Politicians From California

"Upton Sinclair wrote The Jungle at a time when Lincoln Steffens was writing about the political evils of the day and during the muckraking period of Ray Stannard Baker, and others. Sinclair was the only one of these muckrakers who drew the logical political conclusions. At the end of The Jungle he advocated socialism as the remedy for the terrible conditions in industry under private ownership."

"Upton Sinclair's victory is astounding. It bears him out in his early assurance of success and his insistence from the beginning that he sensed a ground swell of revolt against the present order. It is the more remarkable because of the widespread belief that the red scare following the general strike had so aroused California that there was a reaction against the radicalism of Mr. Sinclair. . . . He [will] win others to his belief that the economic and political jungle we live in today is no more necessary and inevitable than were the foul horrors of that human cesspool of the stockyards which he-to his everlasting honor-revealed in his most famous book, "The Jungle.""

"I am against the violation of civil rights by Hitler and Mussolini as much as you are, and well you know it. But I am also against the wholesale murders, confiscations and other outrages that have gone on in Russia. I think it is fair to say that you pseudo-communists are far from consistent here. You protest, and with justice, each time Hitler jails an opponent; but you forget that Stalin and company have jailed and murdered a thousand times as many. It seems to me, and indeed the evidence is plain, that compared to the Moscow brigands and assassins, Hitler is hardly more than a common Ku Kluxer and Mussolini almost a philanthropist."

"I did not want to say these unpleasant things, but you have written to me, asking my opinion, and I give it to you, flat. If you would get over two ideas — first that any one who criticizes you is an evil and capitalist-controlled spy, and second that you have only to spend a few weeks on any subject to become a master of it — you might yet regain your now totally lost position as the leader of American socialistic journalism."

"We also learned an important lesson from Sinclair's campaign. Sinclair had been a socialist ever since the Debs era. He had run for office on the Socialist ticket many times without much success. In 1934, to the dismay of his comrades in the Socialist Party, and to our contempt, he decided to run for the Democratic nomination for governor in California. He put together a ticket called End Poverty in California, or EPIC, which took as its slogan "production for use, not profit," and advocated state-sponsored cooperative enterprises. The EPIC movement swept the Democratic Party, gained Sinclair the Democratic nomination (if not, ultimately, the governorship), and roused enormous popular enthusiasm. We would have nothing to do with the Democratic Party, and so we were left on the outside, denouncing the movement. We called him a "social fascist," which was terrible nonsense. (Lest it be thought that such sectarianism was solely a CP attribute, it's worth remembering that the Socialist Party expelled Sinclair for his act of heresy.) Our position was that you could not reform a capitalist party, that nothing could be gained through the two-party system."

"My concept of what it meant to be a revolutionary was based on a montage of the organizers from the Sinclair novels, along with my childhood memories from Denver."

"Mr. Sinclair would have died in obscurity but for “The Jungle,” which didn’t move a hair upon the heads of the Armours, but netted the author a large sum and a reputation. He may now write the most stupid stuff, sure of finding a market. Yet there is not a workingman anywhere so cringing before respectability as Mr. Sinclair."

"He (Sinclair) is in the doghouse here because he relentlessly sheds light on the hurly-burly dark side of American life."

"I look upon Upton Sinclair as one of the greatest novelists in the world, the Zola of America."

"What Fielding was to the eighteenth century and Dickens to the nineteenth, Sinclair is to our own. The overwhelming knowledge and passionate expression of specific wrongs are more stirring, more interesting, and also more taxing than the cynical censure of Fielding and the sentimental lamentations of Dickens."

"[H]ere are three sentences for you to paste in your hat and learn by heart. First: Credit is the life blood of industry, and the control of credit is the control of all society. Second: The private control of credit is the modern form of slavery. And Third: The American banking system is the most perfect contrivance yet devised by the human brain for making the rich richer and the poor poorer."

"Private ownership of tools, a basis of freedom when tools are simple becomes a basis of enslavement when tools are complex."

"It was cold and clammy in the stone cell; they called it the "cooler," and used it to reduce the temperature of the violent and intractable. It was a trouble-saving device; they just left the man there and forgot him, and his own tormented mind did the rest."

