Jeb isn't tough/alpha enough, Rubio seems too young and idealistic for a gritty moment, Cruz is too much of a straight ideologue.
— Ross Douthat (@DouthatNYT) November 22, 2015
At first I thought NYTimesman Ross Doubthat was just dressing up some standard Repub Hillary-bashing for the centrists when he went “Searching for Richard Nixon“:
… The odd truth is that the most Nixon-like candidate in 2016 — in the sense of being ideologically protean and personally ruthless, at least — might be the one waiting for Republicans in the fall. But the unfortunate reality for the country is that Hillary Clinton might offer Nixon’s weaknesses without his strengths: All the seaminess and paranoia, but none of the actual achievements…
(Everything you lie-brals claim to hate about Tricky Dick, and she doesn’t even have one!)
But, no, he actually longs for a tough Republican daddy who could (if one were predisposed) present his jingoism and xenophobia suitably disguised with “gravitas”…
… It’s a truth universally accepted that nobody ever, ever wants to be Richard Nixon. But there are times, and this might be one of them, when the country needs a little Nixon. The country and maybe especially the Republican Party, which has been trying to forget its debt to Tricky Dick ever since the helicopter carried him away…
… Nixon knew how to channel an angry, “who’s looking out for me?” populism without letting himself be imprisoned by its excesses. A similar anger has propelled Trump, but as David Frum has pointed out, for all of the Donald’s “silent majority” call-outs he’s clearly more a George Wallace than a Nixon. Some of the anxieties he’s exploited are legitimate, just as the crime wave that Wallace fixated on really was a clear and pressing problem. But like Wallace, Trump is a provocateur and bigot — or a provocateur playing a bigot — with a deserved ceiling on his support.
The problem for Republicans is that they haven’t found a candidate who can appeal to Trump’s politically-disaffected supporters — whether they’re worried about immigration, jobs, terrorism or an overreaching social liberalism — without trafficking in slurs and empty bluster. But that’s roughly what Nixon did in 1968 and 1972, when he addressed (liberal historians would say exploited, but we can have that debate another time) widespread anxieties over social change and disorder without ever repudiating racial equality or civil rights.
In this year’s Republican primary, the non-Trump candidates have struggled mightily to make that kind of nuanced case. And they’ve struggled, in part, because they lack a second Nixonian gift: An instinct for the non-ideological character of many American voters, primary voters included…
On the one hand, we have groaning entitlement programs (Obamacare now included) in desperate need of some reform; on the other, we have a stagnant economy and a hard-pressed electorate that fears any fraying of the safety net. No president can deal with that combination without a Nixonian level of ideological flexibility – which is to say, more than President Obama has shown, and more than the demands of Republican orthodoxy allow.
Then on foreign policy, too, a dose of Nixon’s cold-eyed view of world affairs would dramatically improve what Republicans are currently promising. Obama’s foreign policy is, put charitably, a stumbling mess. But the Republican pretense that all we need to do is name our enemies and crush them misses the deep complexity of America’s challenges…
Oh, for the halcyon days of yore when those people (not just people of color and women in general, but the working-class voters who knew so little about discreet marketing as to support George Wallace) knew their place! — as cannon fodder, at the voting booth as well as in the jungles of Vietnam.
Whatever terrible things happen in the Republican primaries, there is at least the minor consolation that Ross Doubthat shall be miserable with the results.
kindness
Douthat sucks. I mean I am not wasting one of my free NYT clicks on a huge chanker like him.
Mnemosyne (tablet)
Of course, being on a Broadway kick right now, I have to bring this classic number up. And it was a huge hit in the 80s!
Redshift
Christ, what an asshole!
Immanentize
I’ve said it before — Nixon was the last liberal president. Vile, insane, and dangerous. But compared to today’s lot, Slippery Dick was a total commie (E.P.A., price limits, and my personal favorite — the LEAA, etc.)
Elizabelle
Can’t stand Douthat. Not gonna read. Can we have another topic? A pet picture, even recycled?
Gin & Tonic
Richard Fucking Nixon is being rehabilitated? Nixon? Are you fucking kidding me? Nixon?
Tom Levenson
And again, Cardinal Douthat gives the game away by linking to Always Wrong McCardle as his evidence for an Obamacare debacle. Consider a Krugthulu alternative, and then bet on whether he or the arithmetic-challenged McArdle would by your guide of choice on this issue.
