The American Spectator : How to Handle a Bully: Nixon vs. Khrushchev

The American Spectator : How to Handle a Bully: Nixon vs. Khrushchev: "In the aftermath of President Barack Obama's timid performance when face-to-face with Venezuelan dictator Hugo Chavez -- who has cast the United States as, among many things, an 'imperialist monster' even as he goes about systematically repressing his own people and making alliances with American enemies -- it is worth recalling just what happened when Nixon found himself in a similar situation."

Nice history lesson, too bad the well rehearsed (teleprompter president) who is so eloquent and well spoken never examined history. he may have avoided his public blunder and embarrassment of the United States for which he has proved himself unfit to serve. To continue:

What should Obama have learned from this episode before he placed himself in the same room with the bullying, boasting Chavez, the Venezuelan tyrant not so unlike Khrushchev?

That if you are an American leader, it is a mistake of magnitudes to let tyrants make a fool of you period, whether in private but especially in public. The photo of a grinning Obama yukking it up with Hugo Chavez, unchallenging as he accepts a book glorifying socialism, is surely being closely studied by less than scrupulous men from Tehran to Afghanistan, from Beijing to Moscow to Havana. Chavez self-evidently sought to publicly tweak the President, to pull his chain, and see what resulted. Just as Khrushchev tried the same with Nixon fifty years ago this July. Chavez got a notably different response from Obama than Khrushchev did from Nixon. For that there will, almost certainly, be repercussions.

As for Richard Nixon, for the rest of his active political life he was cast as the tough-as-nails anti-Communist, a perception that worked to America's advantage. It gave totalitarians pause in dealing with him when he finally did become president, and Americans a feeling of reassurance that if Nixon was in charge it was a safer world for negotiations with the Russians or the Chinese or, for that matter, any would-be adversary. Khrushchev would later boast that he had done everything he could to undermine Nixon's 1960 race against John F. Kennedy.

JFK, as it turned out, sent his own messages to Khrushchev with less success than Nixon. In 1961, he botched the Eisenhower-planned "Bay of Pigs" invasion of Cuba, choosing neither to cancel it nor to support it but rather to let it proceed without serious American backing. The resulting failure emboldened Khrushchev, who proceeded to assess Kennedy at their 1961 Summit as a weak president -- and shortly began building the Berlin Wall. When Kennedy allowed the wall to stand, the next challenge was to put nuclear missiles in Cuba, which JFK, hardened finally by experience, managed to remove. Even so, the perception of weakness by Khrushchev almost brought about nuclear war.

If anything, the horrific results of Nixon successor Jimmy Carter confirmed the need in many minds of Nixon's insistence on strength in dealing with tyrants. Carter took precisely the opposite approach of Nixon, and Nixon made himself known on the subject. While Nixon's focus was on Carter's dealings with the Soviet Union, his thoughts would be well taken when dealing with any tyrant. Like, say, Hugo Chavez:

[T]o apply the Golden Rule to our dealings with the Soviets is dangerously naïve. President Carter, with the best of intentions, tried unilateral restraint in the hopes the Soviets would follow suit. The result was disastrous.

President Obama, finding himself in a Nixon-Khrushchev-style match-up with Hugo Chavez, took the Carter route, ignoring the Nixon lesson. Time will tell just what the image of the Obama-Chavez encounter means to the bad guys of the world. Somewhere down the line, Americans will find out. But in 1959, a young American Vice President sent a different image altogether, up close and personal. It was the picture heard around the world.

America -- and the world -- were better for it.