Paul Revere by Cyrus Dallin, North End, Boston

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Friday, August 8, 2014

Richard Nixon's Resignation Speech



Forty years ago today* Richard Nixon resigned from the presidency in disgrace.

*Flying Junior reminded P.E. that Nixon actually resigned on August 9, 1974, not August 8.  

Thanks for the correction, F.J.


Here's his speech:



36 comments:

skudrunner said...

He was a piece of work but by today's standards all he did was hide the fact he knew about a bug. Now that wouldn't even make 12th page news.

Since him we have had presidents sell weapons to start a insurgency, presidents that have had affairs in the oval office and presidents that have openly lied to the American people on several occasions.

It is all up to the press what the outcome will be and they just don't care.

Les Carpenter said...

President Richard M. Nixon was a paranoid and complex man. His transgressions with respect to Watergate were foolish, in fact they were stupid for a man of Nixon's intelligence. But, he let is paranoia and love of control get the better of him and proved to be his undoing.

Nixon's resignation speech was, in my estimation act of integrity, class, and concern for ultimately doing the right thing for the nation and er citizens. For this I respect the man.

Nixon came to the presidency imminently qualified with many years of public service under his belt. He was in office during the formation of the EPA and OSHA, agencies the left has grown to love. He ended the Vietnam Police Action, opened relations with Communist China, again all things the left applauded. In short he worked in the best interest of this nation and our people. Something sorely missing today and for some time now.

You can say what you will about Nixon, his tapes, and Watergate, I was not particularly fond of Nixon either, but the man did much good and some not so good things for this nation he loved.

So Shaw, I'd take Richard M. Nixon over the current officeholder in a heartbeat. If you or anyone wished to question my reasoning and play the race card and call be a racist have at it. It will sat more about anyone who does than it would say about me or anyone else who thinks as I have just enunciated.

Flying Junior said...

I don't hold any ill will towards Richard Nixon anymore. When I saw Bob Dole crying at his funeral, I knew he couldn't be all bad.

But at the time, us anti-war hippies truly vilified him. I suppose LBJ escalated the war more than Nixon, but he continued on in the same hopeless crusade. I guess the hawks just refused to believe that we couldn't win a simple proxy war just twenty years after we helped save the world from fascism. We dropped a lot of bombs during Nixon's time in office. I mean a helluva lot of bombs as well as agent orange. The once beautiful land of Vietnam is still hopelessly destroyed.

And yes, he wasn't all bad as RN points out. He would be radically out-of-step with the current generation of extreme right-wing republicans. But what a ridiculous choice, Obama or Nixon??? What the hell brought that up? Remember, it was Ford who actually brought us peace with honor.

So anyway, it was August 9th, 1974, tomorrow. I remember because it was my fifteenth birthday. I was at Dad's house with family and friends having a party.

Talk about a nice birthday present!

Shaw Kenawe said...

The date's been corrected, F.J. Thanks for the heads-up.

I never hated the man, but I also thought he was a real paranoid and the tapes bear that out.

Shaw Kenawe said...

RN: "So Shaw, I'd take Richard M. Nixon over the current officeholder in a heartbeat."

Your own description of Nixon and his behaviors: "paranoid," "foolish," "stupid," "control"[ing],

and how you felt about him: "not particularly fond" [of him], did some "not so good" things, could describe all U.S. presidents. They have all been (and are) complex men.

That you say you prefer Nixon over Mr. Obama says a lot about your political leanings.

It is far too early to assess Mr. Obama's presidency, but apparently you think his personal characteristics are far worse than Nixon's were.

As I said, I think that has more to do with your right-leaning political philosophy.

Shaw Kenawe said...

One more thing, Les. Remember it was Richard Nixon who said "Oh, when the President does it, that means that it is not illegal." From the Nixon/Frost interviews


Imagine the explosions of heads on the right if Mr Obama had uttered that narcissistic and utterly idiotic sentence.

But more to the point, here are some other things Nixon said when he wasn't on camera and when he knew the general public (you and I) wouldn't hear his true sentiments:

"The Jews are irreligious, atheistic, immoral bunch of bastards."

Nixon to Bob Haldeman (1 February 1972) as quoted in Counterpunch (March 12, 2002)



"You know, it's a funny thing, every one of the bastards that are out for legalizing marijuana are Jewish. What the Christ is the matter with the Jews, Bob? What is the matter with them? I suppose it is because most of them are psychiatrists."

Statement (26 May 1971) as quoted in Newsweek (27 May 2004)

"I don't give a shit what happens. I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the Fifth Amendment, cover up or anything else, if it'll save it, save this plan. That's the whole point. We're going to protect our people if we can."

