Watergate: S & D

I mean, you've said many times you're an Obama apologist, and to an extent you're right: there's a lot to apologize for.

btw unnice people are often the most sentimental.

search: the Safeway in the complex, where I shopped the summer I lived in Foggy Bottom

destroy: the tapes

as I've tried to make clear, I'm really and truly not trying to excuse Nixon. We just view what lay behind his actions differently. You guys see evil; I see lots of reasons, but evil's not one of them.

that's fair. i think i'm basically just iffy on this idea of evil being something inherent in one's personality. the impression i get of hitler from albert speer's memoirs is that he was a sociopath, a jerk, and a bore -- but not the earthly incarnation of satan. to me, evil lies in what people do, not what they are.

nixon, like every other person, was infinitely complex. that's why, to a certain extent, i think it's ultimately futile to speculate about why he did what he did. there's no doubt at all in my mind that he thought he was doing the right thing -- but for me, that doesn't mitigate anything he did.

i do, btw, think it's still possible to be president and not be complicit in atrocious acts, though it'd admittedly require a statesman of lincoln's stature at this point.

That's cuz the US generally minded its own fucking business til the 1890s

I like the title of Tom Wicker's Nixon book: One of Us. That's how I view Nixon. Then again, Syberberg called his Hitler film [i]Our Hitler[i], so maybe there's a parallel there. It's very complex...but J.D. makes some good points in the previous post.

He IS a fascinating creature, particularly in his striving to be what he was not: classy and beloved. But wickedly fascinating.

i do, btw, think it's still possible to be president and not be complicit in atrocious acts

Things you believe in despite scientific evidence to the contrary.

The question is, how would you behave as president? That's what none of us knows, and why I'm a little hesitant to start setting the bar on evil.

End the fucking wars. Cut the defense budget. Give the working-class and middle-class a fucking break for once.

Also, take over Mars.

yep. and the problem isn't that there's no conceivable candidate who would do that -- there are plenty. it's that neither party would nominate (and support) someone who was seriously likely to do those things.

End the fucking wars. Cut the defense budget. Give the working-class and middle-class a fucking break for once.

Ideally, sure. But I'll be honest, Adam--take away the profanity, and to me that's one step away from Miss South Carolina wishing for world peace.

This'll be a waste of time, and will be answered by a one-sentence dismissal by somebody--and doesn't belong on a Watergate thread besides--but, as briefly as possible, here's why I think Obama doesn't end the wars. 40% of the country will be with Obama no matter what; 30-35% are going to attack him no matter what. That leaves everyone else, and I think you could probably start chopping them up into little groups too. Somewhere in there, I think there's 10-15% of the electorate who had an unspoken deal with Obama: we'll vote for you, but please don't do stuff that's going to remind us that you're black, and no sudden movements, please, because sudden movements will remind us that you're black. Yes, I know--post-racial world, Obama's just the president, not the black president, etc., etc. I don't believe that, and I doubt that Obama does either. On top of that, you can throw in the usual Democratic skittishness when it comes to appearing weak on foreign policy, something that's defined the party since Reagan.

So, I believe, he does the crassly political thing and keeps two wars going, and, tentatively, sort of half-starts a new one. He does this because he has it in his mind that everything will unravel if he doesn't--he'll lose that 10-15% who've been keeping his approval ratings somewhere close to 50%, and from there, no legislation and no re-election. That's not a defense of the wars, and maybe I'm completely wrong; I'm just trying to explain my interpretation of what's happening.

When it comes to the detention and surveillance stuff, that I don't understand. And it's been a major disappointment. I don't go on the political thread and talk about it, because a) there are lots of people who do that already, and b) since those people rarely, if ever, acknowledge anything good about Obama's performance in office, I play the same game and don't acknowledge the negative.

