WI: No (or Fewer) Enablers in the Nixon Administration

Nixon said that the problem was that he relied on people who ended up doing him in. Which is fair, to a degree. However, they did so by doing the sort of thing that Nixon sought to have done. There was a culture in the White House that stemmed from Nixon himself, which lead to Watergate and other similar corruptions and unconstitutional actions. Indeed, much of the great works that came from the administration were in contrast to Nixon, lead by good government Republicans. Therefore, what if the Nixon administration had no or at least fewer enablers? That being fewer people willing to support the president in that line of thinking and action, and unwilling to pursue such actions on his behalf, and who pressured and advised him against it?
 
You'd have to pretty radically change Nixon IMO and get him associating with different people earlier on in his career.
His mean streak had been pretty apparent since the early fifties with his hard-line stance towards communism.
 
And/or, John Mitchell had somewhat different experiences as a young man and to Nixon's idea of developing an 'executive capacity' or however he put it, Mitchell says, No, we can't do that shit or it will come back and bite us in the ass.

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I'd say the SALT treaty with Russia was largely Nixon's doing, as well as re-establishing diplomatic relations with China, although that was largely for triangulation purposes.
 
Opinion

George P. Shultz


New York Times, Jan. 8, 2003

http://mobile.nytimes.com/2003/01/08/opinion/how-a-republican-desegregated-the-south-s-schools.html

In 1970, seven states -- Alabama, Arkansas, Georgia, Louisiana, Mississippi, North Carolina and South Carolina -- continued to enforce the dual school system. This was in clear defiance of the Supreme Court's 1954 decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education, which declared dual school systems to be unconstitutional. It was also in defiance of a 1969 court decision ordering an end to further delay.

If it's possible to imagine, the subject of desegregation was becoming more inflamed by the day. In March 1970, President Richard M. Nixon decided to take action. He declared Brown to be ''right in both constitutional and human terms'' and expressed his intention to enforce the law. He also put in place a process to carry out the court's mandate. Vice President Spiro T. Agnew and I (then secretary of labor) were asked to lead a cabinet committee to manage the transition to desegregated schools.

The vice president said he wanted no part of this effort. So I became its de facto chairman, with help from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a counselor to the president, and Leonard Garment, one of the president's lawyers. With the president's support, we formed biracial committees in each of the seven states. The idea was to reach out to key leaders. Many were reluctant to serve, the whites fearing too close an association with desegregation, the blacks concerned that the committee might be a sham.

The first group to come to Washington was from Mississippi. We met in the Roosevelt Room of the White House, across the hall from the Oval Office. The discussion was civil, but deep divisions were evident. I let them argue for a while. Then, by prearrangement, I had John Mitchell, the attorney general, drop by. He was known in the South as a tough guy, and on the whole was regarded by whites as sympathetic to their cause. I asked Mitchell what he planned to do about the schools. ''I am attorney general, and I will enforce the law,'' he growled in his gruff, pipe-smoking way. He offered no judgments about whether this was good, bad or indifferent. ''I will enforce the law,'' he repeated. With that, he left.

I then addressed the group. ''This discussion has been intense and revealing, but you can see that it's not really relevant,'' I told them. ''The fact is, desegregation is going to happen, whether you like it or not. You have a great stake in seeing that this effort is managed in a reasonable way.'' Gradually, the discussion shifted to more operational issues.
Maybe just if people's work schedules were a liitle different, George and the President could casually talk more often? I think George Shultz is somewhat of a moderate, plus as a former marine, the President would probably respect him on grounds of 'toughness.'

And maybe the President could build on this type of domestic success? Not going to have it every time. Nothing works every time. But might be something Dick Nixon would set a higher threshold on endangering?
 
Dick Nixon very much liked strategic thinking . . .

So, what if he took an interest in projections that energy crises were a real possibility?
 
I always wondered why someone like a Finch never spoke up and said, "Are you guys bleeping nuts? This election is in our hip pockets. McGovern might carry three or four states and the District, and that's all. What could this possibly gain of any practicality? And what if someone screws up, especially with a bunch of amateurs like you're talking about? Lousy reward risk ratio here, people." I won't say that would have prevented Watergate but it might have given the movers behind it something to think about.
 
https://books.google.com/books?id=6...nepage&q=Nixon "sickle cell" shameful&f=false

"It is a sad and shameful fact that the causes of this disease have been largely neglected throughout our history. We cannot rewrite this record of neglect, but we can reverse it."
This is President Nixon talking about sickle cell anemia from "Special Message to the Congress Proposing a National Health Strategy," Feb. 18, 1971. So, I think it's in the nature of submitted legislation.

But this is really more the hopeful side of Dick Nixon.

If he introduces similar initiatives on energy, then by the time the first oil embargo hits Oct. '73, maybe we don't have anything more in the works other than being able to move a lot quicker on odd-and-even rationing (for passenger vehicles if your license plate ends in an odd number, etc, etc). But after the embargo, a lot more is on the table to potentially to potentially talk about. Might be able to make smart moves sooner. Might even be able to get a positive dynamic going of medium step, feedback, medium step, feedback.

Theory: Dick Nixon was almost at his best when he knew more factually than other people and could pull people along in the nature of a coach.
 
I always wondered why someone like a Finch never spoke up and said, "Are you guys bleeping nuts? This election is in our hip pockets. McGovern might carry three or four states and the District, and that's all. What could this possibly gain of any practicality? And what if someone screws up, especially with a bunch of amateurs like you're talking about? Lousy reward risk ratio here, people."
That last part seems to be what influences people's thinking, not the morality, but the practicality and the potential downside. As in, all this risk for essentially nothing, what the hell kind of smart decision is that?

And wasn't George Romney also in Nixon's administration?
 
I've heard the argument made here and elsewhere that the key enabler of Nixon's bad behavior was Chuck Coulson. I think someone here even made the case that the Watergate Break In was Coulson's idea.

Perhaps without Coulson-Nixon being Nixon would be caught doing something illegal eventually. But keeping Coulson out of the administration's orbit may be the minimum requirement for this divergence.
 
Yes, as Sec HUD. And then he proposed integrating the suburbs, thus pissing off suburban White voters, and Nixon was not about to have any of that.
Thanks for the info about George Romney. I think cabinet members don't associate nearly as much with the president in their daily work lives as do members of the White House staff.

I know Dick made a number of long conversational late night phone calls the same night he went over to the Lincoln Memorial. But overall, how big of a late night phone call type of person was he? If he was, that might provide another big area of influence.
 
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Yes, as Sec HUD. And then he proposed integrating the suburbs, thus pissing off suburban White voters, and Nixon was not about to have any of that.
IIRC the problem with Romney was that whilst he had some good proposals he seems to have gone charging ahead without trying to build up any political support either beforehand or during the process so that more often than not he'd then end up hitting a brick wall.
 

Cook

Banned
His mean streak had been pretty apparent since the early fifties with his hard-line stance towards communism.

If a hard-line stance to Communism is the definition of a mean-streak, then Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson all had mean-streaks, as did Stevenson and Goldwater. And given that Nixon was the architect of détente, and the first U.S. president to recognise the People's Republic of China, we'd have to conclude that, of all of them, Nixon was the one with the least mean-streak.

So, what if he took an interest in projections that energy crises were a real possibility?

<cough>
 
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