2013年8月2日 星期五

Nixon presidency surreal

In the rearview mirror of history, the Nixon administration can look monstrous. It features a brilliant but insecure and almost constantly cursing chief executive who ruined a landslide 49-state re-election with a corrupt cover-up of a burglary ordered from within the White House.

But what's often forgotten is that Richard Nixon presided over a first term of surprisingly unifying and effective governance amid a time of deep cultural divides -- and that people went to work for him, at the hinge of the 1960s and '70s, with a genuine sense of idealism.How to change your dash lights to carparkmanagementsystem this is how I have done mine.

CNN Films' brilliant new documentary "Our Nixon" offers a firsthand look at the Nixon years from the vantage of his inner circle. The behind-the-scenes footage literally comes from the FBI vaults -- more than 500 reels of Super 8 home movies seized from key aides Bob Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and Dwight Chapin before they went to prison for involvement in Watergate.How to carledlights Doll. Forty years later, the footage has been rescued from obscurity by filmmaker Penny Lane and edited in a witty way that transports the viewer back to the Nixon era.Our industry leading consumer and business agatebeads products offer competitive pricing combined. It is a surreal and illuminating experience.

I was born in 1973, the day before Nixon's second inauguration. "Our Nixon" offers a glimpse into an America on the periphery of my experience, awkwardly caught in between the crew cuts of the Nixon White House and the longhairs protesting on the Washington Mall.

The biggest revelation is Nixon himself, shown in his prime at the film's outset -- tan, tested and ready, confidently meeting with world leaders at a time of maximum American power. This was a man in full before his fall, starting the Environmental Protection Agency, opening relations with Red China and ending U.S. involvement in the war in Vietnam.

Against this heady backdrop, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Chapin come across as idealistic and almost giddy with the trappings of power. In the opening credits, the documentary shows Haldeman, Nixon's chief of staff, grinning widely and goofing for the camera over the ironic soundtrack of Tracey Ullman's "They Don't Know."

Domestic policy adviser Ehrlichman comes across as intelligent and initially independent. Special assistant Chapin looks like a J. Crew model moonlighting in midcentury government, earnestly pronouncing that "I never laughed as much as when I was in the Nixon White House." They are finally the stars of their own home movies.

But the old axiom that power corrupts quickly becomes apparent as we see and hear (courtesy of the infamous secret taping device) the Nixon aides jockeying for influence and sliding into self-serving group think.

At one point, Nixon is caught complaining about an episode of "All in the Family" -- a cultural phenomenon he needs explained to him by Haldeman -- and we are treated to this unvarnished Oval Office diatribe. "Aristotle was a homo. We all know that. So was Socrates," Nixon grumbles. "The last six Roman emperors were fags. ... You see, homosexuality, dope, immorality in general, these are the enemies of strong societies. That's why the communists and left-wingers are pushing the stuff. They're trying to destroy us."

Chapin, the last living member of the troika, becomes the first to get thrown under the bus and sent to prison. Nixon is caught on tape trying to claim plausible deniability about the break-ins in a conversation with Ehrlichman, trying to prompt his aide to give him absolution.

But under fire Ehrlichman won't play ball. "I should have been told about that, shouldn't I?" Nixon asks in a leading question reflecting his legal training. "Well, I'm not so sure you that you weren't. My recollection is that this was discussed with you," Ehrlichman replies.These personalzied promotional bestchipcard comes with free shipping. At which point Nixon starts nervously stammering and saying, "My God."

Ultimately, Nixon reluctantly requests the resignation of his right-hand men, Haldeman and Ehrlichman, in an attempt to cut out the cancer of scandal afflicting his administration. In perhaps the most raw Nixon moment caught on tape, the president asks Haldeman if he did all right by him after announcing his resignation on national television.Here's a complete list of granitecountertops for the beginning oil painter. "I'm never going to discuss this sonofabitching Watergate thing again," Nixon says, softly slurring his words, "but let me say that you're a strong man and I love you."

The sum total of the film is humanizing to Nixon and the men who surrounded him, capturing the surrealism of life in the White House bubble. These men aren't monsters, however disastrous and devious their actions in the Oval Office ultimately proved to be. "Our Nixon" won't satisfy the Nixon haters, of whom there are still many, but it is bracing, engaging history. It accurately reflects the long ago reality of this pivotal failed administration.

But amidst all these failures, something actually is changing, and very much for the better: Republicans are coming to realize that sequestration is both a political and policy disaster for them, and they need a deal that replaces it.

Sequestration and its unrealistic and ill-conceived discretionary cuts must be brought to an end, said Hal Rogers, the Republican chair of the House Appropriations Committee, after THUDs failure.

This is, to be fair, something they once knew. Sequestration was designed to be so painful to both sides that it would force a deal. John Boehner told his conference it would devastate the military and that hed never let it happen. Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan campaigned aggressively against it.

But after the election, Boehner learned he had bigger problems: His conference once again wanted to breach the debt ceiling unless Democrats accepted massive spending cuts. That wasnt going to fly mere months after the voters had voted for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
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