Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 7

I have two items for my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972.  The setting is the 1968 Presidential election.  The main candidates in this race were Republican Richard Nixon, Democrat Hubert Humphrey, and American Independent George Wallace.

1.  There were no presidential election debates in 1968.  Why not?  On page 192, Ambrose says that Nixon refused Humphrey's challenge to debate because Nixon had problems with Wallace's participation.  Nixon believed that Humphrey wanted the Southern Governor Wallace to get more exposure through a debate on the assumption that this would take away Southern votes from Nixon (even though, as Ambrose argues, Wallace was probably taking away votes from Humphrey, as well).  For Nixon, a debate that included Wallace would undermine the two-party system.  And, until Congress got rid of a rule requiring that presidential debates include all presidential candidates, a debate between Humphrey and Nixon alone was out of the question.  (Whether Ambrose is conceptualizing that rule accurately, I do not know.  I have a hard time envisioning a rule that a presidential debate would have to include, say, the Socialist Party candidate.)  But Nixon resented Humphrey calling him "Richard the Silent" and "Richard the Chicken-hearted" (which, according to Ambrose, were rare incidents of Humphrey's wit), saying that he was not afraid.

Nixon himself addresses the topic of why he refused to debate Humphrey in volume 1 of his memoirs, on page 395.  Nixon essentially says that he thought that Humphrey would benefit from a debate because Humphrey was way behind Nixon in the polls, and that Nixon also did not want to "elevate Wallace", who was already taking from Nixon "a substantial number of votes."  Nixon says: "It was not fear but self-interest that determined my decision on the debates."  At least Nixon is candid here: he didn't debate because he thought that would hurt him politically!  There's no grand talk here about how great the two-party system is!

And, by the way, I don't see what's so great about the two-party system.  I wish that the U.S. had viable alternative parties so that my choice wouldn't be limited to the Republicans and the Democrats.

2.  Did candidate Richard Nixon in 1968 sabotage the Paris Peace Talks on Vietnam by sending Anna Chan Chennault to General Thieu of South Vietnam so she could tell Thieu that he could get a better deal from Nixon than from Johnson, thereby discouraging Thieu from participating in the Paris talks?  Did this result in the prolongment of the Vietnam War, meaning the loss of more American and Indochinese lives?  There have been articles about this topic recently.  See here and here.

Someone I know posted one of these articles, and a commenter said that this is not new information, for progressive Thom Hartmann has been talking about this topic.  But, actually, this topic has been discussed for quite some time.  Ambrose talks about it in this book, whose copyright is 1989.  And, according to Ambrose, a number of reporters in 1968 suspected that Nixon had sabotaged the Paris Peace Talks, but they did not have hard evidence.  Lyndon Johnson apparently had evidence that Nixon adviser John Mitchell, claiming to speak for Nixon, had asked Chennault to try to persuade Thieu to back out of the Paris Peace Talks.  But Johnson did not want to go public with this evidence because it was obtained through wiretapping.

Nixon's story to Johnson was that Chennault was acting of her own accord and did not represent Nixon.  And, according to Ambrose, Theodore White----the author of books on the 1960, the 1964, the 1968, and the 1972 presidential elections----actually defended the Nixon camp on this issue, saying that Nixon's aides were "appalled" (White's word) when they learned of what Chennault had done.  Ambrose quotes White as saying: "The fury and dismay at Nixon's headquarters when his aides discovered the [Chennault] report were so intense that they could not have been feigned simply for the benefit of this reporter" (White, quoted on page 214).  But here's a possibility: Maybe Nixon told Mitchell to call Chennault without informing his aides!

Ambrose's view on this topic is on page 215: "Insofar as the charges imply that Nixon prevented peace in 1968, they are false.  Not that Nixon did not want to, or try to, but he did not have to."  The reason was that Thieu did not need Nixon's encouragement to avoid the Paris Peace Talks, for Thieu liked having the Americans in Vietnam, since they protected South Vietnam and its government and were also significant in terms of contributing to the South Vietnamese economy.  I tend to agree with Ambrose here, for Nixon in his very own memoirs portrays Thieu as rather obstinate when President Nixon himself (through Henry Kissinger) was attempting to forge an agreement to end the Vietnam War.  See my posts here and here.

