One Year of Watergate Was Not Enough

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"I would like to add a personal word with regard to an issue that has been of great concern to all Americans over the past year. I refer, of course, to the investigations of the so–called Watergate affair. As you know, I have provided to the special prosecutor voluntarily a great deal of material. I believe that I have provided all the material that he needs to conclude his investigations and to proceed to prosecute the guilty and to clear the innocent.

"I believe the time has come to bring that investigation and the other investigations of this matter to an end. One year of Watergate is enough."

Richard Nixon
Jan. 30, 1974

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Earlier this week, as Barack Obama was about to deliver his State of the Union address, George Condon wondered in the National Journal if the State of the Union ever really changes anything.

After writing of the successful State of the Union speeches — the ones that managed to set the congressional agenda — Condon observed that "the biggest failure to set the congressional agenda was Nixon's in his 1974 speech."

Forty years ago today, Richard Nixon delivered what turned out to be his final State of the Union address. It is not remembered for Nixon's assessment of the state of the union or his ideas for improving it — although those were offered on that night in 1974. History remembers that speech as the one in which Nixon urged an end to the Watergate investigations. "One year of Watergate is enough," he memorably said.

That is what the State of the Union speech was about in 1974. The agenda was Nixon's survival. Nixon had tried everything else to divert attention from Watergate. He wanted to shift attention to anything, but he couldn't do it.

One year of Watergate wasn't enough for the people who sat in that joint session of Congress 40 years ago tonight — and that was Nixon's fault. If he had been honest with the American people from the beginning, if he had confessed his involvement, admitted it had been a huge mistake and asked for forgiveness, I believe he would have been forgiven. The American people are a forgiving bunch.

But he insisted on concealing his involvement until he had been proven to be a liar — and that made his guilt even more difficult for his defenders to bear.

In that audience 40 years ago tonight were lawmakers who had participated in the Watergate hearings the year before and who would participate in the impeachment hearings in the House Judiciary Committee that summer. Their questions had not been answered satisfactorily. The evidence they sought had not been provided to them. There was more work to be done.

Back at the White House, Nixon's chief of staff, Alexander Haig, had been exploring endgame strategies, including the possibility of Nixon receiving a presidential pardon — even the possibility of Nixon granting one to himself.

Nixon must have known the stakes when he went to Capitol Hill to deliver his address 40 years ago tonight.

And I'm reasonably sure he knew, as he rode back to the White House later that night, that he had not made the sale.

Oh, he had a trick or two left up his sleeve, but Nixon's days were numbered.

Has the War on Poverty Failed?

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"We do this, first of all, because it is right that we should. We do it also because helping some will increase the prosperity of all. Our fight against poverty will be an investment in the most valuable of our resources — the skills and strength of our people. It strikes at the causes, not just the consequences of poverty."

Lyndon B. Johnson
Jan. 8, 1964

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It was in Lyndon Johnson's first State of the Union address 50 years ago today that he proposed the "War on Poverty."

The War on Poverty was, as NPR observes, a personal thing for Johnson. He had been vice president under one of the wealthiest men ever to serve as president, but he had been brought up in poverty. He had known — firsthand — the "constant moments of humiliation ... and insecurity" of penury.

As Susan Page writes in USA Today, what followed was an "historic rush of legislation" — Medicare, Medicaid, Head Start, food stamps.

It was a noble idea — still is, really, this idea of eliminating poverty. It was filled with good intentions, but, after half a century (or, since the Economic Opportunity Act wasn't really enacted until August 1964, nearly half a century), it is appropriate to ask a few questions about this war.

Like, what is (or was) the definition of victory?

We ask that of any conventional war that is proposed because we know a lot of money will be spent on it, but I cannot recall hearing such a definition expressed by any of the politicians who supported the legislation. Trillions of dollars have been spent in this war, but the poverty rate appears to be virtually unchanged since the legislation's passage.

At the time that Johnson proposed the War on Poverty, the poverty rate was in decline, falling from more than 22% in 1959 to around 19% in 1964. In its first year of existence, the Economic Opportunity Act may have contributed to the further decline of the poverty rate to around 15%, but it has leveled off and remained in that range ever since. At times, it has been a little lower, at other times it has been a little higher, but it has been consistent.