Gin & Tonic
Oh, now I understand:
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: Compared to today’s Republicans? I’d say yeah, he doesn’t seem so bad in comparison – though I get that’s mostly a factor of Congress.
Elizabelle
Points for the blogpost title
It’s clever, even while the linked material is not.
Germy
“Boy the wigglin’ Miller played, songs that made the hit parade”
PurpleGirl
@Mnemosyne (tablet): And another revival is either on Broadway right now or about to start a run.
cokane
well said, Anne
Luthe
@Gin & Tonic: It amazes me how many conservatives long for a time they never lived in.
Gin & Tonic
@redshirt: Genital herpes isn’t so bad in comparison with bubonic plague, either. So fucking what. I guess you didn’t live through the Nixon years either.
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: True. So you cede the point?
The Other Chuck
Wow. If you ever want to know if a man has no soul, look for writing like this.
Germy
There was never a time when this country “needed a little Nixon.”
What on earth is DoubtThat thinking?
PurpleGirl
I’ve often said that one of the reasons I hate Reagan is that he made me miss Nixon. And I remember Nixon back to when he was VP.
Keith G
@Immanentize: IIRC, Nixon was not a champion of the EPA, he just saw the virtue in jumping on a bandwagon that passed with veto-proof majorities.
Watching Nixon’s rise to power (and spectacular crash) while growing up, I had the sense that Nixon wanted to be be seen as (and maybe actually be) one of the good guys, but he just didn’t like his fellow man enough to pull it off and he sure as hell had major trust issues.
Sort of similar to Putin, actually.
Feudalism Now!
I long for the time when threads could be Godwinned and closed as opposed to being the starting point.
schrodinger's cat
@Elizabelle: Ask and you shall receive. The story behind Schrodinger’s cat
Germy
@PurpleGirl: Smart people knew what Nixon was in the 1950s. There was no “new” Nixon or “old” Nixon. He was a crook from the first day he got into politics.
Gin & Tonic
@redshirt: “So fucking what” wasn’t sufficiently clear to you?
Amir Khalid
Saying that Hilary Clinton is the 2016 presidential candidate most like Richard Nixon is so wrong, I don’t even know where to begin describing its wrongness.
Calouste
How the fuck can a leading national newspaper carry a column longing back to a national leader who resigned in disgrace?
schrodinger's cat
@Amir Khalid: But only in the badness! Only GOPers can be good according to Pudgy Bobo.
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: I’d rather have herpes then the plague. Maybe the distinction is too fine for you.
feebog
They really are getting desperate. Trump has not faded as the money boys expected and we are now closing in on 60 days before Iowa. If things are unchanged by the first week in January look for desperation to morph into full blown panic. Kaboom!
Elizabelle
@schrodinger’s cat: I’ll take it. Thank you, thank you.
bemused
It’s probably petty to talk about people’s looks but every time rightwing guys like Douthat go on and on about their obsession with “tough” leaders, I just look at their photos and groan. Even if they aren’t pudgy, they just exude doughboy.
PurpleGirl
@schrodinger’s cat: Love your LOLCATS pictures.
redshirt
@efgoldman: Nixonland is fantastic and you’ll love it. You should read it ASAP.
Germy
@efgoldman:
Should have asked “smoking”
Anne Laurie
@efgoldman: In case the one you’re using here doesn’t work, mine is annelaurie (at) verizon dot com. I’ll keep an eye out!
RSA
@Gin & Tonic:
He tries to sound authoritative (e.g., “Obama’s foreign policy is, put charitably, a stumbling mess.”) but in this case he’s talking about a President who resigned five years before he was born, and I suspect he may not even realize how much disdain there is for Nixon among older people.
Germy
@Luthe:
They just know they’d fit right in.
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@PurpleGirl:
It makes me sad that the recent movie version wasn’t better. I still don’t get the rationale for casting non-singers in a musical with big, famous numbers that people want to hear.
I’m looking forward to the NBC live version of “The Wiz” coming up on 12/3. They cast an unknown with an amazing voice as Dorothy and are surrounding her with a cast of singers and Broadway vets, including Queen Latifah and Stephanie Mills, the original B’way Dorothy, as Auntie Em. This may actually be pretty good!
schrodinger's cat
@PurpleGirl: Thanks!
Question:
Will a Hindi/Marathi translation be helpful when I post a link to a Hindi/Marathi song?
Germy
@bemused: It’s not petty, because appearances are everything with them. They’ll make a snap judgement based on someone’s skin color.
