Right and wrong.
Right: anyone who relies on politicians to Do the Left Thing out of the goodness of their hearts is naive. A story I've told her before, possibly apocryphal, FDR heard a union delegation on some policy issue and said, OK you've convinced me. Now go out there and make me do it. This is obvious but it bears remembering.
Wrong: Slimy and evil as Nixon was, Republicans were different before Reagan and especially Bush. Even Nixon. There was a sense of noblesse oblige. There were actual liberal Republicans. Mayor John Lindsay of New York. Nelson Rockefeller. Several Midwestern Govs who names will not necessarily be remembered on the coasts: William Milikan of Michigan, Big Jim Thompson of Illinois. I've _worked_ for one of these liberal Republicans, the biggest bleeding heart liberal I know, actually. Nixon, Ford, and Bush the First were _not_ liberal Republicans. Bush the Second does what Nixon only dreamed in his drunkenmost hearts of darkness. But not=liberal-Republicans in them days were left beyond what any Democrat with serious aspirations to national office beyond a safe House district would even allow him/herself to think today.
So. times have changed for the worse. If we were in a position to make Bush the Second do the sorts of things FDR wanted to be forced to do and Nixon could be grudgingly pressured into doing, W would still be a pathetic loser, drowning his sorrows and failures in drink or Jesus, we'd have Republicans as well as Democrats who called themselves liberals, and we'd be pillorying the liberal establishment as part of the problem, not the solution.
--- Mike Ballard <swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au> wrote:
> On Tue, 3 Apr 2007 15:26:24 -0700 (PDT) andie
> nachgeborenen
> <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> writes:
> >
> > --- Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> wrote:
> >
> > > New York Post [Page Six] - April 3, Elsewhere in
> the
> > book, Nixon says of
> > > the press he
> > > famously loathed for most of his career:
> "Goddamn
> > > newspaper ----.
> > > They're a bunch of sluts."
> >
> > True, true. Nixon seem more and more right as the
> > years go by.
> >
> >
> >
>
> When I think about how Tricky Dick was at least the
> second
> most progressive president in my lifetime, and
> incomparably more progressive than any of his
> successors, it's enough to make you puke.
> ******************
>
> Nixon only looked progressive because he was
> conservatively responding to the
> grassroots pressures of the times i.e. we the people
> were demanding a lot more
> from the ruling class (1968-1975) AND we were
> trangressing the boundaries of
> the ruling culture on a daily basis--at least some
> of us--enough of us, in
> fact, to cause the Nixon era, the Nixon Presidency
> to look progressive and
> liberal these daze. We could make the Shrub look
> liberal, if enough of us were
> engaging in the praxis of social revolution today.
>
> Over and out,
> Mike B)
>
> Wage-slave's Escape
> http://happystiletto.blogspot.com/
>
>
>
>
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