TS: Richard Nixon vs George W. Bush

Weighing the Nixon and Reagan adminstrations' records of lawlessness will produce a draw, methinks. Nixon's indifference to domestic policy centered power in the Oval Office, making it the center for national security issues; almost all his dirty tricks revolved around destroying perceived enemies to this foreign policy ambitions. Meanwhile Reagan's indifference to anything five minutes ago produced a loyal junta of fanatics who thought they were acting in his name.

* to HIS foreign policy ambitions.

a loyal junta of fanatics who thought they were acting in his name.

Or actually were, but were disowned for political and legal reasons.

that episode of Family Matters when Steve Urkel originally become Stefan Urquelle really sucked as it spun the already cliched and weak family sitcom into a downward spiral from which it never recovered.

The Reagan administration understood plausible deniability. Urkel was a cowboy.

and to think, it was the presidency that caused me to look to urkel in the first place.

xp

Theodore Drdaper's A Very Thin Line puts to rest the rumor that Reagan "couldn't recall" the events.

*Draper, of course.

they just adapted Frost/Nixon (the Broadway play) into a movie which is due out next year. Hoping it turns out good, although Frank Langella doesn't exactly look much like Nixon (his head is a lot fatter).

Of course containing the famous quote that when the President does something, it isn't illegal.

does anyone think that nixon, of all people, sincerely believed in law and order?

"the rule of law" ≠ "law and order," which symbolized the suppression of the black power, free speech and student movements (ie of blacks, non-'straights', jews and intellectuals) that were announcing to the world how much nixon was fucking up in vietnam. it's not that he didn't care about domestic policy, it's that he responded to the claims of new interest groups on the government with a policy of benign neglect, cheering when hardhats fought back against protesters. while he had much more of a free hand when it came to war powers, he couldn't much stand in the way of liberal initiatives of a strongly Democratic Congress pressured by such groups, but he created agencies in part to neutralize/contain those efforts, and proposed some liberal measures of his own as poison pills to tank liberal legislative initiatives. he also sought to undermine liberal efforts through the bully pulpit ("law and order") and covert operations. that he did not do more and was not explicitly racist in public was merely reflective of his jekyll-side attempt to be as buttoned-up and removed from the mess as the elites he resented and the internality of his resentments. 'silent majority' indeed.

his entire strategy at home seems to have been one big concerted effort to get the voters to shut up and leave him alone so he could get on with escalating the war

actually, he thought antiwar protesters were encouraging the north vietnamese. and while he prolonged the war in part due to uncertainty as to how a resolution would play politically, he ultimately wanted to end it and get on with larger foreign-policy initiatives that could in fact be described as deescalation.

My only hope for McCain if he's elected is that he'll pursue a Nixonian indifference to domestic policy.

smoke yr planet while you got it

Ok, admittedly I wasn't even alive during the Nixon administration (or half the Reagan administration for that matter). Calling him an "honest liar" was my own awkward way of saying that he was less dangerous simply because he was more obviously creepy -- whereas Reagan was like a cuddly, harmless-looking teddy bear filled with pure hate. Nixon was merely a Jeffrey Dahmer of a president; Reagan was like Chucky or something.

...God, did I just write that? I need to get some sleep.

because he was more obviously creepy

I think it's hard for people of our generation (I'm 26) to get a solid bead on this - all the footage I've ever seen of Nixon is colored through knowing about all the shit he did, whereas for most of his presidency that stuff was well under wraps. So - obviously awkward and uncomfortable, and if you didn't like him he definitely would read as creepy...but to the vast majority that re-elected him in '72, he had to seem like a solid American statesman, ascending from humble roots to accomplish great things in a no-nonsense fashion...or something like that? Help me out here, ILX oldsters.

I guess this is the way Nixon was selling himself, anyway. Wow. Delightful teens in love frolicing down the street - you have Nixon to thank for your youth and energy!

nixon wins this because GWB has committed worse crimes, in my opinion. So did Reagan, probably. It seems like Nixon's biggest crime might have been making the US public jaded enough to not care.

uh, no

nixon did tons of evil, heinous shit

there is a swedish indie group called nixon which i am sure a lot of you appreciate. i would vote for nixon because he is history and w bush is the brute hard reality one will face tomorrow :((

"he is history" == safely dead and buried... true that.

The problem is that, as Marc Antony says in Shakespeare's Julius Caesar, the evil that men do lives after them. Nixon has a lot to answer for in his conduct of the war in SE Asia, where he killed a million Vietnamese, Laotians and Cambodians, and for his crimes at home, where he subverted the rule of law on a daily basis.

All it took was G W Bush for Nixon's legacy to be reconsidered.

Ann Beattie attempts, well, something about Pat Nixon.

Nixon was more vile than Dubya as a person and as a politician, but Dubya left our political system more thoroughly damaged at the end of his administration, because his criminality was embedded in a context that condoned it. In many ways, Dubya was the fullfillment of Nixon's vision and a product of the malign trends that Nixon inaugurated.

