Nothing To See Here, Keep Moving

We’ve recently seen release of ever more definitive documents showing that nothing happened in the Gulf of Tonkin, despite the use of the “Incident” as Lyndon Johnson’s Vietnam War MacGuffin.

Now we learn that the Kennedy Administration’s finest hour, the storied grace under pressure of a wise beyond his years Jack Kennedy, was kind of a bust too.

Specifically, the moment of high seas drama when Soviet Missile ships turned back from the US Cuba blockade, the Eyeball to Eyeball/Other Fellow Blinked stuff - that didn’t happen either.

Happier Days

The Washington Post’s Michael Dobbs is unleashing his account of the Missile Crisis semi-serially in the paper, with vast companion documents and excerpts available on the National Security Archives website.

Only A Mad Dream

Invisible Man

The timeless aura of Plain Speakin’ & Brisk Walking Harry Truman claims another victim.

The 2008 campaign has already featured John Mccain wistfully recalling halcyon days when Truman strolled the capitol, accompanied by a single Secret Service agent.

Barak Obama has topped that on a visit to the Independence shrine, imagining Truman did it with no security.

“The thing that I envy most about Truman was that when he was in the White House, he could go out and take a walk. He could put on that fedora and take a stroll, without someone following him”

Obama had better watch his back. While he hit the Truman Memorial Building, and Truman’s home, Obama skipped the Truman Library, making the Library Board Chairman all huffy.

Trumanesque or Trumanish?

Winsome, Lose Some

It’s one step forward, one step back for gigantic representations of Ronald Reagan. An immense Reagan statue has been dedicated in Covington Louisiana, with a head oddly swollen compared to the original noggin.

Maybe It’s The Hair?

Elsewhere, setbacks for the cause. A young Bill Clinton led anti-war demonstrations at the London Grosvenor Square American embassy. A Reagan statue was proposed for the square, but has just been turned down by the Westminster Public Art Advisory Committee.

It was double dipping by Chaz Fagen, who’s already making the Reagan statue to go in the US Capitol. He’s already done Bush Sr., and a Reagan relief bust for the USS Ronald Reagan.

Life Like!

More detail emerges on new rides at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Museum & Fun Park, as a team of Kansans travel to California to install a Boeing 707 flight simulator in a shed near the Air Force One Pavilion.

Kansas’s El Dorado Times reports that the vintage hardware’s sad fate is to reward impressionable youths who have survived role playing exercises pretending to re-invade Grenada.

Scalia Speaks

Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia claims to be an “Originalist” in court decisions, but he likes his history predictable, if wrong.

Defending his 2000 Florida recount cutoff, Scalia goes with a classic, offering the legend of a noble Richard Nixon putting country above self, declining to challenge the disputed 1960 election.

“Richard Nixon, when he lost to [John F.] Kennedy thought that the election had been stolen in Chicago, which was very likely true with the system at the time,…But he did not even think about bringing a court challenge. That was his prerogative. So you know if you don’t like it, don’t blame it on me…I didn’t bring it into the courts. Mr Gore brought it into the courts.”

Others aren’t so sure about silent, selfless, sixties Nixon.

“Three days after the election, party Chairman Sen. Thruston Morton launched bids for recounts and investigations in 11 states—an action that Democratic Sen. Henry Jackson attacked as a “fishing expedition.” Eight days later, close Nixon aides, including Bob Finch and Len Hall, sent agents to conduct “field checks” in eight of those states. Peter Flanigan, another aide, encouraged the creation of a Nixon Recount Committee in Chicago. All the while, everyone claimed that Nixon knew nothing of these efforts—an implausible assertion that could only have been designed to help Nixon dodge the dreaded “sore loser” label.”