Can we blame Richard Nixon for Pakistani Strongman Pervez Musharraf’s weekend coup?
Agence France-Presse reports his passion for Nixon. The General’s own web site asks”What book have you read recently and really enjoyed?” His answer: “‘Leaders’ by Richard Nixon.” Musharaff made sure to tell a 2005 interviewer that he had thanked Henry Kissinger that year in New York for his and Nixon’s “very good role” in 1971. That was when the Pakistani Army massacred as many as 3 million people in East Bengal with the silence and covert aid of the Nixon Administration.
Musharaff also shares his role model’s penchant for mysterious real estate holdings.
We’ll see how the State of Siege goes for our man in Pakistan. He’s kept his calendar clear for November.
Howdy!
The Washington Post “Fact Checker” weighs in on the Clinton’s papers, and comes up with a simple pointless solution that will never see the light of day.
She says she’s for disclosure, he blamed the Bush White House, the Archives says President Clinton’s representatives have a blanket list of topics they don’t want out till they see the papers first. A Bush Executive Order gave this power to ex president’s and their children after them just as Reagan era papers were about to surface. 
With the sitting president getting yet another whack at preventing disclosure afterwards.
The Post says Clinton should let it all hang out:
‘There is, however, nothing in Executive Order 13233 that obliges a former president, or his representative, to go through the records one by one. If former President Clinton is so opposed to the Bush administration order, he could simply instruct Lindsey to approve the documents wholesale.”
Brilliant. Perhaps the Clinton’s have wandered into a trap Bush devised, perhaps their intentions are impure. But as is often said in political money arguments, why should they unilaterally disarm? We’ve decades to go before we’ll see the Reagan and Bush 1 documents in full.
Absent a real law not twisted into it’s reverse by crackpot Executive Orders our knowledge of past administrations will be based more on contemporary leaks and fatuous memoirs.
Standard deviation
The Weekly Standard offers a wet kiss to Republican operative and son-Nixon-never-had Roger Stone. Nothing on Nixon but the bitchin’ tat on the cover, lots of Stone’s mischievous rise to greatness.
DeFrank Talk
Reaction to Tom DeFrank’s Gerald Ford tell-all “Write It When I’m Gone” shows an interesting split.
When Ford reinforces conventional wisdom it’s shouted from the rafters:
Rudy: strong. Bill: can’t keep it in his pants.Hillary: pushy dame.
But when Ford speaks ill of the dead turned plaster saint, not so much:
“A superficial, disengaged, intellectually-lazy showman who didn’t do his homework and clung to a naive, unrealistic, and essentially dangerous worldview. Foreign leaders have said they were appalled by Reagan’s lack of knowledge of the issues.”
