"(Environmentalists) are a pack of damned animals."

[saltpoint]

-- Richard M. Nixon


link:

http://delong.typepad.com/sdj/2008/07/rick-perlstein.html

Richard Nixon, the Father of the EPA on Environmentalists: "(They're) a bunch of damned animals."

Excerpts from above link:

- - -

Another one of those subjects is the canard that Richard Nixon must be a "liberal" because he started the Environmental Protection Agency...

...

What kind of president was Richard M. Nixon? On the domestic front, a startlingly indifferent one. He once famously labeled domestic policy "building outhouses in Peoria"; he believed such matters took care of themselves, without a president to guide them, and nearly set out to prove it. Later, the laws passed during his administration, and the bills he attempted to pass, earned Nixon a reputation as a sort of liberal. It would be more accurate to say that he took the path of least resistance, and that the conventional policy wisdom of the day was, simply, liberal. He paid closest attention to domestic policy-making when it involved a political constituency he wanted to punish or reward.

...

His policy preferences also indicated a conflicted eagerness to please opinion-making elites. They praised his establishment of an Environmental Protection Agency, launched with an inspiring speech: "the 1970s absolutely must be the years when America pays its debts to the past by reclaiming the purity of its air, its water, and our living environment. It is literally now or never."

But he shared his true opinion of the issue in an Oval Office meeting auto executives: that environmentalists wanted to "go back and live like a bunch of damned animals." Throwing conservationists a bone also suited another political purpose: the issue was popular among the same young people who were enraged at him for continuing the Vietnam War. In the end, the EPA was a sort of confidence game. The new agency represented not a single new penny in federal spending for the environment. It did, however, newly concentrate bureaucracies previously scattered through vast federal bureaucracy under a single administrator loyal to the White House--the better to control them.

- - -

[villager]

1. I think the point is not what his personal beliefs were, but that he felt pressure to start an EPA

...in the first place, whereas now, if it didn't exist, Dems -- feeling pressure from their corporate sponsors -- would be too terrified to dare start one.

So: How do we reapply that same Nixon-era pressure to our "leaders?" Surely a Democrat who felt would have an even more... robust response?

[saltpoint]

2. The national pressure was an even greater one than

the persuasion he would have gotten from Gaylord Nelson, for example, who is certainly the bringer of fire to the mortals on environmental protection.

Nixon was a political beast, roaming the wilderness at night for anything that moved. He would eat it if it gave him some benefit, that is, political benefit, and ultimately, he had no choice but to endorse the EPA. He was in a position, after all, where he could placate the ultra-right haters privately and publicly take credit for "doing something for the earth."

The man was a monster. A beast. A slobbering paranoid racist asshole.

Critical mass occurs from time to time in our nation's history. What "Vietnam" meant as a policy, as a concept, as a strategy to people in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations is not the same thing at all as the "Vietnam" discussed during Johnson's and Nixon's administrations. At roughly the beginning of the Johnson administration a solid majority of U.S. citizens supported U.S. involvement in SE Asia. The military draft was a reflexive value, largely unquestioned by the citizenry. By the turn into the early 70s national polling showed considerable strain on that citizen-government trust, and within another year or two, over 70% of U.S. adults opposed the Vietnam War, suggesting that its 18 & 19 year olds should not be punished for refusing to fight in it.

Even so, George McGovern was rejected by voters in one of the most devastating elections in our history.

There were two pro-peace Democratic primary challenges to Johnson in 1968. One was politically outflanked. The other was murdered.

IMO the questions need to begin with the citizenry and their aspirations for national life. What kind of climate is it that sanctions citizen groups rallying in the public square for the private health insurers to eliminate an affordable public option? What climate is that? It's a dangerous climate. It's one thing to blame politicians for not understanding the nature of public service and quite another to allow citizens to have full benefit of their citizenship without taking any responsibility for their role in Madison's and Jefferson's vision.

[villager]

3. Well, in the call-and-response you delineate, with some Thompson-esque

..turns of phrase about Tricky D., yes: Who are these Americans taking to the streets to demand rights for corporations?

On the other hand, if those offering "alternative visions" at election time can't actually lead/rally/articulate to these people a different vision, what are we to make of such "leaders?"

If the people are insane and the leaders are gutless, where are we?

[saltpoint]

4. I'd prefer that we be in a better place, but am less

inclined to draw specific borders about who is to blame, unless (and until) the adult population in the country decides what it wants and demonstrates the wisdom to attain it. That is pie in the ski conception, to be sure, but it does look like pretty tasty pie to me.

"Thompson-esque" !! -- I wish. No one could hold a candle to Hunter. And he had Nixon's nuts in a steel clamp from the word 'go.'

Not all the people are insane, but the distinction must be made between Sen. Gaylord Nelson and his compatriots and their staffs versus the Haldeman-Erlichman-NIxon White House, where political expediency was the only game.

