He was a crook (1994)

http://m.theatlantic.com/past/unbound/graffiti/crook.htm?single_page=true

by antman • 12 years ago

43 33 12 years ago

m.theatlantic.com

nyolfen• 12 years ago

lest we forget

kbutler• 12 years ago

Pieces like this say a lot more about the author than about the subject.

Nixon did some very good things, and some very bad things, but this article didn't actually talk about any of them.

sliverstorm2• 12 years ago

The things Nixon did are widely known, good and bad. You don't really have to rehash them every time you speak of the man.

Not to mention, as an obit., it was an appropriate time to focus on the man himself (despite the dramatic break from typical rose-tinted obit. style)

barsonme• 12 years ago

Perhaps I'm a bit more "soft" than you, but I'd rather obituaries or stories about the deceased be polite rather than an eloquent version of "Ding-dong! The Witch is Dead!" lest we forget there are actual evil people in the world whose bad actions vastly overshadow those of corrupt politicians.

Qwertious2• 12 years ago

The things Nixon did are widely RECORDED, good and bad. This is not the same thing, and younger people won't know.

Hell, he was president from 1969 to 1974, right? That's literally over 40 years ago. Most people wouldn't be able to tell you that much about politics in general, nor the specifics of what Nixon did.

Most people don't go out of their way to research political history, unfortunately.

And if we never speak of the thing's he's done, they'll fade from public consciousness and any lessons from it will be lost.

erikig• 12 years ago

Leave it to Hunter S Thompson to remind us. In listening to the recent analysis of our US news pundits it is possible to think that the polarization in today's audiences is a recent happening until you come across articles like this.

kiba• 12 years ago

I think it is a natural tendency for humans to self-segregate into opposing groups based on minor difference.

Sometime, I even feel that the Republican party disagree with Obama just for the sake of it.

krapp2• 12 years ago

Sometime, I even feel that the Republican party disagree with Obama just for the sake of it.

Well... disagreeing with and attempting to destroy the agenda of Democrats in power is apparently their job.

Not that the Democrats are any better, but the people who vote and write the big checks are the people who want their blood and circuses.

lisper• 12 years ago

Not "just for the sake of it". It's a way of affirming their membership in the club.

mcfunley• 12 years ago

Nixon invented the freaking Southern Strategy. I think noting "polarization" in HST's polemic is missing the forest for the trees a bit.

lmg643• 12 years ago

I will confess - I've never read a complete Hunter S Thompson piece before. I could see how this appeals to younger people - very edgy and casts everything in a nice black-and-white frame with good vs evil.

Admittedly this was written in 1994 - still under a relative veil of ignorance - and we hadn't seen Clinton, Bush 2 or Obama. By this nice polemic - you would think we've never had another president do anything close to Nixon. No politician or party has ever used FBI for political reasons, abused CIA/NSA intelligence, or used the IRS for political purposes (audits, leaked returns, etc.) And I don't think Nixon really "innovated" in this, he was just the first where it became publicly known. LBJ was arguably far worse as a power-mad president, but he gets a pass because of his Great Society initiatives.

This piece did refresh dots for me with J Edgar Hoover dying in office. This wasn't known when Thompson wrote this, but Mark Felt (also of the FBI) was deep throat, an FBI lifer who reported to Patrick Gray. Gray was a Nixon appointee from outside the agency - not an FBI lifer - a Navy guy, an attorney, and arguably seen as an interloper by many at the agency.

I'm also fascinated by Bob Woodward, a brilliant Yale grad who spend several years in the Office of Naval Intelligence, before deciding to become a reporter. Watergate was one of his first stories, an absolutely incredible coincidence - a guy with US intelligence connections breaks a story that takes down a president.

At the risk of a thousand downvotes - I expect Nixon will be up for a re-assessment at some point. The Watergate story is much more complicated and fascinating than conventionally understood.

aidenn0• 12 years ago

In a late 90s Atlantic interview with HST, at one point he calls Clinton more depraved than Nixon.

aetherson• 12 years ago

I think that you're underestimating Thompson, who may regard certain people as unrelentingly evil, but doesn't seem to think of basically anyone as unrelentingly good -- and to have a black-and-white frame, doesn't the white part need to be there to?

