taking sides: lyndon baines johnson vs. richard milhous nixon

Nixon - a raving lunatic. The nearest thing to a certifiably insane nutbag the USA has ever had in the White House.

Both therefore have their advantages.

"If you think the United States has stood still, who built the largest shopping center in the world?" - Nixon

hunter s. thompson, "he was a crook," rolling stone (Jun. 16, 1994).

http://www.albion.edu/history/tchambers/mencken.htm

Love this thread, and also just finished Walter Isaacson's Kissinger; it's impossible, after also reading Sy Hersh's Kiss bio and Hitchens' Trial of Henry Kissinger to decide who was more corrupt.

damn, we missed the party yesterday.

http://lbj100.org/

Last night I was listening to an interview on the radio (NPR program: On the Media) with an author who has just released a book about the newspaper columnist and muckraker, Jack Anderson, a guy who broke a lot of scandals involving Nixon, starting in 1952 and continuing for a couple of decades.

It seems this author interviewed E. Howard Hunt before Hunt's death. There, on tape, Hunt discussed a plan hatched by our hero, Richard Nixon, to assassinate Jack Anderson. Hunt and that other great American hero, G. Gordon Liddy, apparently spent a couple of weeks tailing Anderson, trying to figure out how to cause a fatal auto accident or else break into his home and slip poison into Anderson's medicine.

Nixon: so much more than batshit insane, he was one baby step from serial killer.

that is also cited in Summer's "Arrogance of Power: The Secret World of Richard Nixon"

May God bless you all, and may God bless the United States of America! Nixon was raised a Quaker, too.

You can bet I've got a ticket for this:

http://www.hotdocs.ca//film/title/our_nixon

Deeee-lighted that declassified documents show Nixon interfered with the Paris peace talks.

Hasn't that been known for a long time--that he was mucking around in the background just before the '68 election? Or maybe he was just gumming things up with public pronouncements, I can't remember.

So much body language. It's like they're all saying "The fuck?"

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/e2/Lyndon_Johnson_and_Nixon,_withAgnew.jpg/1024px-Lyndon_Johnson_and_Nixon,_withAgnew.jpg

And who knew that LBJ inspired the dictatorial jumpsuit/sunglasses combo.

Hasn't that been known for a long time--that he was mucking around in the background just before the '68 election? Or maybe he was just gumming things up with public pronouncements, I can't remember.

Hersh and Hitchens, among others, have mentioned it. Now apparently we know memos written by Walt Rostow, LBJ's NSA, confirming this happened.

I just got done reading The Presidents Club, and there's a big part about all this in the LBJ/RMN chapter.

LBJ let Nixon know that he knew about his spoiling the talks. LBJ called it treason, but never said anything public about it.

Once Nixon got in, he started getting paranoid and wanted to know how LBJ had bugged his plane (he hadn't) and how they could turn this around on Johnson.

Kissenger suggested they could say Humphrey was in on it, and Nixon laughs and goes "Aw hell no. Who'd believe that?"

Haldeman mentions that LBJ bugged HHH too, they all laugh again, and then go bomb Cambodia. Great book.

I alluded to that book (a good read) in the Watergate thread, but if I'm remembering correctly it doesn't link the Plumbers to Nixon's obsession with what LBJ knew.

http://news.yahoo.com/nixon-mocked-democrats-jerusalem-position-071323064--politics.html

I've watched both their American Experiences within the past few weeks (they aired close together, around '90-91). Many similarities, obvious differences. Thought the LBJ was especially good.

Who was Richard Nixon? He was supposed to be Quaker. Some say his father was a lemon rancher. Nobody believed he was real. Nobody ever saw him or knew anybody that ever worked directly for him, but to hear Woodward tell it, anybody could have worked for Nixon. You never knew. That was his power. The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn't exist. And like that, 39 years ago today, poof. He was gone.

LBJ ALL THE FUCKING WAY. 2nd favorite pres after Lincoln.

would take nixon over either clinton any day, though.

(hrrmph. carry on.)

rip, nixon. sure. there've been worse.

Just posted today--your dreams have been answered.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hOqnG9UHLE

http://phildellio.tripod.com/resignation.jpeg

Does anything say Valentine's Day better than Richard Nixon?

https://phildellio.tripod.com/nixon-2.jpg

somewhere, Roger Stone just got hard

You just sent me to therapy.

