Ben Stein's Diary/Au Revoir, Mr. President
Stein, Benjamin J.
BEN STEIN'S DIARY Au Revoir, Mr. President by Benjamin J. Stein Tuesday T his is news I've been dreading for about twenty years. I'm out at Morton's, and the captain, Todd, comes over to tell me...
...I guess I started thinking of him asfriend when my father went to work for him as a member and then chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers in 1969...
...And we were buying the semiconductor stocks last fall when the conventional wisdom said that their run was over...
...Alex and I got to go to the private, ultra-fancy one because we were with my parents...
...It was still on some kind of catafalque or stand...
...He's a fighter...
...They are going to hate you forever...
...He never was particularly tricky, and in any event, he wanted to end the war a lot more than I did...
...Nothing I've ever heard in political life was as loathsome...
...In the fall of '72 I was teaching at U.C...
...They are viewpoints that can help you make money...
...It was uneventful except for my companion's endless questions about people in the business and his sudden theft of my last diet root beer...
...I wasn't only Bill Clinton's lover for twelve years...
...God, I hope so...
...All through the night I awakened and went to my Compuserve for updates...
...Wednesday Well, I guess I had better call my pal John Coyne, my fellow speechwriter from the RN days, and hear his thoughts...
...having sex and play it to amuse racist senators...
...Stone, Vito Marcantonio, and Alger Hiss were the heroes of the shtetl...
...Bill me...
...The old must know it...
...In every case, we horrified the consensus...
...But Main Fact: when you are an unknown guy from Yorba Linda who always has a touching vulnerability, the shtarkers are not going to like the fact that you regularly stand up to them...
...And Ron Ziegler always friendly, always kind...
...He treated my father like a king, made him part of the White House circle, EXPLOSIVE...
...He'll pull through...
...She and David had me to lunch at the White House Solarium...
...How like Nixon to have given us this great party, this fabulous party celebrating a generation of peace and the end of the Cold War, and to be outside in the rain while we all enjoy his gifts...
...Yes, I made mistakes, but I didn't build a TV empire completely on peddling influence...
...I want them at my funeral...
...Au revoir: Not good-bye, `au revoir,' because we'll see you again...
...President, from little me and the people who stood silently on a dank night in Yorba Linda...
...We were sour on IBM when everyone thought it was still Bulletproof Blue, in mid-1991...
...How's your mother...
...I talked for a while with Al Haig and then with Steve Bull and then went to find some water...
...This was my kind of guy, and I loved him...
...fine, dignified Jack Drown, who knew RN since he and Pat were courting...
...I signed autographs for Don Nixon's grandchildren...
...Eurasia is at war with Oceania...
...Then he said some words I cry over whenever they come to mind...
...But I was frightened, and to protect myself, I recorded several of my phone conversations with Bill...
...The Capitalist's Companion turned negative on Merck back when the rest of Wall Street loved it — at its top in early 1992...
...Then the four jets in close formation swooped down...
...How a man who had Jewish friends, was a lifelong friend of Israel, had fought against the Axis, had been a friend of freedom all his life could be called a Nazi by the Democrat standard-bearer was simply beyond me...
...Maybe it was the outsiders' club, but it was real nevertheless...
...It was a throng, an army of fans and admirers, Nixon's secret army, turning out in the hundreds of thousands on a cold, wet night, jamming the area for miles around by car and on foot, faces radiant, set, intent, almost glowing with the need to bear witness, to testify to their love of the man who kept his promises to them...
...Pat Buchanan even more so...
...But I heard nothing on the radio, went ahead with my sandwich, and then after dinner lay down on Tommy's little bed for a nap...
...John Coyne ever more humorous and utterly unafraid...
...I saw Clinton and herself there, along with George and Barbara Bush...
...It was a suburb of Washington, D.C., and I.F...
...She was a real,bantering, cheerful, lively person, and through her eyes I saw how her family was suffering...
...They were a quiet crowd, and yet I thought I could hear them singing something very much like "We Shall Overcome...
...On election night, some kids at College V, where I taught, arranged the chairs in the dining room in a giant swastika to mark Nixon's victory...
...After appearing on many TV shows today to talk about RN's accomplishments ("How history judges me," said RN, "will depend on who writes the history...
...The place I grew tip was—to put it frankly—swarming with Communists 'and their sympathizers...
...Then Alex and I stood in the receiving line for an hour to shake hands with Julie and Tricia...
...She had a voluminous mental encyclopedia of who had been named as a Communist and could mentally run her own FBI check in seconds...
