Where Nixon got the idea that Burglary was Okay.

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 4:57 pm

John Fitzgerald Kennedy.

And from the Washington Post no less! (Extreme Liberal Newspaper that was instrumental in bringing Nixon down.)

JFK's own dirty trick

By Mark Feldstein
Friday, January 14, 2011

Fifty years ago next week, Richard Nixon stood uncomfortably on the Capitol's inaugural platform and watched his rival John F. Kennedy being sworn in as president. "We won" the election, Nixon fumed, "but they stole it from us."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 06399.html

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Thu Jan 27, 2011 5:03 pm

For those of you in the historical know, it was Watergate that caused the downfall of Nixon, and it was as a result of the fallout from Watergate that the Democrats in control of congress refused to further Fund the Vietnam War/Armistice, resulting in North Vietnam over running South Vietnam.

Connecting the dots, this means that John Kennedy CAUSED the loss of the war in Vietnam. Since he started it, it sort of creates a proper historical bookend! N'est-ce pas?

Professor Science · Post by **Professor Science** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:29 pm

If you use causal chains like (namely removing the choice from Nixon) you could very easily select who to blame for everything, Republicans can avoid being blamed for anything bad ever again! hoorah! They're kind of like God! He does everything good and everything bad is satans (the democrats) fault. </satire>

Diogenes · Post by **Diogenes** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:37 pm

Professor Science wrote:If you use causal chains like (namely removing the choice from Nixon) you could very easily select who to blame for everything, Republicans can avoid being blamed for anything bad ever again! hoorah! They're kind of like God! He does everything good and everything bad is satans (the democrats) fault. </satire>

You may be surprised, but this is something I think about from time to time. Just because someone did something that made something else possible, it does not necessarily mean that the initiating event is 100% responsible for the subsequent fallout.

It is difficult to quantify responsibility in these sorts of situations, but it is self evident that without the initiating event, the subsequent event wouldn't have happened at all.

In any case, Democrat Presidents have far more than their fair share of "initiating events" that later turned into horrible disasters with massive body counts and massive probable future body counts.

Andrew Jackson and his "Indian Relocation Act." Comes to mind. If Jackson hadn't forcibly removed the Indians from their land and given it to whites, would slavery have become as prevalent? And would the Civil war have occurred?

Hard to say for sure, but it is pretty obvious that creating thousands of new slave holding plantations in former Indian lands certainly didn't help to prevent it.

Tom Ligon · Post by **Tom Ligon** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 3:44 pm

Nah, it must be Kennedy's fault. Consider that I heard Abbie Hoffman defend (although reluctantly), Nixon's role in Watergate. In person, with my own ears, standing less than 50 feet from him.

Hoffman was on the lam, but dropping by college campuses. He said the charges against Nixon in Watergate were that he covered up for his friends, the very thing that was keeping Hoffman free. He had a hard time finding fault with that. From his tone, I think it was killing him.

Watergate was a red herring. Because of it, nobody thinks much about the Ellsburg breakins, a much worse abuse of power. Yet if you look back thru history, probably not all that uncommon. Nixon was caught in a cultural shift in which we began to demand better.

ladajo · Post by **ladajo** » Fri Jan 28, 2011 4:39 pm

And folks when thinking about Watergate tend to forget that Nixon was re-elected in '72. If he was all the bad and hated, would he have been? He had a banner year, re-election, forcingthe North to the Peace Table on US terms, setting the stage for successful withdrawal of US forces, and garaunteeing the peace, and probably unified government of Vietnam down the road. The North Vietnamese were not happy. The Chinese were OK with it, as they got the UN seat, and Taiwan (in a protracted sense). The Russian's were OK with it as they got SALT and arms reduction. The US was happy cause it had a viable out. Then, oops, Watergate. South now VERY unhappy, vice living with it. North very happy, China very happy, Russia very happy. US unhappy. A proverbial case where folks got their cake and Edith to.