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Read other letters about this article
One of many right-wing falsehoods that is internalized in this extraordinarily shallow and uninformed essay.
It's that "dead voters in Chicago" meme.
But Kennedy could have lost Illinois and he still would have won in the Electoral College.
And what about this "brilliant" opening to China, and detente with Russia? These were advocated by liberals for years but made politically impossible by red-baiting politicians, preeminently Nixon himself.
Say a fireman's trying to put out a fire and there's a guy blocking the entrance. Meanwhile the fire gets worse and worse. Finally at the last minute HE grabs the hose and goes up and puts the fire out.
1. Do you give him -- and not the fireman -- credit for putting out the fire? and
2. Is this the guy you trust the NEXT time there's a fire?
Allen Barra might see it as clever, but it was cynical, dangerous in the delay it caused, and dishonest. And Nixon gave away far more concessions in his China opening than the average liberal President would have. He just didn't know as much about China (or Vietnam) as the many knowledgeable State Department personnel whom he hounded out of public life during the McCarthy era. Thousands of dead soldiers was the result. But hey, he was clever!
