The Newsprint
A little over a week ago, the Nixon Library released more than a quarter-million pages of previously restricted material, including the files of some of Nixon's closest aids and previously unheard recordings. The media coverage of the release has focused on Nixon’s mercenary approach to politics, exposing with particular alacrity his disdain for modern art and Ted Kennedy. Occasional lip service is paid to the political motivations behind Nixon’s views, but even then, Nixon’s baser motives get most of the attention.
But Walter Pincus at WaPo has done everyone a favor by noting, partially, the real canniness behind the blunt and sometimes shocking calculations in Nixon’s papers. Pincus misses the point when he calls Nixon a “political scientist”; Nixon’s not. Little of the most arresting paperwork with Nixon’s hand on it deals with the likely outcomes of policy. Rather, Nixon reveals himself to be a peerless manipulator of personality. Put in the sterilized terms of politics today, Nixon comes across as a personnel manager par excellence, something President Obama is not.
Pincus uses Nixon to jab at Obama, suggesting that the current president could learn a lesson or two from his complex and controversial predecessor. He’s clearly right. Nixon’s White House possessed a political diversity unmatched in Obama’s crowded West Wing. And while both men managed to inspired considerable personal loyalty from their followers, Nixon managed to do so across an ideological spectrum. Obama, not so much.
An upcoming post will deal in greater detail with Obama’s personnel problems. For now, as Howard Fineman notes at Newsweek, the return of David Plouffe and swirling rumors about a pending Emanuel resignation suggest Obama remains a lackluster player in the personality game that is the stuff of governing.
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