"Wherever there was a group of people, and a treasure to be administered, there Peter knew was backbiting and scandal and intriguing and spying, and a chance for somebody whose brains were "all there.""

"An event of colossal and overwhelming significance may happen all at once, but the words which describe it have to come one by one in a long chain."

"Now and then it occurs to one to reflect upon what slender threads of accident depend the most important circumstances of his life; to look back and shudder, realizing how close to the edge of nothingness his being has come."

"In the course of my twenty years career as an assailant of special privilege, I have attacked pretty nearly every important interest in America. The statements I have made, if false, would have been enough to deprive me of a thousand times all the property I ever owned, and to have sent me to prison for a thousand times a normal man's life. I have been called a liar on many occasions, needless to say; but never once in all these twenty years has one of my enemies ventured to bring me into a court of law, and to submit the issue between us to a jury of American citizens."

"In 1969 — President Nixon’s first year — the Soviet Union proposed that the U.S. and U.S.S.R conspire to eliminate Mainland China’s nuclear forces. Nixon said back to the Kremlin: Don’t even think about it. In 2009 — President Obama’s first year — a fraudulent presidential election kept Iran’s extreme Islamists in power. Thousands took to the streets. Obama gave them zero support. Forty years apart, Nixon and later Obama sent early and strong signals: "Count on the new guy to head off anything that will rock your boat….""

"The Nixon tragedy: A man of unsurpassed courage and outstanding intelligence but without vision. An opportunist who missed his greatest opportunity."

"I may not know much, but I do know the difference between chicken shit and chicken salad."

"As President Nixon repeatedly shot down the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, DIA mobilized, and eighty activists shut down Madison Avenue to protest his veto."

"Do you realize the responsibility I carry? I'm the only person standing between Richard Nixon and the White House."

"Each day to facilitate the process by which the United States washes her hands of Vietnam, someone has to give up his life so that United States doesn’t have to admit something that the entire world already knows, so that we cannot say that we’ve made a mistake. Someone has to die so that President Nixon won’t be, and these are his words, “the first President to lose a war.” And we are asking Americans to think about that because how do you ask a man to be the last man to die in Vietnam? How do you ask a man to be the last man to die for a mistake? But we’re trying to do that, and we’re doing it with thousands of rationalizations, and if you read carefully the President’s last speech to the people of this country, you can see that he says, and says clearly: "But the issue, gentlemen, the issue is communism, and the question is whether or not we will leave that country to the Communists or whether or not we will try to give it hope to be a free people." But the point is they’re not a free people now -- under us. They’re not a free people. And we cannot fight communism all over the world, and I think we should have learnt that lesson by now."

"Perceptions of McGovern’s 1972 opponent have been heavily influenced by Nixon’s subsequent disgrace and resignation from office. But in 1972 itself, Nixon was brilliant, in a devious, unprincipled sort of way. He had already defied conservative orthodoxy by imposing wage and price controls (1971) and visiting the previously forbidden kingdom of the People’s Republic of China (a maneuver so audacious that Nixon-to-China became a general term for politicians going sharply against type). Nixon’s campaign relentlessly appealed to Democratic constituencies, especially labor (the AFL-CIO was neutral in a presidential general election for the first time ever), southern white voters (a Democrats-for-Nixon organization was headed by LBJ crony John Connally), and Catholics. He falsely promised imminent peace in Vietnam and used fiscal stimulus to pump up the economy (helping to create later inflation that would bedevil his successors). He gave every appearance of being a very successful president, disguising the moral rot within his White House. His job-approval ratings in 1972 breached 60 percent in May and were at 62 percent on Election Day. Trump has never been within hailing distance of this sort of popularity, and has never shown any interest, much less ability, in appealing beyond his electoral base."

"One has to understand the human problem of a man who had spent all of his life trying to become President whose personality really did not lend itself to politics. He didn't like to meet new people. He didn't like to give direct orders. He didn't like face-to-face confrontations—all the things you have to do as President. He made himself do all these things. And just when he had achieved, for the first time, a tremendous electoral victory, everything collapsed on him."

"Nixon had the quality that...he thought of himself as acting best in crisis. And there was a lot in that. But it reached the point where one sometimes had the impression that he invited crisis and that he couldn't stand normalcy."

