Can I sort of change the thrust of this blog for a moment. While we’ve been focused – quite appropriately – for the past few months on Barack Obama and what his election means for the country, there’s something that just drives me nuts. It’s this irrational Bush hatred that consumes so many people.
What has set me off is a story linked from Drudge (where else?) saying that Ron Howard, the movie director and one-time child star, sees great parallels between George W. Bush and Richard Nixon. Both, you see, imperiled our freedoms in horrific, dangerous, and power-hungry ways. Thanks goodness, in both cases, heroes emerged to save us: Jimmy Carter and now Barack Obama.
This is self-indulgent nonsense of the first order.
First, Bush is no Nixon, and secondly, neither was Nixon.
Nixon certainly was a complex and troubled man, but his excesses in office, unforgiveable though they might have been, were certainly nothing out of the ordinary for the chief executive of this great but flawed system of ours.
Presidential excesses seem to go with the territory. The excesses of the Kennedy clan and Lyndon Johnson were epic, and of course, Roosevelt invented new powers for himself almost as a pastime.
Nixon, in other words was nothing exceptional. His problem was that the hard left targeted him for destruction in the early 1950s for exposing one of their own for what he was – a Soviet agent. Alger Hiss was an Ivy League man and Nixon was a rube from out west somewhere; how dare he insert himself into the business of his betters? They set their sights on Nixon and eventually caught him in the crosshairs. On Nixon being caught mixed up in the Watergate mess, one imagines the democratic leadership collectively saying it was “shocked, shocked” at such behavior. Indeed.
So, as I say, Nixon was no Nixon; he was a wartime president elected to lead a society that somehow had to deal with the likes of William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn, etc. If that wasn’t a time that called for extraordinary law enforcement measures, I don’t know what was.
And Bush, likewise, finds himself leading a society through the complex challenges of a global war on terror – a war that has been constantly undermined on the domestic front by the likes of – yes – William Ayers et al.
But for all of that, Ron Howard is free to make his movies, speak his mind and trash his president. And congratulate himself on his “courage.”
These people are, I tell you, nothing if not self-satisfied. Ignorant, yes, but self-satified.
What brought all this up? Well, Howard has directed a new movie about the post-resignation, post-humiliation interviews with Nixon orchestrated and conducted by British comedian David Frost.
Comedian? Oh, I know he considers himself an important journalist/interviewer/history maker, but his real claim to fame was as host of the comedy/reality show “That Was the Week that Was,” which anticipated a lot of the so-called news programming circa 2008. Oh, and how could one forget Frost’s memorable hosting duties on the periodic (and idiotic) Guinness Book of World Records TV shows?
In other words, Frost, the hero of Howard’s new film, was primarily a clown. His self-serving account of the Frost/Nixon interviews, which I tried to read, serve as the basis for Howard’s film. Nixon, of course, isn’t around to answer Frost, Howard, or anyone else.
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4 comments:
"Opie" is worthless. (So is Andy, by the way.) I think I saw something last night--clips of this stupid Ron Howard Nixon thing--and realized right away it was garbage.
The point is that these leftists hate Nixon and Bush for the wrong reasons. Nixon did a lot less to erode our freedoms than FDR did. I'm sure Obama will do more to erode even the lefty Bush-haters' freedoms than Bush himself ever did. Don't get me wrong: Nixon and Bush are both contemptible; but the lefties, who just need something to get worked up about, get it all wrong. Each man sold out his principles and practically wrecked his party. Each man presided over an appalling increase in the size of government. Each man practically wrecked the country in order to be reelected. As the Bible says--and I paraphrase--what good is the whole world if the cost is your soul? It took dumbo Carter and a giant of a man in Ronald Reagan for us to recover from Nixon; it might not be possible to recover from Bush. We would have been better off with some other Republican as a substitute for each of these men.
I'll add that the more you kiss up to these lefties, the more they despise you. They're just like--or, I mean, are--communists: They only respect and respond to force, whether it's force of arms or force of personality and principles.
Brian, I just can't accept the proposition that Bush is contemptible. He certainly has done things that as a political conservative I find frustrating, but all in all, I admire him. I think he's shown tremendous character and restraint over the past seven years as he has endured an unprecedented assault that has long since moved into the region of pure evil. I don't buy the idea, either that Bush has sold out his principles. The two biggest issues of our time are confronting the evil that is Islamofascism and the evil that is abortion. He has held true and firm in opposing both those evils. Has he been a perfect conservative? No. Has he been misguided in the way he has tried to reach out to the left? Probably. But I don't hold it against him for trying. He is president (as the cliche goes) of all the people, and not everyone agrees with how you and I and Dave think things ought to be organized.
Having said all that, there is something tragically amiss about the man, an awkwardness that,for those of us who are pulling for him, is heartwrenching to watch (sort of like the way I felt in watching Sarah Palin in the horrendous Couric and Gibson interviews).
So I don't hold him in contempt; I feel sorry for him in many ways but at the end of the day, I think I see something heroic there. He's a better and bigger man than I would be in his circumstances. I do know that.
Bill, I understand your position. Great minds can disagree. The beating upon Bush by leftists should not cause us to love or excuse him. I have laid out the lengthy indictment against Bush before. When I have a little more time, I will take up the challenge to update it, so as to account for the disastrous bailouts that have thrust a once-great nation into virtual socialism. Bush is still president. He appointed that socialist Paulson, and allows him to operate (or should I say "run amok"?) unhindered and with impunity. These bailouts alone would be enough to condemn Bush to eternal ignominy. Because of the importance of the issues involved, I shall fill in the rest of the bill of indictment later.
Many human beings have a tendency to make the people around them either "all good" or "all bad." This is a denial of the reality that everyone of us is capable of doing both good and bad. In my quest to find for myself an admirable hero, I read a number of biographies, only to come away feeling that the object of each biography was too flawed to receive my unflinching admiration (the only exception being Jesus Christ). I then began to realize that it was unrealistic to demand a perfect hero. All humans are flawed; yet some are definitely worthy of admiration, in spite of their flaws. Obviously I am a great admirer of TJ, yet I don't admire the fact that he slept with his slave. I admire many things about John Adams, yet I don't admire his yielding to the Federalists and signing the Alien and Sedition Act. I admire many, many things about Ronald Reagan, yet I do not admire (oh my, is this heresy?) his responses (or lack thereof) after the bombing in Beirut and the downing of KAL007. In fact, one could argue that Reagan's tepid response in Lebanon significantly bolstered our enemies in that region (he probably didn't realize the determination and potency of the Islamic threat).
In a similar vein, I admire George W. Bush for his stalwart defense against Islamic terrorism, yet I do not admire his actions over the past two months. In fact, I have lost nearly all respect for the man due to his performance over the past two years, so much so that I can bearly stand to hear him speak. Nevertheless, I admire his tenacity in toughing it out in Iraq, lowering taxes during a recession, and appointing two fine men to the Supreme Court.
I think it is possible to admire much about a man yet find other parts irritating, objectionable, and even contemptible. It doesn't have to me "all good" or "all bad." It think we will probably not be able to objectively assess what we think about Bush, in his totality, for a few more years.
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