Colson is one of the most disgusting humans to ever walk the face of the earth imho

you guys can go on and on about how bad the soviet union was, but boy i'll tell you, i'd like to see some of you guys in stalin's place, what would YOU have done?

not a stupid question actually

anyway oughtn't you to "set the bar for evil" somewhere you actually occasionally cross, because otherwise it's pretty obvious you're cheating

that said nixon was some medieval shit

Yeah I was thinking that the Stalin comparison actually raised some ~interesting questions~

man though can i just say--regarding sam waterston's speech about the cia "developing... appetites" in that clip upthread--there's really a level of stone's ridiculous melodramatic inaccurate shakespearian-history approach to America At The Zenith Of Its Cloistered Power that half the time i totally love. except obviously shakespeare would have just written the yeats poem himself. and not said "this country stands at such a juncture" at the end like a stupid dope.

i'd like to see some of you guys in stalin's place, what would YOU have done?

It seems to me that national power has a perverse logic of its own that makes it impossible to identify and maintain 'national interests' without sacrificing human lives and happiness in their name. Put all that power in one person's hand's and they must either grapple with that perversity and frequently lose out to its strict internal logic (as Obama usually does), or they will happily fall into step with it, commit its atrocities without conscience, and sleep like an innocent child (as Stalin did).

In Stalin's place, most of us would have failed, if failure is defined as allowing the nation to sink into impotence and irrelevance, as the price we'd pay for keeping some scraps of our own integrity. Stalin obv wasn't like that.

P.S. Nixon was a lot closer to Stalin in this regard than to any ilxor.

That's another reason why I don't think Nixon rises to the level of evil: the idea that evil has no conscience and no guilt. I realize that for most people, Nixon easily passes that test, too--no conscience, no guilt. I think he did harbor lots of guilt over his career, however, and even though he kept it hidden from view almost always--to do otherwise would be to give in to all the people he hated--it would manifest itself occasionally. I'm sure most everyone's seen the footage of him at Pat's funeral. I don't think I've ever seen a public figure so devastated, and I have to believe that a lot of that was tied into guilt over what he put his wife through--and that, I believe, was an extension of his guilt over what he put the country through. I also think you can see it in part one of the Frost interviews, towards the end when the camera zooms in slowly as he kind-of sorta apologizes for Watergate. His words tell one story--lots of legalisms and qualifiers--and his face tells another.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PkcZAB4_wd4&feature=related

enjoyed laughing at him at Pat's funeral tbh

One day I'll write my own version of "Campaigner"--I'll call it "Poster" or something like that--and the key line will be, "Even Dr. Morbius has got soul."

That's another reason why I don't think Nixon rises to the level of evil: the idea that evil has no conscience and no guilt

I dunno about that -- evil has many faces. Literature is replete with them. So is life.

Also: Nixon's famous I-gave-them-a-sword line isn't even close to an admission of guilt. The Watergate crimes weren't THEMSELVES illegal and vile acts against the Constitution and hence the body politic: they were opportunities for Nixon's enemies to stab him.

(according to Nixon)

Sincere question for Alfred: how is it that you brush aside Reagan's inability to utter the word AIDs (much less do anything about it) until 50,000 deaths had occurred as a generational blind spot, but Nixon's reckless mindset on Vietnam, which he shared with most politicians of his generation (I realize not all, especially as Vietnam worsened)--America doesn't lose wars and all that--is something different? I don't see one as any more inherently evil than the other.

This is a whole separate thread, but I've never believed that even the most complex characters from literature, films, or wherever can ever be as complex as actual human beings.

you brush aside Reagan's inability to utter the word AIDs ... until 50,000 deaths had occurred as a generational blind spot

I must have missed it when Alfred did this. Are you sure this is an accurate characterization of his position?

I've barely discussed Nixon's Vietnam record, so your question relies on a false binary. And I've never brushed off Reagan's AIDS record. But whatever Reagan's many failings as president, he didn't descend to Nixon's vindictiveness.

on the other hand, Reagan's almost sociopathic distance from people and events he set in motion made him a much better president than Nixon, who never fundamentally understood the office.

It was in the presidents poll: when I brought up Reagan and AIDs, you sort of shrugged and said that you couldn't expect anyone of his generation, at that particular point in time, do react any differently. As Casey Stengel would say, I'll look it up.

I narrow down Nixon's supposed evilness to Vietnam because I don't know where else it would reside. Unless you think all the dirty tricks and red-baiting qualifies as evil.

And even though I find Nixon infinitely more interesting than Reagan, I'm certainly not going to argue against the idea that Reagan's presidency was more successful--that'd be silly. Nixon was, as I saw Bernstein say once, less suited temperamentally to hold the office than any man ever--not even close. Reagan had the perfect temperament. Kind of like the guy in there now, I'd say.

