In an editorial today titled 'Flag ploy at rally shameless', Paul Campos reminds us of the shamelessness that was Tricky Dick Nixon, and ties Nixon into the campaign that John McCain is running.
Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and an author of several books. He has been a guest on CNN, MSNBC and other news channels, blogs at Lawyers, Guns and Money and writes a weekly opinion column for the Scripps Howard News Agency.
In today's column, Campos does a masterful job of linking Tricky Dick with John McNasty.
Rick Perlstein's new book, Nixonland, does a masterful job of describing the extent to which shamelessness gives a skillful politician a major advantage over ordinary humans.
After barely losing the 1960 presidential election, Nixon then went on to lose the 1962 California gubernatorial election, famously telling reporters after that defeat, "You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference", signaling his retirement from an active political life. Of course, we did have Nixon to kick around, as he won overwhelming victories in the 1968 and 1972 presidential elections, only to resign in disgrace, August 8, 1974.
Nixon, Campos reminds us
had no real ideological commitments
just like John McCain, who has changed his position on at least 74 separate issues. Among the most prominent examples of McCain having no real ideological commitments, are his denouncing of hate-mongering 'preachers' among us as "agents of intolerance", then going on to speak in praise of Jerry Falwell. McCain twice denounced the Bush tax cuts, until running in 2008, when he announced he now not only supports the tax cuts, buts wants to go even farther, and give even larger tax cuts to the super wealthy and corporations. And of course, McCain was a prime sponsor of a comprehensive immigration reform bill, with Teddy Kennedy, until announcing that he would no longer even support his own bill.
Campos also notes that Nixon had
no base of support among movement conservaties; he looked terrible on TV; he had no discernable charisma; and he was widely considerated a joke by the media...
Except for the part about the media (the MSM, after all, are McCain's base), the same has been said about McCain. He had little support among the conservative base, so he begs for endorsements from pastors Hagee and Parsley, only to later have to reject their support. To shore up his support among the conservative base, he chose an totally unqualified person as his VP pick. McCain looks terrible on TV, even without the lime jello background; and he has a 'smile' that can best be described as 'rictus'. And charisma, well, that isn't a word I would associate with McCain.
Still speaking of Nixon, Campos says
Yet somehoe he won anyway. What he had going for him was intelligence, ruthlessness, bottomless ambition and no capacity for shame. He was perfectly capable of arguing A on Monday and Z on Friday regarding every issue imaginable, if it suited his political purposes to do so, and he took full advantage of this talent.
Once again, McCain shows he learned from Nixon. Running against Washington lobbyists while the entire top level of his campaign is staffed with current and former lobbyists. Vowing to run an "honorable" campaign, only to then hire as many Rovian proteges as he can, including the person, South Carolina political consultant Tucker Eskew, who is widely credited, or blamed, with destroying McCain's 2000 presidential run by starting a 'whisper campaign' that the McCain's dark-skinned, adopted child, Bridget, was the result of a illicit liason.
Campos goes on to say that Nixon extended to logic of McCarthyism - that there are traitors in our midst - to his political opponents. Just as McCain has done by saying that "...I would rather lose a campaign than lose a war," McCain told reporters.
"Apparently Sen. Obama, who does not understand what’s happening in Iraq or fails to acknowledge the success in Iraq, would rather lose a war than lose a campaign."
Campos then goes on to detail the "shameless" and false flap about the DNC "destroying" American flags after the Denver convention. Campos continues
What's interesting about this incident is how it's straight out of the devious pages or Richard Nixon's political playbook. Don't merely accuse yoiur opponents of being misinformed or wrongheaded or even cowardly - instead, impugn their patriotism in as brazen a manner as you think you can get away with. It's a despicable tactic, but as the last 40 years of American political history illustrate, an often effective one.
And now we have McCain and Palin running the Nixon playbook to perfection. Lying, dividing the country into Nixon's "silent majority" who are patriots, and 'everyone else' (DFHs), denigrating, smearing, swift-boating and all but laughing out loud at Barack and his supporters.
Campos ends his column with the quote I used for the head of this Diary, "Somewhere, Richard Nixon is laughing".
The real question is who will have the last laugh. If Obama and Biden can win this election, and sweep in increased majorities the the House and Senate, maybe, just maybe, we can wipe that laughter of the faces of Richard Nixon, and his direct descendents, John McCain and Sarah Palin.