Nixon in volume 1 of his memoirs, as far as I could see, did not address the question of Chennault talking with General Thieu.  Nixon just says on page 406:

"Thieu's reaction [in choosing not to participate in the peace talks] was totally predictable.  He watched American politics no less carefully than did the leaders in Hanoi.  Given his disapproval of any bombing halt, and the fact that Humphrey was now talking like a dove, it was scarcely in Thieu's interest to acquiesce in a bad bargain.  By holding back his support, Thieu fostered the impression that Johnson's plan had been too quickly conceived and too shakily executed."  Maybe Nixon thought that Thieu would get a better deal under him than Thieu got under Johnson, or would get under a President Humphrey.

Ambrose does not present Nixon as flawless, but he also seems to argue that President Johnson was less-than-candid with the American people about the progress of the talks----that not as much progress had been made as Johnson was implying.

Why the Delay?

On page 100 of The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion, Herman Wouk (if I'm interpreting him correctly) talks about how human beings have been on earth for such an infinitesimal amount of time, in comparison with the vast age of the universe.  I once saw a visual aid about this in a museum: it showed a line, which represented the age of the universe, and a very tiny sliver of that line was how long humans have existed.

An atheist I know once made that point to me: If there is a God, he wondered, why did God take so long to create human beings?  Of course, young-earth creationists believe that God didn't take that long, so they don't struggle with this issue, but those who accept modern scientific consensus while also believing in God as the creator may wonder why there were so many millennia before human beings, who are supposedly the focal point of God's plan, finally appeared.  Then there's the issue of theistic evolution.  Many who consider a scenario that accepts evolution and God as creator may inquire: Why didn't God simply create human beings in one fell swoop, rather than allowing them to develop from proto-human creatures?

I have the same sort of question about the narrative that I got growing up, within Armstrongism.  I was raised on the gap-theory, the belief that there could be billions of years between Genesis 1:1 and Genesis 1:2.  The gap-theory accepted the scientific consensus regarding the age of the universe, and it was open to the eras of dinosaurs and mammoths occurring during that time.  But I wonder what exactly the point was.  Why didn't God just cut to the chase and make human beings, who, as I said, are supposedly the focal point of God's plan?

A common answer is that time is not a factor with God.  What to us is a long time is not necessarily a long time for God.  I'm cool with that, pretty much.  I'm a little skeptical when Christians apply that insight to eschatology, when they argue that Jesus' statements that the end is near are not necessarily false for the simple reason that "near" to God may not be what's "near" for us.  I'm skeptical because that would be mis-communication on the part of God: wouldn't you expect for God to adopt our understanding of "near" when he speaks to us, since that's essential to communication?  Moreover, if God were attempting to comfort suffering people with the notion that God's reign is near, when it's not actually near but could occur centuries after their time, then the comforting message is false.

But, when it comes to origins, I'm more open to the idea that God may not measure time as we do, that millions of years could have gone by, but that wasn't much time for God.

Why would God use evolution, though?  I'm not sure.  Perhaps God foresaw that evolution by natural selection would lead to the result that he wanted----intelligent life.  God's strategy may not be so much to micromanage every little detail, but rather to allow events to unfold, and to be there whenever we want a relationship with God.

Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 6

My blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972 will concern Ambrose's narration on pages 172-174.  The topic of this post is the impact of Nixon's advisers on Nixon, and the question of whether Nixon's Presidency would have been better had Bob Finch rather than Spiro T. Agnew been Nixon's Vice-President.  The setting is July-August 1968.

