The truth about him.
I disagree that Nixon’s first term was a success, domestically, unless by that you simply mean that he accomplished what he set out to. His policies were hardly conservative — he introduced wage and price controls, and the double nickel speed limit, the idiotic bane of my youth that wasn’t really undone until we got a Republican Congress in 1994. But I agree that the impeachment mood was driven far more by personal dislike for him than actual guilt. Bill Clinton got away with many things, and worse things, that Nixon was merely accused of. His primary crime, if it was one, was hiring ethically-challenged aides. It is interesting to speculate how much better off the Vietnamese would have been if he had been president in 1974.
[Update a while later]
I celebrated Nixon’s resignation at the time, but I’d been raised to hate him by Democrat parents. But the Clinton administration was when I finally turned my back on the Democrats as irredeemably corrupt and partisan. Nixon was hounded out of office, with the support of members of his own party, who found his behavior rising to the level of high crimes and misdemeanors, even though he was probably innocent of any actual crime. Clinton, on the other had, had his party circle the wagons around him, even though he had committed multiple federal felonies, after taking an oath to see that the law was faithfully executed, in the service of seeing that a young woman over whom he had great power and was sexually abused by him, didn’t get a fair trial, and sending out his winged monkeys to trash the reputations of her and other women that he raped and molested. There were a few honest Democrats in that episode, but the vast majority of them were disgusting partisan hypocrites, never to be taken seriously again.
” His primary crime, if it was one, was hiring ethically-challenged aides. ”
Definitely his primary mistake. I never understood why he didn’t just throw them under the bus:
“What? my guys engineered a break-in? I’m shocked, shocked! I’ve fired them and they should be brought to trial.”
If Nixon didn’t order the break-in and if he didn’t know about it beforehand, the whole thing would have been over in 20 minutes.
I’m not aware of any evidence that he did either one.
As to Mr. Nixon, his crime was the taping system. Also, “it wan’t the crime, it was the cover-up”, and President Nixon spoke on tape about “talking to” people about the investigation of the Watergate break-in, and “obstruction of justice” is a Swiss Army knife charge the police invoke when “they don’t like your attitude”, and Mr. Obama didn’t have a tape recorder rolling when Fast and Furious was discussed.
As to the people in his own party turning on him, I can tell you one Republican, a refugee immigrant with mother and brother “behind the Iron Curtain”, who would have gone to the ends of the Earth to support Mr. Nixon, thought that spying on the opposition party was crossing a red (excuse the pun) line.
As to Mr. Woodward, I brought up “Veil” and the fantasy of Mr. Casey’s deathbed confession some weeks ago. As to “Wired”, it was apparent from his death that Mr. Belushi used drugs, and it doesn’t seem surprising that a person with a serious drug problem would have enablers and fellow users in Hollywood.
If Nixon didn’t order the break-in and if he didn’t know about it beforehand, the whole thing would have been over in 20 minutes.
That’s a huge couple of ifs. He did order aides to do other illegal things. He had motive to order the break-in, and his aides had little reason to do it without his approval.
Obstruction of justice… isn’t that the definition of the modern democratic party?
Until Woodward accused Obama, would anyone dare go after Woodward?
My opinions on the Nixon admin were all formed after it was out of office (I was born during the Nixon admin) but I’ve always looked upon Nixon as a bungler and an idiot. Top of my list: wage and price controls. Then all the inept and harmful meddling. (55mph speed limit, for one). And then, further down the list, Watergate.
I think Nixon cooked his own goose; he tried to cover up something he only learned of after the fact. He was also unwise enough to tape himself saying things that could be used against him. I do think he committed crimes, specifically obstruction of justice. Not to the level of the Obama admin, and unlike the Obama admin in Fast & Furious Nixon didn’t kill anybody (F&F has a death toll of hundreds) but I think Nixon did commit crimes.
Clinton? What crimes did he commit? Let’s put aside what he’s merely accused of and stick to what’s known. Perjury, for one. Obstruction of justice, for another. Did that rise to the level of removal from office? I honestly don’t know, but I do know this; if Nixon warranted removal, then Clinton did too, only to a greater degree. However, Nixon’s crime was compounded by a far greater crime; Nixon was a Republican. Personally I think he was a RINO, but still…
However, I also think that the Obama admin makes both Nixon and Clinton look squeaky clean by comparison. I’d also much, much prefer to see either Clinton or Nixon return to the presidency, either as they were while in office or as they are today, than have Obama there. I think Clinton and Nixon, for all their many faults, would be far better in office than Obama.
@Ken Anthony; of course no one went after Woodward before he turned on Obama. He wasn’t a heretic then, but he is now, hence the jihad against him.
