Blogs: Rick Perlstein

George Will Reviews "Nixonland": Quick Thoughts

Rick Perlstein — Sun, 11 May 2008 12:53:03 -0400

1) Will says the most important thing to know is that I'm a condescending liberal. For me the fascinating thing is that I think I'm a better critic of liberal condescension in the 1960s and '70s than he is. It's just that—there's no way to sustain the argument that liberals are condescending now in anything like the way they were then. (When Reagan's campaign for governor began, Esquire said there was "rejoicing at Lassie for President headquarters"--can you imagine such patronization now?) But in the end, the deified "liberals are condescending" trope is the only way a conservative like Will knows how to talk about liberals; Whatever the actual facts on the ground, he's still stuck in the frame bequeathed to us by Nixon—which, of course, is the point of the book, which he admirably reinforced.

2) He appends a strange and gratuitous list of my "errors." One is that there were not, as a I claim, tanks at Kent State. I welcome Mr. Will's input as to how to identify the hulking, armored tracked vehicle depicted on page 200 of James Michener's Kent State: What Happened and Why. He can answer care of this blog.

3) Once here, I hope he joins the Facebook group.

Parting thought

Rick Perlstein — Sat, 10 May 2008 16:44:36 -0400

I hereby decree PERLSTEIN'S LAW:

In an online argument, the badder a wingnut gets his butt beat, the more likely they are to excoriate the butt-beater for using bad words.

NIXONLAND News

Rick Perlstein — Fri, 09 May 2008 18:47:20 -0400

This weekend I leave for a two week tour to promote my new book, the product of seven years' labor. I'll be blogging here sporadically if at all.

Folks interested in keeping up on the latest NIXONLAND news should join the Facebook group.

Seattle folks can come see me Monday, May 12 at Town Hall at 7:30; Bay Area friends can join me at Book Passage,
51 Tamal Vista Blvd. in Corte Madera, Tuesday afternoon May 13 at 1:30 at Cody's in Berkeley Wednesday night May 14 at 7; SoCal types can track me down Thursday, May 15 at Pi on Sunset, 8828 Sunset Blvd, at 7.

Week two: Friends in the Washington D.C. area should join us for the panel and reception May 20 being jointly sponsored by Campaign for America's Future and the Nation—and featuring the great Helen Thomas! Details: see the ad at upper right. I'll also be reading the previous evening at Olsson's at 418 7th St. NW. New Yorkers can boogie down on the NIXONLAND tip May 21 at Borders at 461 Park Avenue, and fans of adult beverages shouldn't miss the book party the next night, Thursday the 22, at Brooklyn's Last Exit bar at 7, 136 Atlantic Avenue, Brooklyn.

I hope to meet some of you there. My engagement in the progressive blogosphere was more than incidental to this project, as I explain in the acknowledgments

When I wrote my first book, my ability to reconstruct the mental world of activists working for political change was profoundly enhanced by my work as a participant-observer with the New York Working Families Party. This time, I enjoyed a privileged perch within a sui generis movement for political change and media accountability as extraordinary in its way s the rise of the CIO in the 1930s and the Moral Majority and Christian Coalition in the 1980s and '90s: the progressive blogosphere, or 'netroots.' Here's where the paring gets pretty ruthless, but I'd at least like to recognize John Amato, John Aravosis, Duncan Black, the late Steve Gilliard, Jane Hamsher, Ezra Klein, Howie Klein, Josh Marshal, Markos Moulitsas, Max Sawicky, Pastor Dan Schultz, Matt Stoller—and, first among equals, the one person besides my wife with whom I've enjoyed my most important intellectual partnership, Heather 'Digby' Parton.

I should have mentioned my readers, as well.

Blast from the Past: That Sinking Feeling

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 19:43:58 -0400

Longtime fans of this blog who recall my epic 67-part series on sinkholes and their relation to conservative failure may wonder why I haven't yet weighed in on the 600-foot gargantua that has been opening up in Daisetta, Texas. The reason is that my interest was in sinkholes that opened up as a result of public infrastructure, specifically the nation's underground wastewater pipes which, I never tired of pointed out, are rated a D-minus by the American Society of Civil Engineers, not ones that are the result of private infrastructure, as appears to be the case with this one caused by Sunoco crude oil pipelines.