...But I brought peace to Vietnam, saved Israel, and stood up to the Russians, opened up China, sowed the seeds of a generation of peace...
...It was a bit of childishrebellion to love the man who drove them crazy...
...It's not the grandest home of a national leader or the most magnificent...
...Nixon and his enemies: You're better than the lot of them, Mt...
...Yes, I made mistakes, but I didn't secretly tape .record Martin Luther King, Jr...
...Kissinger's, which was the most personal and the grandest, was the best...
...X -$ Plus $4.95 S+H X .4 Tax (ILL only) X -$ Order Total .4 Li • YEN I want to know the truth...
...I saw a slew of old pals from then WhiteHouse days: eternally wonderful Patti Matson, now a major honcho at Capital Cities-ABC...
...After a few minutes, the Clinton plane came in with many, many more senators and old Nixon hands...
...TO ANYONE UNDER THE AGE OF 18...
...No Maggie the madam to talk to, no Dotty, who was presumably out with one of her multi-millionaire pals, so I lay in bed and thought about RN some more...
...I walked back to the room where the exhibits of Julie and Tricia's weddings were, with life-size mannequins wearing their wedding dresses...
...It was exactly like what I had that night in 1983 when Martha Dauman died...
...If you're not satisfied, we'll send you a pro-rated refund...
...Near that spot, just three months ago, I had a talk with Nixon at the ceremony marking the twenty-fifth anniversary of his 1969 inaugural...
...Still acting...
...But I never felt good calling him "Tricky Dick...
...Driving over, a few minutes before six, I had a terrible tugging feeling in my chest and a wild, uncontrolled chaos in my brain...
...Yes, presidents make mistakes...
...Even in 1968, when I was about the only guy in my class at Yale Law School to vote for him (and my wife jumped out of a moving car to run away from me because she was so angry at me for voting for him), I still didn't consider him a friend...
...My mother's eyes were overflowing with tears and my father seemed heavily weighted with loss...
...IT'S TIME...
...As I drove east, I thought of a wooden classroom building at Parkside Elementary School in Silver Spring, Maryland...
...We parked at the Yorba Linda town hall...
...Friday T his afternoon, I had a strange, sad, uneasy feeling all too like the feeling I had about twelve years ago when dear Martha Dauman, a wonderful friend, was about to die...
...the peacemaker...
...I love Bob Dole for crying at the end of his...
...I loved Nixon for that, and considered him my friend...
...When I awoke, I called my answering machine: ten messages...
...With enemies like this, Nixon had to be my pal...
...After dinner, after leaving the screaming arid drinking and eating of Morton's, I headed across Melrose in my dark car, down darkened streets that seemed darker than usual, as if the light had seeped out of the street lights themselves...
...How I wish I had made a movie of those final days at the White House: Dave Gergen desperately trying to get himself into neutral territory...
...Santa Cruz, the world's most beautiful campus, home of my happiest memories, paradise on earth except for the people...
...My father's protector is my friend...
...But Bob Long told me that if Nixon was truly improving, he would wait until my next regularly scheduled commentary to have me talk about why I loved Nixon so much...
...I paid hardly any notice when he lost in California in 1962, except to note again the amazing glee of the haters at his humiliation...
...Then we spoke briefly to Julie...
...It's a curious thing how the people who write about RN always manage to get in that he had astonishing tenacity, but they never mention the amazing tenacity of the Nixon haters...
...In 1960, when he ran against that movie star, John F. Kennedy, I debatedon the Nixon side in history class, but I didn't really cry when he didn't win, although I was sad...
...I'm out at Morton's, and the captain, Todd, comes over to tell me I have a call...
...We talked about his magnificent words that horrible day...
...t ^ I WARNING: THIS PROGRAM CONTAINS EXPLICIT LANGUAGE AND IS NOT INTENDED FOR SAI...
...T here was a reception inside the Nixon Library afterwards...
...Then he spoke about his father and the lemon ranch they owned, the poorest lemon ranch in California, which his father sold before they discovered oil on it...
...Love is hate...
...Asset Management The Lemley Letter Ralph Lemley Kathleen Pinto For information about who we are and what we do, please write or call: LEMLEY, YARLING & CO...
...Eurasia has always been at war with Oceania...
...Oh, I thought to myself, if I told you what I'd like to say about what you did to this man, you wouldn't ever air it...
...I got to know Julie Nixon Eisenhower, world's saintliest daughter...
...I This is a first edition limited offer, which is historical and sure to become a collectible...