Statement to Haldeman, in tapes ordered released for the trial of Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Mitchell)

These unscripted statements to his trusted aids show Nixon's true character and I'd say it was a bit wanting.

Les Carpenter said...

Bullshit Shaw. I speak my mind honestly and with sincerity. The fact you choose to make it a partisan issue is certainly fine by me. Not surprising as I expect nothing less.

As for my political philosophy, I'm done attempting to explain it. It simply is what it is. Take it however you wish.

Les Carpenter said...

I do not have to imagine anything Shaw, whether it be from the right or the left with respect to Obama. I form my own, independent decisions and my regard for his performance is not fairing well of late. He's not out yet but time is running out for me.

So, resort to playing the "your a right wing sheeple" if you like. Even though you know better.

Nixon has been gone for 40 years from power but I know you must bring up the disgraced president as it us a great momentary distraction from Obama's declining poll numbers.

Now, time for a nighcap. It's been a long troubling day on many levels.

Anonymous said...

Nixon vs Mr Obama? Speaking of where one's political leanings are

Flying Junior said...

Wow man!

It really was a beautiful speech. He truly was a great American. He said, and I quote, "Right now, America needs a full-time president and a full-time congress to face the problems we have at home and abroad... to create a lasting peace and prosperity at home without inflation."

He was talking about the base in congress that supported his agenda for our country, and how he could no longer continue, or at the very least, might resign in good conscience, without that support.

Today's republican obstructionist, blind follower of Rush Limbaugh and FOX news, is just a turdie dropped by some passing animal along the road. And the severest antidote to the American way.

Les Carpenter said...

If perchance the republicans take the Senate with a 50+ 1 majority, a possibility, and retain the Congress what will liberals then say? Will they allege voter fraud as the repubs have consistently done? Will they say it doesn't matter what the People's House and the Senate make up is? Will they say only the president matters and executive orders must be used with abandon? Will they blame it on redistricting and gerrymandering? Or will the just they in true elitist style simply call the electorate stupid, ill informed, and practice liberal obstruction to stop the business of elected reps and senators.

Inquiring minds want to know...

Time for morning coffee, Green Mountain's Nantucket Blend

Dave Miller said...

WOW Les... If Shaw bringing up Nixon on the 40 anniversary of his resignation is partisan and to distract from what Obama is doing, are all news organizations that do the same also guilty?

This was, and remains a historical event.

You sir made it partisan with your comment defending yourself from a charge of racism that was never even intimated. You then proceeded to compare Nixon to Pres. Obama, something no one here, or the post had done.

You brought todays politics and partisanship into this and then when Shaw responded, you guttered up with foul language and an effort after that to claim the high moral ground.

What a piece of work...

It was a historical look back...

Shaw Kenawe said...

RN: "If perchance the republicans take the Senate with a 50+ 1 majority, a possibility, and retain the Congress what will liberals then say?

Will they allege voter fraud as the repubs have consistently done?"

SK: Probably no. Probably they'll say it was a Koch-up.

RN: "Will they say it doesn't matter what the People's House and the Senate make up is?"

SK: You mean like the TeaPublicans have demonstrated and said it doesn't matter that Americans voted for Mr. Obama twice and, therefore, that meant the American people wanted his policies implemented?



RN: "Will they say only the president matters and executive orders must be used with abandon?"

SK: You've forgotten that the TeaPubicans have told the American people that only THEY matter.

The Democrats held the Senate and the Executive Branch and the Democrats actually won more House of Rep. votes than did the GOP, and yet the TeaPublicans have held this country hostage to their demands.

You're looking at what may happen instead of what actually happened with regard to real obstruction for obstruction's sake.



RN: "Will they blame it on redistricting and gerrymandering?"

That is the reason the TeaPublicans retained the House. It isn't a matter of "blame," it is a fact.



RN: "Or will the just they in true elitist style simply call the electorate stupid, ill informed,"


Les, all one has to do is visit conservative blogs where you often comment to read that this is EXACTLY what those folks say almost every day about the American people: That they are stupid for having voted for Mr. Obama twice. It's there for all to read, and yet you're here predicting that the Democrats will say EXACTLY what the conservatives scream about almost every day on those blogs.



RN: "...and practice liberal obstruction to stop the business of elected reps and senators."

SK: RN, you are engaging in what the conservatives have been doing since Mr. Obama won the presidency: Blaming him and the liberals for conservative/Republican obstruction.

