THE NIXON TAPES

Richard Nixon, the Archie Bunker of Presidents

The Nixon Tapes provide a rare glimpse into the mind of a small, sweating "unindicted co-conspirator" whose paranoia proved his undoing. Some of the tapes are chilling, with Nixon railing like Captain Queeg in "The Caine Mutiny," while others yield unintentional humor.

In this clip, Nixon discusses homosexuality and the liberal bias of "All in the Family" with his henchmen John Erlichman and Bob Haldeman.



"All in the Family" was a situation comedy that was originally broadcast on CBS from January 12, 1971 to April 8, 1979. Produced by Norman Lear, the show broke ground depicting issues of class, race, politics, religion, homosexuality, rape and feminism. Carrol O'Conner played Archie Bunker, a conservative working stiff who despised the hippies and liberals and adored President Nixon.

a scene from the liberal situation comedy "All in the Family"

THE FROST/NIXON INTERVIEWS

Up until very recently, Richard Milhous Nixon was probably the worst president in U.S. history. Before Nixon, you could have argued that Indian killer Jackson was our worst, but then Tricky Dick came waltzing up with a sweating upper lip and a brain squirming with Cold War paranoia and red-baiting anti-communist fear, with secret wiretappings and enemies' lists, with an escalation of the Vietnam war and the secret Christmas bombings of Cambodia, with the crimes of Watergate and the Kent State killings, with the CIA overthrow of Chile's elected government...and plenty more.


This ambitious, vindictive, petty crook from Yorba Linda went far--to the very top--and he nearly took the country down with him when he fell. Later, Republicans canonized him, rewriting history with a zeal that would have made Soviet revisionists seem like slackers. Fitzgerald said there are no second acts in American lives, but Fitzgerald was wrong in this case. In later years, after memory of his crimes had receded, Nixon playing the role of a respected elder statesman, bringing to mind the line from "Chinatown" spoken by the incestuous tycoon Noah Cross:

"'Course I'm respectable. I'm old. Politicians, ugly buildings, and whores all get respectable if they last long enough."

Two years after his resignation, Nixon was interviewed by British television journalist David Frost. These historic interviews are the subject of a recent film, "Frost/Nixon" (2008). Here are the original interviews.

Old school politics: Richard Nixon and Prescott Bush--two bastards in better days


For extra credit, click button to hear "Richard Nixon Died Today" by Negativland:

SOUL SACRIFICE

Just a couple years after "Blowup!" the entire world changed drastically. The glacier cool of mod London is replaced by full-out sex, drugs and ecstatic abandon. The same summer man lands on the moon, another small step for mankind is taken in the muddy fields of Bethel, New York. Here, on Max Yasgur's farm, The Woodstock Music and Art Fair provides three days of fun and music to half a million peaceful people.

Here, Santana performs Soul Sacrifice!

WILL HISTORY REPEAT ITSELF?

Walter Cronkite, Feb. 27, 1968

The war drags on. The Democratic party is fiercely divided. Martin Luther King is killed in April, and Robert Kennedy in June, the night of the California primary. With Kennedy dead, only one peace candidate remains, Eugene McCarthy. President Johnson isn't running, but Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who did not participate in the primaries, has enough spoken-for delegates to secure the nomination. This is his golden moment. To most people opposed to the war, Humphrey promises nothing but a continuation of LBJ's failed policies. The year is 1968.

The Democratic National Convention is held in Chicago. Protesters come from all over. Mayor Daley, the last of the big city bosses, meets them with brute force, Chicago style. Protesters are denied a permit, making them easy targets for Daley's agitated police. The Walker Commission later term what occurs as "a police riot."

Democratic National Convention in Chicago, Aug, 26-29, 1968

As the Chicago streets fill with teargas and bloodied demonstrators, strong-arm tactics invade the convention itself, as you can see from this clip with Dan Rather. America watches this chaotic scene on television, uncertain if the whole shebang is going up in flames.



Norman Mailer wrote extensively about the events in his book, "Miami and the Siege of Chicago." He spoke with Amy Goodman in 2004:

"Most of you, I’m sure, know all about it. For those of you who you don’t, there was a huge march of demonstrators, an essentially peaceful march that went up Michigan Boulevard and at a given moment, given the order by Mayor Daley then, not the present Richard Daley, but his father, the police surged into the marchers and beat them up with canes. It was all on television. It was extraordinary television, one of the incredible moments of network television, and everyone was shocked down to the core. The Cronkites, the Rathers, whoever was there then—I don’t even remember—they all were profoundly shocked. And it looked—at the moment, it looked like: how awful, how awful, the Republicans are going to pay for this. Quite the contrary, the Republicans won..."


-- from the documentary, "1968: The Year That Shaped a Generation."

Democratic Party nominee Humphrey will lose to Republican Richard Nixon, who uses the same talking points Republicans use today. Promising law and order, victory, patriotism, tough guy rhetoric, Nixon wins the general election and immediately escalates the war.
There are parallels. The war drags on. People want change. The Democrats are strongly divided. For some reason they argue endlessly about non-issues like flag lapel pins, instead of uniting against the Republicans and Bush's disastrous policies. Let's hope they wise up.

1968 CAMPAIGN AD: REPUBLICAN RICHARD NIXON

Conservative Republican ad for Richard Nixon from the 1968 campaign. Here, Tricky Dick tries to get "psychedelic" to reach youth. Notice the shot of a young, beardless Jerry Garcia near the beginning, when Nixon mentions "American youth today has it's fringes..."