...Wimp that I am, I started to cry, and John reassured me some more, but to tell the truth, I'm having a very hard time concentrating on my work and my auditions and my commercials this week...
...The schoolyard bullies endlessly torturing the kid who was artistic and sensitive, whose mother called him Richard instead of Dick .. . that's the basic story of Richard Nixon and his enemies, even more basic than crossing the powers that be...
...When the cannon sounded, car alarms in the neighborhood went off...
...And in every case, we were right...
...Rain began to fall heavily outside...
...my ideal, Peter Flanigan, and his glamorous wife, Brigid...
...But Nixon was different...
...My own mother was the world's leading anti-Communist and had been since her student days at Barnard during the Depression...
...Probably...
...10010 The American Spectator July 1994 53 Haldeman" Fred Malek, now a major investor...
...TAS794 ( ) I'd like a year (17 issues) for $185...
...My neighbors, Aram Bakshian and John Coyne, were always nice to me...
...I remember wondering if the Nixon haters realized how much they were hurting this innocent young woman and her family, and then I remembered: they did it partly out of a vestigial (and not so vestigial) command from the Comintern...
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...We must always believe it's a new beginning," he said...
...Why are you crying all the time, Daddy," Tommy asked...
...I guess I picked up some of that from her, although she'll probably deny it...
...7 days a week ) I'd like a 5-issue trial for $24...
...I still think it was a good idea...
...As Billy Graham spoke at the interment, out of my view, the whole crowd broke into tears...
...It was another cold, leaden day...
...Still, he was a lot better about RN than I thought he would be...
...Now he's a speechwriter for a very big company in Chicago...
...Will you cry as much when he dies as when Trixie died...
...I will never turn my back on Richard Nixon...
...he asked me...
...He's strong," John said...
...One ranger in Dress Blues stood over it at attention in the rain...
...They also did it just because it did hurt...
...Ken Khachigian and his diehard devotion...
...But I think I really got to love Nixon in 1972...
...We'll send you five issues of The Capitalist's Companion for just $24...
...I wrote my commentary, surrounded by bantering news people who did not seem to realize what a great guy Nixon was...
...41 41 41 6 1, 41 41 41 IP 41 40 40 This first edition, two volume audio cassette program and companion book includes nearly one hour of recorded phone conversations between Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, plus important new commentary by Flowers...
...208 S. LaSalle Street Suite 500 Chicago, Illinois 60604 (312) 372-2422 (800) 654-9865 54 The American Spectator July 1994...
...They passed by to sit behind Julie and David and the Presidents...
...I should add that the Bernsteins were also incredibly fine neighbors and their children dear friends...
...Or maybe it's the same story—after all, what are Communists if not bullies...
...My own particular next-door neighbors, the Bernsteins, were enthusiastic Marxists and simply hated Nixon...
...The Democrats still owe him a major apology...
...The Secret Service kept blocking my view, and finally I asked them to move, which they grudgingly did...
...Every few months for the last couple of years, I've been sending RN notes telling him, in my usual form, that our family not only liked him, but loved him...
...Aram Bakshian ever wittier...
...At midnight, I got a soda and headed back to Hollywood, back through towns like Yorba Linda and Placentia and San Dimas, places where even Richard Nixon has got soul...
...Anyway, as I looked at the exhibit of a happier day, I suddenly, with a start, realized that I could see through the nearby window to Richard Nixon's casket in the rain...
...Name I Company Address LCity State Zip The Capitalist's Companion JOURNAL OF POLITICS AND THE FINANCIAL MARKETS 175 Fifth Avenue Suite 2503 New York, N.Y...
...For over two years the cover-up has continued, but the American people deserve to know the truth...
...My father had been, since birth, a stone solid braino genius...
...Fact: when you cross the Comintern and screw them up, they don't forgive 50 The American Spectator July 1994 and forget...
...And he talked about his mother, the saint...
...The 80 page companion book contains a printed transcript of everything heard on the tapes, plus copies of the authenticity documents from an independent laboratory which confirm that the voices on the tapes are those of Bill Clinton and Gennifer Flowers, and that the tapes have never been edited or tampered with...
...That is what we do...
...Payment enclosed...
...Tell your father to keep sending me his articles," said RN, with a smile...
...As I watched the blur of Pasadena and Glendale and their endless car dealerships and billboards, and thought of Nixon and his enemies in Manhattan and on Martha's Vineyard and in Georgetown, I thought of Nick Carraway's final words to the ultimate outsider, Jay Gatsby—who was about to enter immortality after having been dumped and tricked and framed by the swells and the old money...