But I can't resist this one comment. The AP article cites a geologist in claiming, "Sinkholes are rare."

I used to have a GoogleNews alert for sinkholes, and after getting ten emails a day, and figuring I'd already quite made my point, I quit. But—did I mentioned this?—because of the conservative principle of tax-starvation that has earned our underground wastewater infrastructure a grade of D-minus by the American Society of Civil Engineers—let us make no mistake: sinkholes are in no way rare.

F'rinstance consider this story, which appeared an hour ago:

PEARL CITY, Hawaii -- An 8-inch main broke on Hoomoana Street and it created a hole big enough to swallow a car. No one drove into it.

Residents said they heard running water at about 4 a.m. and called police. Officers kept watch until a Board of Water Supply crew arrived.

The sinkhole buckled the asphalt and literally lifted part of the street.
The main break left 18 homes without water for a short time.

These are Our Debating Partners

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 18:25:35 -0400

I'll be writing more in weeks to come on the conservative response to my book. Briefly, I'm fascinated by how many conservatives have been defending Watergate and arguing that America was lucky to escape the Sixties with no worse than Watergate—that Richard Nixon, in other words, wasn't that much of an authoritarian anyway as these things go, so what's all the fuss about?

But here's a new one on me: a conservative blogger from Canada who uses the occasion of my book to flippantly suggest (lighten up!) that the "hard hat riot" of May 8, 1970—Happy Hard Hat Riot Day, everybody!—was kind of nifty, or at least nothing worse than what the left was typically responsible for. And here is the NIXONLAND excerpt by which she affects to support her "argument."

‘These hippies are getting what they deserve,' said John Halloran, one of the construction workers, while the mêlée was still going on. As he talked a coworker standing with him yelled, ‘Damn straight,' and punched a young man in a business suit who said he disagreed."

The mob moved on to nearby Pace University, setting fire to a banner reading VIETNAM, LAOS, CAMBODIA, KENT. The glass doors to the building were chained shut from the inside against attack. Hard hats crashed through them and chased down unkempt students, joined by conservative students angry at strikers interfering with their education. Some longhairs were beaten with lead pipes wrapped in American flags. Trinity Church became a makeshift field hospital (the mob ripped down the Red Cross banner). The New York Times ran a picture the next day of a construction worker and a man in a tie charging down a cobblestone street to beat someone with an American flag. Pete Hamill, who had only the previous year offered his solidarity to "The Revolt of the White Lower Middle Class," now withdrew his endorsement in horror: "The police collaborated with the construction workers in the same way that Southern sheriffs used to collaborate with the rednecks when the rednecks were beating up freedom riders."

Police made only six arrests. Perhaps they agreed with the construction worker who told The Wall Street Journal, "I'm doing this because my brother got wounded in Vietnam, and I think this will help our boys over there by pulling this country together."

Clipping the Eagle's Wings

Rick Perlstein — Thu, 08 May 2008 15:33:38 -0400

Kathy G weighs in at Crooked Timber with just about the definitive post on this obscene business of Washington University in St. Louis conferring an honorary degree on Phyllis Schlafly. Two more things worth saying, however.

First, I want to respond to commenter Milton Appling below. He points out what he claims should be a mitigating factor: that no one should be surprised that Wash U. is wrapped up in this nonsense, given that they host a right-wing business school named for conservative benefactor John Olin: "That should be all that you need to know about Wash U regarding giving the Eagle an honorary degree." Another friend, a St. Louis native, likewise writes in to point out the institution's historic conservative, citing the way they dissolved their sociology department in the 1980s as a way to shake loose all the suspect lefties lodged within.

In fact, the Olin business is all you need to know why it's so important to press forward with the movement to shame Wash U. on their egregious lapse of intellectual standards.