If the objective of the War on Poverty was to eliminate poverty, it has failed.

Victory (of a sort) probably could have been declared in 1965, but, after all these years, with the poverty rate remaining roughly the same, it would be hard to say the War on Poverty has been a success. In fact, it would be difficult to argue with Ronald Reagan's assertion that poverty won.

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Bill Clinton famously declared 18 years ago that the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act of 1996 "end[ed] welfare as we know it."

From the perspective of 2014, it is clear that welfare "as we [knew] it" did end at that time, but the beast wasn't slain. Not really. A much larger beast emerged to take its place.

Which brings me to another question:

Did the War on Poverty succeed?

I'm inclined to say "no" because poverty has not been eliminated. Even if one was willing to accept the idea that poverty will always be with us, that the idea of eliminating it entirely was unrealistic and that partial elimination of poverty was an acceptable outcome, the War on Poverty still came up short because it created new, unexpected problems.

But, of course, victory was never defined.

It would be wise for us as a nation to ask ourselves some hard questions. I assume that most of us would like to see the ills of the world eliminated — but we need to act responsibly, honestly evaluate what has been done so we can have an idea what works and what doesn't and then focus on those areas where further progress can be made.

We can't continue to act as if there is an unending supply of money to throw at our problems, not with the economy still as shaky as it was when the current administration took over five years ago.

If any attention had been paid to encouraging job creation and putting Americans back to work, there might be more of a revenue reserve in the federal coffers, but unemployment has been permitted to languish unattended so the prudent thing to do is to recognize the economic limitations we face and make realistic, if modest, goals if we are going to entertain the idea of pursuing LBJ's dream in the 21st century.

As contradictory as it sounds, we have to remember that there was more prosperity in America when the War on Poverty was enacted than there is now. When the War on Poverty was signed into law, one income was usually enough to support a family; within a decade, most families needed two incomes just to get by, and the absence of parental supervision when the children got home from school caused new social problems.

Today, two incomes are seldom sufficient to support a family, and the pattern is perpetuated.

The experience with the War on Poverty — indeed, the entire welfare concept — showed us that, as much as we might wish it were otherwise, most things in life are not simple. Most things in life are, in fact, complex, and they deserve to be studied carefully — even exhaustively — before the government intervenes on a large scale.

The nature of unintended consequences being what it is, it simply isn't possible to avoid them entirely, but, when such a significant objective is undertaken, it is important to try to anticipate as many as possible and minimize them.

One need look no further than Obamacare's implementation to find ample cause for caution.

Stephanie Coontz writes at CNN.com that the work isn't done. Coontz says the War on Poverty was "abandoned" by the politicians in the 1980s and that more could have been done.

Perhaps she is right. But, like it or not, there are limits to what can be done in the absence of an economic boom.

State of Obama

The 2012 presidential campaign will begin tomorrow during the State of the Union speech.

It isn't being advertised that way, of course, perhaps because the politicos think most Americans, regardless of their leanings, are just burned out on politics right now. But Barack Obama will be laying out his blueprint for the next couple of years when he speaks tomorrow night — and the voters are likely to judge him on how it works out.

It's a little late to be offering Obama advice on what he should say. Besides, no one ever really knows how these things will work out. If someone comes up with a foolproof method for looking into the future, at the very least we will know if a presidential address is going to be a make–or–break moment for that president.

As I recall, that was a problem with George H.W. Bush in the last year or so of his presidency. Every time he was about to make a speech during that period, the public was told that it was the most important address of his presidency.

But the speeches never seemed to match the expectations. In fact, they often fell far short of them.

By the end of his single term, Bush had become the president who cried wolf.

Now, the State of the Union speech is a little different than most presidential speeches. It is an annual event. It is not inspired by special circumstances, and only rarely does it coincide with something else of equal or greater importance (25 years ago, it was scheduled to coincide with the first space shuttle to carry a civilian teacher — but that mission was terminated by an explosion shortly after takeoff).

