NIXONLAND, Week 6: “Cruise Ship” & “Fed-Up-Niks”

And yet more evidence (as if it were necessary) that nothing in today’s news is new:

In October [1967] the formation of an anti-antiwar group was announced by WWII hero General Omar Bradley and former senator Paul Douglas.[...] [Members of the new Citizens’ Committee for Peace with Freedom in Vietnam] included Harry Truman and Dwight D. Eisenhower. They said they were speaking “for the great ‘silent center’ of American life.” Douglas said he’d come up with the idea himself and emphasized, “We are not supporters of a president or of an administration.”

He lied. The committee had been invented by a White House aide, John Roche, who promised in an “EYES ONLY” memo to the president, “I will leave no tracks.”... The ruse succeeded. The media reported the group as spontaneous. Letters to the editor gushed, “The riff-raff have held center stage long enough and the performances grow more sickeningly disgusting with each added publictiy stunt… ” Maybe the letters had been manufactured at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Roche had promised the president “letter-writing squads.”

Shades of No Labels, as well as you-know-which-group(s)!

Not to mention poor dumb George Romney getting assailed by ‘mysterious pamphlets’ asserting that “Supreme Court Declares Romney Not Qualified Under the Constitution” because he’d been born while his American parents were living in Mexico. Birtherism, a meme to be raised against whatever this election cycle’s variety of “exotic un-Americanism” might be…

What struck you about these ‘new paradigms’? What do you remember from those days?

(Tech note: You can edit your comment by right-clicking on the ‘Edit’ button to open a new tab/window and working from there. Another FYWP glitch… )

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NIXONLAND, Week 5: “The Bombing” & “Summer of Love”

By the beginning of 1967, the war in Vietnam had ended America’s ‘consensus’ for good.

Is there a word that means the opposite of nostalgia—something to describe the acrid taste at the back of one’s tongue when confronted with a vivid retelling of events recalled with loathing?

Although, since I was too young to notice pre-primary candidates outside my parents’ Democratic faith party, I never previously realized how much Willard “Mitt” Romney’s campaigning style owes to his wounded Franklinian vanity. Nixon’s willingness to crawl through whatever rancid sewers of innuendo and misdirection necessary to activate the collective lizard brains of the American voting public seem to have permanently marked young Willard.

(Tech note: You can edit your comment by right-clicking on the ‘Edit’ button to open a new tab/window and working from there. Another FYWP glitch… )

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Saturday Morning Open Thread

Best wishes and stout companions to all attending today’s solidarity rallies, and condolences to those kept away by inclement weather and the myriad other irritations of daily life.

As a reminder, this week’s book discussion of NIXONLAND involves Chapters Eight and Nine, a mere thirty pages. Come join the conversation Sunday at 4pm EST, and still have plenty of time to get ready for Oscar-watching.

And if you want something shorter to read over brunch, may I recommend Dahlia Lithwick’s Slate post on “The Case of the Poisoned Lover“?

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Sunday Night Open Thread: NIXONLAND Query

A question for those who are reading along in NIXONLAND: Two chapters or three for next week’s discussion? “The Bombing” and “Summer of Love” are only 30 pages between them, but it’s not easy reading for those of us who lived through the period Perlstein’s describing. On the one hand, I don’t want to dump too much on our collective psyches during these dreary February evenings; on the other hand, if we tackle a third chapter (“In Which a Cruise Ship Full of Governors Inspires Considerations on the Nature of Old & New Politics”), we’re that much closer to reaching the 1968 conventions…

In either case, same time same place next week, Sunday 2/27, 4pm EST still good?

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NIXONLAND, Week 4: “School Was in Session” & “Batting Average”

The Times had sacralized a Nixon con job. The fuse had been lit. And now, the fireworks began.

Why there are book groups: It’s getting harder and harder for me to keep reading, because for all his multitudinous flaws, I’ve always had a soft spot for Lyndon Baines Johnson. We won’t see a dispassionate LBJ biography until after the men who still remember their draft lottery numbers are no longer in charge of the universities and the publishing houses, but if Harry Truman can be rehabilitated, I can still hope to live long enough to see the 20th century’s most underrated President re-evaluated as he deserves…

“Fooling the people has become the name-of-the-game for a good many Republicans in Congress,” Johnson said, craning out his neck. “They have no constructive programs to fight inflation. They have no program to ease racial tensions. They don’t know what to do about crime in the streets, or how to end the war in Vietnam. But they do know that if they can scare people, they may win a few votes!”

