Only Nixon could go to China.
Because he was the only secret-Communist President!!!
I did find a reasonably reputable site that claims Nixon didn’t need much alcohol to visibly affect him, Christopher Hitchens writing in the NY Times reviewing Anthony Summers biography of Nixon:
Doesn’t directly address whether he was an alcoholic. Lots of site say he had a “drinking problem”. I may have been wrong characterizing him as a “heavy” drinker, simply because it didn’t take mush drinking to get him drink. But he did get drunk fairly often in the White House, and there are plenty of cites about his staff being concerned about it. Pat Nixon, by her own daughter’s account, was at least a borderline alcoholic as well.
FWIW, this is exactly how Maddow explained it last night on her show (which, btw, did a fantastic piece on this whole thing, explaining everything quite well, playing a bunch of the tapes, etc.). Because the information was obtained illegally, they couldn’t publicly talk about it.
I’ve read several stories now claiming the info was obtained from a tap of the South Vietnamese ambassador’s phone. And I have to wonder if a warrant was really needed. The embassy and residency are technically foreign soil and the guy isn’t a US citizen. OTOH, it’s certainly possible that the tap was put in place somewhere along the line on US soil. Sounds kind of like a legal minefield and I’m also doubtful that it’s been specifically addressed by a court, or even a law.
That is an interesting opinion, but one I don’t agree with. Wilson’s suspension of free speech was during war time, and rather limited. The internment, the low point of FDR’s tenure, was again, only during war time, and was heavily criticized later, with reparations and apologies. The red scare was during peace time and used against anyone who was a political opponent and destroyed the lives of people based on their alleged political beliefs from the late 40s to this very day.
Now, I’m a liberal. An FDR liberal, but I’m okay with criticizing his internment and court packing plan, but Vietnam did socially rip the country apart and destroyed a huge portion of the people’s faith in government (which might be a good thing) but the lives and families torn to pieces were horrifying. The counter-culture did produce great art and freedom, but the drugs and crime and PTSD destroyed, as Allen Ginsberg put it, the best minds of a generation. Not to mention millions of mediocre minds too, all of whom had people who loved them.
Nixon’s political allies got power and war dollars for it. Communism never amounted to anything in this country. Poor people in this country not as an exploited proletariat, but as temporarily embarrassed millionaires. (John Steinbeck).
I really adore Hunter S. Thompson’s Nixon obituary.
Even his funeral was illegal. God, that’s great.
But it’s this paragraph I especially love:
That’s about the most perfect definition of the ethos of Thompson’s style of journalism that one could come up with. It’s why he could never be mainstream.
Ginsberg wrote Howl in 1955. We of the counterculture did not begin our campaign to ruthlessly destroy American civilization for some years yet. The drug that damaged his “angel headed hipsters” was heroin, not LSD, sure as hell not pot.
Don’t forget the lead in the gasoline. That dain bramaged everyone too.
So am I. For real.
I don’t think that LBJ was a nice guy, capable of doing nice things, but not being nice with others, IIUC LBJ was not being nice in this case, he was aware that the information he got was not obtained legally, I think the old joke about lawyers is relevant with politicians like LBJ and Nixon:
Why won’t sharks attack lawyers? A: Professional courtesy
*Both Nixon and LBJ did go to law school.
Seconded.
And lawn darts.
That right wing rag The Village Voice, thoroughly debunked it over 20 years ago.
It was a theory propagated by a former Carter aide pissed off at his boss losing and was exposed as a myth by two separate Congressional committees(both of which were staffed mainly with Democrats) and such staunch Reagan defenders as Newsweek and The New Republic.
As The Village Voice reports:
I certainly hope that none of the people who bought this idiotic story have ever ridiculed either the Truthers or the people who believe Oswald didn’t kill Kennedy.
This last sentence was far too harsh and confrontational.
I wasn’t trying to be insulting, but merely point out that believing in it is as naive as believing in either 911 conspiracy theories or conspiracy theories regarding the killing of JFK.
The only reason people who believe in it aren’t held in such low regard is because the case isn’t as famous so people aren’t aware just how thin the case is.
Similarly, 30 years ago, something like 70% of all Americans believed the Warren Commission got it wrong, but now vastly fewer do.
There’s no need to apologize. You do know what thread you’re in don’t you?
Anyway, getting back on-topic, this latest release of information sadly just confirms a story that’s been around since the 90s. The book Nixonland also discusses the tampering Nixon (and Kissinger) did at the peace talks in 1968. It further mentions that Nixon had come to the conclusion that the U.S. could not win in Vietnam as early as 1966 but still kept the war going for another four years after he became president.
If nothing else, it puts to rest the idea that George W. Bush was the worst President ever. Frankly, to me at least, this story is vastly worse than Watergate.
You have in no way demonstrated that. You have instead pointed to a debunking. Very different.
A Ron Reagan October surprise is plausible simply because it happened before in 1968. That the sourcing was suspect did not emerge until years later. Furthermore former Iranian President Abulhassan Bani-Sadr stood by the allegation.
This isn’t implausible or dubious on its face. Whether it happened is another matter: I honestly haven’t looked into it. Heh: until now: 1980 October Surprise theory - Wikipedia
A lot of this may be predicated on a shaky presumption, that the Thieu regime would have accepted a peace deal if Nixon had not intervened. Everybody was taken by surprise, as I recall, no one expected such a sudden thaw. What would a peace deal offer the rulers of S. Viet Nam? The Americans leave, the money spigot is turned off, and they can rely on the ARVN to protect them? For what, two weeks maybe?
I think he did it, and I think he stinks, but it may not have actually made any difference.
This claim is also made in David Kessler’s “In the President’s Secret Service” , for which the author spoke with generations of agents about all the president’s (and their families’) behind-closed-doors behavior. Curiously, Kessler also claims that Pat Nixon was a long-time, serious alcoholic, which was news to me.