So, Nixon still wins this FITE, in terms of villany.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/04/24/politics/bush-interview-king/index.html?hpt=hp_t1

"History will ultimately judge the decisions that were made for Iraq and I'm just not going to be around to see the final verdict," the two-term president told CNN in a wide-ranging interview.

"In other words, I'll be dead."

(...)

"You know, I'm really not that concerned about why people did what during my presidency." Bush said.

I want you Obama voters to listen to who praised Dubya's "incredible strength and resolve" at the liberry today, and think 'bout whatcha did.

oh come on presidents always praise each other at these things, even mortal enemies that hate each other

A president paid lip-service to a former president at a fancy ceremony. My hands are so bloody.

These guys aren't enemies. They're all in the same club. They'll just as cheerfully praise one another as beat each other over the head with a rock, but that's the sort of club it is.

praising your mentor and role model IS entirely polite and proper

o did eisenhower come up?

Did he ever!

http://pulpfactor.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Zombie-President-Eisenhower.jpg

I've lived enough years with "center-right" administrations on both sides to wish for an executive curbed by Congress (Clinton doesn't count).

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, September 13, 2008 2:43 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark

well that's been pretty super.

I'm a prophet!

lol, Ike was Noam Chomsky compared to Bam

lol @ you preferring a fucking military general who probably directly killed more people than Bam ever will

it was a Good War, you know

what's a little firebombing/nuking between war criminals eh they're all the same amirite

yr sense of scale is so weird

I find your actual scales offputting, wanna test you for mercury.

This is a W. vs. Obama fight? Can't we work Nixon into this somehow?

We don't have him to kick around anymore, correct?

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-A2pnGgHVVhs/TxvFmbhULrI/AAAAAAAAB-c/XINp5bIY8zE/s1600/nixonbeach1.jpg

has obama used the CIA to overthrow any left-wing governments? i think ike's still got him beat in that department.

god, gabbneb was annoying as shit on this thread.

I was annoying as shit too.

actually, the best case would be if the Democrats lost Congress and Obama became prez; but this scenario seems unlikely.

― Alfred, Lord Sotosyn, Saturday, September 13, 2008

btw this book is superficial but the reporting is pretty good. What's hilarious is how the four living presidents have their own reasons to at best distance themselves and at worst loathe Jimmy Carter.

"I understand now, fellow club members"

http://www.salon.com/2013/04/25/obama_embraces_the_worlds_most_exclusive_club/

http://admin.fridayfunfacts.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/01/nixon-beach.jpg

He must have been in a particularly jaunty mood that day--he usually wore a tie on the beach.

whom did eisenhower nuke

Anthony Eden as prime minister.

the fissile relationship

that coulda gone better

he'd become The Elder Statesman – the image he'd sold to credulous publishers and Beltway types – by holding salons in '80s Manhattan, serving homemade Chinese food and martinis he mixed himself. Apparently he cut quite the figure.

Now, of course, he has proven himself very deft on Twitter.

Richard M. Nixon ‏@dick_nixon 4h4 hours ago
'68 brought people in. Trump locked the door and threw away the key. If you can't see the difference, the hell with you.

My lord, it sounds just like him. HOW UNCANNY. PITCH PERFECT.

Gonna start a Reagan twitter. Post things like "Boy, this guy? Nothing like 1980."

]people who remember the 90s, was this a real thing? i can't find anything about it and am now obsessed with the concept of 90s youth describing themselves as Lovers of Nixon

now listen y'all. I don't share this video with just anyone.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7dvy8uFN31s

thank you.

Richard M. Nixon ‏@dick_nixon 11h11 hours ago
Bobby Kennedy was the coldest man I ever met.

Richard M. Nixon
‏@dick_nixon
I mean it. Bobby Kennedy should have burned witches.

no offense to alfred specifically, but i am seriously ready for an ILX plugin that filters out reposts of @dick_nixon tweets

but that's what the thread's for – the reposting of wisdom

Richard M. Nixon ‏@dick_nixon
These DNC wikileaks. This is why you employ plumbers.

Richard M. Nixon ‏@dick_nixon
Beyonce might sing about lemonade, but Arnold Palmer was the man with the real drink.

See? Anyone can do it!

I get the uneasy feeling that @dick_nixon might be a friend of ours, but I just hate to see anyone trying to sully up the good Nixon name.

All it took was G W Bush for Nixon's legacy to be reconsidered.

― the return of (burt_stanton), Saturday, September 13, 2008

I bet we all know how to update this, as fucked as it is.

https://twitter.com/DennisThePerrin/status/837659000581808128

I can't wait to see Trump's finger painting.

http://www.avclub.com/article/george-w-bush-takes-credit-snls-strategery-not-war-251447

@adamjohnsonNYC
39 of the 39 people indicted by the ICC for war crimes are African meanwhile Blair is writing NYT op-eds & Bush is taking selfies w/ Ellen.

Sometimes it's hard to believe Dubya was President. Is there a German word for knowing and remembering something but it not feeling real?

buschtraum