On page 172, Ambrose talks about John Mitchell, H.R. Haldeman, and John Ehrlichman, who were key men on Nixon's staff.  These three men were fiercely loyal to Nixon, but they had downsides, according to Ambrose.  They had neither run for elective office nor participated in the compromises that are a part of the legislative process, and they cynically tended to ascribe horrible motives to their political enemies.  According to Ambrose, there was a disadvantage to Nixon surrounding himself with such vindictive men, namely, that they fed into Nixon's own vindictiveness:

"From top to bottom, the staff consisted of men who were vindictive.  For Nixon, this was highly dangerous, because he was also a vindictive man, with a long memory and a deep capacity to hate.  By surrounding himself with vindictive types, Nixon encouraged within himself one of his worst and most self-harmful characteristics."

But Ambrose speculates about whether things would have been a little better for Nixon had Bob Finch been Nixon's Vice-President.  Nixon liked Agnew back when Nixon was looking for a running mate, for the reasons that I mentioned when I was blogging through Jules Witcover's Very Strange Bedfellows: Agnew's confidence, his record as a moderate, and his tough stance on law-and-order.  But Nixon actually asked Bob Finch to be his running mate before making the offer to Agnew.

Finch is this man.  At the time, he was the Lieutenant Governor of California.  Finch was very close to Nixon personally.  For that reason, Mitchell was advising Nixon not to pick Finch, saying it would be "nepotism", which Mitchell was confusing with cronyism.  But Nixon asked Finch anyway, saying that Finch had "youth and freshness, and...would have great appeal to the party and to independent voters" (Nixon, as quoted on page 173).  But Finch turned Nixon down for a variety of reasons.  First, Finch thought that going from being a Lieutenant Governor to being the Vice-President of the United States was too great of a leap.  Second, Finch agreed with Mitchell's concern that people would regard Nixon's selection of him (meaning Finch) as cronyism.  Third, Finch was a rival to Ronald Reagan in California, so Finch thought that Nixon's selection of Finch would be a turnoff to "Reagan's people" (Ambrose's words).  And, fourth, Finch was concerned about the possible impact of a national campaign on his own family.  Finch's kids were getting taunted by antiwar students at school.  How much worse would a national campaign be for them?

And so Nixon picked Agnew, one who shot-from-the hip and proved to be a polarizing figure.  Ambrose asks a question: "What if Finch had said yes?"  Ambrose says on pages 172-173:

"Big, sandy-haired, casual and relaxed, good-looking and easy-going, Finch was the opposite of Agnew.  Finch's instinct was to bring people together, not drive them apart.  Finch's method of operation was to study a problem thoroughly before speaking on it, not shoot from the hip.  Finch had a broad sense of humor and often laughed at himself.  Finch distrusted ideology; he was a pragmatist who sought progress through compromise and negotiation.  Finch combined a warm human sympathy with a basic common sense.  And the biggest differences of all between Finch and Agnew were these: Finch was sensitive to the feelings of others and not at all vindictive.  Aside from these personality differences, there was another important one: Nixon liked and trusted Finch, and would listen to him.  Not necessarily respond, but at least listen."

Would a Vice-President Finch have persuaded Nixon to listen more to his angels rather than his demons?  That's a good question.  The wikipedia article on Finch says that Finch in 1970 was Counselor to the President.  Yet, the problems in Nixon's Presidency remained.

My Science Block

On pages 48-49 of The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion, Herman Wouk states:

"A distinguished physicist once gave me a book of his inscribed, 'To Herman Wouk, one of the few who does not write if he does not understand.'  Not true here, alas.  About astrophysics, I am the man on the street.  As a Columbia freshman I registered for an astronomy course, but upon leafing the textbook crawling with calculus, I dropped out fast.  Astronomers, I guess, hear God talk all the time.  In that language, I never will.  Galileo and Newton need no further words of mine."

Wouk is probably more of a science-guy than I am, though!  To be honest, I had a hard time getting into his discussions about science in The Language God Talks.  They just didn't interest me, whereas his discussions about religion did.

I've long been this way about science.  I remember when my fifth-grade teacher was having conferences with each student to discuss grades, and she noticed that I stayed the same in science: in both periods, I got a "B".  She said she had an idea about why I didn't improve in science: because I didn't like it.  And I was like, "Wow, how did you know?!" (And I was not sarcastic in my response!)

