By Edwin Cooney
Forty-eight years have past since the night of Thursday, August 8th, 1968. On that historic night, Richard M. Nixon approached the summit of his dreams as he accepted, for the second time in his life, the presidential nomination of the Republican Party. The absolute summit was three months, 31,775,480 popular votes, 32 states, and 301 electoral votes away from his lifelong dream of occupying 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C.
Exactly six years later to that very night, President Richard Milhous Nixon entered the valley of despair and disgrace as he announced that the following morning he would resign the presidency. His given reason for resignation was that he had lost his political base of support in the Congress. However, his loss of that base was largely due to the web of illegalities and deceptions he had spun for himself because he had come to loathe a significant percentage of his national constituency. Of course, it wasn’t entirely his fault. After all, he was president of a restless, demanding people who themselves often felt under siege.
Few of the past 100 years of American history have been tranquil for presidents or their national constituents. Perhaps only the year 1926 was mostly devoid of national trauma. About the most exciting event of 1926 occurred when the St. Louis Cardinals upset Babe Ruth’s Yankees in the World Series. The country was at peace and was prosperous led as it was by “Silent” Calvin Coolidge who was spare of frame and of speech and as honest as his actual given first name: John!
The year Mr. Nixon approached the summit of his dreams was, as is this political season of 2016, a time of considerable turmoil. The undeclared Vietnam War, struggles over civil rights and personal privacy, and the assassinations of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert Francis Kennedy exemplified that turmoil. August 8th, 2016 find Americans once again in turmoil -- social, political and even spiritual turmoil. The culture war has been raging since Roe vs. Wade was decided on January 22nd 1973 (which was also the day LBJ died) and during the time President Nixon believed he’d ended the Vietnam conflict “…with honor.” Americans today are almost consumed with fear of ISOL, increasingly suspicious of Muslims, blacks, and police and especially of politicians. On to today’s stage stroll Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump. Thus, the question is how can we use the Nixon trauma to our mutual benefit as we prepare to elect a president this November 8th?
Hillary Clinton is largely mistrusted as a liar and a crook in the same way many politicians have been throughout our history. Donald Trump, on the other hand, brings to the national debate an ill-mannered evaluation of the State of the Union and a host of seemingly ill-considered solutions to some of our most vexing problems. Even more, his willingness to take as personal effrontery every political difference with practically every opponent is disturbingly Nixonesque.
Richard Nixon was, as he took his first oath of office in 1969, pretty much of a standard middle of the road to rightward-leaning Republican. Furthermore, there were understandable reasons why Mr. Nixon was so mistrusted by traditional liberals such as Adlai Stevenson, Harry Truman and even by some GOP liberals such as Chief Justice Earl Warren and Nelson Rockefeller. Nixon’s political skulduggeries against past political opponents coupled with his aloofness and his suspicion and resentment of the working press had nearly terminated his career. Finally, Mr. Nixon’s aloof and brusque personality was no match for the handsome, erudite and politically ambitious Jack Kennedy in 1960. Mr. Nixon’s resentment left its mark and became politically radioactive when he finally became president.
However, as one compares Richard Nixon to Donald Trump, Nixon appears almost affable and even Reaganesque!
Two factors in Mr. Trump’s persona are of considerable concern. First, there is his almost unfathomable willingness to defame and dehumanize all who confront him whether it be Hillary Clinton or John McCain. Then there’s his policy of proscribing major changes such as the abandonment of NATO because he believes NATO members aren’t paying their fair share of that organization’s costs.
Back in January 1962, President Kennedy, during his State of the Union Address, made an observation concerning the United Nations that fits Mr. Trump’s attitude toward NATO today. Said Kennedy: “…I see little merit in the impatience of those who would abandon this imperfect world instrument because they dislike our imperfect world. For the troubles of a world organization merely reflect the troubles of the world itself. And if the organization is weakened, these troubles can only increase.”
As we pass through August 8th, 2016, we must face the possibility that a free people will choose Donald Trump as our president. After all, Mr. Trump isn’t yet responsible for any ill-considered policy, foreign or domestic. His attitudes, and even more his actions, demand that we wonder out loud and persistently whether Mr. Trump is about exploiting our woes or healing our hurts! Up to this point, it appears the former is more likely than the latter!
Sadly, the trauma of Richard Nixon’s ascendancy into the valley of despair and disgrace announced on the night of Thursday, August 8th, 1974 that became official on the morrow of August 9th, remains with us most beneficially as a warning of what could come tomorrow. Turmoil and trauma are, after all, the lot of every powerful nation. The most powerful antidote to turmoil is wisdom. Richard Nixon’s tragedy therefore must be told and retold with a minimum of prejudice but with a maximum of objectivity, truth, and force.
However, there is a small drawback to my prescription of reasonable and responsible restraint in our wise judgment of and attitude toward our fellow citizens. The truth is that American’s taste for controversy and suspicion is invariably far more exciting than wisdom. Wisdom, after all, can be quite boring, especially when Americans would just as soon be entertained!
What say you?
RESPECTFULLY SUBMITTED,
EDWIN COONEY
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