Nixon’s Heir

[laststeamtrain]

Nixon’s Heir
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080327_nixons_heir/
Posted on Mar 26, 2008

By Marie Cocco

WASHINGTON—Some days, there’s just no forgetting that Dick Cheney is still the vice president of the United States. We’ve had a few of these recently, with Cheney traveling to Iraq and elsewhere in the Middle East on what might be called a goodwill mission, if the person making the trip were not Dick Cheney.

<snip>

Cheney is the most Nixonian figure in American politics since—well, since Nixon. You could say that he speaks with some authority about that era, marked as it was by abuse of presidential power, an obsession with secrecy and the continuation of a disastrous war in Vietnam that cost thousands of American lives and cleaved the nation into political factions that have never fully reconciled.

But it is not the discredited Nixon administration to which Cheney compares the current Bush tenure. He compares it to the brief presidency of the decent Ford. Cheney, who served as Ford’s White House chief of staff, correctly points out that Ford paid a political price for ignoring public opinion and granting Nixon a pardon for his Watergate crimes in the aftermath of Nixon’s resignation.

“The country was better off for what Gerry Ford did that day. And 30 years later, everybody recognized it,” Cheney told Raddatz. “I have the same strong conviction” that history will assess the Bush decision to invade and occupy Iraq in a similarly favorable light. In 30 years, Cheney said of Bush, “it will be clear that he made the right decisions.”

<snip>

But that is not what strikes hard and deep in the jarring, even contemptible analogy that Cheney makes. The Nixon pardon was an entirely political decision, made for purely political reasons, and which cost Ford nothing but political support. No geopolitical catastrophe was set in motion when Ford decided that in order to govern, he had to remove the stain of Watergate from the front pages and the television screens.

No historical hindsight is needed to see that, unlike in Iraq, no lives were lost or bodies shattered by the Watergate pardon. No families were ruined emotionally and financially. No civilians were forced to flee their own country, or to become refugees within it. No thousands of prisoners were incarcerated without hope of charge or trial, and none were tortured.

<more>

http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/20080327_nixons_heir/
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Cheney & Nixon; a couple of dicks.

[leftofcool]

1. Yea , but Cheney makes Nixon look like an altar boy

[sce56]

2. I beg to differ with what Dead Eye Dick says! Pardoning crooks just enaables more of them to emulate

their actions! If they would have tried and convicted Tricky Dick Nixon we would have a better country today since it would have outed the criminals that run our country into the ground. Instead it was just don't get caught doing it they never got justice for the people that subverted our laws and allowed them to continue thier law breaking witnessed by the Iran Contra affair and other things done like Ollie North lying to congress and never going to prison for his deeds instead he is hailed as a true hero by the Riech Wing of the GOP. Now we have another tricky Dick in Office and he has been given the power to do anything he wants despite the will of the public, SO!



http://web.archive.org/web/20030602211200/

[dixiegrrrrl]

3. What he means is:

***In 30 years, Cheney said of Bush, “it will be clear that he made the right decisions.”***



People have short memories and *we* will make it will be clear when we re-write the history books.

and,everyone who lived this history will be dead and unable to argue.