There were a few times in my junior high and high school years when I got more into science.  In seventh grade, I studied science diligently and got good grades.  Why?  I think it was because I admired my teacher and wanted him to like me.  He was also my home-room teacher, and so, in a sense, he exemplified to me the challenge of junior high school.  When I was able to answer one of his questions about science correctly, I felt smart.

In eighth grade, I was a diligent student in science.  I even made comic books about the class material in studying for my quizzes and tests!  I think that I was studying hard to be among the smart kids, since I was wanting to impress a particular girl.  But, to tell you the truth, science didn't interest me then.

In high school, I took biology, chemistry, and physics, but they just did not engage me that much.  I usually studied for my biology and chemistry exams the day of the exams!  Regarding physics, I tried much harder, since it was Advanced Placement, but there were some physics problems that I simply could not figure out!  One science class that I actually enjoyed, however, was physical science.  This was true for a variety of reasons.  For one, I felt smart in that class, since I had an edge in the first semester of it, having already taken chemistry.  Second, the material was understandable to me.  It wasn't over my head.  Moreover, I was becoming more religious, and so I was excited about studying God's creation, without overdoing it by getting into territory that was too complex for me!

Math came easier for me.  I one time took an IQ test, and my math IQ turned out to be above average (not off-the-charts genius, but above average).  I took lots of math----Algebra I-II, Geometry, Analytic Geometry, Trigonometry, and Calculus----and I did quite well in my classes.

Yet, when I entered college, and I had the option of skipping a subject area, I skipped science and math altogether.  I was required to take a quantitative reasoning class, so I took logic.  And, in the Honor Scholars' Program I was in, I had to take a seminar on science and postmodernism, but that class didn't get into the depths of science that much, so I did fine.

Science still does not interest me a great deal.  Try as I might, I have difficulty getting into nature shows.  They just don't interest me.  I prefer to watch documentaries about history, politics, and religion----the adventures and struggles of human beings!  I get more interested in science when it is tied into religion, however.  I enjoy reading different perspectives on creation and evolution, for example.  In college, I read on my own time a debate on creation and evolution between creationist Duane Gish and evolutionist Ken Saladin, and I was fascinated by what Saladin was saying.  Whenever some of my more scientifically-inclined friends discuss with me their views on the interaction between astronomy and religious issues, I'm usually interested.  But, when the topic is science alone, I tend not to get excited.

I have contemplated, however, reading more elementary books about science.  My religious beliefs hold that nature somehow reveals the mind of God, and I have thought that perhaps studying science on a superficial level could help me to arrive at a greater appreciation for the order and beauty within nature (though not all of nature is orderly and beautiful!).

Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician 5

For my blog post today on Stephen Ambrose's Nixon: The Triumph of a Politician, 1962-1972, I'll use as my starting-point something that Ambrose says on page 140:

"Through his life, Nixon revealed what he wanted to reveal, and hid what he wanted to hide.  The staff had hit on the best way to present their man, but he was still the same old Nixon.  Newspaper reporters' indignation to the contrary notwithstanding, the Nixon campaign of 1968 was brilliantly conceived and executed.  It was geared specifically to Richard Nixon's strengths and weaknesses, it was well thought out, it had nuances too detailed to go into here, and it was successful."

Richard Nixon as a Presidential candidate in 1960 campaigned in all fifty states.  He was even campaigning in Alaska on the weekend before Election Day!  Nixon was exhausted in the 1960 campaign, and, according to a number of analysts, that showed.

But Nixon's adviser H.R. Haldeman advocated a different approach for 1968.  Ambrose summarizes Haldeman's proposal as follows, on page 138:

"The right way, Haldeman wrote, was to use television to the maximum while keeping direct voter and reporter contacts to a minimum.  One minute on the network evening news would reach more people than three months of barnstorming.  Nixon would have to make only one speech a day to provide the necessary footage."

Essentially, Nixon would answer questions within a townhall sort of format, for which panelists would be recruited from the community.  Panelists who were critical of Nixon were included, since Nixon often shone when he was answering hostile questioners, "assuming", Ambrose narrates, "that the questioner did not know many details and in any case had no chance to follow up" (page 139).  The meeting would be edited for five-minute TV segments, and so Nixon could relax, knowing that "the embarrassing or awkward moments" would be edited out (Ambrose on page 139).

