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Tag: Nixon

  • TNN Exclusive: RN’s Health Care Plan More Comprehensive Than Obama’s

    All eyes have been on Washington in the past year as the parties debated President Barack Obama’s shifting versions of national health care. On Tuesday, after a highly questionable series of parliamentary maneuvers, President Obama signed into “law” his health care plan.

    With some considerable reason, he noted that health care for all is an idea whose time has come. (His plan still leaves more than 20 million not insured, but let that be.) And, with some justification, most of the media rejoiced that national health care had arrived for people with low incomes, with pre-existing conditions, without jobs, with impoverished employers.

    To call Barack Obama’s response to the passage (however questionably executed ) of this bill “triumphalist” is like calling Mount Everest “tall.”

    But among the glorying, there was little or no mention of my former boss, Richard M. Nixon, and this was a monstrous wrong, one of an innumerable number of wrongs directed at Mr. Nixon.

    The flat truth is that in February 1974, with the hounds of hell baying at him about Watergate, with a national trial by shortage under way after the Arab Oil Embargo, with the economy in extremely rocky shape, and with large Democratic majorities in both houses of Congress, Republican Richard M. Nixon submitted to Congress a national health care bill in many ways more comprehensive than what Mr. Obama achieved.

    Mr. Nixon’s health care plan would have covered all employed people by giving combined state and federal subsidies to employers. It would have covered the poor and the unemployed by much larger subsidies. It would have encouraged health maintenance organizations. It would have banned exclusions for pre-existing conditions and not allowed limits on spending for each insured.

    I know a bit about this because I, your humble servant, as a 29-year-old speech writer, wrote the message to Congress sending up the bill.

    In many ways, the bill was far more “socialist” than what Mr. Obama has proposed. It certainly involved a far larger swath of state and federal government power over health care. Please remember that this was 36 years ago, when middle-class Americans still had some slight faith that government was on their side.

    My point is not whether or not Mr. Nixon’s plan was better than Mr. Obama’s. In fact, they have many points in common.

    My only point is that if you want to call someone a visionary, if you want to call someone compassionate, if you want to note that someone was a foe of inequality and a friend to mercy, think of Richard Nixon, with a host of problems of his own the likes of which Mr. Obama cannot imagine, reaching out to the poor and the uninsured to help.

    The plan, of course, was killed dead by the Democrats, led by Edward Kennedy, who later regretted what he had done. Still, attention must be paid to a prophet without honor in his own land.

  • The Little Church In The East Room

    As the first streaks of dawn quietly announced the arrival of morning on Sunday, November 16, 1969, a 35-year old preacher from Ohio named Harold Rawlings had already been awake for a while after a fitful night of what-could-barely-be-called sleep in a room at Washington, D.C.’s storied Mayflower Hotel. He would in a few hours face a crowd punctuated by the most powerful men and women in America, assembled in the most unusual of venues for any clergyman – the East Room of the White House.

    These days, most Americans have moved on from wondering about Barack Obama’s church attendance habits now nearly a year into his presidency. Some of this inattention is due, no doubt, to the swirl of events, but a measure of it is likely because Mr. Obama is demonstrating a kind of ambivalence to church attendance that has become par for the presidential course over the years (though with some exception, e.g., Jimmy Carter).

    Most presidents have likely never read Theodore Roosevelt’s “Nine Reasons A Man Should Go To Church.” Among the things TR said was this gem: “Yes, I know all the excuses. I know that one can worship the Creator in a grove of trees, or by a running brook, or in a man’s own house as well as in church. But I also know, as a matter of cold fact, that the average man does not thus worship.”

    Richard Nixon decided in the first days of his presidency to reconcile the ethic of church attendance with the realities of security and logistics during his time in the White House, by having regular Sunday services in the East Room. Of course, he was criticized for it. Some saw it as political grandstanding and others (many in the clergy) feared Nixon might be setting a trend for “stay at home” worship. Billy Graham noted, though, that in the early days of Christianity churches met almost exclusively in houses. So, on Nixon’s first Sunday in the White House, Graham shared a sermon, beginning a long run of non-sectarian religious services at 11 o’clock most Sunday mornings.

