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Tag Archives: Richard Nixon

Rehabilitating Reagan, Bush and Other GOP Chuckleheads

24 Tuesday Oct 2017

Posted by Jim Langcuster in American History, The Passing Scene, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Dwight Eisenhower, Establishment Media, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, I.Q., Intelligence Quotient, Jim Langcuster, Media, Richard Nixon, Ronald Reagan, U.S. Presidents

Ronald-ReaganWhy should we find it at all surprising?

George W. Bush, our 43rd president, once written off by the pundits and comedic agit/prop of the ruling class as the biggest presidential cipher since Warren Gamaliel Harding, is now portrayed as a thoughtful former president and statesman, one whose ruminations even should be taken seriously.

Yes, folks, in less than a generation, George W. Bush, once excoriated as the greatest menace to liberty and decency since, well, Ronald Reagan a generation earlier, has finally undergone rehabilitation.

But, again, why should we be surprised?

The current occupant of the White House, Donald J. Trump – Potus45, as he’s known in Twitter parlance – has been characterized as the greatest presidential menace since, well, Potus 43, George W. Bush.  So, the Establishment media, in true Soviet-style, had deemed it appropriate to upstage Trump with Bush, much as Dubyah was upstaged by Reagan, whom the media once excoriated as history’s most conspicuous presidential empty shirt.

Indeed, almost two generations ago, Ronald Reagan, now regarded as one of the most successful presidents of the 20th century, sat approximately where Donald J. Trump does today.  He was characterized as an entirely new presidential phenomenon, one lacking intellectual heft – half-educated, a bit gauche and provincial –  not only intellectually limited but a dire threat to the safety of planet Earth.   In fact, some media pundits characterized the former actor as the greatest existential threat to the planet since his intellectual godfather, Goldwater, the 1964 GOP nominee, who incidentally, was also dismissed as a reactionary chowderhead.

And I  still recall the large collection of Reaganite malapropisms the Establishment media compiled to support all these characterizations.

Today, though, Ronald Reagan is lionized by the Establishment media as the embodiment of Republican presidential statesmanship – a man who “grew” into the job.

Also telling to me is how media pundits resort to speculating about the I.Q. differences between Republican and Democratic presidents, especially during presidential campaigns.

In fact, have you ever noticed how the left, a political tradition supposedly wedded to egalitarianism, almost seems obsessed with the subject of a I.Q.’s and scholastic attainment, especially in terms of how this relates to Republicans presidents?

A few yeas ago, the media reported extensively on a study compiled by University of California-Davis professor that projects the I.Q.’s of every U.S. president since Washington.  The study ranked John F. Kennedy, with a projected I.Q. of 158, as the third most intellectually gifted chief executive, just behind Thomas Jefferson.  Bill Clinton, with a projected I.Q. of 156, came in fourth.

That is an interesting assessment, considering that Kennedy tested out with a bright but far from singular I.Q. of 117 at Choate Academy, his secondary school.  By contrast, Richard Nixon, his GOP opponent in the 1960 presidential election, scored a genius-level I.Q. of 143 while a student at Whittier High School.

Interestingly,  perhaps tellingly, Nixon does not rank among  the 15 smartest U.S. president in this survey, nor does any other 20th century Republican president, with the exception of the GOP maverick Theodore Roosevelt.  However, five Democratic presidents do: Kennedy, Clinton, Carter, Wilson and Franklin Roosevelt.

Yet, one can make the strong case that the 20th century produced some unusually cognitively gifted Republican presidents.

Herbert Hoover was a Stanford graduate who became conversant, if not fluent, in Mandarin while he lived in China. He was considered the Bill Gates and Elon Musk of his generation – the greatest logistical planner in the world, though his personality was, to be sure, somewhat mordant and colorless, which proved the kiss of death to his presidential fortunes.

Dwight Eisenhower not only ranked first in his class in the Army’s Command and General Staff College but also attained the Army’s equivalent of the doctorate upon completing the War College. Moreover, he oversaw  the planning and execution of the most complicated military alliance in history – not to mention, the most logistically complex land invasion in history.  As President, Ike undertook a thorough modernization of the White House national security structure. He is now increasing ranked by scholars as a great or near-great president.

And I would be remiss if I did not return briefly to our 37th president, Richard Nixon, who not only tested with a genius-level I.Q. at Whittier High School but also was admitted to Harvard, though he was unable to raise the money to support himself.  He excelled at Whittier College and later graduated from Duke University Law School on a full scholarship. Among other achievements, he significantly altered the geopolitical balance of power through his brilliantly conceived and executed China strategy.

It’s also worth pointing out that George H.W. Bush, frequently depicted by the media during his presidency as an airhead and an egregious violator of English syntax, was a Phi Beta Kappa economics graduate of Yale University and also served in the cognitively demanding role of director of the Central Intelligence Agency, not only overseeing intelligence efforts over a global scale but also managing employees who had taken a demanding cognitive exam to serve in the agency.

Sorry for this long history lesson.  But I do think it’s an instructive and enlightening way of illustrating how the Establishment media are constantly engaged in cultural warfare, even if this involves departing occasionally from egalitarian orthodoxy to call the cognitive capacity of conservative presidents into question or to alter history by elevating previously discredited Republican presidents at the expense of others, typically the sitting one.

