Word: nixon
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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What is this Stakhanovite society? No, not Japan, for all its renown as the exemplar of dedicated labor. South Korea? Taiwan? West Germany? No, again. Every one of the trends cited is occurring in the U.S. -- the very country Richard Nixon once said was being overtaken by a "new welfare ethic that could cause the American character to weaken." Nixon need not have worried: 15 years after he voiced his forebodings, and as Labor Day approaches, every indication is that 112.7 million Americans by and large are working as hard as ever, and sometimes harder, even where the vaunted computer...
This behemothian novel comes from a surprising source. William Safire has largely made his reputation through epigrammatic feistiness and hit-and-run repartee. As a speechwriter in the Nixon White House, he gave Spiro Agnew the epithets and alliterations ("nattering nabobs of negativism") to attack liberal opponents of Administration policies. In 1973 he became a columnist for the New York Times, just as Watergate began to drag his conservative cause and many former colleagues into disrepute. Safire not only survived that debacle but prevailed: he won a Pulitzer Prize in 1978, and his twice-a-week columns continue to display...
Nothing in his past accomplishments suggests that Safire would produce a tedious and seemingly endless work of fiction. In fact, Full Disclosure (1977), his first novel, was a sprightly, best-selling account of a beleaguered White House not entirely unlike Nixon's. But Freedom is another, infinitely longer story. Subtitled A Novel of Abraham Lincoln and the Civil War, the book inches its way from May 1861, shortly after the Confederate forces fire on Fort Sumter, to Jan. 1, 1863, when President Lincoln signs the Emancipation Proclamation. This takes just under 1,000 pages, followed by about 130 more, which...
John Kennedy likewise used a rudimentary recording system. The tapes from such dramatic conversations as his telephone showdown with Governor Ross Barnett during the Ole Miss desegregation crisis provide historians with raw data that is even more gripping than most old letters. But Richard Nixon spoiled it all by going too far, both in what he said and how he recorded...
Reagan must bear in mind the Watergate precedent. In 1974, only one month after Richard Nixon's resignation, Gerald Ford pardoned him for all crimes he might have committed during his presidency. Ford's action left a bitter taste with many voters and may have contributed to his narrow loss to Jimmy Carter in the 1976 presidential election. Reagan, of course, is not a candidate for re-election, but he has become increasingly concerned with his place in history and would not want to be remembered for having weakened the chances of the Republican nominee...