{"id":15579,"date":"2012-06-19T09:03:35","date_gmt":"2012-06-19T14:03:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=15579"},"modified":"2012-06-19T09:03:35","modified_gmt":"2012-06-19T14:03:35","slug":"robert-fulford-1963-74-was-a-period-where-everything-connects-in-a-web-of-deceit-paranoia-and-distorted-ambition","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2012\/06\/19\/robert-fulford-1963-74-was-a-period-where-everything-connects-in-a-web-of-deceit-paranoia-and-distorted-ambition\/","title":{"rendered":"Robert Fulford: 1963-74 was a period where “everything connects in a web of deceit, paranoia and distorted ambition”"},"content":{"rendered":"

An interesting article by Robert Fulford<\/a> in the National Post<\/em>, discussing the time between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the resignation of Richard Nixon. I was too young to pay any attention to politics in those days, and I only started being aware of how weird it was through reading Hunter S. Thompson’s political writings of the time — and I still think it’s a great encapsulation of the bottled insanity of the US political system of that era.<\/p>\n

For 11 years, 1963 to 1974, tragedy and shame were the most persistent themes of American politics. That period has never been given a name, but after four decades it feels like a distinct unit in history. From the death of John Kennedy to the resignation of Richard Nixon, everything connects in a web of deceit, paranoia and distorted ambition.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

Even after ultimate power fell into Johnson\u2019s hands, it left him squirming in frustration and rage. He was triumphant for a brief moment, pushing through Congress laws that opened society to black Americans. But he felt surrounded by enemies. Although he asked Kennedy\u2019s men to stay on, he never trusted them. When Malvolio leaves the stage he threatens, \u201cI\u2019ll be revenged on the whole pack of you.\u201d That was how Johnson felt about Bobby Kennedy. Caro is especially good on the bitter 15-year struggle that consumed these two men, both smart but both hopelessly lacking in self-awareness.<\/p>\n

Johnson\u2019s second downfall, the swiftly increasing Vietnam war, was also America\u2019s tragedy, a fruitless enterprise that cost many lives and wrecked American confidence in Washington. As Caro now says, \u201cEveryone thinks distrust of government started under Nixon. That\u2019s not true. It started under Johnson.\u201d On Vietnam he lied so consistently that Americans ceased to believe anything he said. Journalists spoke euphemistically of his \u201ccredibility gap.\u201d Trust in the political class never \u2028returned.<\/p>\n

With Johnson so dishonoured that he couldn\u2019t run for re-election in 1968, Nixon succeeded him. He brought with him a style darker and more paranoid even than Johnson\u2019s. In covering up a break-in by his party\u2019s operatives at the Watergate complex, he revealed that everything said about him by his worst enemies was true.<\/p>\n

[. . .]<\/p>\n

From beginning to end, Schlesinger despised Nixon. In 1962, when Nixon brought out his self-revealing memoir, Six Crises<\/em>, demonstrating that his main interest in life was judging how others saw him, Schlesinger wrote in his diary \u201cI do not see how his political career can survive this book.\u201d Schlesinger, while he served power-mad leaders, didn\u2019t understand them. He couldn\u2019t imagine that just six years later, in 1968, Nixon\u2019s furious ambition would make him president and then get him re-elected to a second term, the one he failed to complete because Watergate made him the first American president ever to resign in disgrace, a fate even worse than Johnson\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Schlesinger\u2019s book provides an accompaniment to this heartbreaking era of shame. It never fails to remind us that, no matter what theories the historians construct, the course of history is usually shaped by a few frail, frightened and often deeply damaged human beings.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

An interesting article by Robert Fulford in the National Post, discussing the time between the assassination of John F. Kennedy and the resignation of Richard Nixon. I was too young to pay any attention to politics in those days, and I only started being aware of how weird it was through reading Hunter S. Thompson’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[84,7,28,53,13],"tags":[311,263,225,595,515,585],"class_list":["post-15579","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-government","category-history","category-media","category-politics","category-usa","tag-1960s","tag-1970s","tag-jfk","tag-lbj","tag-richardnixon","tag-vietnam"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-43h","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15579","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=15579"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15579\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15580,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15579\/revisions\/15580"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=15579"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=15579"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=15579"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}