    Rev. Rawlings had received an invitation, via the recommendation of his congressman, Donald “Buzz” Lukens, to bring the message during one of those services. But the preacher had to pay his own expenses to the nation’s capital, something gladly accomplished by his church, Landmark Baptist in Cincinnati, Ohio, where the lanky clergyman shared pastoral duties with his father, the senior minister of the church.

    The preacher also had no idea when he accepted the White House invitation that he would be performing his prelatic duties against the backdrop of a city in turmoil.

    Pastor Rawlings and his wife Sylvia made their way to Washington, D.C., on Saturday, November 15, while 250,000 protestors were in virtual control of the city’s streets and parks. The Washington Post headline the next day said, “Largest Rally in Washington History Demands End to Vietnam War.” There was a lingering hint of tear gas in the air and the remnants of torn and burned flags littering the ground. Other flags were prominent and not burned, but they bore only one star and just two stripes – the banner of the Viet Cong (National Liberation Front or “NLF”). The night before, 76 nearby buildings had been damaged, and nearly that many more would experience the same fate that day.

    The swarm on Washington had been organized by an outfit called the New Mobilization Committee. This group was the successor to the National Mobilization Committee to End the War in Vietnam, which had been part of the infamous Chicago riots at the Democratic Convention in 1968. Basically, it was a leftist mosaic made up of people from Students For A Democratic Society (“SDS”), the Youth International Party (“Yippies”), and assorted fellow travelers.

    And though the “festivities” had ended late Saturday night, thousands remained in the streets overnight continuing to shout things like, “Ho, Ho, Ho Chi Minh, NLF is Going to Win!” This made sleep that much more difficult for Rev. and Mrs. Rawlings.

    The couple enjoyed breakfast in the Mayflower’s restaurant, their waitress discreetly pointing out the famous “psychic”, Jeanne Dixon, who was sitting across the room near the booth where J. Edgar Hoover regularly ate lunch. This brush with celebrity would be nothing compared to the experience awaiting Harold and Sylvia when they arrived at the White House.

    They climbed a stairway to the second floor and were immediately met by the First Lady, Mrs. Pat Nixon, who invited them into the beautiful Yellow Oval Room, where they sat in Louis XVI style chairs. Tricia Nixon soon joined them, followed a few minutes later by President Nixon, who took Pastor Rawlings on a personal tour of the adjacent rooms, sharing details about their history. Nixon was in a great mood, no doubt bolstered some by the latest Gallup Poll showing that around 70% of Americans gave him high marks, this in the wake of his already famous “Silent Majority” speech a few days earlier.

    They then made their way to the East Room, with Sylvia taking her seat next to Mrs. Nixon and Tricia. President Nixon, as was the custom, opened the service, “After a very awesome display yesterday,” pausing briefly for effect, knowing that some would think he was referring to the demonstrations, he continued, “of football, we thought it would be proper to have someone here from Ohio.” Ever the football fan, he was referring to the Buckeyes’ 42-14 win over Purdue.

    Pastor Rawlings had been asked to suggest two hymns for the service and did so several weeks in advance, only to be called back by the White House and told, “President Nixon doesn’t know those – could you choose two others?” He did, and the service that day included the majestic strains of “All Hail The Power Of Jesus’ Name,” a song Nixon knew well. A choir from New York Avenue Presbyterian Church sang.

    The President then introduced Rawlings, who chose as his theme that day, “The World’s Most Amazing Book.” Many notables were in the crowd of about 350, including Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger, Secretary of State William P. Rogers, Treasury Secretary David M. Kennedy, Labor Secretary George P. Schultz, and United States Senators Claiborne Pell, Mark Hatfield, John Sherman Cooper, Gale McGee, John Williams, and Charles Percy. And the service was broadcast live across the country via the Mutual Broadcasting System.

