Walter Pincus: More insights from Nixon the political scientist

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"In the final analysis, elections are not won or lost by programs. They are won or lost on how these programs are presented to the country, and how all the political and public relations considerations are handled."

That could have been President Obama after the Massachusetts special Senate election last Tuesday. But President Richard M. Nixon wrote those words to his White House chief of staff, H.R. Haldeman, on Nov. 22, 1970, commenting on staff memos he received about "problems ahead" as they looked forward to his reelection effort, then two years away. The 30-page memo was among the 280,000 pages of documents from the Nixon Library released last week.

With all his flaws, Nixon was a cunning politician, and his newly available memos should be required reading in the Obama White House, which is nervously looking at its first midterm election in November. Obama appears to be considering what Nixon recognized almost 40 years ago -- that the public wants a "hardworking president" and also one "who is a courageous, bold leader who will step up and hit the hard ones."

Obama recently told ABC's George Stephanapoulos, "What I haven't always been successful at doing is breaking through the noise and speaking directly to the American people in a way that during the campaign you could do." Nixon complained in a similar sense to Haldeman.

Read more: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/25/AR2010012503632.html