And I will admit that Obama has certain oratorical skills that neither of the Bushes possessed. Consequently, the emphasis on the performance may not be as great for him as it was for the Bushes — although that could change if he is not up to his usual standards.

I think the pundits' emphasis, in this case, will be on the specifics of his recommendations — and, frankly, focusing on substance would be a nice change.

One of the problems with a substantive discussion is that it can't be argued and resolved in a few hours. It will require some time before the success or failure of Obama's policies can be determined, so those who are inclined to grade the speech the day it is given should be afforded no credibility.

But the window of opportunity for every president in my lifetime, not just this one, has been brief. As technology advances, the window gets smaller and it starts to slam faster. I think people are as patient as they have ever been, but the speed of their gadgets accelerates everything else.

Two years ago, Obama's inaugural address was hailed by friend and foe alike, but, within a few months, it was clear that his stratospheric approval ratings were crashing to earth. Those who cried "racism" may have been right in some isolated instances, but, by and large, they did their president and themselves a disservice by ignoring the underlying problems.

Was the problem that, as some of his critics have suggested, he tried to do too much, or was it, as others have said, that he didn't do enough? I don't know, but there is little to be gained from looking back — unless it is to look for ways to improve. A little self–analysis is a good thing, but it can be over done.

Personally, I have never been as impressed with Obama's delivery as the folks who elected him, but it usually seems to impress most of his listeners, even those who disagree with him — so I don't think there is much to be learned from watching tapes of his past speeches.

And, with the speech coming up in a couple of days, it's really too late to be thinking about substantive changes in speaking style — for this address, anyway.

But there may be some things to learn about following up.

I have heard that the speech will emphasize job creation, and that is a good thing — if it is earnest.

We heard lots of lip service about this a year ago, after the Republicans captured Ted Kennedy's Senate seat, but it disappeared, aided by the ongoing BP spill and the general unwillingness of Democrats to tackle the problem.

When it re–emerged last fall, it was a campaign issue, a cynical ploy to win votes that failed miserably.

Now, there are no votes to win. Or are there?

Alex Kowalski of Bloomberg.com reports that the outlook for jobs is improving. Unemployed Americans — both those who are counted using the government's arbitrary methodology and those who are not — would like to believe that is true.

The fact that there is no election looming in the near future leads one to believe such talk might be serious this time. But there is no time to waste, and neither party controls enough seats in Congress to impose its will on the other. For anything to be accomplished in the next two years, it will be essential for Democrats and Republicans to work together

Bipartisanship wasn't really necessary to accomplish anything in the first year of the Obama presidency, but it will be in the last two years of this term. What will be different about this president's appeal for bipartisanship this time, now that his party no longer controls the House?

Now, most people seem to realize, even if they don't openly acknowledge it, that the crisis is spiraling out of control and what remains of the middle class is likely to be demolished.

If Obama really does focus on job creation in his State of the Union address, his listeners — both those on Capitol Hill and the millions watching on television — seem certain to agree with him. The disagreements will come on how it is to be achieved.

There has been some talk of the conciliatory, centrist tone Obama sought in his speech at the Tucson memorial service. And polls have shown that Obama's standing with the voters improved slightly in the aftermath.

But the polls have consistently shown that the majority of Americans likes Obama. They also think he is taking the country in the wrong direction.

When they go to the polls in November 2012, that may be the decision they have to make — whether to re–elect a president most folks like personally but about whose policies they have serious doubts or to elect someone else.

Tomorrow night is when he can start to make his case.

Barack and the Supremes

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As Andrew Malcolm writes in the Los Angeles Times, it is not unusual for presidents and the Supreme Court to butt heads.

I guess that is to be expected when the tenure of a Supreme Court justice easily can be two, three or four times as long as the president who appointed him/her. I'm sure no one has to remind Obama that Republicans held the White House for 28 of the 40 years prior to his inauguration — or that six of the eight current justices who were not appointed by Obama were appointed by Republican presidents.

But the dressing down that Barack Obama gave the justices during his State of the Union speech in January was virtually unprecedented. It isn't that it was mean–spirited, salacious or particularly nasty. But the setting, as Chief Justice John Roberts said, was "questionable."

