Tea at Trianon: Watergate Revisited

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

Watergate Revisited

What really happened behind the scenes.

A battle to control the soul of the president, not unusual in any administration, was under way. While the conservative, hawkish in de pen dent oilmen thought he was insufficiently loyal to their cause, the Rockefeller Republicans felt the same from their side. Writing in the Dallas Morning News, Robert Baskin noted fears among the Eastern corporate elite that Nixon was being dominated by the right wing. A few months later Baskin further underlined the point in an article headlined “Divisiveness Within GOP Rising.” In truth, Nixon’s reign was a highly complicated one, far from doctrinaire, with issues handled on a case- by-case basis. Thus, Attorney General John Mitchell could say the administration was against busing but for desegregation. Nixon himself could complain about people in his administration being too tough on corporations, yet his Justice Department aggressively pursued antitrust actions that angered industry. While waging the Vietnam War, Nixon held secret peace talks with the North Vietnamese Communists. He also produced a series of liberal-leaning reforms, including creating the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration. And Nixon implemented the first major affirmative action program. But some of his Supreme Court nominees leaned far to the right, and Nixon and his attorney general championed tough law-and-order tactics against political protesters and dissidents. His presidency was a mixed bag, meaning no one was entirely happy, and everyone perceived someone else as having the inside track.

Thus, the July 1969 Dallas Morning News article describing moderates as fearful of the influence of a cabal of conservatives – a cabal that included such names as Tower, Morton, Dent, and Allison. What was left unsaid was that all these people were in the Bush camp. If nothing else, it was a testament to Poppy’s dexterity: the embodiment of blue-blooded Wall Street interests had morphed into a champion of the radical, upstart Southwest. (Read entire post.)

Via A Conservative Blog for Peace. Share