    “If men and women would spend more time in the serious study of the word of God,” said Rev. Rawlings, “earth’s questions would seem far less significant and heaven’s questions far more real.” He then quoted former President Eisenhower, among others. The great man had died eight months earlier and his life and career had intersected with Nixon’s so significantly.

    Rawlings affirmed that, “The Bible is not only good for the soul, but also for the body.” He illustrated this point with a moving story about a soldier in Vietnam, Army Private Roger Boe, who after being ambushed found an enemy bullet “lodged in his Bible, just short of the ammunition clip.” The preacher, describing America as “a haven for freedom and peace,” urged prayer, “to make us morally worthy of protection against outward aggression.” He also issued a reminder about praying for the men of Apollo12, at that moment racing through space, “our three astronauts that they might be blessed with safety and good health on their voyage to the moon.”

    During a recent conversation with Harold Rawlings, who is a long-time friend, he told me that following the service Chief Justice Burger told him that his sermon was “the kind of message America needed to hear.”

    A reception followed, with President and Mrs. Nixon personally introducing Rev. and Mrs. Rawlings to those filing by. Nixon, though, was at least a little bit in a hurry. He was going out to Robert F. Kennedy stadium that afternoon to see the Redskins play the Cowboys. In fact, this would itself be historic – the first time a sitting President of the United States attended a National Football League game. He was pulling for the home team, but conceded to a reporter that the Cowboys would come out on top, “I think they’ll win because of their running attack.”

    But it turned out that the Redskins lost because Sonny Jurgenson threw 4 interceptions – three of them in the fourth quarter. The one bright spot of the game for Nixon was the play of Ricky Harris, who returned a punt 83-yards for a touchdown – only to have it called back because of a penalty. Harris then intercepted a pass at a crucial moment – only to have Jurgensen then quickly proceed to throw his own interception (Harris these days sits every Sunday on the front row of the church I pastor.)

    Possibly, the fate of the Redskins that day was a harbinger of things to come that week for Mr. Nixon. The very next day, American newspapers first mentioned something about a massacre in Vietnam at a place called My Lai. And later that week, the President’s nominee for the Supreme Court, Clement Furman Haynsworth, was rejected by the Senate, 55-45.

    This just reinforces something else Teddy Roosevelt said about why people should go to church: “In this actual world, a churchless community, a community where men have abandoned and scoffed at or ignored their religious needs, is a community on the rapid down grade.”

  • Palin, Nixon, And The “Secret Plan”

    At CQ Politics, Jonathan Allen contrasts Sarah Palin and Richard Nixon.  “Palin doesn’t have Nixon’s interest in, or knowledge of, foreign affairs,” he writes. “Imagine the reaction if Palin suggested she had a “secret plan” to win the war in Afghanistan.”  He is undoubtedly right on his major point, but I must nitpick the second sentence. As Frank Gannon and yours truly have noted on this site, RN never said that he had a secret plan to win the war in Vietnam.  That urban legend started with a wire report that inaccurately paraphrased his comments at a town meeting.

    The CQ article links to a piece that acknowledges this point, while suggesting that RN let the myth stand during the 1968 campaign because it worked to his advantage.  Actually, as Nixon speechwriter Raymond Price has written:  “We on the Nixon staff immediately pointed out, to all who would listen, that he had not claimed a `plan.’ Nixon himself told reporters that if he had one, he would have given it to President Johnson.”  Nelson Rockefeller kept the canard alive as a way of attacking Nixon.  Richard Reeves reported in the New York Times on March 19, 1968:

    When he has been alone with friends, Mr. Rockefeller has scornfully mocked Mr. Nixon by patting his suit pocket and saying that he keeps a peace plan there while hundreds of Americans die each week in Vietnam. The Governor has said that he will ‘pound away’ at Mr. Nixon’s secret plan during the Oregon campaign.

