Elections' Questionable History

While it gets a little tedious, I do try to watch the many public affairs commentaries, particularly on Sunday mornings, about politics, because I just want to know everything. I guess I still felt a sense of shock when I flipped through channels and happened on a discussion between Scott Ritter, former arms inspector in Iraq, and Seymour Hersh of NYT, whose news reporting has been exemplary. They commented about the role of the Nixon administration in arranging for the South Vietnamese and North Vietnamese not to reach a treaty during the Vietnameses War, in order to influence the outcome of the election and put Nixon in high office.

I had to see more than this mention, so searched for it [Googled] and found more;

'As we now know from the memoirs of many of the participants and also from the FBI's surveillance records, because the Nixon campaign was bugged by President Johnson while engaged in doing this. Mr. Nixon and his Campaign Manager, John Mitchell, later Attorney General, later jailbird, went to the South Vietnamese military leadership during the course of the Paris peace negotiations. This is when the settlement to the world was being negotiated by the U.S. Government in 1968.

Peter Robinson: '68.

Christopher Hitchens: …the year it should have happened, and said to the South Vietnamese, if you will pull out of these talks and if you'll do it in such a way that will give us an advantage in the election, in other words, if you'll pull out on election eve, it was an election year as well, you'll get a better deal from incoming United States Republican administration. They had to do this secretly because what they were doing was illegal, as well as disgraceful. Henry Kissinger's role in this was as, so to speak, the third or fourth man. He was attached to the negotiations themselves.'

Maybe I'm just a love child, after all. I always doubted that anyone had stooped this low. And it's just accepted knowledge among the pundits.

Is it any wonder that Nixon regarded the U.S. as his fiefdom since he won it by such skulduggery?

And that removes any element of doubt for me that the election of 2000 and of 2004 was remotely honest. The whole administration, from the Cretin in Chief on down, acts like they didn't earn it, they stole it, and try to devalue high office by their misuse of it. Of course, I hear that cronyism and swilling at the public trough became a problem during Ulysses S. Grant's presidency, and that FDR, like Lincoln, also was a master of the art.

The alphabet soup of federal agencies created by the New Deal was a patronage bonanza, creating over 100,000 new jobs which were listed for convenience in a little volume called the "Plum Book." Somewhere in FDR's correspondence is a brief note written to postmaster James A. Farley — the traditional chief of federal patronage — in regards to a particularly persistent and irritating office seeker: "For god's sake, if you love me, find a place for this woman!"

Even when I was in Washington, member of a family descended from the Costa Rican ambassador and long immersed in local lore, I heard about the Plums and their listing. Yes, I was even offered a couple of soft landing jobs when I was working for a dissident political candidate, but always was, as an officeholder friend portrayed me, "more likely to lie down in front of a train than get on one." Yes, I also heard a political candidate advise to 'grab onto her skirt, hold your nose, and fall in', when it came to a 'slate' member I would not support.

So why am I so surprised that there are unfathomable depths to which crooks will sink to get into high office?

I always thought that there were mechanics at work that worked. I always thought the loyal opposition would not tolerate criminal conduct when it came to serving the public.

From the discussion yesterday, I learned that Lyndon Johnson wanted to bring charges, to openly declare the war criminality of the Nixon operatives. That might have spared this nation Watergate, might have crippled the cretins we now have again sacrificing American lives, (in this instance Iraqi ones), to gain political aims. I think he should not have been restrained by his friends, to keep such divisiveness as would have ensued from making Nixon's presidency impossible. I would postulate that that presidency was impossible, and proved so, that its criminal beginnings doomed it and its practitioners. I am no prophet, however, even in retrospect.

I will advise, though, that you look at this bunch as the crooks and sleaze they are. And like the folks at Eschaton have advised, I advise you keep working after the election as well.

As Diane pointed out, the lawyering up is well underway.

Vote, and keep watching.