Originally posted by: Lemon law
In somewhat irony, Richard Nixon won in 1972 by opposing McGovern's peace plan for Vietnam,
and shortly after winning the election, adopted the McGovern peace plan, but did rename it peace with honor. Only to be forced to resign for other devious reasons.
Nixon is a lasting shame on America, McGovern will stand the test of time.
The American people can be kind of idiotic at times (2000 being one, 2004 another).
The election of 1968 has no shortage of idiocy - including our own democratic president's, Johnson's, friendliness to the Nixon campaign at the expense of his own vice-president.
It takes understanding the public's thinking at the time - many historians write the public was disapproving of Humphrey not adequately distancing himself from the Vietnam war, but how ironic is it for them to 'oppose' the war for that reason by voting against Humphrey, when that means a vote for Nixon, who was so much worse on the war? Not everyone is aware there's evidence suggesting Nixon *sabotaged* the US peace talks in 1968 to help his election chances by heightening the US dissatisfaction with the democrats. Of course, Nixon also ran on the amazing 'secret plan' to end the war, which appears to have been a bizarre policy to try to get the North Vietnamese to make concessions by fooling them into thinking Nixon was mentally unstable and ready to use nuclear weapons (it didn't work).
Was the close vote for Nixon in 1968 a vote against the war, by being a vote against the administration whose war it was with Nixon promising to end it - or was it a vote for the war, with Nixon to the right of Humphrey - or some combination of both, the way some people voted for Bush in 2000 because of what he said, about a 'humble foreign policy', and others for precisely the opposite reason, expecting him to be willing to use force for our interests, and saw his words as blather to get elected, like 'compassionate conservative'?
But the re-election of Nixon in 1972 is even harder to explain, other than by confronting some ugly truths about our society. Nixon had failed to end the war, and had escalated it in areas; the public wasn't praising that. He hadn't done a lot to be seen as admirable in our policy, but yet the public was willing to say 'four more years'. If we ever want to improve our political culture, to reduce the chances of electing a bad president, I think one good place to look for lessons is in why the nation re-elected Nixon in 1972.
The thing most often pointed to as some great achievement is his going to Red China; few are aware of the history on that issue. When JFK was elected, Eisenhower told him he'd avoid public criticism of Kennedy's policies, with one exception - if Kennedy recognized China, he'd come out publically against him, at a time when Eisenhower was well respected (he could have easily defeated JFK in 1960 had he been allowed to run). But when Eisenhower's vice-president does the same thing a few years later, it's a great act.
In hindsight, I see at least two questions to ask about the China visit by Nixon:
One, was how much of the visit was simply for domestic political needs, as opposed to 'good policy', and how dangerous it is for our policies to be driven by those domestic politics (other examples include the Vietnam war, and the continued Cuban sanctions under discussion in another thread; it's well-known how wars can serve domestic politics).
Second, is the question about why the 'far right' was so able to construct a phony issue around anti-communism, such that an American political cliche is 'only Nixon could have gone to China', meaning that democratic presidents were too 'suspect' in their agendas to trust with establishing relations with a communist enemy, and we needed someone who had 'established anti-communist credentials' like Nixon to 'trust' that if he did it, then it must be safe for our nation.
Of course, what have learned later is that Nixon's motives can be far from trusted, even if their flaw was not in 'selling out' to the communists. What a misguided culture that was.
Again, it's dangerous for our culture when a politician can gain power - as Joe McCarthy also did - with the public being blind to their flaws, because they're 'anti-someone'.
The republicans have long run on that sort of misguided platform; later campaigns were in no small part over issues like 'if you don't like violent black criminals like Willie Horton, then vote for republicans, because democrats won't pander over the racism the way we will' - and of course, the real campaign issues over things like the republican's unstated policies to have huge debts for corrupt political spending carried no weight in the election.
These examples go to show how broken our political process is, where it's almost a crap shoot in that the important issues are largely left to the side, and you hope for the best.
It doesn't help that it's pretty terrifying to see how broken it is, and a lot easier to simply want to think that oh, no, it's a wonderful system where the issues drive the best pick.
That line of thinking lacks the benefit of being true, but has the benefit of helping people sleep at night with smiles. But the bad policies are starting to expose that, aren't they?
