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The Lowdown

Mark Silva points out that George Bush’s low, low approval numbers won’t surpass Richard Nixon’s until December, assuming Bush stays down. And the beloved Harry Truman is still all time champ.

Silva is using continuous months below 40% approval in the Gallop Poll as his measure. Nixon and Bush have both been there for 13 months, but Truman rode out his term at below 40% for a solid 26 months.
Another year to go for Bush.

He’ll always have Tirana!

David Corn points us to the latest nugget from the bottomless mine that is the Nixon tapes.

A new Miller Center transcript has Nixon and Henry Kissinger musing over the mind of Ronald Reagan, or lack thereof. With an added bonus: when Kissinger praises Reagan’s ability to deliver a line, Nixon erupts that he can get off a good one too.

“President Nixon: What’s your evaluation or Reagan after meeting him several times now.

Kissinger: Well, I think he’s a—actually I think he’s a pretty decent guy.

President Nixon: Oh, decent, no question, but his brains?

Kissinger: Well, his brains, are negligible. I—

President Nixon: He’s really pretty shallow, Henry.

Kissinger: He’s shallow. He’s got no . . . he’s an actor. He—When he gets a line he does it very well. He said, “Hell, people are remembered not for what they do, but for what they say. Can’t you find a few good lines?” [Chuckles.] That’s really an actor’s approach to foreign policy—to substantive—

President Nixon: I’ve said a lot of good things, too, you know damn well.”

Watergate witness and turncoat Nixon White House Counsel John Dean has a novel suggestion to try and shame George Bush into preserving and disclosing his presidential papers: the Nixon treatment

Dean surveys the damage done to date and proposes that if Bush won’t preserve his papers he’ll have to pay for his own library.

“Cheney has all but confirmed that he is already destroying his papers. Since there are no sanctions if Bush and Cheney do as they wish with their papers – except for an outstanding restraining order preventing them from destroying backup records of emails – no doubt they will do just that……the lawsuit that might have forced Bush and Cheney to comply with the 1978 law and might have overturned Executive Order 13233 is comatose …there is only one thing that yet might be done: Democrats could advise Bush that if he does not comply with the 1978 law, they will not fund his presidential library when it is turned over to the National Archives and Records Administration (NARA)… NARA is essential for presidential libraries, as the Nixon Library discovered. Before it agreed to play by the rules, the Nixon Library was fast going into financial failure, barely supporting itself by renting out a mock East Room of the White House for weddings…Democratic Congressional leaders should warn Bush and Cheney that if they insist on ignoring the law, then there will be consequences: There will be no NARA funding for the administration of the George W. Bush Presidential Library.”

Too soon to tell if a man who plans to raise half a billion dollars towards his greater glory will be phased by this notion.

The Berlin Wall has been down 18 years today, but America never tires of the old concrete chunks left over. Pieces grace all your finer Presidential Libraries, no matter how strained their relationship is to the Wall.

And we usually display them West side out with all the pretty graffiti.

Roosevelt: only link is this hideous sculpture made by a Churchill Granddaughter from Wall.

Truman: see where she got the semi-human shapes above? Still more Churchill relative art at Westminster College where Truman invited Churchill to let rip.

Eisenhower: none – Wall but a gleam in Walter Ulbrecht’s eye then.

Kennedy: because it was built on his watch?

Johnson: sadly, no.

Nixon: because it existed simultaneously with his Presidency?

Ford: same as above, and US established diplomatic relations with DDR.

Carter: none.

Reagan: leapt into the future and tore down his own-self.

Plus one inside:

Plus at the Ronald Reagan Building in DC:

Plus one at the “Reagan Ranch” [downhill from it in Santa Barbara]:

Bush: fell while in office.

Another, indoors:

Other Americans have different ways of displaying the Wall:

The race to the bottom continues for President George W. Bush:

“…Bush reached an unwelcome record. By 64%-31%, Americans disapprove of the job he is doing. For the first time in the history of the Gallup Poll, 50% say they “strongly disapprove” of the president. Richard Nixon had reached the previous high, 48%, just before an impeachment inquiry was launched in 1974.”

http://www.usatoday.com/printedition/news/20071106/a_iranpoll06.art.htm