Terrific Read: Conrad Black Goes To Bat For Richard Nixon
As he has done before, Conrad Black comes to the defense of Richard Nixon. One of the core Dem myths is the claim that Richard Nixon was a bad man who got what he deserved and that the progressive jihad against him somehow saved the country. The exact reverse is something like the truth. Nixon's impeachment had a devestating impact on our country, the deleterious effects of which are still with us--more manifest than ever. The truth is that Nixon was impeached for being an outsider, for being a patriot, and for being anti-communist. All faults for which progressives could never and will never forgive him. Oh, and there was another major fault for which Nixon could never be forgiven--he twice defeated progressive standard bearers, the second time by the greatest plurality in US history. Remind you of anyone?
But we can know better. Black's Nixon’s Lessons for the Would-Be Impeachers offers serious lessons for us today, coming from a Canadian:
Only extremely grave offenses should deprive Americans’ right to choose their president. Nixon didn’t meet the impeachment bar. Neither does Trump.
I will simply offer some excerpts from this fine article, and urge you to read it in its entirety.
One thing that will quite possibly be achieved by the nonsensical impeachment investigation being conducted in the House of Representatives is the end of the extreme criminalization of policy differences.
I'm not nearly as sanguine as Black in this regard. In a country that is oblivious to its own history, in which forces that seek to erase our historical memory gain ground every day, prospects are not good.
One of the many galling aspects of the contemptible farce being conducted by the House Democratic leadership is the historical myth-making they glibly inflict on the country. ...
One of the nauseating permutations of public recollection that has arisen out of the attempts to destroy Trump is that Richard Nixon was treated fairly. This fraud is buttressed by the frequent appearances on our screens of the chief trigger-men in that bloodless assassination: the unspeakable turncoat White House lawyer John Dean and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, still padding around on the imperishable fuel of the Watergate putsch, festooned with the awards the media give themselves.
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For those who do not remember or have not studied him, Richard Nixon was twice elected vice president (with General Dwight D. Eisenhower, having helped secure the nomination for him over Republican Senate leader Robert Taft in 1952). He was likely cheated out of the 1960 presidential election by the supporters of John F. Kennedy in Chicago, Texas, and elsewhere, causing JFK to remark, “Thank God for a few honest crooks.” When the votes in Alabama cast for Dixiecrat candidate Senator Harry F. Byrd are deducted from the Democratic total, Nixon won the popular vote. Though encouraged by Eisenhower to contest the election, Nixon chose not to do so, for the benefit of the country.
He was narrowly elected in 1968 in a country wracked by constant racial and anti-war rioting, after the assassinations of Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy, and with 545,000 draftees in Vietnam, 200 to 400 coming home in body bags every week, with no concept of an exit strategy and all for an uncertain objective. ...
Though his opponents controlled both houses of the Congress, Nixon had one of the most successful presidential terms in the country’s history. He ended the Vietnam War while conserving a non-Communist government in Saigon; opened relations with China; signed the greatest arms-control agreement in history, with the USSR, and started the de-escalation of the Cold War; ended school segregation without the court-ordered busing of millions of children out of their neighborhoods; began the Middle East peace process; ended the draft; and reduced the crime rate and founded the EPA. The riots and assassinations stopped, and he was reelected by the greatest plurality in U.S. history, 18 million votes (in an electorate barely half the size of the present one). The only presidents who accomplished more in that office are Washington, Lincoln, FDR, Reagan, and perhaps Truman.
The Watergate affair was the forced entry — with no damage, theft, or injury — by some Republican campaign workers into the Democratic-party headquarters. A number of insalubrious campaign activities came to light, though nothing remotely as odious as the Steele dossier — and Nixon had no prior personal knowledge of any of them. He authorized substantial payments to defendants, to deal with their legal bills. The allegation has been that he also incentivized the alteration of testimony and effectively obstructed justice, but this has never been adjudicated, and there has never been conclusive evidence that, when cant and emotionalism subside, meets a criminal standard of proof.
As he admitted, Nixon badly mismanaged the investigation and squandered his political capital ...
The articles of impeachment that were adopted in committee against him, examined today, are ridiculous. The first was that Nixon “made it his policy . . . directly and through his close subordinates and agents . . . to delay, impede, obstruct, cover up, conceal . . . illegal activities.” He had a national-security argument, and he was trying to prevent false plea bargains — his guilt on this charge has never been clear. Article 2 was that Nixon had “endeavored to misuse the IRS,” an utterly outrageous charge, especially when many Democratic presidents including FDR, JFK, LBJ, and Obama really have used the IRS in this way. Article 3 was delayed compliance with subpoenas, hardly an indictable offense. This was the feeble case against a very considerable and indefectibly patriotic president.
The despicable frivolity of the present onslaught against president Trump was highlighted when Congressman Jerry Nadler of the House Judiciary Committee called John Dean to testify on the Mueller report. ...
Richard Nixon’s enemies toil on, trading off their contributions to a monstrous injustice that was fashioned from the vehemence of American politics and the psychological susceptibilities of a complicated president. ...
... John Dean, the lowest squealer in the history of cooperating witnesses, gave his evidence against Nixon in congressional committee hearings, thereby getting round the immunity that prevents a person from being convicted by his own counsel.
But Nixon has made the greatest of all his comebacks. He remains the president Americans are most interested in, after Lincoln, ... ever since, he and his memory have raised and teased that same conscience with the thought that Nixon was wronged. He was wronged. ...
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Richard Nixon’s accusers were and remain unrelievedly odious, and so are most of Donald Trump’s, and the survivors of the first mob are huffing and puffing to keep up with the present mob. This will be their last lap, and this time they will lose.
ADDENDUM: A matter of no importance. When I was in the NYO I sued to see Nixon at times in the basement parking garage of the Javits Bldg. He came down to his office most days, arriving at the same early hour that we did.