Nixon's Funeral

Political Machinist

• Both of these statements are obviously false. Clinton is the quintessential campaigner; Nixon was essentially a loner and was about as bad on the stump as it is possible for a major political figure to be. Their political viewpoints--as one would expect of a center-left Democrat fleeing the Vietnam draft and an imperialist Wall Street Republican--were quite different.

Although it was partly the work of a Republican Congress, Clinton approved a major overhaul of the welfare system in an effort for reform. Nixon also oversaw a welfare reform initiative in his Presidency. The welfare reform initiative under Nixon was focused most specifically at distributing the responsibilities to local agencies.

• This is to emphasize one of the smallest of Richard Nixon's domestic achievements as though central, and to take the "triangulation" that exiled Clinton's first-term policy team as the object of an administration that instead failed to achieve what Nixon would never have attempted: to finish the New Deal by instituting national health insurance.

Clinton and Nixon both had great expansions in environmental legislation that were great extensions over what had previously been passed.

• Utterly false as to Clinton, who achieved almost nothing in the environmental area.

Clinton long fought to eliminate racial injustice and while Nixon may have privately made many racist comments, he oversaw the final de facto desegregation of Southern schools.

• You are looking for correspondence at the wrong level. Have you heard the words "Southern Strategy"? Nixon engineered the system whereby the Republican Party took over the white supremacy vote from the Democrats, breaking the one-party rule of the Democratic Party in the South as retribution for the passage of the Civil and Voting Rights Acts under Johnson. His decision in 1969 to turn the Federal Government against busing in order to get the votes of white ethnics in the North caused the resignation of a young HEW official named Leon Panetta, who wanted to signal by laying down his career that the government had gotten into bed with white supremacy. (Of course, Panetta then skilfully used the fact that he had married into one of the biggest agribusiness families on the Central Coast of California to become the Congressman from Santa Cruz and Monterey, but that's another story.)

• Excuse me? If you have swallowed the line that Clinton had an unusual amount of extramarital sex in the White House, you are unusually gullible. Kennedy, Johnson, Ford, and GHW Bush, at a minimum, were known by the insiders to avail themselves of the sexual opportunities presented by power, at a time when "outing" such activity was taboo. Surely, when it turned out that the Speaker of the House who was engineering his impeachment, and the Republican Party's next-in-line for that job, were also fucking staffers they weren't married to, it must have occurred to you that Clinton wasn't in any way unusual sexually. What produced Mr Clinton's problem was the ruling of a hostile Supreme Court (which was also going to interfere in the electoral process to declare his successor) that he could be sued while in office concerning claims as to pre-Presidential sexual activity, thus forcing him to testify under oath about his sex life while in office. A hostile DC Circuit having previously appointed a partisan non-prosecutor to investigate other politically-inspired charges, he turned out to be unprincipled enough to spring the resulting perjury trap. This was the other requisite for the production of Clinton's "scandal." Do remember, please, that outside the US, and therefore also in the light of history, the scandal is the impeachment, not the sex or the lie told about it.

while Nixon was done in by his paranoia.

• No. He was done in by committing the constitutional crime of trying to use the CIA to abort an FBI investigation of the bugging of Democratic National Committee headquarters by Republican operatives working out of the White House. Surely using the secret police to bug the opposing political party during an election campaign is impeachable and is not merely an example of "paranoia"? Moreover, to speak of Nixon's motive as paranoia is probably to do him a grave injustice. He had his moments of rage, but until things spiraled out of his control in 1974--and surely at the relevant time in the spring of 1972--he was as lucid and deliberate a cold-blood politician as you can get. Think, if you must, of the polar opposite of John McCain, who was at that time perfecting his off-kilter personality under the watchful eye of North Vietnamese interrogators. As you will no doubt recall, the supposed reason for the bugging was that Nixon was going to gain evidence of the relationship between Fidel Castro and Laurence O'Brien, the man who had then got the job Howard Dean now has. I think history will very likely show that the idea of Cuban influence on the Democratic Party, far from being a figment of Nixon's unaided imagination, was misinformation planted on one of our Cuban networks by Fidel, who was hoping to get Nixon to do something stupid. Sometimes the wisest old fish in the river goes for the gaudiest lure. Out of political calculation rather than any form of fear or discomfort, Nixon bit.

In reality, the cover-ups of the wrongs were what got each of them in trouble, and their attitudes that they were above reproach certainly would have contributed to that, but analysis of other aspects of their Presidencies and leadership provides more insight for an evaluation of Clinton’s presidency with regard to history and the current Presidential race.

• This sentence is neither grammatical nor meaningful.

• This says: politicians learn from experience, including losses. You shouldn't have bothered, and if you had to bother saying it, you should have used six words.

