Anyone else think Nixon was treated unfairly?

Think of it like sports rules and cheating.

Anything bad you do is punishable.

Things you do to undermine the electoral/democratic competitive process, while in some ways not having as much direct material harm on people, are treated as the most egregious offenses. The integrity of the game (democratic process) is treated more seriously than anything else.

I'd say burglarizing a campaign headquarters, directed by the White House, falls under this category.

It's like hundred dollar handshakes in recruiting, nobody is clean but rules are still rules.

You have to be careful not to bite off more than you can chew. Getting away with it, or making sure someone else gets busted, is political. It is politics after all

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Compare Nixon's Watergate to some of the scandals of HRC and Obama that the media swept completely under the rug, and what he did just really doesn't seem like a big deal (I still don't think it that bad even without this frame of reference).

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Nixon actually ordered the break-in at the DNC. That is pretty important.

"The transcripts depict a campaign finance scandal that dwarfs the current controversy in Washington (10/21/97). Mr. Nixon, the statesman who opened doors to China and the Soviet Union, also sold ambassadorships for $250,000. He and his aides shook down business executives and labor leaders for millions of dollars. The President also kept a large stash of diverted campaign cash as a political slush fund at the White House.

On July 25, 1972, he asked about its size. Told that $300,000 was on hand, Mr. Nixon seemed disappointed. ''That isn't a hell of a lot,'' he said.

The transcripts show Mr. Nixon, weeks or months earlier in the crisis than was previously known, talking seriously about destroying the White House tapes, resigning the Presidency, and facing the looming threat of impeachment. Some excerpts from the tapes, which are housed at the National Archives, were published this week by The Washington Post and Newsweek magazine, which made their own transcriptions."

LINK

If he was a dem, the washington post would have laughed off his watergate issues.

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Compare Nixon's Watergate to some of the scandals of HRC and Obama

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Only difference was involvement of a Special Prosecutor, and enough integrity in his own party to not stonewall proceedings. That coupled with his selfish, and stupid reticence to destroy his oval office tapes.

But no, Nixon was most definitely not treated unfairly.

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scandals of HRC and Obama

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What tha...? Are you sure about this?

I just heard Shelia Jackson Lee say Obama had a scandal-free presidency

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Reagan was weak

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The air traffic controllers say 'Hi.'

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It didn't cost Reagan anything to fire the PATCO controllers.

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1. Why is supposed to 'cost' him something? That has nothing to do with bold action.

2. The firing SHOCKED the country. They never thought he'd have the nerve. It sent the UAW, AFL-CIO and the Teamsters into bunkers and they never came out.

3. Reagan was mercilessly criticized by the media because he was TOO strong. Not because he was weak.

Reagan Altered Story on Arms, Notes Indicate
July 31, 1987|MICHAEL WINES | Times Staff Writer


WASHINGTON — President Reagan privately told aides last November that secret U.S. arms sales to Iran had helped shore up Iran's "weaker" position in its war with Iraq, only to publicly assure the nation three days later that the sales had not tipped the war's balance "in any way," newly released notes of a key White House meeting indicate.

The handwritten notes were taken last Nov. 10 by former White House Chief of Staff Donald T. Regan during a discussion by the President and his top aides shortly after the arms sales became public.

They suggest that the military value of the Iran weapons shipments was a matter of confusion at top levels of the White House even after the arms sales--which sought the release of American hostages held by Iranian-supported terrorists in Lebanon--had been under way for 14 months.

Shultz Advice Ignored

At one point in the session, Regan's records indicate, Secretary of State George P. Shultz counseled "caution on over-assertion that (the) arms shipments were small or inconsequential." Reagan appears not to have followed the advice.



Congress' Iran- contra investigative panels released the records during Regan's testimony Thursday on Capitol Hill.

The 15 pages of Regan notes document a 95-minute meeting in which the President, Regan, Shultz, Vice President George Bush, CIA Director William J. Casey, Defense Secretary Caspar W. Weinberger, Atty. Gen. Edwin Meese III, former National Security Adviser John M. Poindexter and Poindexter deputy Alton G. Keel Jr. debated how to respond to public criticism of the newly disclosed Iran arms sales.

Midway in the session, the notes indicate, the President stated that the United States wished "to have things even" in the Iran-Iraq conflict, which then was entering its sixth year. U.S. arms sales during the preceding 14 months, Reagan said, had helped offset an Iraqi military edge.

"Side with mil(itary) superiority will win," the notes quote Reagan as saying. "We want to have things even. This helps Iran, which was weaker."

In a nationally televised speech three days later on Nov. 13, the President took the opposite position. In describing the total arms sales as small enough to "easily fit into a single cargo plane," he said that the six shipments "could not, taken together, affect the outcome of the . . . war between Iran and Iraq. Nor could they affect in any way the military balance between the two countries."

He repeated the assertions in a televised news conference six days later.

The White House since has admitted that the weapons in those shipments--2,008 TOW anti-tank missiles, plus Hawk anti-aircraft missiles and some spare Hawk parts--were far too large to fit into a single airplane."



TOW missile

Tube Launched Optically guided Wire controlled.

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Reagan was mercilessly criticized by the media because he was TOO strong. Not because he was weak.

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Reagan was never mercilessly criticized by the media over anything. It did a total roll over.

Reagan talked a big game but always caved when push came to shove.