I’d also much, much prefer to see either Clinton or Nixon return to the presidency, either as they were while in office or as they are today, than have Obama there.
I see what you did there.
But it’s actually quite constitutional; the 22nd ammendment says;
“No person shall be elected to the office of the President more than twice, and no person who has held the office of President, or acted as President, for more than two years of a term to which some other person was elected President shall be elected to the office of the President more than once.”
So, if Nixon was merely returned to the presidency via means other than election, he could legally be president again. How could he be returned? Easy, elect him Speaker of the House (a position for which you don’t, technically, need to be a member of the House). Then impeach and convict Obama and Biden, and bingo, Nixon’s back (the speaker is the next in line of presidential succession to the VP). So, Nixon can absolutely be president again.
The one remaining issue is that he’s dead, but that’s not a barrier either. Presidential succession is triggered by death while in office, but in this case, he’s dead before taking office, so it’s not a problem.
So therefor, I think it’s clear; Nixon can absolutely be president again, he just can’t run for the office in an election.
And I think he’d do a much better job than Obama.
🙂
Monica was hardly abused. She treated her incomplete victory over Bill as a notch in her bedpost deserving bragging rights.
Now if Bill had lived up to his musician legacy, he’d have had her over the presidential desk. I am sure JFK and Bobby would have done that to their visiting lady friends more than once.
Monica was hardly abused.
I don’t think anyone said such, but is it ok for Executives to take sexual favors from interns?
Anyway, the abused were Paula Jones and Juanita Broderick.
And Kathleen Willey, and the other women that he raped and molested.
Monica was hardly abused.
Who said she was? Nothing that I wrote about Bill Clinton was about Monica. She got exactly what she asked for. It was all of the peripheral women who paid for it.
I should add that, had Monica not kept the blue dress on the advice of Linda Tripp, you can be sure that her reputation would have been trashed along with the other women, as a “stalker,” because that was exactly the plan, as recorded. It was disrupted only by the inconvenient physical evidence.
I was certainly convinced she was crazy at first. The White House campaign to make that the narrative was pretty intense. I even remember a news interview with other WH interns where the idea of an intern being alone with the president was ridiculed.
So Monica, instead of just cleaning the dress (the normal thing to do), decides to keep it intact. It’s almost as if she anticipated what might happen if the story broke, and kept a little insurance. Maybe the lady (and I use the term loosely) was smarter than people give her credit for.
No, she was an idiot. The only smart thing she did was to listen to the advice of Linda Tripp, in whom she confided. No good deed goes unpunished…
9 lines down in the update.
Monica was abused but not on par with being locked in a basement chained to a radiator. It was an abuse of the teacher/student relationship. An employer assumes the role of teacher when allowing a student to work in exchange for class credits. It is highly inappropriate for a teacher to have sex with their students, at any level of education and is often a crime or fireable offense.
The strange part is how feminists celebrate Clinton as a studly ladies man while trying to get other people fired for making joke about dongles.
I don’t think Clinton should live outside the rules the rest of society lives by and especially not outside the rules his party has for other people’s conduct.
It’s a fact of nature that jokes about dongles are only creepy if made by lesser males, like coders; when super-alpha males such as Clinton get raunchy, vaginas moisten.
One cause for Clinton impeachment that gets little (if any) play: the war with Serbia. The legal problem is that he made it a NATO war – violating NATO’s charter as a mutual defense pact. Serbia hadn’t attacked a NATO member.
What ironies – a sometimes-pro-interventionist conservative complaining about a hippie war protester’s bombing of a Russian ally. The Cold War is definitely over.
The ignorance about Watergate here is disgraceful. Nixon ordered the CIA to halt the FBI’s Watergate investigation, on trumped-up national security grounds (see: the smoking gun tape). That wasn’t his aides, it was Nixon himself. It wasn’t his only crime, but that one act by itself it puts Nixon in an entirely different category from Clinton.
Darn straight. Nixon went too far in protecting the people under him, and paid the price for it. Clinton had nothing but contempt for the people under him, and the laws he had passed, and was willing to break the law and ruin people to protect himself. Nixon made national security claims that were proven completely factual (As we saw with the Collapse of Vietnam and the following Genocide) and Clinton himself attempted to use the FBI and Secret Service to ruin those trying to see justice done, and Clinton himself committed Perjury, attacking the very foundation of Justice. Thank you, Jim, for reminding us that Nixon acted as a Hero would, while Clinton followed the route of the basest villain.
Jim hates Nixon, because if there’s one guy who stands foursquare against an imperial presidency, it’s Baghdad Jim!