• This is nonsense. There isn't any modern presidency that hasn't involved taking steps that strained some part of the electoral coalition; Silent Cal was probably the last guy to get away with doing nothing, and even he was essentially disowned for a second term by the stampede to Hoover. To say that Richard Nixon wasn't an establishment candidate is utterly bizarre.

Clinton and Nixon were both extremely aware of how the public perceived them, with minds toward their lasting legacies. While nearly every President is conscious of their legacy,

• Don't ever make mistakes like that: they make you appear illiterate. Proofreading means checking grammar as well as spelling.

Clinton and Nixon were particularly mindful of how they would be remembered by history. Nixon was also very concerned with his legacy. David Gergen recounted that when he was in the Nixon White House, it was required that they know what the headline would be from an event before it would be scheduled. In addition, Nixon scheduled his motorcade in Rome to travel during rush hour so it would appear that countless Italians showed up simply to see him drive by. Clinton is famous for consulting polls with regard to all of his decisions while in office, a habit he increasingly practiced starting in his second term as governor of Arkansas. This was certainly something that was beneficial for reelections, but also served to ensure popularity with the public that was a concern all the way through both of his terms as President.

• This says nothing more than that modern presidents are intensely concerned with public relations. You could have skipped it, or used seven words.

• You have missed every single element of importance in the comparison of the political behavior of Nixon and Clinton. You made that mistake by emphasizing contingent parallels and overlooking relevant differences. Moreover, you took a view outside the experience of each, which therefore cannot be the view that led them to perceive themselves as similar. Rather than starting from the position in which you know more than they do, and can explain to me what they didn't know themselves, why not begin instead from the position that they know more about politics than we do, and figure out why they, particularly Mr Clinton, saw similarity? Nixon's comments on their similarity as "outsiders" are relevant to that inquiry, I agree, but they don't mean what you think they mean. Consider the difference between Nixon and either Bush, as politicians trying to be President, and I think you will be on the right track.

• Fortunately for us, you did not actually do what you kept telling us we should expect you to do: apply all this to the current campaign. You should, of course, have removed those statements promising to make the mistake you didn't make, but that's just one more of the many levels on which the piece shows itself to be in need of more editing.

Bill Clinton as Richard Nixon

Introduction

Political Personalities

A major driver towards their political successes were the political defeats that they suffered, Clinton losing the Arkansas gubernatorial race and Nixon the Presidency to Kennedy and the California gubernatorial race two years later. Nixon would later describe the time after his loss in California as his time in the wilderness, and he moved to New York where he sharpened his political and foreign policy expertise. Clinton also learned a political lesson following his loss in 1980. During his first term as governor, Clinton had young advisors and along with them he pursued a progressive agenda and he challenged powerful business interests in the state. Clinton was re-elected to the governorship in 1982 and pursued a more moderate course, focusing on education, and he was much more aware of the political implications of his actions in a conservative state.

Neither Clinton nor Nixon was the traditional candidate for their party. Nixon had many beliefs that were not in line with those of the traditional Republican party establishment. The regulatory state expansion with implementations such as OSHA during his Presidency and negotiations with China ran against the conservative Republican base. Similarly, Clinton’s welfare reform and efforts to produce a balanced budget were not traditionally liberal ideas about which many in his party were unhappy. This is partly a result of the times that they served as President and the political realities of those times, but its also a result of who they were. Neither of them were establishment candidates or Presidents.

Clinton and Nixon were both extremely aware of how the public perceived them, with minds toward their lasting legacies. While nearly every President is conscious of their legacy, Clinton and Nixon were particularly mindful of how they would be remembered by history. Nixon was also very concerned with his legacy. David Gergen recounted that when he was in the Nixon White House, it was required that they know what the headline would be from an event before it would be scheduled. In addition, Nixon scheduled his motorcade in Rome to travel during rush hour so it would appear that countless Italians showed up simply to see him drive by. Clinton is famous for consulting polls with regard to all of his decisions while in office, a habit he increasingly practiced starting in his second term as governor of Arkansas. This was certainly something that was beneficial for reelections, but also served to ensure popularity with the public that was a concern all the way through both of his terms as President.

Conclusion

The comparisons between Bill Clinton and Richard Nixon can help us place the Clinton Presidency and Bill Clinton properly within history. At a time when the Clinton Presidency is being evaluated daily, it is important to understand that he is much like the outsider that came twenty years before him.

Introduction

Backgrounds

Accomplishments

Notes on the Scandals

Methods

Political Operation

-- AndrewWolstan - 29 Mar 2008

Clinton and Nixon

Clinton and Johnson..Nixon

Operatives

We're not talking about Scandal

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