It isn’t rude to point out that most of them look like pigs.
Germy
Kitty wigs. For the cat who has everything.
Felonius Monk
The world sure as hell does not need a man(?) like Ross Douthat. What a waste of a human embryo. A perpetual bullshit machine.
Hoodie
Nixon won about the normal GOP vote (low 40%) and Wallace was pulling away some southern voters, but the key event was Nixon sabotaging the Paris peace talks, which halted Humphrey’s comeback. I guess Douthat is saying we need a guy who probably caused the unnecessary deaths of thousands of Americans and untold numbers of Vietnamese. Oh, and Nixon was not liberal. He had a overwhelmingly liberal congress that made him shy away from domestic policy.
Boots Day
What on earth makes this a “gritty moment”? Why is it grittier than 2008, when we were at war and the economy was collapsing, yet the Democrats saw fit to put forth someone “young and idealistic”?
schrodinger's cat
@Germy: You have got to be kidding me. Bosscat does hissy spitty for much less. If I try to put on of those wigs on him. I better have called 911 in advance.
redshirt
Open thread, right?
So I’ve yet to turn on my heat. I would have normally done so around 10/1, but in honor of that time I wrote novels and lived in a cabin with no heat and no insulation till 10/31, I decided this year I wouldn’t turn my heat on till 11/1 at the earliest.
That year – 1997 – I spent at the cabin was the best ever, but the month of October was brutal. Water froze inside the cabin over night. It was a constant battle to ensure the pipes didn’t freeze. It was mid 30’s inside the place for much of the end of the month. There was never any sun due to angle, mountains, and the forest. It was brutal. When I finally moved out the cold didn’t leave me for weeks after. I felt as if the cold got deep into me and no amount of heat got it out, for awhile.
So in honor I went this past October with no heat, but New Gondolin here is super insulated and gets all the sun. And wow, what a difference. Apart from a couple of mornings, it was comfortable. So comfortable I’ve gone with no heat into November, to today, in fact.
But it’s getting real cold. Outside high today was 34. Even the sun can’t raise the inside temp above 63. But 63 is pretty warm, right? So I go on till 12/1.
Keith G
@RSA:
He knows.
He is a scold who is allergic to facts. He seems to manifest a fantasy where he is on some moral high ground from which he dispenses jewels of righteous judgement upon the riff-raff he is displease to observe.
He is the illustrated definition of a favored four letter, British insult that can’t be safely typed here.
schrodinger's cat
@redshirt: Are you trying to be a Yogi? Someone who nothing and no one can affect?
Anne Laurie
@RSA:
Even while Nixon was still in office, the Serious Republican Thinkers were busy turning him into a Machiavellian mastermind that us lowly hoi polloi just didn’t have the capacity to understand. Once “St. Ronnie” captured the figurative throne in the general “Best Conservaprez Ever” games, the SRTs retreated even further into a shared Straussian fantasy where only they had the clear-eyed large-stoned vision to understand that the world is full of happy-faced fools who need to be taken in hand by a tiny enlightened band of philosophers who can delude them into doing What’s Right, or at least What’s Best. Nixon is the grudging haters’ rebuttal to that Hollywood-movie guy, the Last True Conservative (one who understand the value of Serious Intellectuals, so much that he spent the end of his days still trying to insinuate himself among them!).
Germy
@schrodinger’s cat: Our cat won’t even wear a collar. She’d throw a shit fit if she even SAW one of those wigs. But the photos are charming. I think…
goblue72
Douthat is a guy clearly needing a good pegging. He just can’t admit it to himself.
RSA
@bemused:
It is petty! but it’s in the BJ mission statement. For what it’s worth, I think “dough” is traditionally associated with Jonah Goldberg, while hereabouts Douthat goes by Chunky David Brooks, or Chunky Bobo, per the BJ lexicon.
Nate Dawg
@goblue72: Shorter Douche-hat: “Republicans need a president so manly guys like me will bend over for him willingly.”
Anne Laurie
@Hoodie:
Nobody Doubthat knows, or would care to know, was affected by Vietnam. Why should he bother his beautiful Straussian mind about spearcarriers dying at the margins of the glorious world stage?
p.a.
