Private: Let Me Make One Thing Perfectly Clear: Nixon was a Total Disgrace

by John Schachter

Yesterday marked the 100th anniversary of the birth of Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States – and the only one to resign the office in disgrace. Despite his long and well-documented record of criminality, vile language and behavior, racism, anti-Semitism and consistent efforts to obstruct justice and violate the Constitution (as well as the rules and accepted norms of political and personal behavior), a loyal cadre of deluded holders-on still cling to the notion that Nixon was a great, albeit misunderstood, man and president. As none of his friends might say, Oy!

Nixon apologists held a gala celebration at Washington D.C.’s storied Mayflower Hotel to fete the discredited former president. Perhaps the setting was coincidentally appropriate; the hotel is home to some of the political world’s most infamous indignities. Of course, these past scandals – Gov. Elliot Spitzer’s dalliances with prostitutes, Monica Lewinsky hiding out, and JFK mistress Judith Exner waiting there for rides to the White House – all had a connection to sex. But perhaps there’s more similarity here after all; Nixon certainly screwed the American public time and time again.

Of course, when Patrick Buchanan is one of your keynote and most spirited defenders, you know you’ve got some hell of a record. Buchanan called Nixon “a statesman, a profile in courage and an extraordinary man we are all proud to have served.” Looking at Buchanan’s almost equally noxious record on race and religion, among other issues, that sentiment makes sense.

Billy Graham sent a tribute via his son. The Reverend Graham, you may remember, was immortalized on White House tapes lamenting Jewish domination of the media, a “stranglehold” that he feared would be responsible for “this country's going down the drain.''

Also in attendance to honor the former unindicted co-conspirator were Fred Malek – of Jew-counting, dog-roasting and SEC-violating fame – and Henry Kissinger, once caught on tape belittling the plight of Soviet Jews and telling Nixon that “if they put Jews into gas chambers in the Soviet Union, it is not an American concern.” Nixon responded, “I know. We can't blow up the world because of it."

With friends like this who needs an enemies list?

I guess we can cede a little ground and “praise” Nixon for his equal-opportunity offending. Tapes released in 2010 by the Nixon Presidential Library and Museum (the only presidential library where if you have an overdue book, you’re pardoned) revealed a host of offensive diatribes aimed at myriad races, religions and nationalities. According to Nixon, “The Jews are just a very aggressive and abrasive and obnoxious personality.” The Irish – aggressive, mean and more so if they drink, Nixon said. “What you always have to remember with the Irish is they get mean. Virtually every Irish I’ve known gets mean when he drinks. Particularly the real Irish.” And for good measure Nixon added, “The Italians, of course, those people course don’t have their heads screwed on tight. They are wonderful people, but.”

Not surprisingly, Watergate barely received mention at last night’s tribute. It was largely dismissed as a mere blemish on an otherwise stellar record, a trumped up scandal led by the liberal elite, with the lame-stream media at the helm. But as Watergate approaches its 40th anniversary, let’s not forget what the intrepid Woodward and Bernstein reminded us last year. “At its most virulent, Watergate was a brazen and daring assault, led by Nixon himself, against the heart of American democracy: the Constitution, our system of free elections, the rule of law.”

So let Nixon have his revisionists, apologists and history deniers distort his record. But as long as they’re out there, I’ll “have Nixon to kick around” and set the record straight.

[image via Wikimedia Commons]

Constitutional Interpretation, Executive Power