Playing President: Up Close with Nixon, Carter, Reagan, Bush, and Clinton

207 Pages·2006·1.68 MB·English

by  Robert Scheer

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any
manner whatsoever without the written permission of the publisher.
Published by Akashic Books
A Truthdig Book
©2006 Robert Scheer
ePUB ISBN-13: 978-1-936070-42-8
ISBN-13: 978-1-933354-01-9
ISBN-10: 1-933354-01-1
Library of Congress Control Number: 2005934821
Akashic Books
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Grateful acknowledgment is made to the following for permission to reprint
previously published material:
Los Angeles Times: “Nixon: Scorn Yielding to New Respect” by Robert
Scheer, March 8, 1984; “U.S.-Soviet ‘Star War’ Studies Urged by Nixon” by
Robert Scheer, July 1, 1984; “Bush Assails Carter Defense Strategy” by Robert
Scheer, January 24, 1980; “Clinton Sketches Scenarios for Easing Urban
Problems” by Robert Scheer, May 31, 1992. Copyright ©1980, 1984, 1984,
1992 Los Angeles Times. Reprinted with permission.
Playboy magazine: interview with Jimmy Carter by Robert Scheer, November
1976; “Jimmy, We Hardly Know Y’all” by Robert Scheer, November 1976;
photograph by Ken Hawkins of Robert Scheer and Jimmy Carter on the back
cover Jimmy Carter. Copyright ©1976 Playboy. Reprinted by special
permission.
To my wife Narda and sons
Christopher, Joshua, and Peter:
my best editors, critics, and friends
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Title Page
Copyright Page
Foreword by Gore Vidal
Author’s Introduction
Richard Nixon’s Frozen Smile
LETTER FROM NIXON TO SCHEER
NIXON RETROSPECTIVE
INTERVIEW WITH RICHARD NIXON
Jimmy Carter’s Lustful Heart
INTERVIEW WITH JIMMY CARTER
LETTER FROM CARTER TO SCHEER
JIMMY, WE HARDLY KNOW Y’ALL
Ronald Reagan’s Obscure Complexity
LETTER FROM NANCY REAGAN TO SCHEER
PROFILE AND INTERVIEW WITH RONALD REAGAN
George H.W. Bush’s Entitlement Cool
INTERVIEW WITH GEORGE H.W. BUSH
Bill Clinton’s Rascal Component
LETTER #1 FROM CLINTON TO SCHEER
LETTER #2 FROM CLINTON TO SCHEER
INTERVIEW WITH BILL CLINTON
COLUMNS 1996–2000
George W. Bush’s Perpetual Adolescence
COLUMNS 2000–2006
FOREWORD
by Gore Vidal
T
HE TWENTIETH CENTURY PRODUCED A GREAT DEAL OF writing
about American politics, much of it bewildered when new notions like empire
started to sneak into nervous texts whose authors were not quite certain if
“empire” could ever be an applicable word for the last best hope of earth.
The bidding then changed dramatically after World War Two, when Harry
Truman armed us with nuclear weapons and gave us an icy sort of permanent
war against Godless Atheistic communism, as personified by Joseph Stalin,
standing in for Hitler, whom we had got rid of with rather more help than we
liked to admit from the new world demon Stalin. How, why did Truman lock us
all into a national security state, armed to the teeth? The simple story was dread
of communism everywhere on the march, but those of us who had served in
World War Two knew as well as our political leaders that the Soviet Union, as of
1950, was not going anywhere very soon: They had lost twenty million people.
They wanted, touchingly, to be like us, with consumer goods and all the rest of
it.
What actually happened was tragic for the Russian people and their buffer
states: Truman, guided by that brilliant lawyer Dean Acheson, was quite aware
that by 1940 the world Depression of the early ’30s had returned. The New Deal
of Franklin Roosevelt had largely failed. What was to be done? FDR took a
crash course in Keynesian economics. As a result, he invested $8 billion into re-
arming the United States, in order to hold our own against the Fascist axis of
Germany, Japan, Italy. To the astonishment of Roosevelt’s conservative political
enemies, the U.S. suddenly had full employment for the work force and a
military machine of the first rank with which we were able to defeat Fascism,
and just about anyone else who defied us.
Truman and friends learned and never forgot an important lesson: It was
through war and a militarized economy that we became prosperous with full
employment. After victory in Europe and the Pacific, Truman himself began to
play the war drums. Stalin was menacing Turkey and Greece (Acheson threw in
nearby Italy, and why not France?). We must stop the rising Red tide, while
acquiring that era’s latest propaganda toy, a TV set. This wearisome background
was well known to historians like William Appleman Williams, but hardly
suspected by too many of the usual publicists of the American way of life.
Robert Scheer has had the good fortune to observe firsthand the last half-
dozen Presidents, from Nixon to “W”. He has also had the perseverance as a
journalist to insist that he be able to conduct one-on-one conversations with the
odd sort of men who were playing (or trying to play) President. This makes for a