...We passed through a forest of TV cameras and trailers, then through some metal detectors, and found our seats...
...My kind of guy, in a long ago place...
...And Richard Nixon, who spent his entire adult life fighting for freedom, is somehow depicted as an enemy of freedom by the haters...
...I also liked him as an act of defiance...
...You're worth the whole damn bunch put together," Carraway said, and the same to you, Mr...
...So maybe you could come over and be ready to give a commentary before you go home...
...The last week of RN's presidency, I sent Price a memo suggesting that RN go on TV and make his case: Yes, I made mistakes, but I didn't have call girls' in the White House and I didn't have Mafia pals...
...I talked to these nice people, shivered in the cold, went back to my chair and got my camel's hair coat—bought in 1965 at Brooks Brothers for $95 while I was shopping with the saintly Mary Just (now a major Friend of Bill)—and headed for Bob Tyrrell to talk more...
...He was so in love that he would gladly face humiliation to find his soul-mate...
...Freedom is Slavery...
...What can I say about the ceremony...
...was also a co-conspirator in the effort to cover up the truth...
...It's Bob Long, the news director at Channel 13, where I give a humorous news commentary about twice a month...
...The latest trove of books included a biography of Richard Nixon, whom I did not know—at age seven—but about whom I was soon to learn...
...All from TV stations and networks telling me that RN had died at 6:08 p.m...
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...Many a time I've thought that I just would fade away if something happened to Nixon, and now that time may be at hand...
...Out on my deck in Malibu, looking at the stars over Broad Beach, I kept thinking of a civil rights song, "We shall live in peace, we shall live in peace, we shall live in peace someday...
...It was the least sinister place on earth...
...The outsider, the loner, the kid from nowhere...
...I gathered my friend Craig into my car and headed far off into the wilds of Orange County to pay my respects...
...But it's the best house because it has the best people in it...
...I was taken on, largely due to the exertions of my father and his wonderful friend and comrade, Peter Flanigan, even though I had long hair and didn't exactly look Nixonian...
...Patricia Ryan so hard that when he was courting her, he would drive her to her other dates and wait for her on her porch just so he could spend more time with her...
...But when we got off on Yorba Linda Boulevard and headed east for a few miles we saw a sight like I've 52 The American Spectator July 1994 never seen before...
...I had a couch where I could take naps...
...There was Jim Lynn, and there Steve Bull, and there that creep, Elliot Richardson, and then past them, but certainly not on Clinton's plane, Ted Agnew, who had once been my governor...
...Writing's too lonely...
...Still writing all those letters...
...Please send me copies of 'Seising the Record Straight-the Complete and Unedited BM Canton/Gennifer Flowers Tapes and the Story Behind Them.' Ship to: (phase print) • ^,•,a • • •^.• • The American Spectator July 1994 51 made him feel for the first time in his life that he was an insider, that he had a club...
...Wouldn't you please let me—with my faults—continue to work for peace...
...The Nixon haters are really an item for study by specialists in mental disease, in particular, experts in sadism...
...I have always thought that the real story of Nixon was half about his own brilliance and strength, and half about the mind-boggling tenacity and persistence of his enemies...
...Because daddy's friend Nixon is very sick," I said, "and he might die...
...The Companion always—always—gives you the sorts of against-thegrain viewpoints that you won't get from the wirehouses...
...lovely, heartbroken Rose Woods...
...She and Tricia looked tired (God, how tired they must be...
...I was there when I actually heard George McGovern on TV say that Richard Nixon was "worse than Hitler"—and the media never raised an eyebrow...
...War is Peace...
...So I went on Channel 13 and on local CBS and said what Carl Curtis had said in 1973 when someone told him he might be the only senator who voted to acquit Nixon...
...There he is, all alone while the party's going on inside at his own Library...
...I have always liked Billy Graham, and today, I even liked Bill Clinton for his kind, kind words...
...The young must know it...
...The image that lingers in my mind is of a Latino Marine drummer strikingthe muffled drums, then standing with his arms tightly at attention at his sides, his hands clenched in fists...
...his secretary Margaret Foote, telling me on the night RN resigned that I must go out with my head held high and not let the reporters see me crying...
...Then, to my delighted eye, appeared my glorious parents...
...I was still thrilled to see them and hug them...
...There were so many of them, and so few reporters or news cameras to tell the tale of a man who could bring out the crowds even in death...
...I took Tommy and Alex to a delicatessen for dinner...
...Stick with the acting...
