massive gift to historians.

The books are core references on the Nixon years. But between them they also provide a forward view, as SEC filings phrase it, on ...   more »

May, 1972, politically an action-filled month, began auspiciously for President Nixon with the sudden death on May 2 of FBI Director and fearsome White House antagonist J. Edgar Hoover. Hoover’s longtime loyal secretary then destroyed his files on Washington notables inside and outside government, a potential blackmail cache. In an episode pertaining to a future administration, the young George W. Bush – called “Junior” – soon hit the skids in some way, blowing his record with the Air National Guard. As the month went on, on May 15 George Wallace – Nixon’s main threat from the right in the ...   more »

Vote tallies in the race between Tom Feeney and Clint Curtis in Florida’s district 24 show disturbing signs. The following is passed along from the National Election Data Archive. The analysis of results is linked here.

“January 2, 2007

http://electionarchive.org/ucvAnalysis/FL/2006/Analysis-FL-CD24-ElectionResults-2006.pdf

Analysis of Curtis-Feeney race in Florida District 24 shows  that:

The official Diebold reports of vote counts in the Curtis-Feeney Congressional District 24 2006 election significantly misreport the number of voters who voted and the number of under-votes. The pattern of votes counted in Florida's US Congressional District 24 is unusual and consistent with a pattern ...   more »

By informed accounts, Richard Milhous Nixon (1913-1994) was politically obsessed with the Kennedys, and with good reason. Even with the advantage of being Eisenhower’s vice president and the support of most of the nation’s newspaper publishers, Nixon lost the 1960 presidential race to Kennedy – a Catholic with a short Washington resume, lurid concealed private amours and health problems, and apparently no advantages except for a wealthy, no-holds-barred father, a highly motivated extended family, a certain entrenched dishonesty in the Chicago region, and a demeanor that stood up well to television. Nixon lost narrowly, but he still lost.

After ...   more »