fascinating immediacy in the book at hand, particularly when he is giving his
protagonists a harder time than they had expected. Scheer has always suspected
that he would be one of the last journalists able to use the print medium fully in
the electronic age that had dawned around 1960.
Scheer makes a telling analysis of Nixon and his “frozen smile,” with the
comment that “despite being unquestionably the best prepared of all modern
Presidents before assuming office, it was his indelibly awkward and secretive
style that did him in.” Scheer is impressed by this President’s mind despite
himself, as was Walter Lippmann, whom I once teased for supporting Nixon.
Walter was serene: “I only know,” he said, “if I had a difficult lawsuit on my
hands, I would go to him as a lawyer. He presents you an entire case before your
eyes: He is simply brilliant, unique in public life.”
Print journalism is a challenge to the writer’s intelligence, as well as to that of
his subject. Of course, few journalists and player Presidents are up to Scheer and
Nixon. Yes, Nixon did much that was evil along the way (Cambodia, Watergate),
but he usually managed to harm himself most—a form of good manners. He was
primarily interested in foreign affairs and the opening up to China; détente with
the Soviets; these were significant achievements, and he had no strong domestic
policies, which should have been a great relief for Us the People. No wartime tax
breaks for cronies is quite enough for us to applaud him in other roles.
Presidents are trapped in history as well as in their own DNA codes. After
Watergate, Nixon starred as Coriolanus for a while, but when he saw that this got
him nowhere, he realized he was so steeped in blood that he could not turn back,
so he went on as Macbeth, to our benefit at times. Scheer is not the first of our
journalists to recognize how like classical players the Presidents tend to be if
they have the right war or disaster to contend with. Scheer is generally good-
humored about them, though Bush I’s implacable self-love seems to rub him the
wrong way; also, Reagan’s rambling does not get either of them very far, yet
Scheer has grasped what few others have: Mrs. Reagan’s importance not only to
her somewhat listless husband but to our country, where she seems to have
understood before other politicians that the Cold War was getting us nowhere.
Scheer had problems with Jimmy Carter and, perhaps, with Southern
politicians in general. He struggled with the man’s compulsive fibbing about
himself and his place in an imaginary Plains, Georgia, which kept changing to fit
his restless re-imagining of his career, recalling homely barbershop quartets as
well as killer rabbits at large in catfish ponds. Scheer had an edgy time with
Carter, but it was to Scheer that Carter confessed he had lusted in his heart for
ladies, causing much of the nation to admire and smirk.
Scheer concedes Clinton’s brilliance as a player but frets over (as many of us
did) “the end of welfare as we know it.” It is with this President that Scheer is
most interesting, largely because Clinton is as intelligent as he, at least on the
subjects they discuss. Clinton has dared occasionally to touch the third rail of
American political discourse: the superiority of other nations’ economies to that
of America the Beautiful and the Earmarked.
SCHEER Some now blame the Europeans and Japanese for our problems and
call for protectionism. Are you sympathetic to such calls?
CLINTON…But to be fair, the biggest problems we have in maintaining the
manufacturing base are our failures to work together to achieve high levels
of productivity, to control health care costs, to have a tax system which is
pro-manufacturing. Our tax system now is anti-manufacturing. And it was
during the Reagan/Bush years. I think, you know, it rewarded money
making money and not production, not jobs, not goods, and not services.
SCHEER Well, that’s what we say now. But when the last tax-reform package
was passed, many Democrats supported it. It was supposed to help
production.
CLINTON I never thought it would … You know, the elemental principle of
taxation should be [that] people should pay according to their abilities to
pay. And you should have incentives that do specific things. Those ought to
be the two driving, in my view, principles of the tax system.
This is very grown-up stuff.
The final chapter, perhaps in every sense, deals with George W. Bush. Scheer
confesses he was ill-prepared for someone who seems to have no idea of, or
interest in, playing President, as opposed to playing “Wartime President,” easily
the trick of the week when Congress has modestly declined to declare war on
anyone.
Certainly, with these observations on a section of our history, Scheer joins that
small group of journalist-historians that includes Richard Rovere, Murray
Kempton, and Walter Lippmann.