Nixon’s Bastard Son

by digby

So old Tricky Joe got hot under the collar at tonight’s debate:

Evidently after the debate Lieberman walked up to Ned and said “You goddamn sonovabitch,” and something to the effect of “how dare you run those direct mail pieces accusing me of voting for the energy bill in 2005 because of campaign contributions from the oil companies.” Joe’s losing it.

I wonder what it would be like if he ever turned some of that on a Republican? Even when they stole the presidency right out from under him he couldn’t have been more gracious. When he debated Dick Cheney you would have thought they were a couple of old friends spending the afternoon shootin’ the shit at the old fishin’ hole. A Democrat criticizes his record and he turns into a rabid dog.

He’s sounding more and more like his crooked mentor every day, isn’t he? But then Nixon hated Democrats too.

Here’s a neat analysis of the Nixon tapes that might be useful as we examine the very religious, moral and upright public Lieberman vs his slush funded, phony anti-war posture and private conversation:

A search of the Internet produced a number of transcripts of Nixon tapes. Naturally these focus on the evidence of crimes or intent to commit crimes, the cover-up of the Watergate burglary, and the specific events that led to the Watergate hearings, impeachment motions and the resignation of President Nixon. These tapes evidence Nixon’s crimes. The public image Nixon presented to the American people and his denials of illegal activities are well known. Therefore such are not presented herein. Several of the conversations evidencing illegal conduct are. There are more available, but only several are sufficient to demonstrate that Nixon’s private persona is vastly different than his public image. This is not a statistical question.

[…]

Analysis of the conversations in the Appendix also evidence another disparity between Nixon’s public and private images. One of every sixty words Nixon uttered was a profanity. Nixon’s profanities included damn, Goddam or Goddamit, son of a bitch, son of a bitching, hell, asshole, crap and several deleted expletives, all words inappropriate in public political speeches.

Now I am not one to criticize anyone who uses profanity. But I do criticize religious moralizers who pretend that they are above this sort of thing and lecture bloggers and grassroots activists for their incivility. Nixon had a similar smarmy, bathetic public voice — lecturing, hectoring and eye-rollingly “moral” on the outside while being crude and ruthless in private.

Ever since I saw the Nixon angle on Lieberman, I realized why it is I’ve always had such a visceral mistrust of the man. That phony-baloney piety always made me sick when I saw Tricky Dick and it makes me similarly sick when I see Joe Lieberman.

But I have to give Nixon credit in one way. When he lost elections he didn’t cozy up the ones who stole it and pretend to be their best friends. He had enough pride to come back and win his party’s nomination fair and square and take on the political opposition that had bested him. Tricky Joe is just trying to save his seat so he can join the enemy. That’s lower than Nixon would have ever gone.

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