One of the first principles of politics is to choose battlefields to fight on that unite your side and divide the opponents. The fact that Wash University's administration and benefactor class is lousy with the sort of conservatives who love Milton Friedman-style business schools is all the more reason to point up the absurdity of Washington University association with Phyllis Schlafly. Schlafly believes a secretive cast of bankers—the "Bildergergers"—are conspiring to impose One World Government on the United States. She believed it in the 1960s, when she said the Bilderbergers were fronting for the International Communist Conspiracy, and she believes it now (or, at least, she believed it in 1997 when I interviewed her; I have it on tape) that that International Communist Conspiracy is fifteen years gone. Schlafly believes—or claimed to believe—that if the Equal Rights Amendment passed, boys bathrooms and girls bathrooms, would be outlawed, and that little girls would be forced to see little boys' wee-wees each and every day; and thatwomen would not be able to refuse their husbands if their husbands demanded they went out to work—would be slaves of their husbands. And yes, these things are crazy. And Phyllis Schlafly believes them, because Phyllis Schlafly—for all her brilliance, organizational accumen, and ability to gain get granted respect among the councils of the respected and powerful—is crazy.

If the city of St. Louis learns, if the greater Washington University community learns, if America learns, if the world learns just how crazy she is, thanks to the efforts of this movement, the respectable business conservatives of Washington University's Oilin School will want nothing to do with her. She will be, as she should be, an albatross around their respectable conservative necks.

The Age of Reagan cannot survive the successful wedging of its business constituency, which craves nothing so much as respectability, and its lunatic constituency, who appear the more unrespectable the closer they're held to the light. And so, progressives, hold Phyllis Schlafly to the light. You have nothing to lose but your chains.

Here's the other point, and it's a depressing, disconcerting one: in l'affair Schlafly we have already lost. If this campaign succeeds, there will still be not inconsiderable collateral damage to the progressive movement: conservatives will once more be able to claim themselves free speech martyrs, "silenced" by political correctness. It reminds me—yes, I truly am the hammer to which everything in the world of politics is a nail—of a story involving, yes, Richard Nixon.

Early in 1966 Richard Nixon was offered an honorary degree from the University of Rochester. His political friends in New York—who understood themselves to be re-grooming the disgraced two-time loser's image as a responsible statesman, with an eye toward his 1968 presidential run—were ecstatic: occasions like his robe-bedecked commencement speech in Rochester were what would kill the poisoning image of the slashing, low-brow "old Nixon" at long last.

Only problem: the previous year a (then-Marxist) history professor at Rutgers said that he would "welcome" a Communist victory in Vietnam; the Republican gubernatorial candidate made it his marquee issue for the fall; and Nixon came to the state to campaign for him, braying thus:

I do not raise the question of Professor Genovese's right to be for segregation or integration, for free love or celibacy, for Communism or anarchy--in peacetime. But the United States is at war. [ed.: Anarchistic multiracial orgies, in wartime, no less!... If anyone had welcomed a Nazi victory during World War II there would have been no question about what to do. Leadership requires that the governor step in and put the security of the nation above the security of the individual.

The Rochester faculty, enraged that an enemy of academic freedom could be honored at their free academy, got up a petition to bar him from speaking. Nixon wrote a long and legalistic letter to the New York Times arguing that he as actually arguing for the preservation of academic freedom "by defending the system of government which guarantees freedom of speech to individuals." The swells at Nixon's Wall Street law firm, Len Garment wrote in his memoirs, were annoyed that he just didn't fold his cards and admit the mistake. The boss was nonplused. He told Garment to stop listening to the "damned press." Nixon understood that in fact he held all the cards in this game. In the Gallup Poll, among presidential contenders, he was the leading Republican by 13 points. Sticking it to the liberal intellectual elites didn't hurt him. It helped.

He spoke at Rochester in June in defiance of a successful faculty petition not to offer him an honorary degree, lying that "since leaving the office of Vice President it has been my policy not to accept honorary degrees." He both got across his right-wing message ("If we are to defend academic freedom from encroachment we must also defend it from its own excesses") are cloaked himself in the martyr's mantle of moral superiority.

Phyllis will, too. Even if she doesn't speak.

We have to stop these invitations before they start. Venal conservatives lobby for them. They harass liberal institutions to get them, by baiting boards of trustees that they will be excoriated for ideological "intolerance" for not extending them. Then—win win—they watch the fun that ensues.