At any rate, I don't think that his characterization of Nixon is as one-dimensional as you're implying. Things like this:

Nixon laughed when I told him this. "Don't worry," he said,
"I, too, am a family man, and we feel the same way about
you."

complicate it.

At any rate, understand Thompson's style as existing within the milieu of conventional journalism. Someone who will say bluntly horrible things about not just Nixon, but the most powerful politicians of the day may not tell the whole story, but they serve as a bracing corrective to mainstream journalism which is incredibly deferential to people who are the traditional leaders of American society.

quanticle• 12 years ago

Nixon may be up for a re-assessment... but not because of Watergate. If anything, what (partially) redeems Nixon is his foreign policy accomplishments. He wound down the Vietnam War and he successfully pursued a rapprochement with China that served to split the PRC/Soviet Union alliance. Both were important things that needed to be done, and arguably, Nixon was one of the few American politicians who could do those things without instantly being accused of being a communist sympathizer.

But in terms of domestic policy, Nixon was a disaster. He served over the worst of the economic "malaise" that would be later characterized as "stagflation". He started the "war on drugs", and for that reason he is in no small part responsible for the deaths and incarceration of millions of poor, minority men. His attitudes on civil liberties and legitimate dissent continue to infect the military and intelligence agencies, who, to this day, see their job as protecting the American state from the American people. It was under Nixon that the Executive branch began to see itself as superior to the Legislative and Judicial branches. This is what people were referring to when they said that Nixon began the tradition of the "imperial" presidency. While blame can be laid at the feet of Nixon's successors for not reversing the harms that Nixon did, the blame for setting a bad precedent rests squarely on Nixon's shoulders. No amount of historical revision can or should erase that.

yzzxy2• 12 years ago

Common consensus today appears to paint Kissinger as the driving force and genius behind the Nixon administration's foreign policy success. I think Thompson expresses this quite well:

Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Whether this is an accurate depiction I have no idea. But if it is, then Nixon seems to deserve credit mainly for getting out of the way.

redthrowaway• 12 years ago

He wound down the Vietnam War

After getting Kissinger to prolong it by getting the South Vietnamese to torpedo the peace talks, causing the deaths of tens of thousands, simply in order to get elected.[1]

a rapprochement with China that served to split the PRC/Soviet Union alliance.

The relationship was broken long before rapprochement. Nixon/Kissinger took advantage of the split; they didn't cause it.

As an aside, I'm currently reading Kissinger's World Order. It's a fascinating read by a man who was undeniably a giant of a statesman, despite his many flaws.

[1] http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/nixon-prolonged-vie...

mc32• 12 years ago

Something few people (on the right or left would imagine today) it was the Nixon administration which started the earned income tax credit for the poor[1]. So, he wasn't totally a classist/ideologue as people night think. Seems more pragmatist than people might think.

I think it's fascinating that a conservative admi'n would consider negative taxes. Something society, I think will need to consider more seriously in the future as people's jobs are obsoleted.

[1]http://www.nber.org/digest/aug06/w11729.html

username223• 12 years ago

I will confess - I've never read a complete Hunter S Thompson piece before.

He's very hit-and-miss, but try "Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail" for Thompson at his most coherent. It's not black-and-white, but mostly a colorful character study of the 1968 Presidential candidates.

danieltillett• 12 years ago

The reason Nixon will up for a re-assessment is because of the record of the more recent office holders. I don't think Nixon would have thought it was ok to authorize torture.

flipped_bit• 12 years ago

> I'm also fascinated by Bob Woodward, a brilliant Yale grad who spend several years in the Office of Naval Intelligence, before deciding to become a reporter. Watergate was one of his first stories, an absolutely incredible coincidence - a guy with US intelligence connections breaks a story that takes down a president.

He was a crook (1994)

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