The Wild Blue by Stephen E. AmbroseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
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Sunday, June 29, 2025
Saturday, June 28, 2025
Review: Nixon, Vol 2: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972
Nixon, Vol 2: The Triumph of a Politician 1962-1972 by Stephen E. AmbroseMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
small-minded, dictatorial, retalitory
IT SOMETIMES SEEMED that Nixon was more concerned about and angrier with the American press than with the North Vietnamese. His fury escalated to new heights at the end of January, when new uniforms he had had Ehrlichman design for the White House police were worn in public for the first time. Inspired by the guards at Buckingham Palace and others he had seen on Nixon’s European tour a year earlier, Ehrlichman had put the White House police into white-tunicked, gold-braided, pillbox-hatted ceremonial uniforms.
The press ridiculed the result. The Chicago Daily News was reminded of movie characters from The Student Prince. The Buffalo Evening News thought “even ushers at old-time movie palaces were garbed with greater restraint and better taste.” “Ruritania, D.C.,” scoffed The New York Times.
Mort Allin, in the News Summary, informed Nixon that Newsweek had used a photo from a 1925 movie, The Merry Widow, and that Life used a photo of Emperor Francis Joseph for comparison.
Nixon was defiant. He wrote on the News Summary, “H—I want our staff to take RN’s position on this regardless of their own views—remind them of K’s line—a W.H. staffer does not have independent views on W.H. matter. H—Have Klein take the offensive on the slovenly W.H. police we found.” Happily for the police, his defiance didn’t last, and soon they were back in less colorful uniforms.
His rage against the press did last. When John Gardner criticized his budget, Nixon wrote: “H & E—He is to be completely cut off from now on. This is an order.”
When Walter Cronkite was quoted by Allin in a critical remark, Nixon circled his name and scribbled furiously, “A Nothing!” He didn’t much like Cronkite’s competitor, either; at his insistence, Jeb Magruder mounted a campaign to discredit David Brinkley, including such actions as having Don Kendall of Pepsi-Cola, an old Nixon friend and client, complain to the NBC corporate heads about Brinkley.
Hugh Sidey was another target. “H—I’m inclined to think Sidey is under orders,” Nixon wrote on one report. “No Contact with him for 30 days will shake him—order this to all hands.”12 When Sidey mentioned in a column Nixon’s lavish private homes and his wealthy friends, Nixon commented, “Freeze him completely for 60 days.”13 He also instructed Magruder to “initiate some letters to the editor comparing RN with LBJ, Ike, and JFK on this score.”
The obsession with the press and PR in the Nixon White House was never ending. On February 27, after his morning conference with the President, Haldeman sent a note to the staff. He began, “There is a need for some cold, tough decisions regarding the amount of time spent being king vs. that spent as leader of the government. Perhaps we should consider a drastic shift—reducing the ‘king’ time to a bare minimum. We also have to recognize that some of the time has to be spent just in being a nice person.”
(Ten years earlier Ann Whitman, Ike’s secretary, had observed in her diary, “The Vice-President [Nixon] sometimes seems like a man who is acting like a nice man rather than being one.”)
Haldeman went on to call for some “deep thinking” about the presentation of the President, “recognizing always that it actually gets down to what is the best television.”
Nixon loved television, especially when he could use it to speak directly to the people from the majesty of the Oval Office, with all three networks carrying his speech on prime time (after the networks caught on and began dividing up the chore, with two showing their regular programs, Nixon’s ratings sank, and he cut back drastically on his TV time).
2nd term plans
Nixon also brought Caspar Weinberger and John Ehrlichman in on his plans. On September 20, at Camp David, he subjected them to a two-hour monologue on how things were going to change after he got his mandate. He wanted Weinberger to prepare a radically austere budget for fiscal 1973. He wanted Ehrlichman to get cracking on the reorganization, not only of departments (Nixon wanted to reduce the Cabinet to eight departments; there would be four new ones, Economic Affairs, Human Resources, Natural Resources, and Community Development, plus four traditional ones, State, Defense, Justice, and Treasury) but by finding new people to replace the current officeholders.
NIXON’S ANTICIPATED MANDATE not only strengthened his tough-guy and mean-streak attitude toward McGovern and the Democrats, and toward his own Cabinet and the federal bureaucracy,...
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Monday, June 23, 2025
Wednesday, June 18, 2025
Review: Life under the Pharaohs
Life under the Pharaohs by Leonard CottrellMy rating: 3 of 5 stars
Social history is a branch of history that examines the experiences, lives, and social structures of ordinary people, rather than focusing solely on political or military events. It explores the everyday lives, social dynamics, and cultural practices of past societies.
Here's a more detailed look at what social history encompasses:
Key Aspects of Social History:
Focus on the "People":
Social history seeks to understand the lives and experiences of individuals, families, communities, and social groups, often those who were not part of political or military history.
Broad Scope:
It examines a wide range of topics, including family structures, social inequality, cultural practices, economic systems, and social movements.
Diverse Sources:
Social historians use a variety of sources, such as diaries, letters, oral histories, and material culture, to reconstruct the lives of people in the past.
Emphasis on "History from Below":
Social history is sometimes referred to as "history from below" because it emphasizes the perspectives and experiences of those who were not typically part of the historical narrative, according to Wikipedia.
Different from Traditional History:
Social history distinguishes itself from traditional political or military history by focusing on the social, economic, and cultural aspects of the past, rather than solely on political events or the lives of elites.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_...
Social history, often called history from below, is a field of history that looks at the lived experience of the past
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Tuesday, June 17, 2025
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Review: The Wild Blue
The Wild Blue by Stephen E. Ambrose My rating: 4 of 5 stars View all my reviews
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