There was a scene about Nixon's use of this townhall format in Oliver Stone's Nixon.  Nixon was being grilled by an African-American, who was accusing Nixon of creating divisions in the country.  Haldeman in the movie was upset that someone let that questioner in!  But Nixon managed to artfully circumnavigate the question.  I can't find the scene on YouTube, but part of it is in the movie's trailer (see here), starting at 1:36.
And John Bircher Gary Allen talked about this townhall format in Richard Nixon: The Man Behind the Mask, saying that Nixon often gave the same stock, generalized answers to the same stock, generalized questions.

What Ambrose says about the 1968 campaign stood out to me because it made me think about the topic of hard work.  Hard work is not always a good thing.  Don't get me wrong----Nixon was not lazy, even when it came to the 1968 Presidential election.  Nixon spent the years between 1962 and 1968 meeting with foreign leaders and learning about the world, such that, according to Ambrose, Nixon had more knowledge and understanding in 1968 than he did in 1960.   But Nixon in 1968 did not over-exert himself, for over-exertion did not serve him that well in 1960.  My impression from Ambrose is that Nixon's campaign in 1968 was more relaxed.

The key, I think, is to work hard, but to do work that is necessary, and to allow for some relaxation so that one can be fresh and maybe come up with original ideas.  On a related note, see Sam Tee's post on hard work here.

Aaron Jastrow's Sermon

I finished Herman Wouk's The Language God Talks: On Science and Religion.

At the end of the book, Wouk quotes the sermon of Professor Aaron Jastrow, who was a character in Wouk's book, War and Remembrance.  As I read the sermon, it seemed familiar to me, and that was because my family watched the War and Remembrance miniseries when it was on TV in 1988.  The miniseries was jarring to me at the time because it was the first time when I saw on television a depiction of the Holocaust, and I remember that I cried when Jews (including Professor Jastrow) were being gassed in the concentration camp.  I recall that Professor Jastrow was reciting Psalm 23 as he went to his death.

Professor Jastrow in his sermon spoke about Job.  Jastrow's assumption was that Job was a Jew, which is not explicitly in the biblical text.  But his main point was that the Jews themselves are like Job, in that they praise God even when the universe does not make sense.  After my family watched the sermon scene, my Dad said that it was a good sermon.

I recently watched the miniseries' depiction of the speech on YouTube (see here), and it was more pious than what I read in Wouk's quotation of the sermon in The Language God Talks, for Jastrow in the book questions whether God's reason for allowing the Satan to afflict Job (namely, to meet the Satan's challenge) was a good enough reason.  But the main point in the book's version of the sermon is the same as what was on the miniseries.

Although I finished The Language God Talks, I may still write another post about it, maybe even two.

How Should Leftists Respond to the Economy under President Obama?

I was reading a Forbes article yesterday: Economically, Could Obama Be America's Best President?  The Dow has been doing very well lately, and some have argued that this has contributed to a growth in federal revenue that has helped to ameliorate the deficit.

I guess that my question is this: How should I, as one who is fairly left-of-center, respond to this?  I suppose that I can publicize it far and wide, heralding President Obama as a great President when it comes to the economy.  But that would be problematic.  Why?  Because people on the left were predicting that the sequester would have a negative impact on the economy, and yet the Dow has done well after the sequester.  So maybe Paul Krugman and Robert Reich are wrong.  Maybe trying to keep the deficit under control is a good thing and we should focus on doing that, rather than having the government stimulate the economy through more deficit spending. 

But not so fast!  Even though the Dow is doing well, that does not mean that Wall Street's success is trickling down to the middle and lower classes.  As conservatives like to point out, job growth is still pretty anemic right now. 

So what should leftists do: Rejoice that the Dow is doing well under President Obama, or lament that the economy is not doing well enough because the government has cut spending rather than increasing it to stimulate the economy?  Could a leftist do both?