Nixon's Western White House For Sale

La Casa Pacifica
(Image: wsj.com)

In case you need real estate's version of a safe deposit box for your cash, consider putting in a bid for Richard Nixon's former residence in San Clemente, California. Known as the "Western White House," the home and surrounding acreage sit on some of the Golden State's most desirable beachfront property. (Ironically, there is more than one "Western White House," including George W. Bush's ranch in Texas.)

According to a story in today's Orange County Register, the asking price for Tricky Dick's Pacific hideaway is $75 million. Even by New York, San Francisco, Tokyo, London, or Monte Carlo standards, that's a lot of money. The article did not state whether there would be an open house for prospective buyers, complete with annoying real estate brokers asking if their visitors have "representation."

Not even former president Bill Clinton can afford Nixon's "La Casa Pacifica." That's too bad, as the San Clemente compound would seem like a comfortable refuge for Chief Executives who've experienced a brush with impeachment.

When Nixon Asked Robert Altman for a Copy of "Nashville"

My wife generally works the Netflix account pretty vigorously. Our movie watching patterns were recently affected when our DVD return did not reach Netflix in the usual prompt manner. I wondered if a little inside game would have helped our chances.

I wouldn't know who to contact at Netflix. However, in a different era, it was possible to contact a human being and cut through red tape. Evidence on behalf of this proposition was recently demonstrated by the movie maestros at the Criterion Collection. They posted via Facebook a reproduction of correspondence from the one and only Richard Nixon to Robert Altman. Tricky Dick asked the very liberal film director if he could forward him a copy of Nashville. If you didn't see the request in print, you would have imagined this was a Hollywood barroom gag.

It's not, and you can see the proof above.

Two Nixon Anniversaries: Watergate and the Opera "Nixon in China"

Richard Nixon
(photo from CBS News)

Anyone with a sense of history and dread should not miss reading Bob Woodward's and Carl Bernstein's account of Watergate in today's online editions of the Washington Post. The article is a searing indictment of Richard Nixon and his cabal. For those who did not live during the Watergate era, the piece offers a blunt reminder of how a president masterminded a criminal conspiracy designed to consolidate power by undermining the nation's principal governmental and communications institutions.

Tricky Dick's exploits led to his forced resignation. However, it's a bit easier to be "holier than thou" when Nixon is the subject. Where was a very compliant American media when George W. Bush and his collection of ideologically motivated cohorts treated the law as an inconvenience rather than something to cherish? The actions of right-wing intellectual gangsters such as John Yoo brought far deeper disgrace to the United States than anything Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman did during the Watergate era. To this day, the American people have not been able to face the collective domestic political silence that characterized the Bush-Cheney era. A contrast of that inaction with the ferment of the Watergate era is not flattering to the current generation.

Hillary Clinton and Chinese President Hu JinTao in 2009
(photo from Xin Hua/Yao Dawei)

While the mainstream media is busy recalling Watergate, the San Francisco Opera is staging John Adams' Nixon in China. This year, coincidentally, is the 25th anniversary of the opera's premiere in Houston. The opera's story line involves the historic meeting between Mao and Nixon. At that time, the People's Republic of China was a largely backward, agrarian, and communist nation immersed in the Cultural Revolution; the United States was a stable, economically flush superpower. Now, America relies on Chinese purchases of US Treasury bonds to remain solvent; China is busy creating a new economic nexus that includes Brazil and a non-communist Russia. Unfortunately, there is currently an absence of effective American foreign policy leadership. It is more than a little ironic that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton was a staff member on the House committee that investigated the Nixon Administration's involvement with Watergate and other criminal activities. I wonder if she reflects on those days and asks herself what Tricky Dick would do with China now.

Trust Lost: From Nixon to Google

Earlier today, a widely circulated report noted a Stanford University researcher's findings regarding Google's circumvention of Apple privacy safeguards. To put it mildly, the episode adds to Google's collective black eye over privacy. (Google's ex-CEO Eric Schmidt's announcement today of his intention to sell over two billion in Google stock seemed particularly ill-timed.) However, it would be fatuous to assume such privacy violations were unique to the Mountain View search giant. The sense, from Facebook's outrageous rape of privacy to the everyday data mining that American technocrats are convinced are their entitlement, is that Silicon Valley finds privacy rights simply inconvenient to their firms' ambitions.

It is ironic that Silicon Valley -- a hotbed of libertarian political philosophy -- should treat privacy so cavalierly. A previous generation understood how profoundly invasive and erosive electronic "data collection" -- a/k/a snooping -- can be. I was reminded of this when I read a rather truculent opinion piece in today's Miami Herald. The article, by Glenn Garvin, complained about what the author claimed were the less than virtuous motives of Richard Nixon's nemesis, Deep Throat.

Garvin alleged that Deep Throat, who was the FBI's numero due at the time of the Watergate incident, wanted to become the next J. Edgar Hoover. To that end, Deep Throat used his leaks to reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein to as leverage to ease out DT's bureaucratic obstacles. At that time, privacy was still something Americans of any political persuasion guarded. The notion that a widespread invasion of privacy, managed by a Mafia-like network within the federal government's executive branch, could seize control of the nation was a shivering thought. It was as if the very foundation of American political freedom and hope was being slowly strangled.

Nixon was stopped, though not easily and especially not without resentment from conservatives who saw Tricky Dick's denouement as a plot hatched in the editorial offices of "liberal" newspapers. The current situation, in which fabulously rich enterprises apparently simply flout any inconvenient privacy statutes in their lust for advertising and data dominance, is much more upsetting than Nixon's attempted overthrow of the Constitution.

Who will stand up to Silicon Valley?

Richard Nixon and His 1975 Grand Jury Testimony

Thanks to a federal judge's ruling, President Richard Nixon's 1975 grand jury testimony has been released to the public. The comments so far are fascinating. In the excerpt noted in today's LA Times, Tricky Dick talks about the buying and selling of ambassadorships, the quality of State Department careerists, and Nixon's opinion of certain nations.

Who needs memoirs when Nixon's grand jury testimony is far more compelling reading?

The photograph shows Prescott Bush, father of George H.W. Bush and grandfather of George W. Bush, fixing Richard Nixon's lid.

Nixon Tapes, Documents Ready for Public Release

Former president Richard Nixon, who has the ghoulish habit of returning from the dead, has again returned among the living. This time, according to the Washington Post, the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Archives will release recordings and documents long sealed and kept from the public. Among them is the transcript of Tricky Dick's grand jury testimony during the Watergate probe.

With Halloween only a couple of weeks away, Americans may feel inspired to get their Nixon masks out of the attic, knock on some doors, and do scary things to get a gift. Just like the 37th president of the United States did nearly forty years ago.