Excuse me, but have we once again become distracted?
The reference is to the Herman Cain contretemps that started out as another one of those "revelations" planted with an online media outlet. Knowledgeable observers remain of a mind that one of Cain's rivals in the race to represent the Republican Party in the 2012 Presidential election did the planting. Suggestions that the Democrats are responsible make no sense. The race is for Mitt Romney to lose and the Dems would much rather be confronted by Cain in the finals for all the obvious reasons. Cain, meanwhile, is in impressive denial with the specter of at least four women pooling their experiences on TV chilling in terms of a Cain survival.
It was an odd week of peculiar verbalizing by the rag tag collection of those seeking the GOP nomination aided and abetted by not always helpful associates. Michelle Bachmann suggested Mount Rushmore recognition for James Garfield who barely had time to check out the rose garden during six months in office. Then, there was money decider Karl Rove, further distancing himself from the Tea Party by suggesting that celebrity attorney Gloria Allred (Sharon Bialek's mouthpiece) "lends credibility" to sexual harassment accusations leveled at Cain. Let us not forget big-hearted Rick Santorum who became a rare early bird to not call for Penn State's Joe Paterno's resignation just hours before the old coach was told to clean out his locker. We certainly can't pass over Ron Paul who once again suggested scuttling the minimum wage nor can we forget a quote, actually a resurrection of a quote, about Newt Gingrich that was first reported a year ago. We have word from ex-wife Marianne Gingrich who quoted "Newtie" staffers as saying: "He's a sociopath, but he's our sociopath."
Perhaps the biggest gaffe of the campaign was made Wednesday night when Rick Perry, straight from a highly animated appearance in New Hampshire where he gave further evidence that he does a magnificent impression of George W. Bush, couldn't come up with a third department he would eliminate should he make it to the White House. This guy is so goofy "Saturday Night Live" has zeroed in on his stumbling.
Somehow, and hardly a surprise, the far right wing commentators (identifications are hardly necessary these days), responded to the Cain matter by blaming it all on the "liberal press." Were Machiavelli around today, he would not be impressed by the lack of subtlety.
Lost in all the ululation was the Cain story's most important factor. Given 10 days advance warning by Politico.com, Cain handled things with such withering dithering that his guilt or innocence regarding old sexual harassment complaints simply don't matter. Cain bungled a series of challenges while changing his stories to meet the developing charges finally implying race is at the root of it all when pointed in that direction by the usual hate radio suspects. The bottom line is that Cain has proved what most people had already figured during his inept campaign; he is not capable of the Presidency although better than most of the candidates. It seems logical that had Bill Clinton been given 10 days to come up with a superior legalistic use of words, we would have heard something more impressive than a parsing of the word "is."
Cain's run for the Republican nomination has underlined how stunningly short of leadership we are in this country. The message is clear when a candidate like Cain can gain significant traction with Republican Party primary voters by running as a Beltway outsider who once ran a pizza company and the National Restaurant Association. His undeniable connection is based upon the well-earned eight percent approval rating currently accorded the 535 clowns who represent us in Washington. How in the world has there not been a call for Joe, the Plumber to haul us out of this mess?
What we have been getting out of Cain has advanced from puzzlement over the words "settlement" and "agreement" to what sounds strangely like lines from old "Amos & Andy" radio shows with Cain doing a very effective George "Kingfish" Stevens including the kind of upscale speech expected from a representative of the business world. Those of sufficient memory may recall the Kingfish as a fraudulent observer whose misadventures often involved "The Knights of the Mystic Sea." Kingish nemesis was Madam Queen and we seem to be gathering a burgeoning cast of featured females more than capable of raising Cain's hackles. Who knows where the road will lead us but I have the damnable feeling that we're going to hear more about the inner-workings of the hospitality-prone National Restaurant Association than we really deserve. We may yet see those women on "The View" with the go-getting Barbara Walters, a highly proficient getter of the "get," in fine feminine fettle.
This action distraction in politics, characterized by a deadly seriousness and determined reluctance during shallow TV debates to discuss a lot of highly important subjects, wasn't always so. Back in the days when Richard Nixon was running for Congress against Congresswoman Helen Gahagan Douglas, the future President was done in for the first time by prankster Dick Tuck, then a student at the University of California, Santa Barbara. It was an absent-minded professor who made possible Tuck's stunt by asking him to promote a campus appearance by Nixon whose campaign against Douglas remains one of the dirtiest ever. As advance man, Tuck rented a big auditorium, invited very few people, then gave a long-winded speech to introduce Nixon. As Nixon moved to the microphone, Tuck asked him to speak about the International Monetary Fund. When Nixon finished, the candidate asked Tuck his name, then told him: "Dick Tuck, you've made your last advance." It wasn't.
