So says John Dean, in his book Worse Than Watergate: The Secret Presidency of George W. Bush, which is released today. Dean (Richard Nixon’s Counsel) argues that the present administration is far more hung up about working in secret than Nixon and his buddies ever were.
A search of < Nixon Bush “John Dean” > will turn up 9000 hits (already!). I’ll refrain from comment until I actually see Dean’s book, but I know that won’t slow up some of you. . . .
Go to it!
Wouldn’t surprise me in the slightest. Certainly, they are pursuing a much more extremist agenda than Nixon did (for example, a lot of our modern environmental laws…like the Clean Air and Clean Water Acts, I believe…were passed under the Nixon Administration). So, I would expect they would have a strong desire to hide this extremism from the American people.
Well, my first reaction was…uh, sure. Comparing Bush to Nixon is only a step above comparing Bush to Hitler (in may peoples minds anyway).
My second was to question how John Dean is an authority on the Bush Administrations inner workings? Afaik he’s not an insider in any way or even part of the administration. No?
I have no doubt that Bush IS a secretive bastard. Makes sense when you look and see all the cold warriors on his staff. They are still living in the past with all this secrecy crap IMO (though sometimes it is necessary to keep stuff classified and from the public). Nixon however broke the law and totally abused his powers in the Watergate fiasco. Afaik Bush has not broken the law or abused his powers…at least not in the same way and for personal gain. The other side of it is that Nixon WAS a fairly good president (until he fucked up and broke the law of course and then compounded it by trying to cover it all up) while Bush is not, IMO. So I don’t see the comparison on any level.
Maybe if I read the book it will shed some light on all this, but this sounds like someone just sniping at Bush (again). The Lefties and the 'Crats have been crying wolf so often about Bush that it is getting to the point that they are falling into backgound noise. There is a real danger that people who they want and need to appeal too are going to begin to ignore them (like, say, at election time) if they keep this shit up. Its like some folks are so rabid about Bush that they feel they have to attack him about everything he does. They nitpick the issues and the man to death. What this does though, in effect, is to dilute the very real stupid things he’s done, and the very real reasons NOT to re-elect this fool. A good example of this was Clinton. The 'Pubs did the exact same shit with the man…and he got 2 terms in office. Maybe something to think about.
-XT
Same sort of coverups too, as with Jack Spadaro, the federal employee who, by coincidence, had worked for every administration since Nixon, and was silenced by Bush’s puppeteers. The financial shenanigans that followed should enrage the same people who screamed about Whitewater.
When Bush imposes wage and price controls, I’ll agree that he is pursuing a “more extremist agenda” than Nixon.
This business about who is more “X” than Nixon, Clinton, Reagan, etc. is a great way to sell books. I wonder how many books would be sold if Dean were to delcare that Nixon was more secretive than Bush. Maybe Bush is more secretive, and maybe not. I doubt we’ll ever actually know.
One must also consider the media environment. There’s a big difference between how much media exists and what they will publish or broadcast now vs the situation in the 60s.
I think I’ll save my book money for something more educational or entertaining.
Election time hell, it’s happening now. Polls have said a frightening majority of Americans could give a shit about anything Richard Clarke says.
Most people don’t seem to know this, but outside of America, Nixon is seen as one of our greatest Presidents, second only to Truman.
Seriously, that’s really, really vile. This is what happens with ideologues. They declare that environmental protections are industry-hurting nonsense (and some are), and suddenly they start indescriminately gutting everything without regard to merit or even a sense of human decency.
If the people who waved their hands at this were REALLY the free market advocates they claim to be, they’d have to acknowledge that abuses of public goods, let alone other people’s private property, must be paid for to get the incentives correct. But crony capitalists have no such consistent principles.
Its distressing but understandable. If I shout at you every day that all is doom, all is doom! day after day, eventually you will ignore me (look at the Peak Oil threads and issues). Then if one day all really IS doom…well, you see the point I’m sure. Since day one we have been bombarded by the left that Bush stole the election, Bush is Evil, Bush is blah blah blah…and eventually it all tends to blur. And then the REAL shit he is doing just kind of folds in with the made up rabid yammering of the foaming at the mouth partisan crowd…and doesn’t get the importance it deserves. I’ve seen it over and over on this board alone. People focus on the most trivial and inconsequential shit Bush has done (there was a whole thread of this stuff about Bush not acting fast enough when 9/11 happened, reading a ‘goat book’, etc etc) instead of focusing on the REAL stuff he’s done to the country. After a while when you’ve heard enough petty nitpicks it takes real focus to concentrate on that real stuff…and there are a lot of folks that, for various reasons, lack real focus.
My worry is that GW will be re-elected due to a combination of a deluge of these kind of book, yammering from the left, and the fact the 'Crats seem bound and determined to give the 'Pubs a handicap by running Kerry. Basically I am already starting my ‘toldya so’ thread for November.
/hijack
Well, the latest book by Eric Flint in his 1632 series is out (1634: The Galileo Affair) if you are reading the series. 
Its definitely more entertaining, though probably not as educational.
/end hijack
-XT
Was that really considering “extremist” at the time? Extremist in which direction?
Thanks for the heads up
I’m only about halfway through the book so I cannot speak to the book as a whole, but I do not believe he makes any claim to having an insider’s view of the current administration. He does, however, claim a certain insight into the Nixon administration and its penchant for secrecy, and I don’t know that anyone could deny his right to claim such. His very point rests not on any particular knowledge that he holds regarding the Bush administration, but very specifically what we do not know, and what we have been told we have no right to know. It is certainly a reasonable approach to a book on secrecy to express concern regarding those secrets that we know we do not know. Insider status might give us a view into a larger set of secrets to examine, but such a collection is unnecessary to promote his book’s premise.
When Bush imposes wage and price controls, I’ll agree that he is pursuing a “more extremist agenda” than Nixon.
Take me now, Jesus! I have lived to see Dick Nixon Sinistralis–the left wind nixon…
If only I had known back then…
It was by anyone who knew anything about economics.
The wrong one.
On the socialism/capitalism scale.
They didn’t have to live thru Watergate.
But of course Nixon was a Foreign Policy master. IIRC, he spoke French to boot!
What exactly is so awful about Nixon? He simply got caught doing something along the lines of what every contemporary president (except maybe Carter) most likely did. The quote “Power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely” comes to mind.
to nixons credit (or clinton’s shame) he ws to the left of devious bill on almost every impt. issue.
Nixon would never, for instance, have gutted habeas corpus. (God, I can’t believe I’m wrigfin this–I think my hnds have been taken over by some entity, like in the bad movies…)
He’s the guy for whom we invented the phrase: “It’s not the crime, it’s the cover-up.”
What Tricky Dick did while President was both utterly reprehensible and unprecedented. It was not “just the coverup”; he also used government agencies known as the IRS and the FBI to pursue his political enemies.The Articles of Impeachment against Richard M. Nixon
You gotta give this Administration credit…It has done wonders for nostalgia! I never thought I would be joining others in pining for the good ol’ days of Richard Nixon or Ronald Reagan!
I don’t want to slow any one up, but…
But what exactly are the criteria that Mr. Dean uses to render his judgement, Worse Than Watergate? Are the criteria relevant, meaningful criteria or seemingly arbitrary?
The criteria may well be a signifigant determiner of the quality of Mr. Dean’s judgement.