No reason, for all that, not to fight this fight anyway. We can get ahead of the game, and force them to play it on our battlefield for once. Tie Phyllis Schlafly to Washington University, whether she speaks there or not. Make it poisonous for "respectable" conservatives to have anything to do with lunatic, lying conspiracy mongering constituency they need in order to succeed politically. Unite progressives. Split conservatives. Wash, rinse, repeat. We shall overcome.

Crash the Eagle

Rick Perlstein — Wed, 07 May 2008 14:57:38 -0400

I find this stunning: a great American institution of higher learning, Washington University in St. Louis, is giving Phyllis Schlafly an honorary degree.

Others will make the make the argument that this is obscene because of Schlafly historic engagement with insane conspiracy theories, and this will be a perfectly reasonable argument. (When I interviewed Schlafly for my Goldwater book, she mentioned something offhand about the Bilderbergers. I didn't know what that meant. She explained that it was a retreat where the elites got together and decided how to rule the world. I'm not kidding. She said this. I have it on tape. Proud of yourself, Washington University?)

Others will make the argument that this is obscene because Schlafly has spent the last several decades working full-time—working overtime, in fact—fighting other women's rights to work full time. And this will be a perfectly reasonable argument, too.

Others will make the argument that this is obscene because Schlafly is a right-wing extremist. This is not such a reasonable argument; I can think of several right-wing extremists who, on the strength of their intellectual accomplishments, deserve honorary degrees.

No, my argument that this is obscene is that, except in the case of fiction authors, great American institutions of higher learning should not bestow honorary degrees on people who habitually make things up. One of the most famous was that, if the Equal Rights Amendment was passed, "men's restrooms" and "women's restrooms" would be outlawed, and men and women would all have to go to the bathroom together. There others; there still are—she probably hasn't gone a day without lying in her entire adult life. (Her latest lie is that Barack Obama is propounding a global tax.)

Here's a passage on the Phyllis Schlafly Report in NIXONLAND:

"This Amendment will absolutely and positively make women subject to the draft," he subscribers learned. It would license a man to "demand that his wife go to work to help pay for family expenses.... The women's liberals are radicals who are waging total assault on the family, on marriage, and on children."

Washington University, I'd only ask you this: is there any intellectual standard below which you'd not be willing to fall?

Want to organize against this bastardization of the degrees of the hardworking students of Wash U? Click here.

Loving

Rick Perlstein — Mon, 05 May 2008 14:53:53 -0400

Mildred Loving was a black woman who married a white man in Virginia, which was against the law in the state. She took her case all the way up to the Supreme Court, which struck down interracial marriage bans in the 1967 Loving v. Virginia decision. Today it was announced that she has died at the age of 68. But what her AP obituary doesn't mention—hopefully others will correct the oversight—is that last year Mildred Loving came out foursquare for marriage equality for same-sex couples as well, and insisted you should, too. Here was her statement:

Loving for All

By Mildred Loving

Prepared for Delivery on June 12, 2007,
The 40th Anniversary of the Loving vs. Virginia Announcement

When my late husband, Richard, and I got married in Washington, DC in 1958, it wasn't
to make a political statement or start a fight. We were in love, and we wanted to be
married.

We didn't get married in Washington because we wanted to marry there. We did it there
because the government wouldn't allow us to marry back home in Virginia where we
grew up, where we met, where we fell in love, and where we wanted to be together and
build our family. You see, I am a woman of color and Richard was white, and at that
time people believed it was okay to keep us from marrying because of their ideas of who
should marry whom.

When Richard and I came back to our home in Virginia, happily married, we had no
intention of battling over the law. We made a commitment to each other in our love and
lives, and now had the legal commitment, called marriage, to match. Isn't that what
marriage is?

Not long after our wedding, we were awakened in the middle of the night in our own
bedroom by deputy sheriffs and actually arrested for the "crime" of marrying the wrong
kind of person. Our marriage certificate was hanging on the wall above the bed.

The state prosecuted Richard and me, and after we were found guilty, the judge declared:
""Almighty God created the races white, black, yellow, malay and red, and he placed
them on separate continents. And but for the interference with his arrangement there
would be no cause for such marriages. The fact that he separated the races shows that he
did not intend for the races to mix." He sentenced us to a year in prison, but offered to
suspend the sentence if we left our home in Virginia for 25 years exile.