  • F/N Gathering Its Rosebuds While, And Where, It May

    As RN often equably observed, his books could always count on at least a couple of hundred thousand sales because the cons —who were eagerly anticipating delicious new Nixonian excesses and outrages— were as likely to buy them as were the pros —who were patiently awaiting the latest expressions of Nixonian wisdom.

    Indeed, Rose Mary Woods kept a “book list” —ultimately amounting to a couple of hundred thousand names— of those who wrote regarding RN’s oeuvre. Almost evenly divided between the pro and the con, the list would be maintained and used as the basis for the next book’s sales plan.

    This is the context in which a press release from Universal Pictures announcing that Frost/Nixon enjoyed the biggest per-screen debut of any film released in 2008 should probably be read.

    “Frost/Nixon”, Universal Pictures’ new electrifying drama, directed by Academy Award(R) winner Ron Howard (A Beautiful Mind, Cinderella Man) and starring Frank Langella and Michael Sheen, had a remarkable first weekend at the domestic box office, it was announced today. Over the weekend, the film accumulated $180,708 from just three locations in New York City, Los Angeles and Toronto, for a per- screen average of $60,236. This figure gives “Frost/Nixon” the biggest per- screen debut of any film released in 2008.

    “This is a spectacular opening, and we are thrilled with the result,” said Adam Fogelson, President of Marketing and Distribution for Universal Pictures. “Ron Howard, his cast and crew created one of the best films of the year, and it is gratifying that audiences and critics alike are celebrating it with such enthusiasm. We look forward to bringing ‘Frost/Nixon’ to additional markets through Christmas so audiences everywhere can discover for themselves what has people crowding into these early theaters.”

    Currently playing in New York, Los Angeles, and Toronto, F/N will expand to 29 additional markets (including Washington DC) on Friday. It will open wide on Christmas Day — timing which some snarks will probably see as Universal’s coal in the stockings of America.

    The major critics have now weighed in, and the film has received a pretty decisive endorsement: 92% positive among all critics (per Rotten Tomatoes) and 95% among the top tier. And the combination of strong reviews and potentially strong word of mouth could extend the film’s charmed life in Friday’s targeted cities,

    But the answer to the question of whether F/N will “Sizzle or Fizzle” can, surely, never really be in doubt.

    Given the reviews and degree of interest to date —not to mention the remnants of Rose Woods’ list — it’s hard to see a complete fizzle in F/N’s future. But —unless lightning were to strike in the form, say, of a Best Actor or Best Director Oscar— it’s hard to imagine the film finding a wider audience after the sizable but finite universe of interested individuals —the people who still love and the people who still love to hate RN, plus the hardcore universe of younger political junkies— have seen it.

    Depending on how much it cost to make —and there’s nothing to indicate that this was a budget-busting project— the film seems bound to deliver a respectable, and even a strong, return on investment.

    But, sizzle is a slipprier standard. In Clintonian terms, it depends on what you mean by it. Such sizzle as there may be in F/N’s future is almost precisely there — in the future. Screenwriter Peter Morgan’s earlier success —The Queen— did respectable business, but no more, before Helen Mirren won her Oscar. This holiday season, along with visions of sugar plums, visions of Frank Langella’s Oscar acceptance speech are undoubtedly unfolding before the wondering eyes of Messrs. Morgan, Howard, Grazer, and Fogelson, et al. (and, of course, Mr. Langella).

    That’s the only route to true sizzle for F/N. But there’s a precedent. And stranger things have happened.

  • Gen ‘08

    In the July 30 “New Republic,” Michael Crowley has a thoughtful profile of McCain right-hand man, co-author, and speechwriter Mark Salter. Here’s the 53-year-old Iowan’s challenge as he heads to to his cottage in Maine to work on Sen. McCain’s acceptance speech at the GOP convention:

    Salter hints the speech will spotlight McCain’s moments of self-sacrifice, as when he refused early release from captivity in Vietnam or challenged his own party over campaign finance reform. The contrast, he says, will be the “selfishness” of “self-interested” political partisans–i.e. Obama–who, he argues, have risked nothing of substance in their lives.

