Saturday, March 02, 2019

THE WAR ON CANCER

This is a history lesson for the legions of millennial blog readers who, when asked about the Nixon presidency, postulate that it occurred sometime just before or after Abe Lincoln was president.*
And digressing for a moment about our best President, Monday March 4 is the anniversary of Lincoln's first inauguration in 1861, and we are certain we can all expect a monograph from the estimable Judge Milton Hirsch on the subject. 

Back to the war on cancer. In the NY Times today, John Dean, counselor for President Nixon writes  about his testimony before the House Judiciary Committee that brought down President Nixon. Dean writes about the similarities between his situation and Michael Cohen's and what Cohen can expect as the years go by. 

Dean famously brought down Nixon when he testified that he had told Nixon that there was a cancer growing on the presidency.  Like Cohen producing the check Trump wrote as president to reimburse 
him for payments to a woman to remain silent about a sleazy assignation, Dean's testimony was backed up by the tape of the conversation which we include for your listening edification. 




But that was not the final straw. The final straw for Nixon came on August 7, 1974  when he was visited by a coterie of Republican leaders - Senator Barry Goldwater, (R-Ariz), Senator Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA) and House Minority leader John Rhodes (R-Ariz) - who told the embattled President  that he had lost support of his party and the country. 

It was the integrity of those men and their placing country over politics that arguably saved our nation and in a Rumpolian sense won the war on cancer. 

Where do we find these men and women today? Senator McCain had the right stuff, but he has passed on. We though Senator Lindsey Graham had the right stuff, but he has become a whimpering sycophant to the power of the presidency. 

You know who has it? You know who needs to step forward and lead? None other than the junior Senator from Utah, Mitt Romney. 
Romney is underrated as a man and politician. He was roundly mocked for stating in a debate with President Obama that Russia was presented our greatest threat on the international front. Romney was right; just ask the Clintons. 
Romney blasted candidate Trump as a liar and a charlatan and he was right again. He has the right stuff and the time is now for him to lead. 

Dean worked for a brilliant politician who was a flawed man who saw enemies and conspiracies everywhere. 
Cohen worked for a flawed man who has no brilliance who believes in nothing other than acquiring and holding power and will promote false conspiracies ("the media is the enemy of the people") to serve his own purposes. 

Nixon opened relations with China and successfully defused a potential third Israeli-Arab war during his Watergate crisis. 
Trump cozied up to a murderous dictator and pandered to Russia and China while alienating our closest allies in England,  France, and Germany.

Our system worked in 1974 because we had politicians of courage and integrity. 
We, and the world are watching to see if our system of government which we champion as the best, can work again. 

The whole world is watching our shame. 

* There was a 107 years between Lincoln's presidency and Nixon's presidency.



11 comments:

  1. Please Rumpole - clear more posts over the weekend. I can’t live without reading new stuff on the blog. I check in 20 times on Saturday and Sunday.

    I have no life. Help me.

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  2. You have no understanding of the blog or blog operations. I WRITE posts. I CLEAR COMMENTS.
    Capiche?

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  3. Rump these are NY Times worthy. Your understanding of history and ability to interweave it into the current affairs of our country is nonpareil. You're brilliant and your writing is compelling. As to 6:22. There are a dozen new restaurants to check out on the beach or in Wynwood. There is the Miami Film festival. There is a showing of films at the Coral Gables Art Theater and then you can walk across the street to Books and Books and have a panini in their café and I recommend their Riesling. It's crisp and cold and sweet and the courtyard is a secret PD hangout and the action ain't bad if you get my drift so close the laptop and get an uber and get off the couch and get out and live a little mi amigo/amiga.


    Keep it up Rump. Recognition is not far away. I mean national recognition.

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  4. Posts? Comments? In any event, I NEED more on the weekends. Ok??

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  5. Truth is the Judge Hanzman and Judge Scola are home the entire weekend waiting for “COMMENTS” to be cleared by Rumpole.

    Rumpole, at least allow more weekend COMMENTS cleared quickly for these two gents.

    They have nothing to do all weekend - and anxiously wait for each update. I’m begging you. Do it for them ...

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  6. I totally agree with you rump. All campaign finance violations MUST be prosecuted as felonies. When hillary falsely said the millions she spent on the pee pee dossier was for legal consulting, she should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law. Same goes for Rep. Rashida Tlaib who paid herself $17,500 in campaign funds AFTER the election. Also we should take a look at that big fine they gave the obama campaign and see if we can make it criminal. This isn't politics, this is about transparency for the American people! We have far too few people in prison in this country!

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  7. Hey Rump. Based on your previous posts, I detected an evolving and mature understanding of the Nixon fiasco. You have given honorable mention to Leonard Colodny's Silent Coup and some very deserved praise for Robert Caro's Path To Power. I just finished Seymour Hersh's The Dark Side of Camelot. Fascinating stuff. Before you start pissing on Nixon, you must know that he was bush league compared to Johnson and Kennedy. Had it not been for JFK's death, LBJ would most likely have been indicted for bribery. And JFK's cavorting with a mafia don's mistress and using her as a bagman to pay off the Chicago mob to kill Castro makes Nixon's transgressions the equivalent of throwing spitballs in 6th grade English class.

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  8. As Allen Iverson might say, we talkin bout FEC violations?

    LoL

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  9. I have strong criticism for RMN. And high praise. Kennedy, Johnson, Nixon were all the same players in their attempt to obtain the presidency. No argument there. What distinguishes and diminishes Nixon is what he did once he had the presidency. The petty enemies list. The criminal desire to use the IRS against his perceived enemies. The use of money that clearly violates 1956.
    And if you do not think Nixon was not equal to LBJ and Kennedy in his attempt to obtain the presidency, he did nothing less than subvert and stop Johnson's peace initiative with the North Vietnamese in violation of federal law- the Logan Act. Google Anna Chennault. It's one of the more fascinating and less known events of the late 1960's that caused the war to go on and on.

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  10. Nixon's undermining of LBJ's peace initiative was treason disguised as politicking. That said, I just finished reading Ron's Chernow's excellent biography of Alexander Hamilton. Among my take-away's from that tome is that the more things change, the more they stay the same. The founders played dirty, underhanded politics with the best of them. The only difference is that social media has now amplified the volume and reach.

    PS. Perhaps the greatest insult in political history was uttered by John Adams in reference to Alexander Hamilton's reputation as a man-whore (Google "superabundance of secretions") and you'll see what I mean.

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