Here's the passage I had in mind, from an earlier politic thread:

Ehhh. I'm gay and don't think it's as reprehensible as you claim, considering that it took the death of Rock Hudson to mobilize any sort of mass public interest in the disease as an epidemic. Reagan was as blinkered as Walter Mondale would have been; nothing in that generation's DNA suggests they would have been comfortable discussing condoms, gay sex, blood transfusions, etc (that's why congressman and senators around when Roe v Wade was upheld get a pass from me; do you think FDR's second generation of New Dealers were prepared to discuss a woman's right to an abortion?).

To be fair, a little later in the thread you did say "Which is not to exonerate him." You do seem more willing to look beneath the surface of Reagan's actions (or inaction, as it were) than you are with Nixon. And, as I did at the time, I disagree totally about Mondale; I say he would have done a much better job of handling the first few years of AIDs.

t was in the presidents poll: when I brought up Reagan and AIDS, you sort of shrugged and said that you couldn't expect anyone of his generation, at that particular point in time, do react any differently.

I still believe this, but it doesn't exonerate Reagan either.

Basically, at its core, I don't think Nixon's handling of Vietnam was any less generational than Reagan's handling of AIDs. And, yes, with Nixon, his own personal failings compounded the problem.

You do seem more willing to look beneath the surface of Reagan's actions (or inaction, as it were) than you are with Nixon.

Did you mean "less willing"? I'll assume so. At any rate, not at all! I've probably read more about Reagan than any other modern president, with the possible exception of Nixon. In the case of Dick, he had a long record of malicious behavior, which Reagan simply didn't have and was incapable of (a long record of stupidity and callowness though).

But I trust you're not assuming my categorizing means I don't find Nixon an awesome character and worth endless study.

No, I did mean "more"--i.e., you'll attempt to explain mitigating factors when it comes to Reagan, whereas you won't with Nixon.

Anyway, we can probably bring this to a close. We seem to all agree that Nixon was fascinating. We also all agree he did horrible things. Everyone except me views him as evil. I stop short of that.

crossposted on Pakula thread re All the President's Men (the film):

http://mubi.com/notebook/posts/3148

Bernstein: "What I took away from watching the movie six years ago was that most of the good work was done at night. I think, and there are certain exceptions, that you get the truth at night and lies during the day."
cracking line that.

i watched all 30 parts of thi slast year. fascinating stuff:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QzRM3l5TwRU

August 9, 1974: And then, you destroy yourself.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XfNjpHAMy2E

That he never once mentions Pat but chooses to languish in his habitual self-pity makes this a particularly gruesome watch.

It's the most public descent into abject self-pity that I can think of--almost stream-of-consciousness when he starts talking about him mother and father. (His mother, anyway--he'd been using the line about his father being the poorest lemon grower forever.) But I do think those two or three lines that begin with "Always remember" are improbably poetic.

Anyway, the whole speech runs eight or nine minutes--are you sure he doesn't mention Pat somewhere?

I checked the full text of the speech, and if search is to be trusted he doesn't. He acknowledges his family a couple of times in his resignation speech, but doesn't mention Pat by name.

I haven't seen the whole thing so it's possible. He wasn't particularly interested in mentioning Pat. In the Pat chapter of a history of modern First Ladies I browsed through at the library a couple of months ago (wish I could remember its title), we learn that while president Dick, stepping off Air Force One, walked right past an open-armed Pat and greeted local dignitaries. According to the author, he had never seen such a look of desolation on a woman's face.

Pretty sure her look of desolation on wedding day was worse

http://thenewnixon.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/richard_nixon_new_dad.jpg

He treated his wife miserably. I don't know much about presidential wives before Jackie O, but I figure Pat was the template for that awful scene that gets replayed over and over now of the wife standing by stone-faced as the husband publicly admits to whatever transgression he's committed (captured very well by Joan Allen in the Stone film).

How pathetic that the one president who needed wifely interaction preferred the warmth of Brezhnev and Chou En-Lai.

I believe that's the first time ever the phrase "the warmth of Brezhnev" was typed or uttered.