Richard Nixon’s Legacy
P. Schultz
January 11, 2013
Attached
below you will find a column on Richard Nixon’s legacy by Andrew Rosenthal of
the NY Times. There are some reasons I find this column interesting, that is,
interesting for how we analyze and think about politics.
Rosenthal’s
argument is that Nixon was a complex character, a shrewd political analyst and
manipulator as well as a president who “promoted important social-welfare
policies” like the Clean Air Act, affirmative action, the EPA and OSHA.
Nonetheless, Rosenthal concludes that he was “a crook who was forced to
relinquish his presidency. That is his legacy.”
Here is
what I see as the problem with Rosenthal’s analysis, viz., that it just isn’t
political enough. Note that Rosenthal does not present those “important
social-welfare policies” as political. That is, he does not describe them in
political terms such as “democratic” or “oligarchic” or “elitist.” This is not
surprising insofar as a politics of policy making is actually an attempt to
escape, suppress, or avoid politics. Policymaking is something that should be
done by experts, who of course will gather facts and propose solutions,
solutions that “work” to “solve the problem.” These experts are not thought of
as being political or participating in politics, that being left to congressmen
or presidents. So there is or should be nothing crass about “making policy” or
endorsing a politics of policy making and by endorsing such “important
social-welfare policies” Nixon was not being crass or manipulative.
On the
other hand, Nixon was “a crook.” Again, although this is not necessarily an
inaccurate description of Nixon, it is not a political description. “Crooks”
are not political and their activities are not political. What they are is
ambiguous but it is clear that they are not political or involved in politics.
The problem
here is that neither of Rosenthal’s descriptions of Nixon, that of
social-welfare endorser or that of crook, can explain the intense feelings that
Rosenthal admits surround Richard Nixon even to this day. To explain such
intense feelings we must recur to Nixon’s politics, that is, to such political
actions as his making war or further war in Vietnam, his attempts to subvert
the democratic process in the 1972 presidential election that led to Watergate,
and his opening to China, to take three examples. Policy makers or crooks do
not, and I would argue cannot, create the kind of intensity that Nixon created
and creates. Only politics can create such intensity. [See “Note” below.]
Viewed
politically, Nixon’s actions in Vietnam may be and were seen by many as war
crimes and him as a war criminal. Whether he was a war criminal is a political
question, whereas whether he was a crook is a legal question. Similarly, Nixon’s
actions during and after the 1972 presidential election were seen by many, even
by most, as attempts to undermine the democratic process of electing a
president. Again, this is a political crime, not an ordinary crime. And, lastly
here, Nixon’s opening to China was seen by many as an act of statesmanship and,
of course, such acts are necessarily political.
And this
helps explain why Richard Nixon arouses such intense feelings even today: Who
was Richard Nixon? What was he, a war criminal or a statesman? It is not
difficult to see that such questions will excite people, should excite people,
perhaps even for a very, very long time. But it is also possible to see that this
debate is far more important than debating whether Nixon’s “crook-ed-ness” was
redeemed by his endorsement of certain “important social-welfare programs.”
[Note: Why
this is so I am uncertain. Perhaps it is part of what Aristotle meant when he
described we humans as “political animals;” that is, for we humans politics is
a serious business indeed, perhaps even our most serious business. And it is
because we humans raise and take seriously the questions, what is good or what
is best? These are the questions that lie at the heart of politics and are
never far from the center of political debate, controversy, and conflict. And
they are also the kind of questions that quite naturally lead to controversy
and conflict. Just ask Socrates about that.]
No comments:
Post a Comment