...Now, I've decided to set the record straight, once and for all...to give YOU the opportunity to hear those unedited conversations for YOURSELF, and to MAKE UP YOUR OWN MIND about truth, fact and the question of presidential character...
...It's better to be too gullible than too suspicious...
...Fact: when you show up some eastern establishment guys as Communist agents, they don't forget either...
...I think that's why he was always so friendly...
...I hope he's still right about that...
...Why not give us a try...
...By your friends shall ye be judged," said someone, and maybe you're also judged by your enemies...
...It doesn't matter," he said...
...The real silent majority had turned out to say good-bye to the man who stood for what they stood for and who had brought them back from Vietnam...
...I wished they could have also sung, "The Whole World is Watching," but I alone was there to tell the truth of how it was...
...Tomorrow is another day...
...but strong...
...So dial the toll-free number, or clip the coupon...
...She took both of our hands in hers and asked that we come see her outside Philadelphia...
...For public presentation, the names of certain private individuals have been blocked on the cassettes to protect their privacy...
...my favorite congressman, Bob Doman...
...I worked until midnight almost every night and was happy doing so...
...The book—a quickie campaign bio—said that Nixon had fallen in love with Benjamin J. Stein is a writer, actor, economist, and lawyer living in Malibu, California...
...The end...
...Then we got on a bus with Roy and Lila Ash and David Kissinger, Henry's son, and headed over to the library...
...SETTING THE RECORD STRAIGHT" The Complete and Unedited Bill Clinton/Gennifer Flowers Tapes and the Story Behind Them...
...He always does...
...C-Span, world's best TV network, had been running RN's farewell to the staff of August 9, 1974...
...He spoke about the White House...
...For this one day, I am going to like Clinton...
...John is a sober, intelligent guy who's also a poet, and he was incredibly kind to me when I was cracking up back in 1974 when RN resigned...
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...a frat house, a family...
...This is it, I thought...
...The speeches were good...
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...Still have all those dogs...
...That afternoon, on my way to Malibu to check my mail, I kept thinking about when I started to think of Nixon as my friend...
...He had done yeoman service for all of the organizations he worked for—the FDIC, the Navy, the Committee for Economic Development, Brookings—but he was always lonely and (I think) very insufficiently appreciated...
...Wednesday A lex and' I drove down to Yorba Linda along the same route I took last night...
...In 1952 or so, it had been converted into the school library...
...I think that's the most magnificent material, man-made gesture I've seen...
...Ray Price scholarly and aloof...
...I went to work for him in November 1973...
...Also, as Irving Kristol likes to say, the apple does not fall far from the tree...
...At the TV station, there was the welcome news that Nixon's condition had improved, and that he was not expected to die any time soon...
...Ann Morgan, our research chief, lighting our lives with her beauty...
...Always a new beginning...
...Tuesday I heard about fifty times today that Nixon's body was lying in state in the Nixon Library—where I'd had a nice talk with RN in January...
...1-800-966-6567 24 hours a day...
...I sat at my table with my friends from somewhere and felt dizzy...
...Bear in mind that like all good spoiled sixties children I had marched against the Vietnam war (I'm still not sure how to think about that) and had shouted "One-Two-Three-Four, Tricky Dick, Stop The War...
...Governor Whitman...
...my time and would I please be on their station to talk about him...
...The French have a word for it...
...And the hippies on the government pad in Santa Cruz were cheering McGovern on...
...I decided that I needed a change...
...I loved the work, even in the worst days...
...Again, I got into my car and drove home to the mighty Shoreham Towers...
...I sat in that wonderful library surrounded by maples and oaks and the perfect eastern smell of new cut grass, and I read about a man who came from nothing, no money, no connections, no family ties, to become a vice-presidential candidate...
...All through the night they said his condition was stable...
...The trip down was extremely long—about one hour from Hollywood at freeway speed...
...Haldeman's Consensus...
...To get to the Nixon Library, you drive east past Glendale and Pasadena, then south past San Dimas, and then east again past Placentia and Yorba Linda, places that have palm trees and warm winters, but are more Iowa than Hollywood...
...I passed by Dave Gergen, who cut me as dead as dead can be...
...Army Blue, Army Blue, Hurrah for the Army Blue," I thought to myself...
...We talked about old times...
...We visited for a long time with Roger Stone, a giant political consultant...
...President Nixon has had a stroke," Bob says, "and it doesn't look good...
...Maybe they're politically motivated, and in fact I am sure they are...
Vol. 27 • July 1994 • No. 7