"Nixon's comments about Jews were sort of — there was a huge disparity between the comments he made about Jews and the large number of Jews he had in his administration. And it is hard to believe in one sense. I don't really think Nixon was anti-Semitic. He had sort of standard phrases."

"Nixon's technique was to make grand accusations, provide little proof and keep his opponent on the defensive. In this he succeeded brilliantly."

"Revolutionary Chicanas want the liberation of our people and of all oppressed peoples. We do not want to become page-girls in President Richard Nixon's Congress the most recent bone tossed to "women's liberation.""

"It was ironic that President Nixon, in a memo released by the National Archives, complained that his commanders had played "how not to lose" that they had forgotten "how to win." To render justice to the generals, I agree with General Westmoreland that the U.S. needed to rethink its Viet Nam policies. It had to do away with the "status quo" and resolutely carry he war to the North. Although President Nixon later ordered B-52 runs on North Viet Nam, this move was not so much to win the war, but to induce the enemy to sit at the negotiation table."

"Even if you just think he's a character on Futurama, you've probably heard of Richard Nixon. The 37th president of the United States was a crook, a liar, and a raging anti-Semite. He deliberately sabotaged the Vietnam peace process, launched the expensive failure known as the 'War on Drugs', and famously ordered his goons to try to burgle the Democratic Party's headquarters. Oh, and he did all this while being one of the greatest presidents the U.S. has ever known."

"Only a Republican, perhaps only a Nixon, could have made this break and gotten away with it."

"Doesn't he understand Nixon promised the Southern delegates he would stop enforcing the Civil Rights and Voting Rights Acts?"

"Meanwhile, Trump revelled in the mob. He exalted in the mob, hoping that his shock troops would succeed where Pence had failed: prevent Congress from fulfilling its constitutional obligation to certify the election of the new and real president. Again, Trump was the fifth column. If Richard Nixon had an illegitimate heir – it would be Donald Trump. Like Nixon, Trump – motivated by hate and vengeance – was intent on using the powers and authority of the presidency to pervert what he was obliged to protect: the US Constitution. Like Nixon, Trump treated Congress and the constitution as inconveniences to his dangerous, disfiguring will and parochial designs. Like Nixon, Trump was more potentate than president. Like Nixon, Trump orchestrated a pervasive assault on the constitution, convinced that the president and his enablers were above the law, safe from the retributive arm of the law. Like Nixon, Trump was impeached for just cause – in his disgraceful case, twice. And, like Nixon, Trump has escaped the dock. That is the test and challenge confronting America today."

"Had Richard Nixon not resigned, he would certainly have been impeached by the House and most likely convicted by the Senate. Peter Rodino and John Doar had been essentially right about the preconditions for a successful presidential impeachment: There had to be a commonly accepted baseline of facts, an atmosphere of trust among the members of the House Judiciary Committee, and a disciplined commitment by the committee chair and the inquiry staff to bipartisanship. But those were only the preconditions. Even still, Richard Nixon very nearly finished his second term. His impeachment holds worrisome lessons for future Congresses. Law enforcement and the judiciary had evidence of Nixon’s criminal behavior eight months before he left office, and yet there was no predictable way to ensure his removal. Impeachment is a political process, not a legal one, and by hampering access to information while encouraging his defenders to demand a very high level of proof of direct presidential misconduct, Nixon almost stymied that process. But Nixon had made tapes, and the public and Congress learned about those tapes before he could destroy them. Fortunately for the nation, Richard Nixon could never figure out how to untangle himself from those tapes. Equally fortunate for the nation was the fact that in 1974 a group of elected officials, from both parties, were prepared to take political, and even personal, risks to follow that evidence wherever it led for the sake of a Constitution they all revered."

"Richard Nixon was the last president who faced anything like the legal jeopardy former President Trump is facing — plus a frothing electronic lynch mob. The end game for both Nixon and Trump has some eerie similarities. Detested by the media, the New York-Washington elites and the left, both Nixon and Trump were subject to a nonstop campaign to destroy their administrations and their futures. Both played off the haters for political gain. Both ended up making severe errors in judgment that brought them down. Trump even managed to get caught on tape incriminating himself. But Trump is not Nixon; he is, at best, a smaller, weaker, more vacuous version. Unlike Trump, Nixon had a real worldview — a vision of a world with a restored balanced of power and subsequently stable, peaceful relations between the great powers. Nixon was determined to see his vision through and formed an administration built to achieve that goal. Trump, however, believes only in himself, hamstringing efforts by his administration to achieve lasting results."