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"The image of having the members of one branch of government standing up, literally surrounding the Supreme Court, cheering and hollering while the court — according to the requirements of protocol — has to sit there expressionless, I think is very troubling."

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Well, it took a month and a half, but Roberts finally responded, yesterday at the University of Alabama. He called the scene "very troubling," and he bemoaned the "political pep rally" the address has become.

I feel like I'm having a Claude Rains moment — Political? The State of the Union speech is political? I'm shocked!

Sure, there are certain traditional formalities that must be observed when a president addresses Congress. For example, the president cannot enter the House chamber until he is invited to do so. They've been doing that for a long, long time, and, even when a majority of its members hasn't belonged to the president's party, the House has never turned away a president yet.

As far as I know.

But the State of the Union speech has been political as long as I can remember. It is not a recent development. In 1986, for example, Ronald Reagan intended to use the space shuttle and its teacher in space for his personal propaganda purposes while delivering his State of the Union speech — until the shuttle exploded shortly after liftoff, forcing him to postpone his address for a week.

And, for nearly 45 years, someone (often — but not always — a member of Congress) belonging to the opposing party has been granted "equal time" for a rebuttal address immediately after the president's speech. There have even been times when both parties have put together elaborate television programs to air along with their rebuttals. During Clinton's presidency, the Republicans became the first to hold their rebuttal in front of an audience (partisan, of course).

Heck, these things couldn't be more political if you advertised them with the president's party preceding the phrase "state of the union" and you served fried fish or chicken dinners to the attendees.

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No one could possibly know this better than Obama. He delivered the Democrats' response in January 2008 — long before he secured his nomination for president and nearly a year before taking the oath of office.

And Obama wasn't shy about expressing his own political views on that occasion — although, in hindsight, his response is amusing when one thinks about how often his words contradict his later actions as president.

Anyway, after a presidential campaign that went on for nearly two years, followed by more than a year in the presidency, Obama must be pretty thick–skinned by now. But what about his press secretary?

Although the Washington Post asserts that the White House "fired back," it was actually Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, who said that the Supreme Court decision in Citizens United v. Federal Elections Commission, which was handed down the week before Obama's address, opened "the floodgates for corporations and special interests to pour money into elections — drowning out the voices of average Americans."

And, as you will see if you watch the attached video clip, echoed his boss' choice of words.

Well, that tends to be the nature of the role of the press secretary, I suppose. Whether most people recognize it or not, there are times when a press secretary expresses his/her own beliefs and not the president's — especially at times when a president has deliberately sought to keep the press secretary out of the loop.

But this doesn't seem like one of those times. And it cannot be stressed too much that press secretaries have to be careful. They can't be casual about the words they use. Too many people presume that anything a press secretary says is straight from a president's mouth, word for word.

In this case, though, it's hard not to make a convincing case that Gibbs was repeating precisely what the president said. Nothing new was included in Gibbs' response. So what was the purpose? If you have nothing to add to your argument, why repeat the argument that provoked the justices to begin with? Won't that just keep the fires burning?

More than 400 years ago, Shakespeare wrote that discretion is the better part of valor.

So I have to wonder how prolonging these testy public exchanges will serve Obama's stated objective of improving the atmosphere in Washington.

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

That's hardly a new phrase.

I'm not sure where it originated. I remember reading in school that Renaissance writer Michel de Montaigne wrote, "Saying is one thing and doing is another." That isn't exactly the same thing, although it's kinda sorta in the same ballpark.

But I do know that "actions speak louder than words" is something my mother frequently told my brother and me when, as children, we promised her that we would do something we hadn't been doing.

Perhaps it is the lingering presence of that memory that made that phrase reverberate through my brain during last night's State of the Union speech.

I don't know anyone — either supporter or opponent — who will say that Barack Obama is not a gifted speaker. Clearly, he is.

Maybe that is because people compare him, in their minds, to his predecessors — and, when compared to the linguistically challenged George W. Bush, just about anyone who can express a single, grammatically correct sentence is bound to come out ahead.

But, in an effort to get some confirmation of my feelings, I turned, as I often do, to Facebook, where I reviewed the comments of others.