Gore Vidal, among the nation's harshest critics, wrote disparagingly of lazy citizenship:

"Half of the American people never read a newspaper. Half never vote for president. One hopes it is the same half."

[T Wolf]

5. None of us who lived (and died and laughed) through the Nixon regime have any illusions

about how evil he was as a person or how ass-backwards almost-all of his policies were.

We do not admire him for anything he did.

We do not think he was liberal in any cell in his body.

We do not like him in the least.

We do not even think that he was more leftward than Obama.

We simply observe and note that some things that Tricky Dick did would be seen as wild-eyed, crazy librul in today's toxic world of politics in Amerika.

That is fucked up enough without the hyperbole of dismissal through exaggeration.

[villager]

6. Very well said, TWolf! It's all about how much the political spectrum has shifted...

...as no less than John Mitchell predicted it would.

He knew how gullible the American people were, I guess. And what the PTB really had in mind...

[villager]

7. Huh -- the computer liked that comment so much, it duped it!

I, however, will delete the "extra" version...!

[saltpoint]

9. Most of your points were my starting points, T Wolf,

but you slip, IMO on the last two.

It would be very difficult indeed to "exaggerate" Nixon's life. It was one of unpardonable extreme conduct from Commie-baiting his initial opponent in a Congressional race to his graceless enthusiasm over the "Southern strategy," which set out expressly to achieve political power on the backs of the black citizens of the American South. It was intended in large part to dominate the national electoral strategy for more than a generation by playing specifically on malingering racist fear. That's plenty toxic for me.

There's always 'toxic' politics. Always.

There's no exaggeration there at all. If anything, I'm tamping down the diction. It was actually far nastier than that, and there are tapes to prove it.

On the subject of the EPA, Nixon's position was never "liberal," nor "liberal by contrast" in its role for his administration. Had there been no Gaylord Nelson in the U.S. Senate, for example, there would have been another Senator Nelson, and the public pressure for the EPA would have carried the day. There was consensus. There was no liberal posturing or accommodation by the Nixon administration. He regarded "the hippies" and "the environmentalists" as scum, and said so.

I reject completely, the idea that he was "liberal" in any respect, and that the comparison is even useful. It's interesting that Obama carried Florida and North Carolina, for instance, both foundation blocks in the "Southern strategy." Things change. Demographics shift.

Certainly Nixon had his day. My own family tree split, almost generationally, between Nixon and Kennedy in the 1960 election. Except for one later conversion in the 1980s. None of us was Catholic.

I think you're right not to have illusions about Nixon, but consider that you can't graft one era onto another and say much about a given figure that is as authoritative as the period in which that figure lived and served.

[LostinVA]

15. Yup, especially Title IX

[saltpoint]

17. Again, the man's signature appears but his heart

was not in his work:

http://nixonghosts.blogspot.com/2009/07/title-ix.html

Excerpt:

- - -

Casper Weinberger's "proposed regulation," which he described in this recently released memo, "has been drafted in such a way... so as to minimize the impact on existing competitive athletic programs." Most importantly, Weinberger added language to say that "Nothing in this section shall be interpreted to require equal aggregate expenditures for athletics for members of each sex." That way, unequal spending in college athletics would not be seen as discriminatory, and remedies for discrimination could be fashioned that fell far short of requiring public institutions to fund men's and women's athletic programs equally. While complying with anti-discrimination law, these new rules allowed Nixon's staff to "minimize these changes to the extent the law permits us to do so."

Instead of framing this change as a capitulation to the NCAA, Nixon's aides described the watering down of Title IX as a feminist act. Or, at least, a kind of paternalism meant to prevent "serious backlash against women's rights."

No doubt there would have been a backlash against women's rights if the government had required equal or even comparable funding for women's athletic programs. And no doubt Title IX still proved important. It empowered women across the country to demand that the law be enforced.

But the Title IX that became law limited government support for women, and thus let a number of discriminatory practices go unchallenged unless large enough groups of grassroots activists organized themselves in opposition. Like he had on racial politics, Nixon thus deferred enforcement of anti-discrimination laws to the courts, which had wide latitude to issue decrees but almost no administrative apparatus to oversee them. The upside from this is that it provided women's rights activists with greater tools to organize for change. The downside is that it put the burden of change on them, not on those who practice discrimination-- thus leaving discriminatory practices and attitudes in place that Title IX was never intended to eliminate.


- - -

[LostinVA]

18. Nixon was a pig to women, buit he didn't publicly derail it

And he probably could ahve.

[saltpoint]

19. Ok, point taken. But note the spirit in which the

proposal was advanced.

If you and I were hoping to strike equanimity under provision for Title IX, would we hire goddam Caspar Weinberger as a consult?

I bet we wouldn't.

He wasn't even the Attorney General.

[stuntcat]

8. long as my species of animal is threatening every other animal on the planet..

Yeah I'll go all ANIMAL when it comes to sticking up for Earth :) Honestly I'm ashamed of being Human.
Big as our brains are I hope we can figure out how to undo the proud progress that's fycking our future without resorting to living like "damned animals"

[saltpoint]

10. Imagine for a moment, stuntcat, that Richard M. Nixon

was your primary care physician.

