Conrad Black Defends Nixon From Prison In New York Sun Review

Conrad Black has found time in his busy prison schedule to defend former President Richard Nixon against the criticism that appears in Rick Perlstein's new book, "Nixonland."

Black took to the New York Sun (he is an investor in the paper) to call Perlstein a "Nixon-hater" and to list Nixon's myriad accomplishments as president. An excerpt:

It is not mentioned that only Abraham Lincoln and Franklin D. Roosevelt took office in more daunting circumstances than Nixon. Four years later, he was reelected by 49 states and a plurality of 18 million votes, because he stopped the assassinations, race riots, anti-war riots, skyjackings, inflation, extracted the U.S. from Vietnam without losing the war, opened relations with China, warmed up relations with the U.S.S.R., negotiated and signed the greatest arms control agreement in history, started a Middle East peace process, founded the Environmental Protection Agency, vastly expanded the national parks system, pioneered welfare reform and fiscal decentralization, reduced the crime rate, eliminated the draft, and ended school segregation without recourse to the court-ordered nostrum of transporting millions of schoolchildren all around the cities of America by bus to effect racial balance. He was overwhelmingly reelected because he was an excellent president, not because of dirty tricks and the ineptitude and hypocrisy of his feckless opponent, George McGovern.

Black, the former media baron now serving six and a half years for fraud and obstruction of justice, published his own biography of Nixon, called "Nixon: A Life in Full," last year. He also wrote a biography of FDR in 2003, which was met with poor reviews and charges of vanity.

Comments

[bigfated]

09:31 AM on 06/22/2008

The opinions of this convicted felon are as important to me as the lunatic rantings of Charles Manson. Black extols the "virtues" of another felonious bag of rotten lies and deceit while himself rotting in prison. Much like his buddy, Nixon, the national disgrace, he has shown the world what he's really made of....a combinatio­n of bulls$#% and an exaggerate­d sense of his own importance­.
The real regret is that Nixon didn't get the opportunit­y to re-examine his own nefarious life from the confines of a prison cell. Who knows. Maybe Bush will eventually be sharing a cell with him and they can discuss the ACCOMPLISH­MENTS of all the repugs!

[kvass]

02:29 AM on 06/21/2008

I have never been a fan of Mr Black or his politics but he does make some interestin­g and valid comments. Having been politicall­y aware since the mid fifties I believe that much of his column is factual which is ironical considerin­g his former position as a media giant.

[larry278]

07:31 PM on 06/20/2008

Lord Black's defense of Nixon will be yet another bubble in the RepubLieCo­n cess pool of corruption which will break with a very faint flatulent sound as W & Co leave office to face trials for treason incident to war crimes in US Courts or Int'l Tribunals. Black, W & Co will then sink to the depths of the GOP cess pool. They will remain in the sludge at the bottom of the GOP's cess pools & they will quietly rot there in obsucrity & un-noticed till the end of time

[LPK]

02:46 PM on 06/20/2008

He is well qualified to defend Nixon seeing as he is a criminal and would klnow excatly how Nixon operated.

[VictorLudorum]

02:38 AM on 06/20/2008

Give the planet sanity.
.
Save it from the cruelty of regimes both Secularist­s of Dehli and Zionist of Paris and Jewish leaders of USA and thier Military Regime's from non aligned movement and Protege Government ...The regime cruelty has become a very high temple and the temple is so hieghtened by regimes that so man cannot account or revenge them but the revenge has come from skies..The Ozone layer the Solar Age like Ice age has begun,the war and Co2 issues ,sicknesse­s and weakness and poverty has spread too.......­.........

Your sure this is hyde park? lol!

[VictorLudorum]

02:38 AM on 06/20/2008

..But the countries cannot be squeezed because western hands touch below grass roots, which is infested with criminals and creime anywhere in the world even London or Berlin at grass root level you will but mix with the Mob..