"Nice enough speech," an old friend of mine wrote. "Hard to get too excited, but after the previous eight years, that's a pretty big improvement right there."

Well, that's a semantic improvement. Substance is another matter altogether.

It's easy for an orator to talk about things. It's quite another to make the tough choices.

Don't get me wrong. I'm glad he finally spoke about joblessness. But I can't help wondering why he didn't even mention it on the day when it would have been most appropriate — Labor Day. That day, though, he was busy campaigning for health care reform and preparing to make his speech to the schoolchildren of America.

Obama has been talking the talk. Now let's see if this year he can walk the walk.

The McNugget President

When I was fresh out of college and working as a reporter for a daily newspaper in central Arkansas, I found myself in the press entourage that covered then–former Gov. Bill Clinton and his opponent in the gubernatorial runoff for the Democratic nomination.

Typically, the reporters who were assigned to cover the candidates followed in a separate plane as the candidates bounced around the state, hopping from one small airstrip to the next. At each stop, the reporters would pile into vehicles that were provided by the local campaign workers for whichever candidate the reporters were following that day, and they would be taken to the rally where the candidate would speak.

The candidates usually gave the same speech repeatedly all day — the "speech of the day," as some reporters jokingly referred to it — so, by the third or fourth stop, there really wasn't much point in pulling out your notebook until after the speech was over because that was when newsworthy developments were likely to happen — if they happened at all. And sometimes they didn't.

On one such late spring/early summer afternoon, I recall sitting in the backseat of a campaign staffer's car and being driven to the candidate's local campaign headquarters, where a rally was scheduled. The staffers in the front seat apparently were local businessmen, and one was discussing a new product that he thought was worthy of investment. Those who invested in this product, he assured his companions, would be rich beyond their wildest dreams.

The product was McDonald's Chicken McNuggets — which, as I recall, actually had been introduced in the larger markets, like New York and Los Angeles, a few years earlier, but, as usual, the product didn't make it to Arkansas until its public appeal had been verified elsewhere.

Anyway, I remember this businessman gushing about this product, how simple it was and how it could taste like anything you wanted it to taste like, depending upon which sauce you ordered. No one else in the car had tasted the chicken nuggets before, and we were all enthralled by the idea that one product could be so many things to different people.

Now, personally, Chicken McNuggets have always tasted like chicken to me — no matter which sauce I consumed with them. But some folks swear that they taste different with different sauces.

Well, it occurs to me tonight, as I watch the State of the Union address, that Barack Obama is like those Chicken McNuggets. And that really shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone.

I don't know how often I've heard him refer to himself as a walking Rorschach test, a blank screen upon which people could project anything they wished.

I guess I never really understood what he meant by that before. I should have. Even though I live in Texas, which gave McCain more than 55% of its ballots, I encountered many Obama supporters in the fall of 2008 (Dallas County, where I live, has been devoutly Republican in the past, but it was like a little blue island in a sea of red counties in the northern half of the state that year, giving Obama 57% of its votes). And each one seemed to see a different Obama, even when they watched the same event.

Some of those supporters saw an advocate for homosexuals. Others saw a champion of the elderly. Still others admired his commitment to ending American military involvement in Iraq and Afghanistan or his defense of the sick and the poor. Then there were those who believed in his support for (or his opposition to) all sorts of other causes — global warming, "green" products, clean energy, animal rights, you name it.

He even had supporters who were on opposite sides of the same issue — and each supported him because he "shared" their views on that issue!

Honestly, how can anyone be expected to prevail over someone who gets credit for being both for and against the same thing?

Whatever you cared about, he cared about. That was his appeal. He was less filling and tastes great, a floor wax and a dessert topping. He was all things to all people.

I don't know. Maybe his rhetoric does taste different, depending upon which sauce you swallow with it.

But, as I say, I've been watching tonight's State of the Union speech. And you know something?

It still tastes like chicken to me.

State of the Union

Barack Obama, in deference to Lost fans who had their hearts set on watching the season premiere on its scheduled date next week, is delivering his State of the Union speech tonight.

