I picture Richard Nixon sitting around alone, watching through the three network news programs — special focus on the hated CBS News, Washington Post and New York Times at hand — the Enemies.\u00c2\u00a0 He watches Spiro Agnew work in his role as hatchet-man, pleased when he says “nattering nabobs of negativity”<\/i>.\u00c2\u00a0 Why, Nixon himself had told Buchanan and Safire when they passed their proposed slogan to them that “neener weiners of negativity” needed some tweaking!<\/p>\n
The smile turns to a frown when Nixon reads through a New York Times editorial that labels Spiro Agnew “Nixon’s Nixon”.\u00c2\u00a0 His face turns red, steam runs out of his ear.<\/p>\n
“Nobody.\u00c2\u00a0 Is.\u00c2\u00a0 Nixon’s.\u00c2\u00a0 Nixon.\u00c2\u00a0 There is only One Nixon, and I am Nixon.\u00c2\u00a0 Goddamnedit!”<\/p>\n
Pausing to reflect, Nixon makes a mental note.\u00c2\u00a0 “I must destroy this ‘Nixon’s Nixon<\/i>‘.”\u00c2\u00a0 Nixon then clears out the path to Agnew’s fall from grace, such that he was at a stage of grace, and so it was.<\/p>\n
I suspect there are predecessors for Eisenhower’s use of Nixon — but within the framework of the president — vice-president relationship I just wouldn’t know what it would be.\u00c2\u00a0 Perhaps Nixon really was the first Nixon — the first vice-president to be granted enough responsibilities — Henry Wallce was said at the time to be a bell-weather of vice presidential power in the same way Walter Mondale is now –\u00c2\u00a0 and walk back from him and you see John Garner actually worked against his president, Franklin Roosevelt, helping the anti- court packers.<\/p>\n
Agnew was a little more crude than Nixon — difficult to ever picture him being sent out to the kitchen-table debate with a Kruschev — and Nixon not exactly ever coming out as the statesman that Ike seemed to be.\u00c2\u00a0 Maybe I’m viewing these the individuals through a false lense, but the path from Eisenhower — Nixon to Nixon — Agnew is a steep slide downward.\u00c2\u00a0 Try to imagine Agnew in the presidency and figure out who “Nixon’s Nixon’s Nixon” might be.\u00c2\u00a0 Ann Coulter?<\/p>\n
This week, we’ve witnessed a further degeneration of this dichotomy.\u00c2\u00a0 Witness the attacks coming from Dick Cheney on the Democrats, against the backdrop of a sometimes congenial respectful statement of “disagreements”.\u00c2\u00a0 Bush pulls off the “statesman” not at all — and doesn’t appear to be even trying — Cheney lacks the wink and a nod found in Agnew.
\nBeyond which, haven’t we already established that Cheney is the man in charge here — literally hiding in the bushes, as that soon to be iconic photograph and video shows?\u00c2\u00a0 The effect is a lesson of lack of style.\u00c2\u00a0 We need a new Nixon.\u00c2\u00a0 And to compliment Nixon, we need a new Nixon.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I picture Richard Nixon sitting around alone, watching through the three network news programs — special focus on the hated CBS News, Washington Post and New York Times at hand — the Enemies.\u00c2\u00a0 He watches Spiro Agnew work in his role as hatchet-man, pleased when he says “nattering nabobs of negativity”.\u00c2\u00a0 Why, Nixon himself had […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2221","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2221\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.struat.com\/election\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}