Why does Ross feel the need to go back to Dick? What
hewe did, and set in motion, in Cambodia and Laos (I’ll set VietNam to LBJ’s account) isn’t far different than Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria, Libya. Main difference is the jungle grows to cover the scars compared to the MidEast. And time. It’s just not viable to long for a return to Bushism. 6 v 1/2 dozen.cain
Crime wave? Is he out of his mind? There is no fucking crime wave, crime has been going down for decades now. What world is he living in? Thanks to 24 hour news, a gang banger scratching his ass is big news. Does he not know how all this stuff works?
Betty Cracker
@redshirt: From my subtropical fortress, I wage an opposite-day battle with nature when summer comes, challenging myself to see how much heat I can bear without turning on the air conditioning. I’ve never made it past June 15.
ETA: I know exactly what you mean about internalizing the cold and not being able to get rid of it. I lived in Boston for four years, and that’s why I had to come back home. I couldn’t bear that awful feeling of the unshakable chill. Heat can be abominably oppressive too, but for me, at least, I can shake that off easily enough — take a shower, go swimming, chill out in the A/C for awhile, etc., and it’s gone. The cold, though, man, it gets in your bones, and there just aren’t enough blankets in the world.
redshirt
@schrodinger’s cat: Yes, I guess? Not really my aim though. I just like challenging myself. And saving money when possible. I’ve saved approximately $300 so far.
So far I’ve become acclimated to these temps and surprise myself by feeling comfortable in 62 degree inside readings. I used to run my Boston apartment at 74 and walk around in shorts and tank, so I’m shocked at this development, but dig it.
When I do turn the heat on, I think I’m going to set it for 64, which is waaaay below previous years.
Mustang Bobby
Ross Douthat was born five years after Nixon resigned. I was campaigning against Nixon when he ran for president in 1960. Phfft.
cain
@p.a.:
It’s because Nixon is the one who bought such natural treasures as Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld. The assholes who had such a great hand in our central american foreign policy. I mean it was such a stunning success that it continued in Reagan reign and into W’s. The gift that keeps on giving.
Mustang Bobby
@Betty Cracker: Today I was able to drive home with the top down and the A/C off. The house is actually cool without it running. Winter is here.
p.a.
@efgoldman: Anti-Semitic? Counting the Jews in the Dept. of Labor was just for Chanukah gifts.
cain
@Germy:
Except they won’t because conservativism is no longer an ideology, it’s just anti-whatever. You’ll never find anybody happy and they’ll self referential to some other grand time in the 1800s or something. Eventually, they’ll wish they were living back during the old testament.
schrodinger's cat
@Germy: Cats as pinups. It has both boy cats and girl cats!
Anne Laurie
@Keith G:
Dude, the Doubthat runs in terror from… you know. ( Chunky Reese Witherspoons.) Keep the gendered insults on your side of the XY divide: Ross is a prick, a dick, a putz, a schmuck. I’m not sure he can even rise to the novelty of schwantz, since his prissy gynophobia seems better suited to baby-talk euphemisms like ‘jewelry‘ or ‘decoration‘.
Germy
@cain: No matter where they found themselves, they’d have no trouble finding an enemy.
gene108
The reason you cannot have another Nixon is Reagan and the subsequent Reagan worship by Republicans.
Reagan took the accepted economic doctrines of the time, which Nixon gladly supported, and decided they did not work and tried something radical in its place.
The Reagan worship of the post-Reagan years has turned Reagan’s economic ideas into doctrine to be dogmatically followed by all Republicans.
Nixon did not have to be as much of a bomb thrower, because on a lot of issues, he was not that far apart from the status quo and/or where the mainstream of the Democratic and Republican parties were.
Modern Republicans want to implement a very radical right-wing agenda, should they seize power.
Hoodie
@Anne Laurie: In other words, Douthat is looking forward to carpet bombing of civilians in Syria and captured American soldiers dying in gruesome ways in ISIS videos.
Enhanced Voting Techinques
@RSA: I recall back in the day Mad Magazine asserting “They don’t trust Nixon” was the one thing the Right and the Left had in comon.
Germy
@schrodinger’s cat: Very nice photos.
I think the cats came first. The pinup girls and guys imitate the cats. The cat photos should be on the left.
Gin & Tonic
@redshirt: You want to join that moron Douthat in defending a war criminal, knock yourself out. I’m out.
Germy
everyone ready for thanksgiving? I know I’m not,
Fair Economist
@feebog:
That’s almost guaranteed. Thanksgiving is in 3 days and after that most won’t be paying attention to politics until after New Year’s.
Germy
Trump thread upstairs.