CNN.com's Ed Hornick reports that political analysts don't expect the speech to reassure the millions of Americans who are hurting.

Well, there are many issues that need to be addressed. If Obama focuses most of his attention tonight on health care reform, he's going to lose a lot of listeners on both sides of the political aisle.

Joblessness must be dealt with. Most unemployed Americans cannot afford the luxury of giving Obama another year to address a single issue with reforms that won't even go into effect for several years. They need a president who will go to the mat for them on jobs. Now.

He can't create jobs — well, he can't create enough jobs to turn things around over night. But he can propose projects that will create temporary jobs, and he can do things to encourage job creation in the private sector — through tax breaks and the like. He just hasn't.

Perhaps he can explain that tonight. Perhaps he can make it clear that he is shifting his emphasis to things that matter to Americans now, not four or five years from now.

The Miami Herald succinctly summarizes the challenge facing Obama's speech, which will be delivered to an increasingly skeptical public:

"Obama must regain public trust to move his agenda."

We'll see if he is able to do that.

Priorities

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"He shall from time to time give to the Congress Information of the State of the Union, and recommend to their Consideration such Measures as he shall judge necessary and expedient."

U.S. Constitution
Article II, Section 3

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This probably shouldn't surprise me.

But yesterday — the very day that the Labor Department reported that 85,000 more jobs were lost in December and the unemployment rate remained at 10% for the third straight month — it was stated by White House press secretary Robert Gibbs that Barack Obama will not disrupt the plans of TV addicts who want to watch the season premiere of Lost by scheduling his State of the Union address for that night.

Now, I know my regular readers probably get tired of hearing me talk about unemployment, even though it affects me directly and I have been waiting for nearly a year for this president to do something — anything — to encourage job creation, so let me briefly recap some of the other matters of concern:

• Security — After being told "the system worked" by an incompetent Homeland Security secretary, we have had two incidents in recent days in which the misbehavior of airline passengers has required fighter jets to escort commercial flights to places that were not their original destinations.
  
  Perhaps it was appropriate — given the apparent obsession over the Lost premiere — that the first incident was sparked by a note from a passenger that referred to Gilligan's Island.


• Two wars — We don't hear much more about them than we did during the Bush administration, but America still has troops fighting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Nevertheless, they have combined to suck more than $950 billion from our economy — and we will continue to squander money overseas until our troops are withdrawn. Supposedly, that will happen during Obama's term in office, but aren't we entitled to an update on our progress?


• State budgets — New York Times columnist Bob Herbert writes that "[t]he states are in the worst fiscal shape since the Depression." And he's right.

Well, that's really just the tip of the iceberg.

But I think it makes my point without belaboring it.

Let's see a show of hands from those who think a TV show — any TV show — is more important than the state of the union.

Well, I can name at least one person who was concerned enough about it to ask Gibbs about it — ABC correspondent Ann Compton.

ABC, in case you didn't know, is the network that airs Lost.

I guess that tells you all you need to know about the priorities of ABC's news division. And those priorities can be summed up in one word — ratings.

Bush's Final State of the Union

George W. Bush will give his final State of the Union address Monday night.

It will be interesting to hear how he evaluates the state of the union in his final year in office. This is the record his would-be successors will have to deal with.

This is an especially important speech for the Republicans who are contending for their party's presidential nomination. This is the country they seek to inherit from a fellow Republican, and it is his record on which they will have to run, like it or not.

It had been generally assumed that Bush would leave office with the economy strong, if overshadowed by the war in Iraq.

Now, as the New York Times points out, Bush could well leave office in much the same way his father did in 1993, "on an economic sour note, with a reputation for spending so much time worrying about foreign affairs that he forgot about the problems of ordinary Americans at home."

It is expected that the speech will focus on the $150 billion "economic stimulus package" Bush and congressional leaders discussed last week.

One question that hasn't been answered to my satisfaction is -- how will this be paid for?

Bush gives his address at 9 p.m. Eastern on Monday night.

Two nights later, watch the final Republican debate prior to "Tsunami Tuesday" and find out how the State of the Union speech affects the GOP campaign.

And, if you live in Florida, don't forget to vote in the primary on Tuesday.