Remember the Watergate!
Several years ago I read that the right wing in the U.S. was seeking revenge for Nixon; they didn't accept that "Tricky Dick" did anything wrong by having his crew of "plumbers," masterminded by former CIA operative and then-current thriller novelist E. Howard Hunt, bug the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C. (or by having his "plumbers" break into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's pyschiatrist and steal his records in retaliation for Ellsberg bringing what became known as The Pentagon Papers to the world), and were infuriated that the "godless liberals" engineered (aided in large part by a young lawyer who would later become one of the right wing's bêtes noires, a still-single Hillary Rodham, who was then working on the House Judiciary Committee impeachment inquiry staff) what amounted to, in their eyes, a bloodless coup. I thought that the level of invective that they leveled at the former head of state Bill Clinton over the Monica Lewinsky scandal was informed at least in part by this.
Little did I dream that the right wing, when they failed to garner enough votes to remove Clinton from office, would stop trying to repay the "godless liberals" in kind; even less did I dream that one of the right wing's shining stars would openly allude to their grudge against the Watergate hearings on Election Day 2004.
On the first hour of The Diane Rehm Show, a National Public Radio (NPR) news-talk show broadcast from WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., former Speaker of the House and co-author of the (in)famous "Contract With America" (styled, by some wags, as "Contract On America") Newt Gingrich was reached as he was about to board a plane, whereat he had this following exchange with the host:
DIANE REHM: "Some commentators, I'm sure as you well know, have traced back today's intense partisanship to the days when you were...Speaker in the mid-'90s. Is that from your perspective a valid assessment?"
NEWT GINGRICH: "Well, I think if you're a liberal, it's a valid assessment. Because when the liberals attacked Ronald Reagan, it wasn't partisanship; when they impeached Richard Nixon, it wasn't partisanship... Liberals only thought of it as partisanship if Republicans won."
(The preceding exchange occurred roughly between 7:30 and 8:15 into the archived audio for the first show of 2 November.)
I've read elsewhere that the modern right-wing fury really got its start with Lyndon Johnson's decisive defeat of Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, thanks in large part to a nigh-legendary commercial that the Democrats aired, dubbed "Daisy," which suggested that Goldwater's bellicosity towards the Soviet Union would lead to a nuclear war. Certainly it was that defeat that prompted the right wing to retrench and rethink their strategy, and which ultimately led to the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s. But while right wing operatives like Grover Norquist will cite Warren Harding as their favorite U.S. president and dream, usually in code when speaking to the press, of undoing FDR's New Deal (goodbye, Social Security....), I've not heard them cite Goldwater's failed presidential bid as a rallying cry; usually they content themselves with fulminating about Robert Bork (whose 1987 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was so thoroughly scotched by the Senate that his name became a verb: if someone is borked, it means he or she has been so unfairly treated by a political body and the media that the person fails his or her confirmation hearings), Oliver North (yes, Mr. Gingrich, the Iran-Contra hearings were mere "partisanship"...), and the ever-insidious threats that the Clintons pose to this Republic.
The fact that the right wing is out to avenge "Tricky Dick" was made more apparent to me when I heard Here & Now (a noontime news/talk show originated at WBUR-FM in Boston) host Robin Young talk to Richard Leiby, the "Reliable Source" columnist for The Washington Post, yesterday, about this item that appeared in his column for 2 November:
"The Bush administration continues its tradition of gracious hospitality to the press corps up until the very last minute. Reporters wishing to cover the president's election night party will have to pay $300 for the privilege of a 3-by-2-foot work space and a padded seat in a tent nearby to watch the proceedings on television. Wanna eat? That's $200 extra. Want a phone line or Internet hookup? Fork over separately to Verizon.
"But it's not just the exceptional expense that has journalists grumbling. It's what the money buys: Small groups of media will be escorted into the atrium of the Ronald Reagan Building to look around -- but they won't be allowed to talk to participants [emphasis added]. 'There's really no mingling with the guests,' said Megan Rose, of the public relations group handling arrangements. The restrictions are unusual, but the GOP message isn't: Reporters are not our kind."