That sets a certain stage for one's reaction to him as a public servant. I don't want his grimy fingers on my balls nor on my Constitution.

I get your reference regarding animals. Humans in some cultures in other times and places held animals in far greater reverence. We are guilty of abandoning that reverence in the U.S. I would add plants, flowers, trees, and so forth as well, as they form their parts of the ecosystem.

Nixon would likely have been threatened by your impulse to stick up for the earth, which suggests, IMO, that your impulse is certainly right-on.

[david13]

11. I don't think Nixon was a liberal. I don't think anybody thinks he was

because he signed the EPA bill.
But it makes me feel great to mention today, when the anti environmentalists rant and rave, when the climate change deniers rant and rave about the EPA, to indicate to them that Nixon, a ... Republican, say it with distaste, signed the EPA into existence.
dc

[saltpoint]

12. Hi, David13. Yes, his signature appears on the bill,

and he gets that notice in the History books, even though Gaylord Nelson of Wisconsin did all the heavy lifting.

There is a bigger problem that the GOP has to face in elections to come, namely that they often used to nominate candidates who drew cross-voters, including many independents, but those Republicans have mostly been driven into the desert. A few have died off. One or two have caved to current leadership. And the current assessment seems to be that we are looking more at a remnant political party now in the process of becoming a Tea Bagger bunch of some hybrid form.

The trouble in some hybrid species is that they can't reproduce!

[david13]

13. Yes. I don't think Nixon was an environmentalist. Not at all. I like

your scenario there, driven into the desert. That is about the size of it.
But that would have to happen with McCain as the candidate, and that horrid woman from that far north state.
She is a disgrace to Republicans, to Americans, to Politics, to Government.
And with the Limbaugh insanity taking greater hold amongst the great unwashed? uneducated? non thinkers? lunatics? it's to be expected.
dc

[saltpoint]

16. Your description of Michelle Bachmann, if anything, is

charitable.

In private I'm a lot less charitable about the public comments she has made on various issues.

I have no idea why voters in that district think she's an acceptable adult, nevermind a Congresswoman.

Very frightening stuff.

[saltpoint]

14. As eulogies go, this one is a bit on the coarse side,

diction-wise, but also one of the most readable ever:

http://www.counterpunch.org/thompson02212005.html


It is by Hunter Thompson, on the death of Richard M. Nixon.


Excerpt:

- - -

These are harsh words for a man only recently canonized by President Clinton and my old friend George McGovern--but I have written worse things about Nixon, many times, and the record will show that I kicked him repeatedly long before he went down. I beat him like a mad dog with mange every time I got a chance, and I am proud of it. He was scum.

Let there be no mistake in the history books about that. Richard Nixon was an evil man--evil in a way that only those who believe in the physical reality of the Devil can understand it. He was utterly without ethics or morals or any bedrock sense of decency. Nobody trusted him--except maybe the Stalinist Chinese, and honest historians will remember him mainly as a rat who kept scrambling to get back on the ship.



- - -

[saltpoint]

20. The past sometimes carries the seed of future harvests,

bitter though they sometimes are.

This is from a piece in THE NATION by John Nichols.

http://www.thenation.com/section/Bella-Abzug


Father Robert Drinan, D-Constitution

When Father Robert Drinan was swept into Congress as part of the "New Politics" surge of 1970 -- which saw Democratic primary voters across the country replace pro-Vietnam War incumbents with anti-war champions such as California's Ron Dellums and New York's Bella Abzug--the new representative from Massachusetts arrived as a Constitutional scholar who had a bone to pick with Richard Nixon's imperial presidency. The longtime dean of the Boston College of Law, Drinan joined the House Judiciary Committee with the stated purpose of renewing the system of checks and balances by asserting the power of Congress to constrain and, where necessary, sanction the president for overstepping his authority.

Nixon was not amused. He placed Drinan's name high on the White House "enemies list" and the chairman of the Republican National Committee, a Nixon acolyte named George Herbert Walker Bush, declared that the dissenting Democrat's defeat would be a top priority of the president's party.

Drinan did not blink. The Jesuit priest, who has died this week at the age of 86, never hesitated to identify Nixon's military adventurism in southeast Asia as both "morally objectionable" and "illegal." And the wily and whimsical scholar--who had joked with supporters such as a young John Kerry about campaigning on the slogan: "Vote for Father Drinan or Go to Hell"--was determined to hold Nixon to account on both counts.

John Nichols
- - -

The seed from the past who sprouted into such a bitter harvest is then-GOP Chair George Herbert Walker Bush, "...a Nixon acolyte...(who) declared that the dissenting Democrat's defeat would be a top priority of (Nixon's) party."

Drinan won that next Congressional race, despite Bush's and Nixon's efforts. Sadly, McGovern lost to Nixon and there would be more from GHW Bush a bit down the road...