Whenever I finish one of these posts, I tell myself that I am going to be much more diligent about writing my thoughts down. Then time goes by and I realize suddenly that days or weeks have gone by and my blog has remained empty. No wonder practically no one follows this. Oh, well, it's OK. To those few who do, I say "Thank you" really gratefully for sticking with me and checking back occasionally. On to my entry:
When we moved back to Connecticut from California, we had with us many, many boxes, some of which have never been opened. They were put in the attic until we needed them, and eventually were forgotten as more recent items that needed to be saved were put in the attic in front of them. Now that we are getting old, I decided that it was time to clean out the attic before we get too feeble to climb the pull-down stairs that lead to it. So far, I have gone through about a half-dozen boxes and gotten rid of most of their contents, mainly consisting of old books and magazines, but the latest box contained pictures in frames and other breakable stuff that was wrapped in old newspapers dating back to 1978, which is when we started packing for the move in early 1979. This particular wrapping paper was a copy of the Sacramento Union dated December 10, 1978, and the top-of-the-fold headline read "Nixon Flattened, but no 10-Count". The Nixon referred to in the headline was Richard M. Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, who might have gone down in history as one of the greatest presidents, had it not been for a little scandal called Watergate, which resulted in a choice of removal by impeachment or voluntary resignation less than two years after the start of his second term. He chose resignation, and left office in August of 1974. Interestingly, the House Judiciary Committee at the time had used charges of obstruction of justice, abuse of power and refusal to honor the committee's subpoenas as justification for recommending impeachment, all of which in some form or other could also be applied to Mr. Obama, yet no one in this Congress has had the courage to pursue an impeachment charge here. I wonder why? Anyway, four years later, Nixon was still a big deal, so I opened the yellowed pages carefully and read the article. In it, Mr. Nixon stated the following to the reporter:
"If a leader doesn't stand up on a great issue, he's not going to be great. If he does stand up, he will be controversial. The mark of leadership is not how a leader can take a popular position and ride with it, like a poll or congressional sentiment. The real test is to take the unpopular position, if he thinks it is right, and make it popular." Nixon was pretty good at this until he was derailed by Watergate.
The article was very long, and covered a variety of issues besides Watergate, including issues of the day on which he commented. Among the views that he held were that the balance-of-power strategy was still the best way to deal with the Soviet Union (now Russia), and that without our military superiority the Soviets would otherwise take advantage of American weaknesses to engage in "adventurous policies" that could result in America suffering a defeat without actual warfare; a bad agreement (like the SALT agreement at the time) is worse than no agreement at all; the Soviets must be kept out of the Middle East at all cost; Israel must be kept strong enough to defend itself; the US should remain friendly with Israel's Arab neighbors so that the Soviets can't move in, and Egypt's president at the time, Anwar Sadat, must be kept in power as a guarantee of future stability in the region (Israel and Egypt had signed a non-aggression treaty sometime during Nixon's presidency, I think) . Almost forty years later, those policies are essentially still valid, although they have been egregiously dismissed by our present administration, with disastrous results, as we all now know.
Nixon was also clear-eyed about the complications inherent in supporting allies who don't engage in the same level of human rights as we do, citing Saudi Arabia and South Vietnam as examples of this dichotomy and laying out exactly what the conflicting ideologies were in each one. He maintained that keeping them as allies could take precedence over differences in human rights issues, even as we recognize and publicly disagree with those differences. That he had an unsurpassed understanding of politics and especially international relations was never questioned even by his adversaries, according to the article. It's too bad that he got it so wrong on Watergate. History may still redeem him, or at least put his accomplishments in perspective. I think I hope that happens. I also think I will save this article and the newspaper in which it was written.
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