It just isn't so, and repeating this doesn't make it true:


"Congressional experts Thomas E. Mann of the Brookings Institution and Norman J. Ornstein of the conservative American Enterprise Institute appeared on MSNBC's Up w/ Chris Hayes...to detail the Republican Party's "all-out war" against President Obama. They explained how the GOP has "been aggressively oppositional in every respect" and how it has succeeded in using parliamentary tools "to deny the majority an opportunity to act."

This is an inconvenient truth that conservatives have tried to bury and obfuscate for the past 5 years:

"This notion that it's Obama and the Democrats who refuse to compromise on policy issues is absurd, but it is an oft-repeated claim that media outlets and conservatives fling out to deflect from, and obscure, Republican obstructionism. Indeed, as Ornstein and Mann pointed out, the fault lies entirely with the Republicans."

Shaw Kenawe said...

Yes. Gerrymandering helped keep the GOP in charge of the House and thwarted the will of the people:

"It can be a bit difficult to tally up the popular vote in House elections because you have to go ballot by ballot, and many incumbents run unopposed. But The Washington Post's Dan Keating did the work and found that Democrats got 54,301,095 votes while Republicans got 53,822,442. That's a close election -- 48.8%-48.5% --but it's still a popular vote win for the Democrats. Those precise numbers might change a bit as the count finalizes, but the tally isn't likely to flip.

What saved Boehner's majority wasn't the will of the people but the power of redistricting. Republicans used their control over the redistricting process to great effect, packing Democrats into tighter and tighter districts and managing to restructure races so even a slight loss for Republicans in the popular vote still meant a healthy majority in the House."


If you can find anything that disputes this, please provide me with a link.

SOURCE

Les Carpenter said...

Basically you left me with the same questions unanswered. That is fine, this is America where pointing fingers is standard, more entertaining, and it insures the continuation of the status quo.

Life and American politics are beautiful. The politics do get stale however, but, never fear, the partisans soon arrive and spice things up.

Now, off to the gym for a three hour burn...

okjimm said...

I always thought of Nixon as a corrupt,venal meglomaniac. A real Shit. Rather the same way I think of GWB, only he was smarter.

and by the way, do not pay the ransom, I have escaped and am now hiding in a safe place.

Anonymous said...

shaws right rational nation usa

heres what is on one of those extreme right blogs today:


The only reason society voted for him twice him is because they are clueless to whats going on.half the country is on welfare collecting Obama phones,why would they hate him.we are in a welfare state& now he"ll have all the illegals support,while he takes them on a ride to Disneyworld.I personally despise Barack Hussain Obama, and EVERYTHING that he stands for. As well as his Fat-Assed wife."

those aare the people rn nation sides with and dises the liberals? nice work.

Leo T. Lyon said...

Richard Nixon was a deceitful liar. Those who praise him and ignore his deep-seated anti-Semitism want people to ignore his character, which as okjimm very well put it, was shitty. Nixon's own paranoia and deceit undid him, not the so-called "liberal media," as most of his apologists claim. He screwed himself by being himself. So he was smart and was experienced? What good is smarts and experience when a man is basically a shit?

Robert D. said...

Nixon was also obsessed with his predecessors, instructing his chief of staff Bob Haldeman in July 1971 to organise a covert raid of a Washington thinktank to uncover information it might have about John F Kennedy.

"I want a son-of-a-bitch. I want someone just as tough as I am [to carry out the raid] ... I want it done. I want the Brookings Institution cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that has somebody else take the blame."

Documents released alongside the recordings detail the progress made by his staff in carrying out a presidential order to remove all pictures of past presidents from the White House.

An office belonging to a junior civil servant in which he had seen two photographs of Kennedy, one bearing a personal inscription, particularly offended Nixon. "On January 14," wrote White House staffer Alexander Butterfield in a 1970 memo, "the project was completed and all 35 offices displayed only your photograph."


This is the guy many conservatives prefer over Obama?

That's what Obama Derangement Syndrome does to a person. They'd prefer a paranoid narcissistic drunk to a stable temperate natured Obama.

Amazing.

PJE said...

President Obama has all of the class, intelligence and foreign and domestic policy mastery that Nixon wished he had. The whiners are out in numbers trying to negate what history will forever testify: Nixon was a complex, but in the end, an insecure, anti-semite paranoid creep.

Wht we'll always remember him for:

"I am not a crook."

Other great momenbts in conservaland:

"I am not a witch."

"I can see Russia from my house."

"They misunderestimated me."



Anonymous said...

Oh yeah very classy to whine and blame everyone else

Edwin Mice said...

Nixon's the One! The RESIGNED ONE!

The only ONE to resign in the history of the American presidency!

What a hero for the right!

Bwahahahahaha!

BB-Idaho said...

To paraphrase RN, I'd take Nixon
...over Reagan, any day.

