Yesterday afternoon I was watching Book Notes on C-Span2 where historian Robert Dallek was discussing his latest book Nixon and Kissinger: Partners in Power. Someone in the audience asked as to why the book's subjects, Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, were relevant today. Dallek replied that the lies, deception, and cynicism spread by both Nixon and Kissinger, so evident during the years when Nixon chose to prolong the Vietnam War knowing fully well that the war was unwinnable, reminded him of our policy in Iraq today. Just as Nixon's 'Peace With Honor' strategy led to an additional 23,000 American (and countless Vietnamese, Laotian, and Cambodese) deaths in Vietnam after Nixon took office in 1969, so is the case with Bush's Iraq strategy now. Additional American deaths in Iraq - just as in Vietnam - were unlikely to change the outcome.
When historians start comparing George W. Bush to Richard Nixon, you know he has become politically toxic.
And not just historians.
Dallek said that not since when Richard Nixon declared in late 1973 that "I'm not a Crook" - at which point he knew the Nixon Presidency was over - that the nation desperately wanted another presidency to be over and move on.
As if they were anticipating a political meltdown in 2008, an article in 'Newsweek' quotes a couple of Republican consultants discussing if Bush would be asked to appear before the 2008 Republican National Convention in St. Paul, MN
That's what the story line will be at the next GOP convention. Here's a startling question people are already posing: will Bush be asked to speak there? "There will be angst-ridden discussion, but yes, you have to do it," says Galen. Fabrizio disagrees: "If they're smart, no. Especially if things don't change in Iraq, we'll have the problem the Democrats had in 1968 with Lyndon Johnson and Vietnam. The question becomes: where do we hide the president?" In 1968 that meant the LBJ Ranch in Texas.
Where's the evidence that Republicans of all stripes are running away from Bush?
{I}n the most recent NEWSWEEK Poll, Bush's hit an all-time low of 28. Established GOP figures in Blue States shun him, even when he comes to raise money in closed-press events. The invites aren't piling up from Red States, either. Since Bush never cultivated real allies in Congress, no one there feels guilty that he has none now. With his vice president not running, there is no '08 contender trapped in the role of shameless Bush promoter. Even the longtime paid cheerleaders are putting down their megaphones. Dan Bartlett, the senior spinmaster who joined the team years ago fresh out of college in Austin, announced last week that he was leaving.
Bush remains personally popular at the party grass roots. But those same voters prefer to identify themselves as Reagan Republicans, not Bush Republicans, by a 75-15 percent margin.
The only place Bush can go and hear the crowds cheering is Albania. But, as this snarky post in The Hill's Pundit Blog noted
Never let it be said that George W. Bush has become a "Man without a Country." They LOVED him in Albania. But otherwise in Europe, the president was a Man without a Continent.
Over here, absence didn’t exactly made the heart grow fonder either.
But he’ll always have Albania.
The Democratic Party, beginning with FDR in 1932, ran against Herbert Hoover and his ineptitude for decades. And it worked politically. Don't let these Republicans disassociate themselves from the catastrophe that has been the Bush Presidency. At every opportunity, Democrats should remind the electorate that the Republicans running for political office in 2008 can run but not hide from the disaster (Bush) their political party has inflicted upon this country.
As Dallek suggested over the weekend, Bush may have finally reached Nixonian territory. He's fast becoming a political untouchable.