Word: nixonization
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...dollars ($1,170 per ounce when last I checked) is setting a new record every few days. Cash4Gold and its competitors have been flooding the airwaves with ads exhorting you to fork over your gold jewelry for dollars. And for the first time since 1971, when U.S. President Richard Nixon unilaterally yanked the world off the gold standard, gold is also attracting interest from a crowd that usually doesn't pay it much heed: the world's central bankers...
...Obama's foreign policy, in fact, looks a lot like Richard Nixon's in the latter years of Vietnam, which sought to scale down another foreign policy doctrine - containment - that had gotten out of hand. And Nixon's experience offers both a warning and an example: pulling back from your predecessor's overblown commitments can be vital. The risk is that it can make you look weak or immoral, or both...
Stepping back a bit, I do see a metapattern that extends over the 40 years since Richard Nixon's Southern strategy began the drift toward more ideological political parties: Democrats have tough first years in the presidency. Of the past seven Presidents, the two Bushes rank at the top in popularity after one year, while Obama and Bill Clinton rank at the bottom, with Jimmy Carter close by. There is a reason for that. Democrats come to office eager to govern the heck out of the country. They take on impossible issues, like budget-balancing and health care reform. They...
...Great Wall. That image - the noble loner - is clearly one the White House wants to project. But it raises the specter of isolation. Most Presidents have a significant other when it comes to policy. Bush Junior had Cheney; Clinton had Hillary; Bush the Elder had James Baker; Nixon had Kissinger. Obama's conservative critics poke fun at his overweening ego, but I suspect that the President's need to find an alter ego, an intellectual equal - in addition to the First Lady - who can challenge his decisions and demeanor (in private, with the bark off), is the biggest adjustment...
Similarly, the critique that this is a peculiar gesture or in some way not in keeping with a tradition of diplomacy misses the mark; former President Nixon attempted a similar gesture when he met with an emperor of Japan in 1971, albeit with more success. Nixon certainly had other problems with his presidency, but showing respect to a foreign dignitary was not one of them...