Hillary, You Are No Richard Nixon

01 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in Patriotism, U.S. Politics, Uncategorized

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Cook County, Election 2016, Election of 1968, Hillary Clinton, Jill Stein, Jim Langcuster, Patriotism, Richard Daley, Richard Nixon

richard-nixon-crowdOur 37th president, the late Richard M. Nixon, was a terribly flawed man – a fact corroborated by many of the people closely associated with him during his troubled presidency.

But, of course, Nixon was also a complicated man, capable of as many soaring acts of brilliance and selfless patriotism as he was of petty and, sometimes appallingly destructive partisanship.

Henry Kissinger, who endured a full immersion in Nixon’s manifold complexities, described him as a man who, despite his flaws, almost invariably put the interests of his country first.

One unusually compelling chapter of U.S. presidential history reveals Nixon’s capacity for selfless patriotism.  As The Washington Times opinion editor David A. Keene observes in a recent column, Nixon had acquired compelling evidence that the Kennedys, working through Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s manipulation of Cook County ballots, had stolen the 1960 presidential election.

Illinois Republican Senator Everett Dirksen urged Nixon to take action.

In the end, though, Nixon refused to contest the election, fearing the effect a recount would have in eroding  the standing of the United States vis-a-vis the Soviet Union, which was competing with the United States to carve out a following among the emerging developing nations of Africa and Asia.

How times and personal standards have changed.

Dr.Jill Stein, the nominee of the tiny Green Party, which garnered a mere 1 percent of the U.S. popular vote, has demanded a recount in the key swing stares, apparently not so much with the goal of changing the election’s outcome but rather to raise her visibility and that of her party.

Never mind the effect this recount may play in undermining what remains of this nation’s standing as the world’s leading democracy and model for democratic government. She apparently is interested solely in building her and her party’s political viability.

And to add insult to injury, the defeated Democratic nominee, Hillary Clinton, has joined the fray, apparently with the that hope that this recount could throw the election outcome into the House of Representatives.  Throwing the election into the House would likely not alter the inevitability of a Trump victory – Hillary and her staff are undoubtedly well aware of that fact. But it would have the effect of eroding what legitimacy is attached Trump’s presidency.

 We have come a long way from the politics of the 1960’s, when even the most fiercely competitive and morally flawed national politicians still felt compelled out of a sense of patriotism to put the interests of the nation first.

Dr. Stein,  I may be a deplorable, but you are despicable – and as for you, Mrs. Clinton, you are no Richard Nixon.

The End of Clintonism

10 Thursday Nov 2016

Posted by Jim Langcuster in U.S. Politics

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Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Jim Langcuster, Richard Nixon

nixon-and-clinton

Former President Nixon conferring with President Bill Clinton in the White House in 1993.

The Clintons arrived at her headquarters Tuesday night with high hopes of victory, possibly  even a resounding one that would shape the American political landscape for decades to come.

They left facing the bitter reality that Trump’s electoral upset had likely rendered the Clinton dynasty, if not Clintonism in general, extinct.

In many ways, the Clinton legacy bears remarkable parallels to  that of Richard Nixon – and in this case, I’m focusing entirely on Bill’s presidential legacy.  Both Nixon and Clinton were gifted intellectuals, though Clinton was able to indulge his intellectual gifts publicly in a way that Nixon wasn’t, largely  due to his rather impeccable elite educational credentials and the fact that he had been largely adopted into the U.S. political Establishment. Nixon, largely because of his nonelite educational and provincial Republican pedigree, was denied acceptance – a factor that fed his deep-seated and self-destructive bitterness and paranoia, but that’s another story.

Along with keen intellects, both men also possessed razor sharp, incisive political minds able to perceive and quickly seize on fleeting political opportunities.  Indeed it was out of a sense of deep political necessity that both undertook moderate transformations of their respective political parties.

Both strategies were alike in the sense that they focused on winning voters in what is now known as Red State America, and the South played a particularly significant role in both efforts. In fact, both men will be remembered as architects of Southern political strategies.  Likewise, both Nixon and Clinton were political moderates who reluctantly tacked their parties to the right to capitalize on the South, though Nixon was at heart far more of a centrist than Clinton, a Baby Boomer who possessed the soul of a maverick New South liberal.

In time, historians may discern interesting parallel.

Both men were unusually perceptive and astute political gamesmen and improvizers. They knew how to exploit political opportunities when they arose, even in those instances when these ran against their political temperaments.

In Nixon’s case, Sen. Barry Goldwater’s disastrous 1964 presidential campaign nevertheless opened up a major opportunity for Republican prospects in the South.  And this provided Nixon, a pragmatic centrist like his predecessor and political patron, Dwight Eisenhower, with a strong incentive to capitalize on this opening by moving his party to the right.  The Red State populism of George C. Wallace as well as the need for Nixon’s need to protect his right flank from an internal insurgency provided additional impetus.

In the end, though, Nixon’s pragmatic centrist vision of the GOP, leavened a bit by hardcore-sounding conservative rhetoric to appease the post-Civil Rights Southern voters, was ultimately supplanted by Reagan’s modified Goldwater model.

Likewise, Clinton’s brilliant re-tooling of the Democratic Party in the early 90’s ultimately may be superseded by a considerably more left-leaning model inspired to one degree or another by the Bernie Sanders insurgency against Hillary Clinton in the 2016 Democratic primaries.

That is why in the end, both Richard Nixon and Bill Clinton may be as brilliant strategists whose visions for their respective parties supplied valuable but only temporary solutions for their parties’ political fortunes.

To put it another way, they may be remembered as two of American history’s most gifted political strategists, though not  as the architects of enduring political traditions as Andrew Jackson, Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan were.

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