To Hold Bush Accountable for the Iraq War, the Democrats Should Listen to Richard Nixon

from BuzzFlash

We were listening to the Thom Hartmann Show on Air America on Friday, September 7, and were blown away when he played this tape of Richard Nixon at the 1968 Republican Convention speaking about Lyndon Johnson's failed Vietnam War.

It was a mind-boggling moment as we listened to the excerpt, because Nixon defined Johnson's losing effort in the way that the Democrats should be doing with Bush.

Do the Democratic leaders on the Hill have anything to learn from Richard Nixon? We'd be the last to think so, until we heard this tape.

We asked Thom Hartmann to write us a note setting up the short clip:

"An unpopular president [Johnson] was prosecuting an unpopular war, which was despised by more than half the American people. His political opponent [Nixon, although Nixon actually ran against Humphrey, Johnson's Vice-President] knew that the best way to take him down - and ultimately to take down his entire Party - was to simply say out loud what everybody knew to be true. To call out the President. To declare him and his war a failure. To call on the American people for truth and honesty in government, and an end to war. Here's a quick clip composite, sent along to us by a listener (I'm sorry, I don't remember whom) a year or so ago, of Richard Nixon at the 1968 Republican National Convention..."

-- Thom Hartmann in an e-mail to BuzzFlash

(Click here.)