A Time-Warped Columnist’s LamentIt could be that New Yorker contributing writer Ruth Marcus has boned up on L.P. Hartley’s 1953 book The Go-Between (in which he said “The past is a foreign country”), considering her Oct. 9th essay “Nixon Now Looks Restrained,” one more demonstration that liberal pundits/reporters—which is which is up to you; revisiting that past country, paraphrasing George Wallace, I don’t see a “dime’s worth of difference between the two”—are now sanguine about the 37th president who was arguably more reviled by the media than anyone until Donald Trump. It’s pretty crazy since Nixon escalated the Vietnam War, driving up the American casualty toll, presided over a lousy economy, was hilariously forced to announce “I’m not a crook” in the fall of 1973 and, in combination with LBJ, sowed and encouraged more antagonism among rhetorically (usually) warring social/political cultures than any president in my lifetime.
But throw Trump into the mix about U.S. presidents and Marcus (Yale, Harvard, The Washington Post from 1984-2005, when she quit over owner Jeff Bezos’ “interference” at the failing daily; 67, she’s married to Obama FTC chairman Jon Leibowitz) yearns to go back to that “foreign country.” I’m no Trump scholar—unlike the guys and gals on the “Acela” media party car—and can’t keep up with his hourly “beautiful” declarations, stop-and-start peppermint twists with Bibi, Putin and Xi Jenping, and most of what he says is, while often very, very funny (like speculating he won’t ascend to heaven) is just background noise.
What Marcus now finds quaint about Nixon is how, in 1970, “Tricky Dick” was compelled to “walk back” a statement that Charlie Manson and his posse were “guilty” of the Los Angeles murders the previous year. Before the retreat—Marcus recounts that “chaos ensued” in the media because of the President’s opinion about the ongoing trial—Nixon said there was a “tendency” among the young, to “glorify and to make heroes out of those who engage in criminal activities.” That doesn’t sound much different than the support, often from liberals like comedian Bill Burr, for Luigi Mangione, who, for those with short memories—almost everyone today—allegedly murdered a healthcare executive. (Same for that Utah young man—another story that’s disappeared—who supposedly assassinated Charlie Kirk. Will those details be sealed until 2075?)
Anyway, Marcus finds Trump’s out-in-the-open hope that indicted former FBI Director James Comey is convicted at his trial next year outrageous and, holy crap!, just not cricket. Trump said: “[Comey] knew exactly what he was saying, and that it was a very serious and far reaching lie for which a very big price must be paid!”
She writes: “Once, the notion that a President would offer his judgment on a criminal case was shocking, and his words carried enough authority that they might harm a defendant. In our hyper-polarized environment, it is not clear Comey will be irreparably damaged by Trump having convicted him in advance. The damage is less to the defendant than to old-fashioned notions about the presumption of innocence and the imperative of persevering an impartial and independent Department of Justice.”
That doesn’t move me.
Marcus, stuck in a self-serving time warp, might (but won’t) consider other “old-fashioned notions” that’ve disappeared. Such as: JFK catting around DC with the media’s that-old-dog! silence; that a black man couldn’t become president; that Nobel and Pulitzer prizes once had meaning; that the United Nations, now a laughingstock, was taken seriously; a nationwide press that would keep (or at least cleverly disguise) political opinions off the front page; a gay man couldn’t run for president (Mayor Pete is the only “out” politician to do that; as for others, who knows, who cares); the idea that a monthly jobs report would have any influence on the financial markets; a sitting president getting hummers in the White House and, 30 years later, considered a grand “elder statesman” of the Democratic Party; or a Department of Justice (overseen by presidents of both parties) indicting, for the hell of it, this or that man/woman for political revenge.
Democrats (including most of the extant media) are waving their hands like Pete Townsend’s windmill guitar calisthenics back in a foreign country and Republicans are just as silly. This is the United States in 2025, one that couldn’t have been predicted in 1985, just as people in 1928 (who wouldn’t elect a Catholic as president), couldn’t have foreseen the 1950s. But, contrary to partisan mock-alarmists like Ruth Marcus, the country isn’t mired in anarchy. That’s #NoKings fiction.
The picture above, from an unrecognizable, if not foreign, country, is of my mom, Uncles Joe and Pete in the Bronx one summer day. It’s not impossible that Joe (center) has a grumpy look because he’d just returned from a ballgame at Yankee Stadium (walking distance from the Duncan Family’s house) and Babe Ruth whiffed four times.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: John Masefield is named U.K. Poet Laureate; Langston Hughes’ Not With Laughter, Evelyn Waugh’s Vile Bodies and Geoffrey Kerr’s London Calling are published; the Empire State Building begins construction; the Philadelphia Athletics win their 5th World Series; Jean Harlow has first major film role with Hell’s Angels; Sara Jane Moore is born and William Howard Taft dies; Duke Ellington’s “Three Little Words” is a big hit; and Big Bill Broonzy’s “Somebody’s Been Using That Thing” is a top blues recording.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023