Les Carpenter said...

I have never come across more hateful ignorant individuals as I see here on this thread.

Anonymous said...

Obviously RN doesn't read AOW's blog

Les Carpenter said...

Whatever Anonymous.

Dave Miller said...

Really RN? Never? Granted some here are out of line, but like some pointed out, what about the places like AOW, Mustang, Geez, and the classic of bygone days, Malcontent...

Sorry to say there is just not much here that even comes close to rivaling those places not just for their naked hate, but for some, their refusal to even enter into a conversation with the left.

Shaw has never banned a conservative as long as they did not personally attack anyone... can some of those other blogs make that statement?

I am pretty sure the people of whom you speak here today are not part of the regular crowd... and you know that...

Shaw Kenawe said...

RN, your comment @August 9, 2014 at 10:09 PM is a bit over the top, IMO.

No one on this thread attacked you or called anyone vile names. I pretty much allow comments to pass as long as those guidelines are kept.

I don't agree with everything posted here, but I do allow a difference of opinion and I do not allow savage attacks on those who give them. I also do not like the sort of gross insults that are allowed over at the blogs Dave mentioned.

I'm surprised you didn't let your disgust known over at those blogs where they insult and degrade President Obama and his family, on a daily basis, with the most appalling racist attacks.

Apparently people who criticize Richard Nixon and his presidency are more hateful than the people on those blogs who degrade, by vile name-calling the First Family and who never fail to attack everything any liberal says or does.


Shaw Kenawe said...

BTW, my blog is on blog rolls of various liberal blogs, and it is sometimes picked up by and referred to by "Crooks and Liars." That's probably where the non-regulars come from.

I do not follow and check on "Feedjit" every day. I don't have time.

Robert D. said...

As a follow up to shw's answer to RN nation, here's what is posted at one of the blogs mentioned:

"AnonymousAugust 9, 2014 at 8:52:00 AM EDT

Nixon was ten times more honorable than that muslime mulatto commie ape who lies to the American people on a minute by minute basis every day."

That's just ONE example of the racists who continue to post at that blog and who are welcome there by their fellow conservatives, even encouraged because those sorts of racist comments are left for anyone to see what "hateful ignorant" people write.

But RN says we who post here are hateful and ignorant because we gave our opinion on Richard Nixon's presidency.

Shaw Kenawe said...

Dave: "Shaw has never banned a conservative..."


I have to make a correction, Dave.

I have banned a couple of extremist conservatives:

Rusty Shackleford: (he's called me a c**t on other blogs, so I see no reason to engage him in any sort of discussion.)

Thersities: (his harassing, spamming, and stalking of me and this blog (and even, at times, The Swash Zone) over the past two years are reason enough to exclude him from P.E.

Radical Redneck: (He and Rusty S. may be one and the same and may be the multi-personalities that copy and paste P.E.'s commenters and my blogposts over at the conservative blogs mentioned.) R.R., as mentioned here many times, has sent me porno photo of female genetalia as his way of discussing the issues. And he never misses an opportunity to leave racist images and name-calling of Michelle Obama at various other conservative blogs.

There's no reason to discuss anything with people like Rusty S., Thersities, or Radical R.

They're trolls interested only in spreading their toxic anger.

Les Carpenter said...

Shaw, I typically do not visit the blogs that are vile and IMO idiotic, save a couple. On those I regularly take issue and often my comments are deleted.

So, try again Shaw. It seems "hateful" is the meme that liberals assign to the motives if anyone who dares disagree with them. Please take note of this clarification, I did not say ALL liberals. In addition I acknowledge there are a fair amount of conservatives that are as*holes and I have made my posistion quite clear with respect to the disgusting and disrespectful comments leveled at the President and First Lady.

Have a nice Sunday.

Les Carpenter said...

Robert D, check the comment section again over at that blog.

Although I wouldn't be surprised if the administrator has deleted my comment since I posted.

So stuff it.

Robert D. said...

. "It seems "hateful" is the meme that liberals assign to the motives if anyone who dares disagree with them."


That's funny...the writer of the above called the people here "hateful and ignorant," now he's accusing shaw of writing what he wrote?

Mr. RN, you introduced the meme "hateful and ignorant" and labeled people who did not agree with your assessment of Nixon as such.

Just to keep the record straight:

No one called you any names, you told shaw's commenters that they were haeful and ignorant.

I guess it's the same old same old with certain ideologues, accuse other people of what you say aabout them.

Les Carpenter said...

Robert D. find someone else to harass, I'm not interested in your games.

BTW, I did say all, those who are know who they are.

Les Carpenter said...

Correction... didn't say all.