Great review/essay, Mr. Barra. I'm glad somebody's tackling Nixon, the archetypal American political demon. The following lines are very revealing...

Probably because our definition of liberal has little to do with politics and economics and has more to do with what we regard as being a good person. By that definition, Richard Nixon does not qualify. He was petty, vindictive, paranoid and resentful

Heh -- I think plenty of liberals are petty, vindictive, paranoid, and resentful! But the first sentence is vital -- attempting to divorce liberalism from politics and economics is deadly to it, which is why it's suffered so much since the early 70s.

What makes a person truly liberal? Ecumenical politics and equitable economics -- fairness and justice just can't be safely or sensibly extracted from the political and economic arena, if liberalism's the goal.

Nixon, for all his brooding conservative paranoia and the Watergate albatross around his neck, governed to the left of every president that followed him, Democrat or Republican. It's disturbing and upsetting to think that he was our last liberal president, but I'm glad you pointed out his significant political and economic progress on a host of issues; maybe he was just rolling with the turbulent times, trying to distract people from Watergate, or trusting in a Democratic-led New Deal/Great Society holdover Congress to handle things -- but I find "When in doubt, build a park." far better than the Bushian/Rovian/Cheneyesque "When in doubt, start a war." (or the DINO/DLC "When in doubt, appease.")

Any Democratic president today should aspire to be more liberal than Nixon in their administration, and if they fail, they need to held to account for it, or at least called on it. So long as "liberalism" is quarantined from political progress and liberal economics, it will remain gliberalism, weaker than tea, a very poor substitute for progressive politics.

The "Nixon's Golem" reference is a good one; there certainly are tons of Nixonian veterans in the Bush administration, folks who cut their political fangs in his administration, fangs that they've bared these days, to terrible effect.

Perhaps what forced Nixon to support the domestic programs he did WAS the presence of actual liberals in Congress, which forced Nixon to tack toward the left just to get anything done domestically. Maybe that and all the protests in the streets lit a fire under his loafers. I often think that was what moderated Reagan's own reactionary ambitions -- there were still liberals in Congress, still a few New Dealers left there, still some Great Society folk who would stand against an imperial president.

What we're clearly lacking these days is a liberal Congress, even among the Democratic majority, so when you take old-guard Nixonians with their slash-and-burn politics, and you have milquetoasts like Harry Reid and DINOs like Rahm Emanuel calling the tune for the "opposition," it gives us the worst of both worlds -- all the paranoid politics of Nixon without any accompanying answer in good legislation that actually improves people's lives, and without any actual opposition. Maybe even being able to legislate is very retro and outdated in the age of sound bites and ephemeral political grandstanding.

It goes back to what makes a liberal? Do you believe government can be good, can do good? If even "liberals" see government as a necessary evil at best, then on what foundation are they standing, exactly?

Or maybe the Surge was really intended to get a lot of troops at Iran's border, as a prelude for an attack on them, or at least to put that threat on the table. Naval groups performing exercises offshore from Iran, troops piling in at the border, and so on. Cue rattling of sabers.

Maybe the Bush League will stage a preemptive bombing of Iran's nuclear facilities, just like Hersh reported, what, last year? Two years ago? Just one more vigorous stirring of the cauldron before he gets out of power, hands a piping hot war over to his successor, and the GOP can then get very vocal in their criticism of the handling of the war, assuming a Democrat wins in 2008.

The prospect of somebody as rotten as Bush being an ex-president is kinda nasty -- like he'll be with us the rest of his life, showing up at events, poisoning the atmosphere. Then again, maybe we need him around as a reminder of what happened to this country, what he did to it, and what people let him do and get away with. Maybe he'll even live long enough to see the end of his war.

How is Shoeless Joe Lieberman benefiting from his ridiculous stance on the Iraq War? Is it really that he's Israel's sock puppet in Congress? Or are General Dynamics and others simply profiting handsomely from the war, and he doesn't want to let that key constituency down? From a late May press release from his office...

WASHINGTON - Senator Joe Lieberman, a senior member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, lauded the committee's approval of a $648.8 billion defense authorization bill for FY 2008 that provides critical equipment to the nation's war fighters, including more than $3.8 billion to submarine construction and billions more for cutting-edge defense projects across Connecticut.

http://lieberman.senate.gov/newsroom/release.cfm?id=275124

Isn't there a conflict of interest with a Senator who is deep in the hip pocket of the defense industry beating the pro-war, pro-escalation drum? It's the equivalent of the old Southern tobacco Congressmen, cigarettes perched on their lips, defending Big Tobacco, back in the day.

Shoeless Joe has got to go. But will CT voters accept that, knowing that their Pentagon pork buffet comes by way of Lieberman? The perils of a militarized society, I guess.