Richard Nixon

I cannot believe I missed this. Last Wednesday was Dick's 100th birthday. I would have had a party. They aren't forwarding the Nixon Newsletter (yes indeed, there is one) to my new address, so the date slipped past me. I'm reading a book about the election of 1960. It was the one the where Nixon had the election stolen from him. The book makes it really clear about the candidates. Dick comes out looking like a saint compared to Kennedy and Johnson. Johnson had a history of cheating on elections his whole life. Comparatively, a little taping at the Watergate was nothing. John Kennedy kept his distance from election tampering, but he could because his family was doing it for him. Apart from election ethics, Bill Clinton looks like a choir boy compared to extra curricular the stuff LBJ and JFK did.

Plus, let's get over the whole Watergate thing anyway. It was just a little misunderstanding. He was trying to tape a singer performing at the Watergate Lounge, but things went awry. Nixon was unfairly criticized for all kinds of things at the time. That he would tape White House conversations was despicable. Now, Kennedy and Johnson tapes are released and everything thinks its a great piece of history. Dick had a few expletives and that was considered terrible. Harry Truman does it and somehow that makes him crusty and adorable.

All Dick did was end a war, make peace with China, make peace with Russia, start the EPA and Title 1, the Clean Air and Water Act, ended the draft... It's not too late, people. Mt. Rushmore has a little space between Roosevelt and Lincoln, where we could squeeze in Nixon's head. I say we do it.