Steven Pearlstein with a slightly different version.
Ah, a reasonable explanation why Kennedy might have acted the way he did. But you’d never know it from Nixon hagiographer Ben Stein. Now don’t get me wrong, the article from Stein is full of admirable actions taken by Nixon during his presidency. But don’t you think that any article with the title “The Truth About Nixon” ought to have at least one mention of that little incident we refer to as “Watergate”.
Yeah, legislators (and presidents) are really good about submitting sham bills with fancy names in order to impress the voters. The actual details are usually crap, and they get shot down. But then they can go on TV and tell everyone, “The evil other party shot down my ‘Universal Success For Everyone’ bill!”
He does sort of mention it. At the very end of the article he has a line about “He helped with a coverup of a mysterious burglary that no one understands to this day. That was his grievous sin, and grievously did he answer for it.”
So technically, Stein did mention Watergate. But he soft-pedaled the hell out of it. There is nothing mysterious about the crime. And Nixon did more than just “help” with the cover-up. He was the President - the reason there was a cover-up is because he told people to do it.
And by the same token, his involvement occurred prior to the cover-up. The crime occurred because Nixon decided to hire a bunch of criminals to work for him. He might not have known the details about what crimes they were committing but he knew they were out there committing crimes for him.
As for grievously answering for his crimes, Nixon was allowed to retire and was pardoned from any possible criminal charges. I’d say he got off lightly.
You know those threads where we come up with absurd (but partly true) summaries for movies? Like that Wizard of Oz one: “Transported to a faraway land, a young girl murders the first person she meets, teams up with 3 others and kills again.”
Well if we had a thread doing the same thing to well known political events, this summary of Watergate would take first prize. Absolutely hilarious.
Stein also claimed that Nixon “did not get us into a large, unnecessary war on false pretenses”. I guess he didn’t fact check that with any Cambodians.
I have read that one of the main sticking points was how they were going to finance the healthcare system. They had agreed on a payroll tax with a worker and a company contribution like Social Security has. Nixon wanted the individual to pay for most of it while Kennedy wanted the company to pay for most of it. The irony is that anyone with any knowledge of tax theory knows that it does not matter which side pays for the payroll tax the tax incidence is all on the worker. So Kennedy held out for a meaningless issue and after a while pressure on both sides nixed the deal. That was the liberals best chance for a health care takeover by the government for almost forty years and Kennedy blew it. Thankfully that idiot was in charge of the push for health care legislation and not someone competent. Nepotism sometimes works out for good.
Why does anyone listen to Ben Stein anymore? He sold his credibility for a bag of money long time ago. He’s gotten so bad that I have trouble believing him when he talks about Clear Eyes.
Stein was a columnist for the New York Times. His contract said that he couldn’t do any commercial endorsements, which is apparently standard for Times columnists. Stein went ahead and began doing endorsements for a credit score company because he somehow figured that didn’t count. The Times fired him. Stein claimed it was because they didn’t like his politics.
Now the Times presumably was aware of what Stein’s politics were when they hired him. There was never apparently any issues over what he wrote. (It’s not like the New York Times is some left-wing publication.) The Times said he was fired over the endorsements, it was a clause in Stein’s contract, and Stein was doing endorsements.
But I guess claiming you’re a political martyr sounds better.
The difference is that Kennedy was an ideologue and government health care was on the liberal’s wishlist since the end of WW2. For Nixon, he just wanted an accomplishment to burnish his re-election campaign. He was consumed with foreign policy and he was ready to compromise with congress over domestic policy so he could do want he wanted in foreign affairs. He did not need to have a bill to get what he wanted since he was re-elected in a landslide. He ended up getting what he wanted and Kennedy ended up with nothing.