Swap out the relevant clauses for “crime on Wall Street”” and “end the war in Afghanistan“, and the only difference is that today’s Republicans have the marketing research to know exactly how win votes by scaring people. Speaking of depressing—45 years and counting, and the Low Information Voters among us are still stampeding staunchly into the slaughterhouse through whichever chute the Republican flaggers spook them.

What do you think?

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NIXONLAND III: “Reagan” & “Long Hot Summer”

Herewith Nixon takes great strides in assembling his retrograde cast of trolls, thugs, and shills—Pat Buchanan, Bill Safire, the Haldeman/Ehrlichman ‘twins’, Maurice Stans—the Merry CREEPSters who would do so much damage to our country for the next forty years and counting.

But I didn’t know that the smart money, or at least the large money, was going to the media-friendly figurehead and grinning sociopath now known as St. Ronnie as early as 1966:

Nixon… wanted Ronald Reagan to be in his debt should Reagan win the [California] statehouse. At the same time, conservatives were already talking about Reagan as a presidential prospect—so Nixon stood to benefit mightily if Reagan pledged before the national political press corps not to run in 1968…

Reagan dashed off a note thanking Nixon for “your very good suggestions”, then jetted east. In Pittsburgh he was the guest of right-wing billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. In Gettysburg his host was General Eisenhower—who said “you can bet” Reagan would be a presidential prospect if he beat Pat Brown. (The bastard, Nixon had to be thinking, kicking Dick Nixon once more.)

If we didn’t know what horrors he’d be responsible for, you could almost feel sorry for Tricky Dick, once again out-maneuvered by a fellow Orthogonian with just enough pretty-package “charm” (and so little of Nixon’s prickly self-respect) to sell his favors to the hateful Franklins for all the plaudits denied to RMN no matter how hard he worked or how dirty he was willing to fight…

What say you all?

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NIXONLAND II: “The Stench”

Herein emergeth both “Nixon the Loser” and “The New Nixon” (same as the old Nixon, but with embedded viral marketing). What say y’all?

Have to admit, this is also where Perlstein starts to run crossgrain to my own prejudices:

Went one of the Stevenson/Galbraith jeremiads… “Our nation stands at a fork in the political road. In one direction lies a land of slander and scare; the land of sly innuendo, the poison pen, the anonymous phone call and hustling, pushing, shoving; the land of smash and grab and anything to win. This is Nixonland. America is something different.”

Of course, saying a President Nixon would unleash the bomb was also slander and scare, and spared not the innuendo. Adlai Stevenson and his learned speechwriter had coined a useful word, Nixonland. They just did not grasp its full resonance. They described themselves outside its boundaries. Actually, they were citizens in good standing… [I]t only stood to reason that if you believed your opponent was neither sensible nor sober and would do anything to win, and that his victory would destroy civlization, a certain insobriety was permissible to beat him.

I have no opinion of Adlai Stevenson (which is the way my people say: I have a conviction that Stevenson is too minor a character to bother having an opinion about), but I would argue that Galbraith was indisbutably correct to assert that “Nixonland” was (is) a sociological construct in opposition to all that is best and decent behind the concept of “America”. Of course, this is because I’ve spent my entire life on the Galbraithian side of the divide… and I blame the Stench Artists Nixonians for its very existence…

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Late Afternoon Open Thread

First off, another reminder: NIXONLAND discussion group tonight, 9pm EST, “The Stench”. Now aren’t you curious enough to come lurk and see what you’re missing?

Second, since I know many of us are geeks and some of us are gamers, how come no love for this particular Superbowl ad?

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Nixonland Reminder

Next virtual meeting of the Balloon Juice Book Group is Monday evening, February 7, 9pm EST, because a bunch of participants (including Rick Perlstein) are going to be busy watching the Superbowl on Sunday afternoon.

We’ve only up to the third chapter (“The Stench”), so it’s not too late to download the enchanced e-book edition and join the discussion. Lurkers always welcome!

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Sunday Evening Open Thread

Thanks to all who participated down-thread. Next Sunday is some big noisy quasi-religious observance for sports fans, I’m told, so how about we schedule the discussion of NIXONLAND, chapter 3, “The Stench”, for Monday evening, Feb 7, at 9pm EST? Or is that too early / too late / the wrong day?