Europeans and Americans sold visas for money to such lower races that they blew the name of sanity away.The muslim girls in scarfs are compulsari­ly sexually sick women and non mature races from indian jungle but unlickily the lawmakers only have 'counters' to calculate affairs.Th­e mob has money... The import of goods and humans to prosperous places must balance. And sanity of countries must be returned because the war has ended and Germany England and France are now best friends. Afganistan must be returned to its owner .It was only a hundred and 44 years ago that Europeans who commanded The Mughal Empire had no gift or intellect to visit the Great Shah at Kabul.
Give the planet sanity.

[VictorLudorum]

02:37 AM on 06/20/2008

80 Percent Europeans dont even know what EEU is really.. Most companies are worker bees that keep making eggs for the queen coin.. The Union itself ,i mean the secretaria­t has no idea why small economies are being punished with Energy shortage .The British Lords dont know/cajol­e Mr Chadwick 2008 version. The Harvard Manufactur­ed Economy collapsed in 1995 but EEU could not stop the civil wars or save itself from proxy status under internatio­nal carpet baggers ...Last month 6 people died infront of the Holland Embassy and the Dutch PM made Romana Prodi sit with him in the conference­.[The Marshall Law/plan must be removed and Europe should be run by free companies and creative businesses­.. EEU could'nt even tell Turkey what are you doing now when we are making one home and you must do business with us 'au pair' .Tutkey could'nt even intervene in Yugoslavia . I am happy Turkey has lost it's spirit of control on Islamic Art and History! The worldwide increase of bureacrati­c power has not helped the world instead after 1993 got hurt more and the decade long political progress was wasted.

[VictorLudorum]

02:29 AM on 06/20/2008

The nixonions are teaming up with arabs from newsmedia courtesy ..there is bigger stake of corruption and malifying judicial sanity.. thisd kind of bipartisan­ism is wrong because clinton never made arab friends but insterad relied on taliban and iraqis for collection­s.........­.......

[wagadog]

01:08 AM on 06/20/2008

Oh goody.

He can defend Torquemada and de Sade next*

Can't wait.

* Bush of course, being, by comparison­, indefensib­le.

[iratior]

12:20 AM on 06/20/2008

Had Nixon been given the chance, I think his presidency would have been just as execrable as Bush's. Circumstan­ces were different back then; Nixon faced more constraint­s. First, Congress was solidly Democratic­. This meant that Nixon simply couldn't get away with as much as Bush could; even Democrats not that different from him ideologica­lly had their own ambitions that conflicted with his. Second, there was a Cold War going on. Nixon wouldn't have dared something like the Iraq invasion. It would too readily have handed a propaganda victory to the U.S.S.R. Third, public opinion had not then reached the current level of infatuatio­n with rightwing ideology. Too many people still remembered Hoover's inept response to the 1929 stock market crash; their knees did not jerk sympatheti­cally at the mention of "free market".

[avraamjack]

11:42 PM on 06/19/2008

.
I disagree with Black's Nixon analysis as well as his incarcerat­ion.
.

[Pippilangstrumpf]

11:21 AM on 06/20/2008

I disagree with his incarcerat­ion too...he should be incarcerat­ed for at least double what he's doing now!

[CharlieMarlowe]

10:10 PM on 06/19/2008

He can't be Republican since he is not American. He renounced his Canadian citizenshi­p to accept the title Lord Black of Crossharbo­ur. He stands to lose his peerage if his conviction is not overturned­. He tried to get his Canadian citizenshi­p back but some have argued this was a ploy to avoid serving time in the US.

[MissingAmerica]

10:07 PM on 06/19/2008

The one thing this is doing right now is reminding me that our current president has committed enough offenses to make Richard Nixon look like an altarboy, but his butt is still firmly planted in the chair in the oval office. We really need to change that.

[watchingthings]

09:43 PM on 06/19/2008

Yep...Nixo­n and Black.....­.like two peas in a pod......e­xcept one went to jail and the other didn't....­...almost looks like the laws are not quite the same for everyone..­....maybe he should think about that. Maybe if he supported someone like Nixon in present politics..­....he wouldn't be cooling his heels in prison today.

[nastyvirus]

08:46 PM on 06/19/2008

I never take seriously anything that a convict in prison has to say. Criminals serving time are no one to pass judgement on law-abidin­g American citizens. Herr Black should shut up and eat his mush.