We left, and got a lawyer. Richard and I had to fight, but still were not fighting for a
cause. We were fighting for our love.

Though it turned out we had to fight, happily Richard and I didn't have to fight alone.
Thanks to groups like the ACLU and the NAACP Legal Defense & Education Fund, and
so many good people around the country willing to speak up, we took our case for the
freedom to marry all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court. And on June 12, 1967, the
Supreme Court ruled unanimously that, "The freedom to marry has long been recognized
as one of the vital personal rights essential to the orderly pursuit of happiness by free
men," a "basic civil right."

My generation was bitterly divided over something that should have been so clear and
right. The majority believed that what the judge said, that it was God's plan to keep
people apart, and that government should discriminate against people in love. But I have
lived long enough now to see big changes. The older generation's fears and prejudices
have given way, and today's young people realize that if someone loves someone they
have a right to marry.

Surrounded as I am now by wonderful children and grandchildren, not a day goes by that
I don't think of Richard and our love, our right to marry, and how much it meant to me to
have that freedom to marry the person precious to me, even if others thought he was the
"wrong kind of person" for me to marry. I believe all Americans, no matter their race, no
matter their sex, no matter their sexual orientation, should have that same freedom to
marry. Government has no business imposing some people’s religious beliefs over
others. Especially if it denies people’s civil rights.

I am still not a political person, but I am proud that Richard's and my name is on a court
case that can help reinforce the love, the commitment, the fairness, and the family that so
many people, black or white, young or old, gay or straight seek in life. I support the
freedom to marry for all. That's what Loving, and loving, are all about.

Conservative failure between covers

Rick Perlstein — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:25:57 -0400

My review of Mickey Edwards's Reclaiming Conservatism in this week's Washington Post Book World.

Iranagain

Rick Perlstein — Sun, 04 May 2008 13:22:19 -0400

One of the side-obsessions of this blog has been the Bush administration's machinations to drag us into a war in Iran. Here's the latest, from the very reliable Andrew Cockburn:

Six weeks ago, President Bush signed a secret finding authorizing a covert offensive against the Iranian regime that, according to those familiar with its contents, "unprecedented in its scope."

Bush's secret directive covers actions across a huge geographic area – from Lebanon to Afghanistan – but is also far more sweeping in the type of actions permitted under its guidelines – up to and including the assassination of targeted officials. This widened scope clears the way, for example, for full support for the military arm of Mujahedin-e Khalq, the cultish Iranian opposition group, despite its enduring position on the State Department's list of terrorist groups.

Similarly, covert funds can now flow without restriction to Jundullah, or "army of god," the militant Sunni group in Iranian Baluchistan – just across the Afghan border -- whose leader was featured not long ago on Dan Rather Reports cutting his brother in law's throat.

Other elements that will benefit from U.S. largesse and advice include Iranian Kurdish nationalists, as well the Ahwazi arabs of south west Iran. Further afield, operations against Iran's Hezbollah allies in Lebanon will be stepped up, along with efforts to destabilize the Syrian regime.

All this costs money, which in turn must be authorized by Congress, or at least a by few witting members of the intelligence committees. That has not proved a problem. An initial outlay of $300 million to finance implementation of the finding has been swiftly approved with bipartisan support, apparently regardless of the unpopularity of the current war and the perilous condition of the U.S. economy.

Until recently, the administration faced a serious obstacle to action against Iran in the form of Centcom commander Admiral William Fallon, who made no secret of his contempt for official determination to take us to war. In a widely publicized incident last January, Iranian patrol boats approached a U.S. ship in what the Pentagon described as a "taunting" manner. According to Centcom staff officers, the American commander on the spot was about to open fire. At that point, the U.S. was close to war. He desisted only when Fallon personally and explicitly ordered him not to shoot. The White House, according to the staff officers, was "absolutely furious" with Fallon for defusing the incident.

Fallon has since departed. His abrupt resignation in early March followed the publication of his unvarnished views on our policy of confrontation with Iran, something that is unlikely to happen to his replacement, George Bush's favorite general, David Petraeus....

Read the whole thing.