Shut up, George

[Chacoguy]

Here's a hint: The stupid arrogant little shit DID NOT READ HIS OWN BOOK!! He doesn't care; he just wants to get paid. That's the one thing that he has demonstrated that he actually cares about.

[Anacanapuna]

Originally Posted by mswas

Well, I didn't live through his term, so I don't know.

I lived through it in two different newsrooms. The most damning indictment of Nixon is offered in John Dean's "Blind Ambition." Dean accepts full responsibiliity for his role in the Nixon presidency, but also gives full vent to his outrage at having been betrayed by Nixon. It's how most of us moderate conservatives felt. I mark my long journey to the left from that time.

[Random Precision]

So who's going to be the John Dean in the Bush Whitehouse? Now that Dubya has his book on the market, will Colin Powell or Condi Rice show up with a retrospective on the reality behind the scenes? Or do they have to wait for Karl Rove to die?

[eleanorigby]

Baldwin: Why does that surprise you? Reagan was ga-ga for his second term, and it's still not common knowledge (hell, I think he was ga-ga for the first. Morning in America my ass).


The MSM very rarely gets to the meat of things. Watergate was an exception, not a rule.

[Anacanapuna]

Originally Posted by eleanorigby

Baldwin: Why does that surprise you? Reagan was ga-ga for his second term, and it's still not common knowledge (hell, I think he was ga-ga for the first. Morning in America my ass).


The MSM very rarely gets to the meat of things. Watergate was an exception, not a rule.

Bingo! W&B never did break the story open, they pried it open a little at a time. And once the NYT, LAT and CBS all realized there was really a story there, everybody jumped on it. But in the early going, the boys had to fight for every scrap of information. More than once they came damn close to blowing the whole thing (in fact, they did screw up one story when they said a witness had testified to something before a grand jury that he did not, in fact, testify to.) They spent months slogging through thousands of public records and a few not so public. They begged, wheedled, and cajoled sources to give them information, and then they had to check every scrap of it for validation. It was some of the hardest work journalists have ever done, and they had to constantly fight with their editors for time, money, and page space.

Today, nobody wants to go to that kind of trouble. Publishers want immediate story returns on their reporter investments. Reporters are paid to produce copy, it's as simple as that.

[BJMoose]

Originally Posted by Random Precision

So who's going to be the John Dean in the Bush Whitehouse? Now that Dubya has his book on the market, will Colin Powell or Condi Rice show up with a retrospective on the reality behind the scenes? Or do they have to wait for Karl Rove to die?

Interesting question. It seems Powell was marginalized early on so he may not have much. Rice doesn't strike me as the sort to bite the hand that fed her. It seems Cheney, Rumsfeld and Rove all learned well from their experience in the Nixon administration and managed to hire only "safe" people. And since there appears to be no chance of anyone facing serious time for, say, obstruction of justice, no one has any motive to spill his guts.

And so, ironically, the John Dean of the Bush administration will have to be John Dean himself. His Worse Than Watergate really is essential reading.

[Uthrecht]

Originally Posted by Veb

He screwed over the country and he screwed over conservatism until the crazies took over.

Not defending Bush here on any of the points you made, but I don't think the Republican party substantially changed during his administration. It had gotten itself set up in the current overarching attitudes in the latter half of Clinton's administration (in my opinion). I think it just became largely noticeable once he was in office (I admit that I hadn't caught on prior, myself).

Originally Posted by Anacanapuna

Today, nobody wants to go to that kind of trouble. Publishers want immediate story returns on their reporter investments. Reporters are paid to produce copy, it's as simple as that.

While true, as you more or less pointed out, almost nobody wanted to go to that kind of trouble in their time, either. That's why they had to keep fighting their publishers. Reporters have *always* been paid to produce copy, so it takes a specific mindset to be willing to push money at long-term projects that could well not materialize. I think there are some folks willing to do that, but it's not a lot, and I think their results tend to not get jumped on in the same way by the other news sources - that could be the shift.

[Veb]

Originally Posted by Uthrecht

Not defending Bush here on any of the points you made, but I don't think the Republican party substantially changed during his administration. It had gotten itself set up in the current overarching attitudes in the latter half of Clinton's administration (in my opinion). I think it just became largely noticeable once he was in office (I admit that I hadn't caught on prior, myself).

IMO it started with Reagan. He added the Christian Coalition and other social conservatives into an alliance with fiscal conservatives like the long-standing "country club" conservatives, and was able to package blue collar votes into the mix as well. It was an uneasy alliance and Reagan was the only one able to make it work. It started to come apart under Bush Sr., which is part of the reason Clinton got into office. Shrub (who deserves the insulting diminutative because he wasn't half the man or genuine public servant his father was) blatantly played for the religious right. The stress fractures were already there but Dubya bears the responsiblity for functionally splintering the GOP into warrring factions. All IMO of course but his exclusionary stance is what finally blew apart Reagan's coalition.

[Uthrecht]

That's fair enough overall, I'd say. I still think that the Christian Coalition and social conservatives got themselves (back) into power in Clinton's second term, with the taking of Congress (which let them get into the party at large more concretely), but I will agree that Bush played to them and did nothing to shift things around. Certainly, as the leader of his party during his administration, however the party forms up is largely his responsibility.

I can see your point about Reagan courting them, and I also don't think Bush Sr did much for that (he was more of an old-school moderate than Reagan, in my opinion).

[Anacanapuna]

Originally Posted by Uthrecht

While true, as you more or less pointed out, almost nobody wanted to go to that kind of trouble in their time, either. That's why they had to keep fighting their publishers. Reporters have *always* been paid to produce copy, so it takes a specific mindset to be willing to push money at long-term projects that could well not materialize. I think there are some folks willing to do that, but it's not a lot, and I think their results tend to not get jumped on in the same way by the other news sources - that could be the shift.

Goddamnit, now I have to think about that! I HATE when I have to think!

Lemme get back to you on that.

[Fish]

Originally Posted by Uthrecht

While true, as you more or less pointed out, almost nobody wanted to go to that kind of trouble in their time, either.

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