Tom Levenson
@Anne Laurie: Less genitally focused, but with great mouthfeel: Douthat is also a schmendrick.
redshirt
@Betty Cracker:
Sub tropical fortresses are lovely in the day to day but over time nature will conquer you unless you are actively fighting against her. The jungle eats castles.
Whereas in the North it is the erosion of ice and snow which ruins everything, eventually.
Here are my cooling tricks – I’m sure you know most if not all of them, but for those who don’t:
1. Close your curtains. Keep out the sun.
2. Keep your windows closed if your indoor temp is lower than the outdoor, no matter if it’s 80. If you must open windows open them opposite the sun. Open your windows at night, closed during the day.
3. Fans generate heat, and only work on contact with skin or other liquid medium to cool.
4. Dehumidifiers make it feel drier, but also generate a lot of heat.
5. Take cold showers.
redshirt
@Gin & Tonic: I’m not defending anyone. I thought it was a Nixon versus current Republicans question? I’d take Nixon over Ted Cruz, for example. But of course Nixon is terrible through and through.
jl
I agree with others that Nixon was not a liberal in any real sense. He went along with liberal policies passed by bipartisan majorities in Congress whenever opposing them would be too costly politically. He didn’t really care that much about domestic policy, seeing it as bread and circuses to keep the plebes happy while World Historical Figures like himself did high policy and national security. When an attempt at a liberal health policy reform failed, Nixon eagerly switched to a conservative approach that got corporations more money for providing less care, hell that sounded better to him anyway.
As for the crazification factor, Douthat is wrong on that. Nixon started the Southern Strategy and put social, racial and ethnic wedge issue electioneering on center stage. Hasn’t Douthat read about Lee Atwater’s analysis: as time goes by you have to get both shriller and more indirect, go after new targets after going directly after the old ones becomes too offensive to the majority of the voting public.
So, with the social policy, race and ethnicity wedge issues, the the GOP just has the typical junky’s problems with shooting junk: Oh, why can’t the same hit get the same high, like it did back when I first got hooked on the stuff? Oh, those were the days!
The GOP reactionary base demands more crazy, because the GOP has had to push increasingly crazy garbage as all of their fake crises and prophesied disasters fail to materialize, and their promised reactionary paradise for all good boys and girls fails to materialize when they are in power. So, their loyal primary base head junkies need ever more lurid fantasies to keep them following the same old fraidulent reactionary promises hopes and dreams.
Scott
Let’s face it. He is talking about Putin.
goblue72
@efgoldman: No kidding. I see this stupid meme all the time on the liberal blogosphere that somehow Nixon was not a conservative. Its ahistorical stupidity. And goes right along with liberals making the White House the be all and end all. Completely ignoring that legislatures are where the power resides. Control of the WH will always switch between parties fairly periodically. Control Congress with durability though, and at some point, when the WH comes back to your party, you come up straight 7s.
Why has the last 20 years seen more and more wealth flowing upward and the social safety net ever fraying? Because by and large, the Democrats have lost control of Congress since the Gingrich Revolution in 1994 – as well as having lost control of most state legislatures. It is not by magic that the only material expansion of the social welfare safety net – Obamacare – was passed during a brief moment in time when Democrats regained control of both Houses of Congress while a Democrat was also in the White House.
Nixon wasn’t a liberal. He was a conservative. He just happened to be President at a time when the Democratic party had an iron grip control over Congress.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Presidents_and_control_of_Congress#/media/File:Combined–Control_of_the_U.S._House_of_Representatives_-_Control_of_the_U.S._Senate.png
jl
@Fair Economist: And if Trump followed through on early signs that he was actually building a ground organization for primaries and caucuses in early states, that will be big hurdle for the other GOPers to overcome.
Most GOPers don’t want to bother with that boring stuff, but like TV ads and media.
Mandalay
@bemused:
Digby nailed Trump to the wall on his “toughness”:
jl
And, exactly what were Nixon’s political accomplishments before he ran for president in 1968? From what I read, it was red baiting, and losing previous presidential and gubernatorial elections.
Edit: and being a despised VP of Eisenhower, who rather deliberately refused to do much to help him get elected in 1960, and liked to think up new ways to give him back handed compliments that Nixon would have been better off without.
Edit2: Most famous one was, IIRC, Q: What are Nixon’s accomplishments as VP? A: I dunno, give me a week and I might be able to think of something.