Nixon would've loved to have been able to treat the press corps thusly: marginalizing and rebuking them all in one stroke. Somewhere, "the Colossus of Yorba Linda" is smiling as he contemplates the benighted ruins of the Fourth Estate.
Little did I dream that the right wing, when they failed to garner enough votes to remove Clinton from office, would stop trying to repay the "godless liberals" in kind; even less did I dream that one of the right wing's shining stars would openly allude to their grudge against the Watergate hearings on Election Day 2004.
On the first hour of The Diane Rehm Show, a National Public Radio (NPR) news-talk show broadcast from WAMU-FM in Washington, D.C., former Speaker of the House and co-author of the (in)famous "Contract With America" (styled, by some wags, as "Contract On America") Newt Gingrich was reached as he was about to board a plane, whereat he had this following exchange with the host:
DIANE REHM: "Some commentators, I'm sure as you well know, have traced back today's intense partisanship to the days when you were...Speaker in the mid-'90s. Is that from your perspective a valid assessment?"
NEWT GINGRICH: "Well, I think if you're a liberal, it's a valid assessment. Because when the liberals attacked Ronald Reagan, it wasn't partisanship; when they impeached Richard Nixon, it wasn't partisanship... Liberals only thought of it as partisanship if Republicans won."
(The preceding exchange occurred roughly between 7:30 and 8:15 into the archived audio for the first show of 2 November.)
I've read elsewhere that the modern right-wing fury really got its start with Lyndon Johnson's decisive defeat of Arizona senator Barry Goldwater in the 1964 presidential election, thanks in large part to a nigh-legendary commercial that the Democrats aired, dubbed "Daisy," which suggested that Goldwater's bellicosity towards the Soviet Union would lead to a nuclear war. Certainly it was that defeat that prompted the right wing to retrench and rethink their strategy, and which ultimately led to the "Reagan Revolution" of the 1980s. But while right wing operatives like Grover Norquist will cite Warren Harding as their favorite U.S. president and dream, usually in code when speaking to the press, of undoing FDR's New Deal (goodbye, Social Security....), I've not heard them cite Goldwater's failed presidential bid as a rallying cry; usually they content themselves with fulminating about Robert Bork (whose 1987 nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court was so thoroughly scotched by the Senate that his name became a verb: if someone is borked, it means he or she has been so unfairly treated by a political body and the media that the person fails his or her confirmation hearings), Oliver North (yes, Mr. Gingrich, the Iran-Contra hearings were mere "partisanship"...), and the ever-insidious threats that the Clintons pose to this Republic.
The fact that the right wing is out to avenge "Tricky Dick" was made more apparent to me when I heard Here & Now (a noontime news/talk show originated at WBUR-FM in Boston) host Robin Young talk to Richard Leiby, the "Reliable Source" columnist for The Washington Post, yesterday, about this item that appeared in his column for 2 November:
"The Bush administration continues its tradition of gracious hospitality to the press corps up until the very last minute. Reporters wishing to cover the president's election night party will have to pay $300 for the privilege of a 3-by-2-foot work space and a padded seat in a tent nearby to watch the proceedings on television. Wanna eat? That's $200 extra. Want a phone line or Internet hookup? Fork over separately to Verizon.
"But it's not just the exceptional expense that has journalists grumbling. It's what the money buys: Small groups of media will be escorted into the atrium of the Ronald Reagan Building to look around -- but they won't be allowed to talk to participants [emphasis added]. 'There's really no mingling with the guests,' said Megan Rose, of the public relations group handling arrangements. The restrictions are unusual, but the GOP message isn't: Reporters are not our kind."
Nixon would've loved to have been able to treat the press corps thusly: marginalizing and rebuking them all in one stroke. Somewhere, "the Colossus of Yorba Linda" is smiling as he contemplates the benighted ruins of the Fourth Estate.