"Nixon accomplished much both in domestic and foreign policy, in spite of facing Democratic majorities in Congress. Nixon initiated relations with China (a relationship botched by future presidents), negotiated the first nuclear arms limitation treaty and extricated (imperfectly) the nation from its multi-decade misadventure in Vietnam. Nixon created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), increased aid to people with disabilities and worked to devolve power to the states. Trump’s foreign policy is, at best, a draw. While the Abraham Accords and a few trade deals were completed, he failed to get out of Afghanistan and got ripped off by China. That he cut through the policy inertia to move toward leaving Afghanistan is to his great credit. But he could not close the deal — something Nixon would never have let fall through the cracks. His domestic policy accomplishments included a tax cut and a raft of executive orders that his successor wiped out within weeks of his inauguration. And Trump faced far less adversity that Nixon. Nixon had to deal with inflation sparked by Lyndon Johnson’s spending and Vietnam escalation, the subsequent collapse of the Bretton Woods monetary system, war in the Middle East and an energy crisis caused by decades of increasing dependence on imported oil. Trump entered office with low inflation and low unemployment. He faced one major crisis in the COVID epidemic and, unsurprisingly, fumbled it badly. Trump’s hesitating, vacillating response ended up dooming his reelection. In times of crisis, the American people tend to rally around their president, but that only lasts as long as the president demonstrates leadership and determination. Trump only demonstrated confusion, indecision and doubt."

"Even in scandal, Trump does not compare. The sum of misdeeds by the Nixon administration under the heading of “Watergate” was sprawling and complex. But for a botched burglary, they might have gotten away with it (and to be fair, Nixon’s predecessors all abused the power of the presidency for political aims, just not as extensively as Nixon). Meanwhile, Trump is getting caught for stashing classified documents in his bathroom, begging for votes (unsuccessfully) and paying hush money to a stripper. That’s one pathetic collection of felonies. But there are two ways in which Trump and Nixon diverge. First, Nixon was a winner. He won the biggest vote percentage of any Republican in 1972, in addition to his win in 1968. He was on the winning national ticket in four of five attempts, equaling Franklin Roosevelt. Even in 1960, there is some dispute, with historian Irwin Gellman casting doubt on the result and Robert Caro, award-winning biographer of Lyndon Johnson, certainly implying that Texas was stolen for opponent John F. Kennedy (see pp. 150-155 in his book “The Passage of Power”). Second, Nixon was willing to sacrifice for the country. Most people don’t realize Nixon was not impeached. Articles of impeachment were voted out of committee, but the process had not started. Nixon might have held on to enough votes to forestall conviction. But Nixon resigned. He knew impeachment would be profoundly damaging to the nation and Republicans. He kept a low profile through the 1974 and 1976 elections (where Gerald Ford, improbably, almost won). Can anyone imagine Trump sacrificing anything for the GOP or the country? So far, that’s an emphatic “No.” In fact, Trump seems to be going out of his way to wreck Republican election prospects. Republicans escaped the damaging effects of Nixon and Watergate by 1980 and the nation moved decisively to the right for nearly 30 years. Nixon somewhat rehabilitated himself and became a respected voice on international relations. Today’s Republican Party is not nearly so fortunate. Trump is determined to stick around no matter the cost to everyone but himself. He already cost Republicans control of the U.S. Senate in both 2020 and 2022, and he is primarily responsible for the most left-progressive administration since Lyndon Johnson to be in power. Trump is just a shadow of what Nixon was as a president and a politician, but the damage he is causing Republicans and conservatives is exponentially greater than anything Nixon ever did."

"Well poor old Jack [Kennedy]. I hope he gets [elected]. I think King Kong would be better than Nixon."

"Carter didn't kill my brother with his own hand, but he overthrew him. If Nixon were President, my brother would still be on the throne."

"Nixon has the audacity to tell me to do nothing in the interest of my country until he dictacts where that interest lies. At the same time he threatens me that failure to follow his so-called advice will be to jeopardize the special relations between our two countries. I say to hell with such special relations."