Satby
@redshirt: I tend to run warm, so 68 gets a bit too warm for me. But then I go in and outside all day and dress appropriately for the season. I’m conceded to my tropical family members by having my heat set to 66 this year, it’s usually set to 64. Because they were able to acclimate fairly slowly over 3months, they’re actually ok with this, and as I mentioned, like to show off how cold hardy they’ve become with selfies in front of the outside thermometer, in their jammies and flip-flops.
PurpleGirl
@Germy: As I’m by myself this year, I’m going to a restaurant. Just have to check that Donovan’s pub will be open on Thursday and serving turkey dinners. I like their downstairs back room with the fire place. Very cozy.
Satby
@Germy: Well, I am cooking and it’s just the girls and me. I invited a friend who I know will be solo, but they prefer to stay home.
Halal turkey is crazy expensive compared to regular turkey, but I’ll get several meals plus soup so it should end up worth it.
Satby
@PurpleGirl: Too bad you live so far away, you could come over!
Josie
I am old enough to have detailed memories of Richard Nixon. I knew who and what Richard Nixon was. I was a staunch enemy of Richard Nixon. And, believe me, Hillary is Nothing like Richard Nixon. Douthat is a pasty idiot.
bemused
@RSA:
Spongy comes to my mind.
Kathleen
When I was growing up Richard Nixon was “The Devil” in my house. We lived in Omaha, NE in the late 40’s and early 50’s. Omaha was a veritable bucket of chuckles during the McCarthy years, and my Dad’s favorite sport was hurling the Omaha World Herald across the room with a few choice epithets.
Dad worked at a radio station which invited visiting dignitaries and celebrities in for interviews. Since my Dad was the only Democrat at the station, he was chosen to interview Nixon. Somewhere we still have the picture.
piratedan7
and the worst part about that fucking article is that someone paid this lying sonofabitch for that piece of work…
randy khan
@jl: Bingo. Clinton has done much more than Nixon ever did before he was President.
The Golux
@Germy:
I think that’s actually, “Boy, the way Glen Miller played…”
Mnemosyne (iPhone)
@redshirt:
The claim is that Nixon was more liberal than current *Democrats,* including Obama and Hillary. Which is patently stupid for all of the reasons people outlined above, but people keep repeating it anyway.
J R in WV
@efgoldman:
Yes to all of this. On the night of the Saturday night massacre, when Nixon fired the Attorney General, his assistant AG, until he reached Mr Bork, who was willing to fire the special prosecutor who was probably about to indict Nixon for some of his crimes, we were at a work party.
The work was at a newspaper. Mrs J and I (both confirmed Nixon haters) went back to work to watch the various wire printers, Teletype devices moving character data over dedicate telephone lines at about a character per second. The news that night was 4 Bell stories. the bells rang on the teletype machines, to let wire editors all over the world know that breaking news was arriving on the paper being printed upon by the teletype machines.
A 5 bell story was either the outbreak of war, D-Day, or the surrender of Imperial Japan. The collapse of Nixon’s government was a 4 bell story, and we watched those stories print out on the teletypes, late at night. Before the internet, no one got news faster than a morning newspaper, except people who could watch The AP, UPI, and the NY Times wires print today’s news in real time. As long as real time fit into 55 characters a second.
Nixon was a sociopathic criminal, who managed to hid his mental disease well enough to win elections. He was… well I’m speechless to attempt to explain how a national news outlet allows one of its writers to long for the days of a criminal in the White House.
If I was able, I would call Mr Douthat, right now, and tell him to turn in his keys to his desk, and that we would ship any personal items we found to his address of record. No severance pay. Bye. And Good Riddance!
Kathleen
@J R in WV: I remember that night well.
Jeffro
@redshirt: Seconded – a real eye-opener. Puts everything from that era onwards into very clear perspective.
Bill Murray
@Germy:
Is this one of those lyrical things like “‘scuse me while kiss this guy”?
KS in MA
@J R in WV:
And I lived in Manhattan in August 1974. The night Nixon resigned, I and my many roommates watched on TV, cursing him as he made his lying, hypocritical resignation speech. It was a hot night; everybody’s windows were open, and we heard all our neighbors cursing him right along with us. Had to be the high point of his presidency.
Botsplainer
@KS in MA:
I most remember mom railing on how he didn’t do anything that any other president didn’t do, and he just got caught.
grumpy realist
@redshirt: I grew up in a house where we regularly kept it at 60. More warmth provided by fires in fireplaces.
But yeah, I did get a lot of the “put on a sweater if you’re cold!” parental reaction.