TS: Richard Nixon vs George W. Bush

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

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/130425135314-obama-barbara-bush-story-top.jpg

^^^ the white queen and her caustic judgments

pictured w the little prince of inane false binary hype

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2013/04/26/us/OBAMA-3/OBAMA-3-popup.jpg

You're still a scary dude, DC. Congrats on that.

Hugh Hefner made an appearance as well.

http://timenewsfeed.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/texans-bush-cheerlead.jpg?w=753

^^ pic is very very texas

btw Shakey, not only are you an ass for your ingratitude to Ike keeping us from speaking kraut, but....

"In 1945 ... , Secretary of War Stimson visited my headquarters in Germany, [and] informed me that our government was preparing to drop an atomic bomb on Japan. I was one of those who felt that there were a number of cogent reasons to question the wisdom of such an act.... During his recitation of the relevant facts, I had been conscious of a feeling of depression and so I voiced to him my grave misgivings, first on the basis of my belief that Japan was already defeated and that dropping the bomb was completely unnecessary, and second because I thought that our country should avoid shocking world opinion by the use of a weapon whose employment was, I thought, no longer mandatory as a measure to save American lives. It was my belief that Japan was, at that very moment, seeking some way to surrender with a minimum loss of 'face.' The Secretary was deeply perturbed by my attitude, almost angrily refuting the reasons I gave for my quick conclusions."

http://www.nuclearfiles.org/menu/key-issues/nuclear-weapons/history/pre-cold-war/hiroshima-nagasaki/opinion-eisenhower-bomb.htm

feel like one of eisenhower's bigger positives as president was specifically not nuking anybody, maybe even more than jfk altho he's more famous for it. famous for it after eight years of firm precedent of executive resistance to military+political+popular belligerence.

but then i guess it is one of every president's bigger positives! thanks RN

^^ pic is very very texas

― Aimless, Thursday, April 25, 2013 11:21 PM Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

He needs Lone Star socks, but yeah.

otoh hand as prez Ike was canny enough to never rule out the bomb "as an option," which everyone thought he'd be judicious about using because he was Ike.

oh well sure i mean the direction that took us to MAD was basically his direction. plus although honestly i don't know much specific about eisenhower's public persona throughout his terms my impression is he's Genial And Affable for eight years then at the end he's suddenly like haha no rly tho there might be tremendous moral and social risks hidden in the postwar system we have developed! gl off 2 golf

His persona was proto-Reagan, buttressed by 1943-1945.

i'm not so sure i'd be quick to praise ike for 'executive resistance to military+political+popular belligerence' -- as i mentioned he basically turned the CIA loose to wreak havoc in a bunch of other countries and ramped up the arms race (the u.s. had fewer than a thousand warheads when he came into office and had more than 30,000 by the time he left). not that i remotely put ike in the same category as a warmonger like bush (or truman for that matter), but he's as deeply implicated in the growth of the national security state as anyone.

no yeah completely, but the cia and "massive retaliation" were his covert/passive alternatives to overt/active military involvement in korea/taiwan/dienbienphu/prob even egypt idk. he believed in the Need For Strength and nsc-68 and the indispensability of the defense sector and everything and that's why the last-minute "but be careful!" is so funny, but he used his triumphant-general cachet to set a precedent of relative moderation when he could have done differently (altho not necc for very long in a recognizable world).

i mean tell that to the guatemalans sure.

I mean, we had TWO crises over future Trivial Pursuit answers Quemoy and Matsu.

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