Schwarzenegger and Nixon
"I remember watching the Nixon and Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend who spoke German and English, translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism which is what I had just left," Schwarzenegger said.
"But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting government off your back, lowering taxes, and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air.
"I said to my friend, 'What party is he?' My friend said, 'He's a Republican.' I said, 'Then I am a Republican."
Great work, Arnold. I'm a great admirer of Nixon myself. Like a wiseacre, I recently wrote that Nixon was one president the Republicans would not dare to mention at a convention of theirs; and there you go.
My theory, borrowed from Eleanor Clift on McLaughlin, was that other than Reagan, Truman was the only president the Republicans could really name.
Now they've discovered FDR (See McCain, Miller, Cheney)--obviously because he fought the Axis with one hand tied behind his back--or even worse, a disabling case of polio. (Or possibly Guillain-Barre?)
Wasn't FDR a Democrat, in some ways more of a socialist than Humphrey? But I guess when you're in a world war--or perhaps, in the one never-ending world war, none of that matters.
But Nixon a breath of fresh air? Somehow that doesn't fit. As enjoyable as the transcripts are, it is words like paranoid, crazy, and claustrophobic that come to mind. A high IQ, sometimes funny, but still dark, dank, and wait: isn't that a bodily secretion I smell?
The new Atlantic, which has a lot of good stuff, has a few more Nixon transcipts. Once again it is easy to say that with so much sycophancy going on, any of us might lose our heads. After Nixon spoke on TV about Laos and Vietnam, Kissinger said: "Well, you gave a speech that we...can all be proud to have had the privilege to be associated with." RN: "Well, I'm glad you feel that way." HK: "It is--it was also magnificently delivered. It was the best delivery--" RN: "Well, it was a goddam good little speech, actually." HK: "Deep down they all know you're right. That's the end of it."
Speaking to Secretary of State William Rogers on Ireland, Nixon says wisely that whether the British are now mishandling the situation or not--and they're probably not--they "always" mishandled it in the past, and "the historical record is so bad that they now just can't look good, anything they do."
Then for some strange reason, this: "...let's face it, the Irish are--these people, the Irish, are pretty goddamn bad here. They're the Kennedy type, out raising hell, blowing up the place, burning down the embassy and all that."
On Burundi, Kissinger and Nixon are both interested in helping British subjects who are trapped during a civil war--even though, or especially when they find out, that the State Department would rather ignore the Brits--presumably in order to be on good terms with the rebels. Somewhere in here Nixon says he wants to help, people are people; but elsewhere he makes it clear he wants to help white people, and he doesn't trust blacks. "I'm tired of this business of letting these Africans eat a hundred thouand people and do nothing about it."
Mayor Mel Lastman of Toronto got in trouble for saying something like that.
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