Posts tagged Richard Nixon

All Your Message Are Belong To US

28
3 days ago
by Michael Weiss in

He’s look­ing at us, kid.

We learned last week, on the May 1 edi­tion of CNN’s Out Front with Erin Bur­nett, that our gov­ern­ment has been spy­ing on all of us for years. In the rel­e­vant por­tion of the tran­script, for­mer FBI coun­tert­er­ror­ism agent Tim Clemente tells us so matter-​​of-​​factly that he almost seems sur­prised that we didn’t already know:

BURNETT: Tim, is there any way, obvi­ously, there is a voice mail they can try to get the phone com­pa­nies to give that up at this point. It’s not a voice mail. It’s just a con­ver­sa­tion. There’s no way they actu­ally can find out what hap­pened, right, unless she tells them?

CLEMENTE: “No, there is a way. We cer­tainly have ways in national secu­rity inves­ti­ga­tions to find out exactly what was said in that con­ver­sa­tion. It’s not nec­es­sar­ily some­thing that the FBI is going to want to present in court, but it may help lead the inves­ti­ga­tion and/​or lead to ques­tion­ing of her. We cer­tainly can find that out.

BURNETT: “So they can actu­ally get that? Peo­ple are say­ing, look, that is incredible.

CLEMENTE: “No, wel­come to Amer­ica. All of that stuff is being cap­tured as we speak whether we know it or like it or not.”

At this point I don’t see any harm in dis­cussing it, though I’ve known about this for longer than I’d care to admit. One of the dif­fi­cult aspects of work­ing in the secu­rity realm is that I hear many things from many sources, and quite a few of them involve top­ics I can’t (or won’t) divulge to oth­ers. So it is in this case.

But now that the cat is out of the bag, it’s worth look­ing at this a bit more thor­oughly.  (more…)

The Greatest Debt

17
1 month ago
by dcpetterson in
President Johnson meets with candidate Richard...

Pres­i­dent John­son meets with can­di­date Richard Nixon in the White House, July 1968 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

World events, epic tragedy, mas­sive mis­con­duct, and the per­sonal impact of the grand sweep of his­tory all struck home for me this week. This is why his­tory and pol­i­tics fas­ci­nate me. A domino falls some­where else in the world, and it can reach across decades and nations to change lives far away.

It’s easy to imag­ine that his­tor­i­cal events or high-​​level polit­i­cal machi­na­tions sel­dom impact the real lives of real peo­ple. Noth­ing can be fur­ther from the truth. Yeah, we all know that a war or a hur­ri­cane can change the lives of the peo­ple caught up in such things. But even the inti­mate and unre­lated details of a life can be for­ever altered in unex­pected ways. One domino falls, and one’s world is changed.

I’ve been hap­pily, joy­ously, enthu­si­as­ti­cally mar­ried for very close to thirty-​​seven years. I found out this week that my mar­riage exists because of the stun­ning and per­haps trea­so­nous per­fidy of Richard Nixon. (more…)

The Unmaking of the President: 2012

24
1 year ago
by Monotreme in

Roger Ailes and Richard Nixon in the White House

In a clas­sic series of books (The Mak­ing of the Pres­i­dent: 1960, and its suc­ces­sors 1964, 1968 and 1972), journalist/​historian Theodore White set a new stan­dard for polit­i­cal jour­nal­ism, detail­ing the work­ings of an Amer­i­can polit­i­cal cam­paign in ways never before seen by the gen­eral public.

A young Joe McGin­niss, clearly inspired by White, turned a gim­let eye to the Nixon Pres­i­den­tial cam­paign of 1968 in his land­mark book (or hatchet job, depend­ing on who you ask), The Sell­ing of the Pres­i­dent: 1968.

Roger Ailes was a media wun­derkind who took Mike Dou­glas from a local Philadel­phia TV host to the top of the national rat­ings. He then turned his atten­tion to pro­mot­ing con­ser­v­a­tive can­di­dates using his con­sid­er­able tele­vi­sion skills. In his book, McGin­niss describes how Nixon’s cam­paign team actu­ally func­tioned as a mar­ket­ing team, prepar­ing Nixon for tele­vi­sion star­dom like a box of soap. Nixon’s Cre­ative Direc­tor of Adver­tis­ing, Harry W. Tre­leaven Jr., and Ailes have a con­ver­sa­tion about how to best sell Nixon on tele­vi­sion with­out the inter­fer­ence of jour­nal­ists. Long before Barack Obama has learned to read from a teleprompter, Nixon is to appear on a staged tele­vi­sion show. Ailes is direct and pro­fane: (more…)

Politics on Film

16
1 year ago
by dcpetterson in

And now for some­thing com­pletely different …

I’m going to give brief descrip­tions of some of my favorite movies with polit­i­cal over­tones. Many of them aren’t nor­mally thought of as being “polit­i­cal movies.” Some are sim­ply light enter­tain­ment. I deeply enjoyed them all, and would highly rec­om­mend them to any­one. I’m sure I’ll for­get a few, even some of my favorites (I can claim age as an excuse, but I’ve never had a good mem­ory). I hope you, dear reader, will share some of your favorites as well.

In no par­tic­u­lar order, here are some of my top polit­i­cal movies: (more…)

Is Roger Ailing?

0
2 years ago
by Monotreme in

Roger Ailes. Source: New York Times; Fred Prouser/​Reuters

This week­end, the Inter­nets (a series of tubes) were buzzing about the “pos­si­ble” indict­ment of Roger Ailes.

Ailes, you may recall, is the mas­ter­mind of Fox News. The accu­sa­tion, reported in Friday’s New York Times, is that he obstructed jus­tice by order­ing Judith Regan to lie regard­ing her rela­tion­ship with Bernard Kerik. The rumored indict­ment is based on a ran­dom over­heard phone call, and an audio tape of the alleged obstruc­tion of jus­tice. The mere exis­tence of the phone call was sup­posed to be sealed by court order, but the court order was not prop­erly filed and so inad­ver­tently became part of the pub­lic record. (more…)

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