Tuck quickly became Nixon's avenger with his famous prank, "the Chinatown Caper," a particular winner. Running for Governor of California in 1962, Nixon pulled into Los Angeles Chinatown where a backdrop of children held "welcome" signs in English and Chinese. When Nixon spoke, a community elder whispered that one of the signs in Chinese said: "What about the Hughes loan?" The reference was to an unsecured $205,000 loan that Howard Hughes provided Nixon's brother, Donald. On camera, Nixon grabbed a sign and ripped it up. Later, Tuck learned that the Chinese characters actually spelled out: "What about the huge loan?"
So distinctive was Tuck's mischief-making that arch-conservative William F. Buckley singled him out as a master political prankster. "You see," wrote Buckley, "Dick Tuck has been an employee of Democrats for many years, and his running assignment is to embarrass Republicans by any means. He specializes in glorious improvisations which are no doubt more damaging to Republicans than any conversation the Watergaters might have tapped from the telephone of Lawrence O'Brien."
Humor always characterized Tuck's pranks and there was never any suggestion of meanness to what became legendary efforts. In 1868, Nixon was defeated by Pat Brown in a race best known for his "you won't have Nixon to kick around anymore" comments to reporters. Nixon's state of mind that day was believed by many to have been irrational and unbalanced; his behavior was partially attributed to Tuck having tricked Nixon twice during the campaign. Included was the premature departure of a train from which Nixon was speaking. Tuck modestly denies the event and such is the snow-balling effect of fame where undeserved credits are sometimes awarded. To connoisseurs of dirty tricks, Tuck's were to politics what Frank Sinatra was to beautiful women.
One of the most fascinating moments of Tuck's career occurred in the White House during a give and take between Nixon and H.R. Haldeman. On tape, a perplexed President makes references to disclosures by staffer Donald Segretti whose Watergate dirty tricks were deemed inferior to those of Tuck's everyday efforts. That was in October, 1972 and there is admiration in Nixon's voice in recounting Tuck's triumphs. "Dick Tuck did that to me," says the President. "Let's get out what Dick Tuck did!"
It's easy to understand how a lot of people credit Tuck with an inspirational role in Watergate. Segretti was hired by Dwight Chapin who reported directly to Haldeman. It was during the Watergate hearings that Tuck ran into Haldeman, asked to resign the month before along with John Ehrlichman.
"You started all of this," said the former White House chief of staff.
Replied Tuck: "Yeah, but you guys ran it into the ground."
No one ever accused the Nixon White House of having a sense of humor and I think it fair to believe that Nixon and his staff didn't understand that Tuck was almost exclusively a merry prankster and a decided contrast to most of those who surrounded the President. I was twice interviewed in 1967 by Haldeman and Ron Ziegler, both employed at the time by J. Walter Thompson Advertising in Los Angeles. They were looking for a Ziegler replacement on the Disney account and my two sessions with them were enormously serious. I didn't know it at the time but they had been tapped by Nixon for future White House work with Ziegler taking on a job for which he was disastrously ill-prepared: press secretary.
Tuck ran for office once and it was a failure. That was in 1966 and his race for a newly-created California State Senate seat happened when he was late for a meeting with fellow Democrats. By the time he arrived, his pals had chosen him. He lost big time but his concession speech lives on: "The people have spoken...the bastards."
Two years later he joined the Robert Kennedy campaign following his candidacy announced in March, 1968. Tuck did press relations and occasionally walked Kennedy's dog, Freckles. Kidded by journalist friends, Tuck observed: "To you, this is just a dog, but to me it's an ambassadorship." Tuck was walking behind Kennedy when the candidate, celebrating his California primary victory, was shot by Sirhan Sirhan. Tuck tended to the fallen Kennedy and rode with police to the hospital where the candidate died.
Tuck also had the last laugh on Nixon when he helped give the public a better understanding of Watergate. While the unedited transcripts were made available in August, 1980, no tape excerpts had been played on national media. The National Archives would not allow any public access to the tapes other than being able to hear them at the Archive building. Acquiring tapes from an undisclosed source, Tuck called an October 21 press conference in the Aspen (Colorado) Hotel's Jerome Bar. He played excerpts for an hour, the media recorded the material, and the public acquired a better understanding of how venal and paranoid was our 37th President.
Dicktuck.com has a wealth of information about the prankster who lives in Tucson, Arizona. Now 87 with a birthday coming up in January, Tuck has much to look back upon. He had a lot of laughs and so have those of us who know how devastating humor can be in the political arena. Nixon was almost forever a stranger to fun and breathed his last believing that a 1968 "Sock it to Me" appearance on "Laugh In" got him elected President. My best guess is that he never really understood the why of it.
# # # #
Comments