"I was in Paris yesterday for the funeral of President Pompidou, and I met your President Nixon. He was wearing pancake makeup!"

"This administration has proved that it is utterly incapable of cleaning out the corruption which has completely eroded it and reestablishing the confidence and faith of the American people in the morality and honesty of their government employees."

"It struck me from time to time that Nixon, as a character, would have been so easy to fix, in the sense of removing these rather petty flaws. And yet, I think it's also true that if you did this, you would probably have removed that very inner core of insecurity that led to his drive. A secure Nixon almost surely, in my view, would never have been president of the United States at all."

"I finally arrived here in 1968. What a special day it was. I remember I arrived here with empty pockets but full of dreams, full of determination, full of desire. The presidential campaign was in full swing. I remember watching the Nixon-Humphrey presidential race on TV. A friend of mine who spoke German and English translated for me. I heard Humphrey saying things that sounded like socialism, which I had just left. But then I heard Nixon speak. He was talking about free enterprise, getting the government off your back, lowering the taxes and strengthening the military. Listening to Nixon speak sounded more like a breath of fresh air. I said to my friend, I said, 'What party is he?' My friend said, 'He's a Republican'. I said, 'Then I am a Republican'. And I have been a Republican ever since."

"Imagine a man. A mean man. A mendacious man. In many ways, a mad man. A man who mocked minorities, including African-Americans, Hispanics, Jews, and gay people. A man who cynically capitalized on the racism of Southern whites in the course of his campaigns. A man who cheated in an election he was already going to win by covering up a break-in at the Watergate hotel. Richard Nixon, the 37th president of the United States, won his first election in the shadow of the death of Robert Kennedy. His second election, a landslide win over liberal George McGovern, felt like one last boot stomp on the ashes of the sixties. And, of course, Nixon resigned office in the greatest presidential scandal of the 20th century. Yet, in between those curtains of American despair, Nixon ended up accomplishing a whole lot. He did the unexpected—his executive orders and his legislation helped the poor, minorities, women, the environment, and the world. Nixon, dare I say it, was progressive. He was conservative, and he clothed his ideas in conservative rhetoric, but he was progressive."

"There are moral intentions and there are moral consequences. The floral consequences of Richard Nixon’s presidency—most of which are overshadowed by Watergate—contradict his intentions. Would the opposite be any better? The revolutions of the 20th century—of Mao Zedong and Joseph Stalin—attest to the grotesque transformations of the most moral intentions. The unrelenting ocean of history washes away our motives, our hopes, our dreams. All that remains is our actions. And we will remember Nixon’s actions: his biggest mistake, the scandal which will forever define his presidency and life. But if we dig through his legacy, we would find gems which shine brighter in today’s light."

"Today is a time of much historical revisionism. We look for sins in the lives of saints. I understand this tendency—greatness doesn’t excuse evil. To worship another human is to forget who a human being is in the first place. But the truth goes both ways. What about finding the good in disgraced figures? What moral lessons might we gleam from such an exercise? I am not talking about dictators, or mass murderers, or perverse evildoers. I am talking about Richard Nixon. I am talking about our presidents, our parents, our favorite characters, our friends, our artists, and our acquaintances. People who make great mistakes but also do great good. People who say prejudiced things and then do justice. People who are human. What are we to make of such people? Richard Nixon, by many accounts, was a mean man. But there was good in him. More importantly, there was good he did. And that’s worth remembering."

"The President wants me to argue that he is as powerful a monarch as Louis XIV, only four years at a time, and is not subject to the processes of any court in the land except the court of impeachment."

"Forty years ago public outrage about the actions of President Richard Milhous Nixon, lead by his long time liberal critics, forced him to be the first U.S. chief executive to resign the presidency. Critics screamed about Nixon’s extra-legal and extra-constitutional conduct as protestors ringed the White House chanting "Jail to the Chief." Nixon’s men had spied on their fellow citizens, allegedly used the IRS to harass their political enemies, waged war without the consent of Congress and used the CIA in an effort to hide their crimes. No man, Nixon’s critics assured us, was above the law. For his transgressions, Richard Nixon was forced from office, evading prosecution only because of a presidential pardon. Yet by any reasonable measure, Nixon’s sins seem venal compared to those of President Barack Obama."