The Gipper goes out

H.S.T. once wrote an obituary for his career-long arch-nemesis Richard Nixon that would've made the famously hate-filled ex-President (as in Monty Python's ex-parrot) blush in his grave... it included lines such as:

He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

Thompson's screed is worth reading in full because it gives you a rare historical perspective - that of one of the victims - a hippy/freak who lived through some of the most corrupt, totalitarian and vicious Republican presidencies who provides a great deal of insight on what to expect while under the thumb of this blue blood royal son.

This is all topical because of the recent death of another famously duplicitous Republican president who infamously oversaw a period in which Army officers sold arms, despite a US-prompted embargo, to Iran in order to (a) fund an war not approved by congress against a democratically elected left-leaning governement in Nicaragua, and (b) oppose the Soviets by arming their enemies. That president was Ronald Reagan, failed actor, General Electrics touring salesman and Republican puppet president with more names than a hitman: The Gipper, Dutch, The Great Communicator etc. The hypocrisy of the son of Reagan's Vice President, George W, now calling Iran part of an axis of evil and raving about so-called weapons of mass destruction should be obvious.

Nevertheless, the tribute's to the Great Communicator have filled the mainstream media (not that Rupert Murdoch naming him as one of his political heros has anything to do with that). For a sanity check you have to look quite hard. Try an article on The Great Prevaricator. This Slate article mentions that where Nixon only a term earlier had been run out of office and Washington for the Watergate scandal in which he used government security bodies to ransack a Democrat office in the lead up to the election, Reagan staff in the 1980 debates had stolen then-President Carter's briefing book - he wasn't impeached for this because he didn't use police or federal agents to do it. You could also refer to HST's chronicling of Reagan's presidency in the aptly named Generation of Swine.

In the big picture HST warns us that

This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

but he also mentions the upside:

Nixon had the unique ability to make his enemies seem honorable, and we developed a keen sense of fraternity. Some of my best friends have hated Nixon all their lives. My mother hates Nixon, my son hates Nixon, I hate Nixon, and this hatred has brought us together.

(edit)

Some additional reality checks:

A lot of people were hurt by these policies, a fact that in our view did not weigh heavily enough on this president
-- The Washington Post, quoted by Alternet

...all one needs to know about this man and his Presidency can be gleaned by looking even haphazardly at the racial and ethnic makeup of the crowds flocking to his ranch, or his library to pay tribute...They are, and will be – in case you missed it or are waiting for the safest prediction in the history of prognostication – white. Far whiter, one should point out, than the nation over which Reagan presided.
-- The Black Commentator

Some of the articles portray the Reagan era as a period of extraordinary economic growth. ... This is not accurate, the expansion of the sixties was considerably longer. ... The average growth rate in the eighties was the slowest of any decade in the post World War II era. ... The fact that growth was weak in the Reagan years is especially important because Reagan's economic policies emphasized growth, with the claim that more rapid growth will benefit everyone, even if it is accompanied by an increase in inequality.
-- The Center for Economic and Policy Research

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