If I write a biography of Nixon or H. W. Bush, it would be brief and tightly focused. A full-blown birth-to-death is more than I can muster the enthusiasm for, in either case.
I ought to stop saying "another excellent, thought-provoking essay" because it's redundant. They're all like that. One comment on the present one. When Brands writes "Watergate wasn’t merely sordid; it was feckless, in that the burglars really were third-rate and their bosses no better," I'm reminded of what some columnist wrote way back then. I can't recall who it was (George Wills maybe?), but the columnist floated the theory that the break-in was so clumsy that it might have been a set-up to discredit Nixon. As this columnist put it, "the FBI, CIA - even the Mafia - could have done it so expertly that nobody would have ever known it."
The PPACA ( aka Obamacare ) It was hardly a progressive liberal program model as it was on Massachusetts Romney care which was a heritage foundation program to funnel money to private health insurance companies
Single payer medicare for all was distinctly cut out of it even as a small element in the bill
While Obama care did go a long way towards reducing the level of uninsured it did not solve the issue of the high cost of medical care nor the fact that people are still going bankrupt from medical bills
Another thought-provoking post, Bill. You've mentioned in some podcast interviews when you've discussed your six-volume biographical history of the United States ("America: Its Lives and Times") that you considered writing about Nixon for volume 6 instead of Reagan. Since you ended up concluding the series with Reagan, have you put any more thought into writing a biography about Nixon? Also, you've mentioned in a lecture before that you're of the belief that George H. W. Bush is the most important President since WWII (you've said the same thing about both LBJ and Reagan, too). Any plans to write a biography on Bush the Elder, or should the world just be satisfied with Jon Meacham's Bush 41 biography?
If I write a biography of Nixon or H. W. Bush, it would be brief and tightly focused. A full-blown birth-to-death is more than I can muster the enthusiasm for, in either case.
I ought to stop saying "another excellent, thought-provoking essay" because it's redundant. They're all like that. One comment on the present one. When Brands writes "Watergate wasn’t merely sordid; it was feckless, in that the burglars really were third-rate and their bosses no better," I'm reminded of what some columnist wrote way back then. I can't recall who it was (George Wills maybe?), but the columnist floated the theory that the break-in was so clumsy that it might have been a set-up to discredit Nixon. As this columnist put it, "the FBI, CIA - even the Mafia - could have done it so expertly that nobody would have ever known it."
Right?! And it wasn't like there weren't some of those "plumbers" with FBI and CIA connections. Perhaps it was just hubris.
The PPACA ( aka Obamacare ) It was hardly a progressive liberal program model as it was on Massachusetts Romney care which was a heritage foundation program to funnel money to private health insurance companies
Single payer medicare for all was distinctly cut out of it even as a small element in the bill
While Obama care did go a long way towards reducing the level of uninsured it did not solve the issue of the high cost of medical care nor the fact that people are still going bankrupt from medical bills
Another thought-provoking post, Bill. You've mentioned in some podcast interviews when you've discussed your six-volume biographical history of the United States ("America: Its Lives and Times") that you considered writing about Nixon for volume 6 instead of Reagan. Since you ended up concluding the series with Reagan, have you put any more thought into writing a biography about Nixon? Also, you've mentioned in a lecture before that you're of the belief that George H. W. Bush is the most important President since WWII (you've said the same thing about both LBJ and Reagan, too). Any plans to write a biography on Bush the Elder, or should the world just be satisfied with Jon Meacham's Bush 41 biography?
Interesting that this focuses the decline by watergate with liberal government rather with crooking conservative. 🤔