Incidentally, I was a bit surprised that more of you ‘lurkers’ didn’t comment on the book… rest assured, we would be thrilled to hear what you have to say, new blood is alway welcome!

Reading assignments aside, what are y’all doing this evening?

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Nixonland I: Hell in LA / The Orthogonian

The past isn’t dead; it isn’t even past.—Faulkner

Here begins the first virtual meeting of the BJ Book Group. Today’s topic: the preface and first two chapters of Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland.

What do y’all think?

One thing: I hadn’t realized how much Nixon used the “popular media” successfully. I know everyone remembers the Checkers speech as a near-career-killer and the infamous JFK tv debate as a debacle, but Perlstein demonstrates in convincing detail that Nixon used those “failures”, as much as they stung at the time, to dog-whistle to those among his fellow grievance-huggers who would become his Silent Majority.

Another thing: The Goldwaterite wing of the Republican Party—the people now calling themselves Tea Partiers—really does come off as a cult, right from the beginning:

Experts, claiming the Republican tradition of progressivism was as much a part of its identity as the elephant, began talking about a party committing suicide. The Goldwaterites didn’t see suicide. They saw redemption. This was part and parcel of their ideology—that Lyndon Johnson’s “consensus” was their enemy in a battle for the survival of civilization. For them, the idea that calamitous liberal nonsense [...] could be described as a “consensus” at all was symbol and substance of America’s moral rot. They also believed the vast majority of ordinary Americans already agreed with them [...] It was their article of faith. And faith, and the uncompromising passions attending it, was key to their political makeup. (p.5)

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Nixonland: Book Group Reminder

After Checkers, to the cosmopolitan liberals, hating Richard Nixon, congratulating yourself for seeing through Richard Nixon and the elaborate political poker bluffs with which he hooked the sentimental rubes, was becoming part and parcel of a political identity…

Four o’clock EST, this Sunday, we discuss the first two chapters of Nixonland.: the Rise of A President and the Fracturing of America.

The book is info-dense, but Perlstein’s range is giving me all sorts of details I hadn’t heard before, even though I consider myself fairly well read about Nixon’s pre-Watergate history.

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NIXONLAND: Official Book Group Invitation

First online ‘meeting’ of the BJ Book Group will start at 4pm EST Sunday, January 30th. The book, of course, is Rick Perlstein’s Nixonland. If you own an e-reader (are an e-reader?), commentor RSR pointed out that an “enhanced” e-book with CBS news footage is available through publishers Simon & Shuster.

Now that I’ve pored through the pages available on Amazon, let’s plan on covering the preface and first two chapters, plus the notes and related backup material as necessary.

I’ve added a new category, in hopes that people will be able to use the ‘search’ function to find all posts related to Nixonland as we progress.

Any suggestions, comments, or disagreements will be accepted in the spirit in which they are offered.

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Book Group: NIXONLAND’s the One

Nixon had a rough childhood, poor and wretched. Some people would say “I don’t want anyone to go through that” and become a liberal. Some people say ” it’s okay with me if others suffer so I won’t” and that’s a modern Republican. Some people say “There will be suffering and I’m the one dishing it out!” and that’s Nixon.—commentor WereBear

Also most of the people around Nixon, and quite a few of those voting for him, in my experience. He may have been America’s foremost exemplar of Faulkner’s “The past is never dead; it’s not even past”.

Since at least four dozen people spoke up in favor of Nixonland, that will be our first “book group” selection. The fact that author Rick Perlstein volunteered to “participate in some way” would be a contributing factor, if that weren’t more likely to give some members of this anarchic blogmune a severe case of the shys than to encourage them.

So, Amazon has to ship me the copy I’ll order right after this. And I’ve got to stock up on my blood pressure medication, and dig out my copies of Unbought & Unbossed (Shirley Chisholm), Nixon Agonistes(Garry Wills), and Fear & Loathing on the Campaign Trail ‘72 (Hunter S. Thompson). I’m planning on tackling NIXONLAND a chapter or two at a time, since that seems to work for other book groups on other blogs.

How about we all plan to start the first discussion sometime Sunday afternoon / evening, January 30?

Any other suggestions gratefully accepted…

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