[Nixon orders a "Break In"]

Editorial Reviews Amazon.com Review: How did we go from Lyndon Johnson’s landslide Democratic victory in 1964 to Richard Nixon’s equally lopsided Republican reelection only eight years later? The years in between were among the most chaotic in American history, with an endless and unpopular war, riots, assassinations, social upheaval, Southern resistance, protests both peaceful and armed, and a “Silent Majority” that twice elected the central figure of the age, a brilliant politician who relished the battles of the day but ended them in disgrace. In Nixonland Rick Perlstein tells a more familiar story than the one he unearthed in his influential previous book, Before the Storm, which argued that the stunning success of modern conservatism was founded in Goldwater’s massive 1964 defeat. But he makes it fresh and relentlessly compelling, with obsessive original research and a gleefully slashing style–equal parts Walter Winchell and Hunter S. Thompson–that’s true to the times. Perlstein is well known as a writer on the left, but his historian’s empathies are intense and unpredictable: he convincingly channels the resentment and rage on both sides of the battle lines and lets neither Nixon’s cynicism nor the naivete of liberals like New York mayor John Lindsay off the hook. And while election-year readers will be reminded of how much tamer our times are, they’ll also find that the echoes of the era, and its persistent national divisions, still ring loud and clear. –Tom Nissley From Publishers Weekly: Starred Review. Perlstein, winner of a Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Before the Storm: Barry Goldwater and the Unmaking of the American Consensus, provides a compelling account of Richard Nixon as a masterful harvester of negative energy, turning the turmoil of the 1960s into a ladder to political notoriety. Perlstein’s key narrative begins at about the time of the Watts riots, in the shadow of Lyndon Johnson’s overwhelming 1964 victory at the polls against Goldwater, which left America’s conservative movement broken. Through shrewdly selected anecdotes, Perlstein demonstrates the many ways Nixon used riots, anti–Vietnam War protests, the drug culture and other displays of unrest as an easy relief against which to frame his pitch for his narrow win of 1968 and landslide victory of 1972. Nixon spoke of solid, old-fashioned American values, law and order and respect for the traditional hierarchy. In this way, says Perlstein, Nixon created a new dividing line in the rhetoric of American political life that remains with us today. At the same time, Perlstein illuminates the many demons that haunted Nixon, especially how he came to view his political adversaries as enemies of both himself and the nation and brought about his own downfall. 16 pages of b&w photos. See all Editorial Reviews

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Writes: James N. Kariuki

Obama, nuclear weapons and the race factor — Given the history of nuclear weapons relative to the non-white world, and noting the ongoing ‘loose talk about nukes’ in the US regarding Iran, it is fitting that Barack Obama should aspire to eliminate all nuclear weapons, American and otherwise. Perhaps, he owes it most to his ancestral Diaspora.

In early August 1945, the US dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan. The indiscriminate damage of life and property was immeasurable. It was a massive collective punishment, a classic case of the power of modern civilisation without its mercy.

Ever since, the world has been haunted by two questions. Was the use of nuclear devices necessary? Would the US have used nuclear weapons against white Germany? Critics remain deeply divided.

President Harry Truman’s sympathisers however, support his logic that the bombs were vital to shortening the war in the Pacific and saving American lives.

Doubters insist that by mid-1945, Japan was virtually a crippled enemy. Nazi Germany had already surrendered in May 1945.

Combined bombardment

How much longer could Japan have endured under the combined ‘conventional’ bombardment of the Allies and, possibly, Russia?

In short, the American use of atomic weapons was unnecessary, prompted and made easier by the fact that the victims were non-white. Indeed innuendoes abound that America used the Japanese as guinea pigs to demonstrate the ravaging power of its new, barbarous weapon.

Twenty years later, the same US was bogged down in the protracted Vietnam War, and language of nuclear weapons resurfaced in American politics. The 1964 Republican presidential contender, Barry Goldwater, openly recommended using low-yield nuclear weapons for defoliation of Vietnamese woodlands.

Goldwater’s ‘nuclear reckless talk’ ultimately cost him the presidency. But in the hunt for it, he had arrogated to himself the right to entertain nuclear language that could have resulted in annihilation of a Southeast Asian nation.

Again, the collective victims would have been non-whites — men, women and children alike.

Castro’s autobiography

In a 2007 autobiography, Fidel Castro: My Life, the Cuban icon narrates the story that for Angola’s freedom, Cuban and Angolan troops fought against an apartheid army and government that had eight Hiroshima/Nagasaki-size atomic bombs secretly “provided by the US through … Israel.” Were those weapons developed during the South African-Israeli nuclear collaboration or were they US-made? In either case, the targets were black people.

As SA approached freedom, the West became increasingly nervous over the prospects of blacks inheriting a nuclear state.

Accordingly, Nelson Mandela and his associates were vigorously coaxed into dismantling the bombs and signing the Non-Proliferation Treaty. Racist SA could be nuclear; democratic one could not.

Given the history of nuclear weapons relative to the non-white world, and noting the ongoing ‘loose talk about nukes’ in the US regarding Iran, it is fitting that Barack Obama should aspire to eliminate all nuclear weapons, American and otherwise. Perhaps, he owes it most to his ancestral Diaspora.

Popularity: 14% [?]

By BOB HERBERT

Barack Obama is winning, so why does it look like Hillary Clinton is having all the fun?

Senator Obama has been thrown completely off his game by a combination of political attacks (some fair, some foul), a toxic eruption (the volcanic Jeremiah Wright was a gift from the gods to the Clintons and the G.O.P.), and some pretty serious self-inflicted wounds.

You can almost feel the air seeping out of the Obama phenomenon. The candidate and his aides are brainstorming ways to counter the Clinton death-ray machine and regain the momentum. They need to generate some new excitement and enthusiasm, and they need to do it soon.

Despite all the new voters who have been brought into the process, Democrats are filled with anxiety about their prospects in November. A nervous operative told me on Friday: “If we lose this election, it would be like Johnson losing to Goldwater.”

One of the problems is that anger is growing like a cancer among Democrats. The Clintons have more than lived up to their polarizing reputations, slicing and dicing the electorate and then gleefully exploiting the myriad divisions.

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