    …[T]he challenge Salter’s convention speech encapsulates is the generational showdown this election has become. The baby-boomer speechwriter must come up with an address that explains why voters should choose the elderly McCain’s experience and grounding in traditional values over the youthful Gen-X audacity of Obama. In the Salter narrative, the self-sacrificing war hero could not meet a better foil than the Obamamaniacs’ narcissistic world of Facebook and YouTube and Scarlett Johansson. But voters aren’t likely to base their decision on the past. With the economy on fire, gas prices soaring, and the Bush presidency a disaster, voters are feeling the fierce urgency of now. Even many Republicans concede John McCain may be waging an unwinnable fight.

    A funny thing happens in that second paragraph. After reprising Salter’s somewhat overwrought argument that McCain’s narrative is redolent with self-sacrifice compared to that of the untested Sen. Obama and his self-obsessed, youthful hordes, Crowley doesn’t bother sticking up for the younger cohort. It wouldn’t be a tough argument. After all, aren’t Salter’s own boomers supposed to be the most narcissistic generation in history? Instead, Crowley nods in the direction of Salter’s world view but then suggests that voters will be so distracted by their troubles and worries that they…well, I guess he’s saying that they’ll vote for whomever more persuasively promises instant relief.

    That sounds like a voters-are-dumb argument. Since voters definitely aren’t dumb, perhaps Republicans shouldn’t be so discouraged. Obama is brazenly reaching for the Kennedy mantle, especially with his coming star turn in Berlin. Not much of a Kennedy person, even I’m offended. Obama’s no Kennedy. A 13-year veteran of the House and Senate, the son of a U.S. ambassador, Kennedy’s World War II and Cold War bona fides (together with his fictional missile gap and deft manipulation of state secrets about Cuba) even enabled him to edge to Richard Nixon’s right on foreign policy in the 1960 election. He didn’t shift a whole range of positions within weeks of winning primaries with them, and he never said blithely that he’d be President “eight to ten years.” He earned his aura by his easy style and humor in office as well as his martyrdom. Obama pretends to it as a national figure for under two years. If Europeans go nuts over him, what does that prove? That they’re as easily fooled as Americans and their lapdog network anchors?

    Sure, Obama may be the real thing. Inexperienced leaders have sometimes risen to historic, wrenching challenges. But nobody really knows if Obama is such a leader, because nothing in his record demonstrates it. Supporting him urgently is by and large an act of faith. Meanwhile, there’re ample grounds for Obamagnosticism. Ryan Lizza, who studied him carefully for “The New Yorker,” wasn’t even willing to say for sure that Obama puts the public’s interests ahead of his own political advancement. His policy shifts, even if some are in the right direction, add credence to the view that he’ll do whatever is necessary to win. I think voters will notice that and begin to hold him to a higher standard than either they or the media have so far. In the months to come, for the very reason that they’re worried about their future, as Crowley notes, voters in key states will look for a substantive debate about issues that matter to them, and they’ll know when they’re being spun and manipulated. In anxious times, authenticity counts. McCain’s “experience and grounding in traditional values” may yet come in handy.

  • The Great Pennsylvania Debate – in McKeesport

    Presidential debates, especially the intra-party variety we are witnessing these days, are frequent to the point of becoming common place, if not benign. They seem to prove what Marshall McLuhan said about medium equaling message. The recent gotcha-fest between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama could make even the wildest political animal long for the days when debates were fewer and farther between.

    Or at least interesting.

    I’ve found myself longing a bit for those sixteen silent years between 1960 and 1976, when debates weren’t part of presidential campaigns. In fact, they were rarely mentioned at all. Maybe Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon were on to something.