Screenshot I took from Versailles '73: American Runway Revolution.

https://phildellio.tripod.com/fashion.jpg

CNN starts an LBJ series tonight (yeah, I know, "Turn Turn Turn"):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pND1mP0Rwpo

That trailer's voice-over has a definite "In a world..." vibe.

a bit of a Casey Kasem vibe too

Still wishing for the day when the Mothers' "Trouble Every Day" becomes the go-to music for the mid-late '60s.

Jesus, I think it involves reenactments. I'll be out of there with the first one.

I bailed, indeed--the Man on Wire documentary might be the only one I ever saw where I reached a level of tolerance with the reenactments.

The other guy in the thread title has a new ally:

https://www.hotnewhiphop.com/kanye-west-shares-his-long-list-of-enemies-including-skete-davidson-news.147986.html

111th--planning something monstrous with Kissinger right now.

has already fired the special prosecutor in Hell

Still intrigued by what kind of balancing act he'd do with regards to Trump. He was the ultimate company man, but I think he'd try to figure out some way to create a little distance--a non-endorsement endorsement, if you will.

I was not quite eight when Nixon resigned. My most vivid memory of him is that, when he was on TV, he sweat. Like, a lot. His upper lip was slick.

This is my all-time favorite Nixon pic. It says so much about the man.

https://i.dailymail.co.uk/1s/2021/08/31/14/47274247-9943475-Pictured_Nixon_checks_his_watch_as_he_shakes_hands_with_a_member-a-12_1630417756875.jpg

I don't think he was a political genius so much as an amoral survivor. His only goal was his political survival, and any means to achieve that goal was acceptable.

If there has been a true political genius in the U.S. in the past 100 years, it was Bill Clinton.

Nah, man. FDR. At least his feral genius produced tangible good for decades.

FDR I'd put up there also. I obviously didn't experience the man first-hand. But Clinton has (or had) what Apple developer Bud Tribble, referring to Steve Jobs, called a "reality distortion field."

Nixon was at least complicated (Title 9, the EPA, detente with China)... for all his base amorality he actually did a thing or two

But yeah, we still live daily with FDR's legacy, maybe even a little LBJ as well

My very Republican grandmother used to fake gagging whenever the name Franklin Delano Roosevelt was mentioned.

Lol... so much of his 'pinko' stuff (via Keynesian economics) was a desperate attempt to avoid actual pinko shit; the 1930s was probably the most marxist decade the U.S. ever experienced

My very Republican grandmother used to fake gagging whenever the name Franklin Delano Roosevelt was mentioned.

LOL no

That didn't stop her from saying that FDR had "ruined the country."

So the US was a better place in 1933 than in 1945... that is some take

I can't separate "political genius" from the morality of those decisions, and FDR followed by LBJ are so obviously the winners. Bill Clinton, the only Dem we could've elected, alas, in 1992, left office having prevented the worst of a GOP counter-revolution who thought the presidency belonged to them after a dozen years, nominated good judges and (sure) justices, and was a charming rogue, but I don't wanna think about him anymore.

So the US was a better place in 1933 than in 1945... that is some take

Yes . . . and this from a woman who had truly harrowing stories of the Depression. There were times she was literally starving.

Nixon gets mistakenly called a liberal -- or, worse, "would never have been nominated by today's GOP!" -- because he endured an immovable Dem majority in both chambers of Congress and, trying to begin a political revolution that culminated with the election of Reagan, he signed their legislation.

Died 30 years ago today (Nixon, that is), although I think he still tweets.

Nixon never suffered enough for his crimes to satisfy me, but Kissinger's decades as an éminence grise were even more sickening.

He doesn't tweet. That's just some weirdo making goofy statements and thinking he sounds just like Richard M. Nixon.

he's pretty good!

Not Nixon good.

YouTube has been recommending a lot of videos from the Nixon Foundation, which I guess runs the presidential library, sells merch, etc. Feel like their social media team is really leaning into "bet you miss him now, eh?" (I don't, though.)

I'm surprised there isn't a counter-propagandist "Nixon still a craven shitbird" group pumping out unflattering videos