Being President means coping with distractions

In 1972, here are just some of the items that were on President Nixon's plate that anybody - Nixon-hater, Democrat, liberal; Nixon-fan, Republican, conservative - who cared about welfare of the country would have thought the President should well have been concentrating on:

• U.S.- Sino relations
• War in Indo-China and Vietnam
• U.S. - Soviet Union detente
• Multi-lateral disarmament movements and treaties
• The U.S. Senate's ratification of the Equal Rights Amendment

Then, there were these "distractions":

• Congresswoman Bella Abzug's (D. N.Y.)  resolution calling for the impeachment of President Nixon following his decision to mine North Vietnamese harbors. [Note: This was back in the day when impeachment was not taken off the table when war crimes were at issue.]
• The Watergate break-in occurs [Nixon's reaction caught on tape on June 23 when Nixon meets  his chief of staff H. R. Haldeman and says, "The only way to solve this, and we're set up beautifully to do it, is for us to have [Deputy CIA Director Vernon] Walters call [FBI Director Pat] Gray and say, 'Stay the hell out of this . . . [The CIA] should call the FBI and say that, 'We wish, for the good of the country, [that you] don't [look] any further into this case.' Period"]

The distractions spilled over into 1973:

• The Watergate break-in builds into a scandal. President Nixon names Plainfield, N.J.-born Harvard law professor Archibald Cox, 60, special Watergate prosecutor and tries to have CIA director Richard Helms prevent an FBI investigation into the Watergate break-in. Helms refuses and Nixon relocates him, making him ambassador to Iran.
• Vice President Agnew resigns under pressure October 10, pleading no contest to charges of income tax evasion in connection with money received during his tenure as governor of Maryland.

Of course, in 1973, there are matters that anybody would think deserved Presidential attention, including:

• A cease-fire in Vietnam January 28 ending direct involvement of U.S. ground troops in Indochinese hostilities.
• The Yom Kippur War occurs. It is the fourth and fiercest Arab-Israeli war since 1948.
• Britain joins the European Economic Community. Denmark and Ireland also join, bringing members to nine in the Common Market created by the Treaty of Rome in 1958.

The point: being President in complex times - and the early 1970s were complex times - means coping with a variety of events. Some make the President's job easier, some make it harder. But just because the ones that make it harder do that, does not mean they should not be examined.

I hope that the matters that the pundits are dismissively trivializing as distractions do not in fact lead to the same sort of demise for President-elect Obama  that the distraction of  the early 1970s brought to Richard Nixon. The revelation that Richard Nixon was possibly more corrupt than his greatest detractors ever thought he was was not good for the country. But that does not mean it would have been better for the country if press and public just went ostrich-like and refused to consider the "distractions" because of the very real difficulties facing the U.S. and the country at large. Ridding the country of a thieving vice-president and a president who regarded the U.S. Consitution as an inconvenient constraint on his own power was good thing.

True, how troubling distractions are is a matter of degree. A plagiarizing Vice-President is not as troubling as one who is an income-tax evader. A Presdent whose staff may be involved in high level state corruption is less bothersome than a President who is personally directing violations of national and international law. A President who retains a misogynistic speech writer, keeping him out of sight, presumably in the hope that all will be forgotten is terribly bothersome.

But whatever the final truths we learn aout the current "distractions" facing President-elect Obama, we need to know the truth. After we get some information we can decide whether it disqualifies Mr. Obama from the presidency. But for now, we need to the press to take the heat and find out some truth for us.

It would also be helpful if the Obama administration's transition team would ditch the bunker mentality. Somebody has to begin the process of political disarmament in Washington D.C.

Comments

[chatblu]

So much for change we can believe in.

[barrington]

"Somebody has to begin the process of political disarmament in Washington D.C."

Absolutely. And political disarmament needs to begin with transparency and reform.

http://myfugue.wordpress.com/2008/12/15/the-reform-candidate-who-wasnt/