    In spite of abundant current evidence of forensic mediocrity, there does seem to be renewed interest these days in the gold standard for political debate – those serious and cerebral verbal exchanges between Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas one hundred and fifty years ago. And, even though their experience was part of a campaign for a U.S. Senate seat, and not the White House itself, comparing that historic dialogue with what political debating has become in our age tempts one to switch the television channel to something with more depth.

    Like a rerun of The Price is Right on The Game Show Network.

    It actually took ninety years for what Abe and Steve did so well to even begin to impact modern American presidential politics. In 1948, Republican hopeful Harold Stassen debated Thomas Dewey before the Oregon Republican Primary. In 1956, Estes Kefauver debated Adlai Stevenson before the Florida Democratic Primary. And, of course, all modern day discussion of presidential debates inevitably includes a reference to the Kennedy-Nixon debates of 1960.

    The first of those now legendary debates took place in Chicago on September 26, 1960. It was moderated by Howard K. Smith and watched on television by more than 70 million Americans. But, in fact, it really wasn’t their first debate.

    With this year’s Pennsylvania primary now on center stage, it’s interesting to note that Richard M. Nixon and John F. Kennedy had their very own Keystone state debate moment many years before – back in 1947.

    The two young Navy war veterans were elected to Congress in 1946 – Kennedy from Massachusetts and Nixon from California. During their first days in congress, they were appointed to the House Education and Labor Committee and were, as Nixon later recalled, “like a pair of unmatched bookends.”

    In April of 1947, they traveled to McKeesport, Pennsylvania, a coal mining and steel industry town of around 50,000 citizens at the time, located about fifteen miles from Pittsburgh, at the confluence of the Monongahela and Youghiogheny Rivers. They had been asked to debate before a Junto Forum (this kind of discussion-based group dated back to the days of Benjamin Franklin) and to argue the merits, or lack thereof, of a piece of legislation informally known as the Taft-Hartley bill (officially, it was “The Labor-Management Relations Act”).

    This legislation had already passed the House and was at that time before the Senate. It was designed to rein in what was referred to at the time as Big Labor, and was the most successful of more than 200 similar bills proposed in the immediate aftermath of the war, as the country faced significant labor unrest. It would eventually clear the Senate and be vetoed by President Truman, who referred to it as a “slave labor” bill. His veto was then overridden and he actually found himself using the act a dozen or so times during his presidency.

    The debate took place at the Penn McKee Hotel, with about one hundred and fifty people in the audience. Nixon spoke in strong support of the bill. Kennedy was opposed – but not without commending certain aspects of the legislation. Chris Matthews in his 1996 book – “Kennedy & Nixon: The Rivalry that Shaped Postwar America”- suggested that the crowd clearly favored Kennedy (being a largely blue-collar and pro-labor district) and that the catcalls from some had been so fierce that “a local business leader felt called upon to apologize to the Republican congressman in writing.”

    But Kennedy saw it differently. In October of 1962, just three days before he would see the first photographic evidence of the Soviet missile build up in Cuba, President Kennedy returned to McKeesport. In his speech that day at their City Hall, he recalled: “The first time I came to this city was in 1947, when Mr. Richard Nixon and I engaged in our first debate. He won that one, and we went on to other things.”

    Indeed.

    It’s a fascinating little bit of history in preview – a joint appearance of these two young men with such compelling and interrelated futures ahead of them.

    Following their debate that evening long ago, the two future fierce opponents made their way to the town’s Star Diner to eat hamburgers and talk about baseball. They were killing time before heading to the train station to catch the midnight Capital Unlimited back to Washington.

    Sharing a compartment on the train, they drew straws to see who got the lower berth. Nixon won that one too.

    By all accounts, Mr. 35 and Mr. 37 talked long into the wee hours of the morning about the issue that most resonated with them – foreign policy. The Cold War was underway, and these two men who would play such vital roles during its most critical moments, contemplated their world.

    If only we had a transcript of THAT debate. — DRS