Bill Clinton: “I am not a racist.”

Bill Clinton: “I did not have sexual relations with that woman.”

Richard Nixon: “I’m not a crook.”

Good one, eh?

We read this in the the Miami Herald’s profile of Roger Stone:

Stone’s office is a Nixon shrine, crammed with campaign posters and buttons and personal letters. Stone even has the former president’s mug tattooed between his shoulder blades “just to piss liberals off.”

And what does that tattoo look like?  Here it is:

Peggy Noonan wonders of Hillary Clinton staying in the race to the Democrats’ detriment:

The question “Who will tell her, who can make her go?”

Of course, 34 years ago Barry Goldwater went to Richard Nixon telling him to vacate the White House (Goldwater: “Nixon should get his ass out of the White House—today!”)
Precedent for Hillary?  Consider that during the 1964 presidential campaign, Hillary was a Goldwater Girl.

An all-too-rare item from Extreme Mortman’s intrepid real estate reporter:

With nice weather expected this weekend, TIVO the NCAAs, load the kiddies in the minivan, and hit the presidential homes tour, previously detailed by Extreme Mortman last September.

Here’s a look at newly-elected Congressman Richard Nixon’s temporary digs from 1947:

“Richard Nixon lived here briefly in 1947 while house hunting.”

Also, “Senator Huey Long lived here from 1934 - 1935. It was also home to locally prominent business families, for example, the Hechingers, the Mazors, and the Zlotnicks.”

(Source)

Here are two photos about the Cathedral Avenue NW home of both GWB 41 and 43.

(Source)

The 2nd photo is a snapshot of page 99 of Barbara Bush’s memoirs, courtesy of Google books.

It’s the location of the infamous “mano a mano” challenge that Bush 43 issued to 41 after a night of frolic with his younger brother Marvin, described by the WashPost here:

“By the end of 1972, Bush’s father was mulling over a new job offer from Nixon – to be chairman of the Republican National Committee. With his parents back in Washington, Bush went to stay with them for the holidays and was involved in one of the most notorious incidents of his “nomadic” years. He took his 16-year-old brother Marvin out drinking, ran over a neighbor’s garbage cans on the way home, and when his father confronted him, challenged him to go “mano a mano” outside.”

“Bush maintained a Washington residence at 4429 Lowell Street during his 1980 campaign for Vice President”

(Source)

That’s it.  Happy trails.

Fascinating tidbit in Andrew Glass’ profile today of Reagan-era hawk and arms negotiator Max Kampelman in Politico:

Did Reagan vote for Humphrey in 1968, over Richard Nixon, whom Reagan privately detested?

Kampelman says he has reason to believe he did. He first met Reagan in 1978 in Palm Beach, Fla., when the former California governor spoke at a fundraiser for the American Friends of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, which Kampelman chaired.

“He asked me how I got to Washington,” Kampelman said. “I told him I had come from Minnesota with Hubert Humphrey. His eyes lit up. He told me Humphrey was one of his best friends and that he would have made a great president.”

Interesting quote by the National Archives’ head of the Nixon Library in today’s Washington Post.

From the story “Suburbanites: At President Nixon’s home, there’s a longing for the good old days of conservatism and an ambivalence about this year’s contenders”:

Schilling, 65, counts a daughter of Barry Goldwater among her closest friends. She came to the Nixon museum Friday afternoon after selling her flower shop in the morning. “And don’t even get me started on the state of California and being a small businesswoman,” she said, rolling her eyes.

Rex Johnson, a classmate visiting from Florida, smiled sympathetically. They had wandered past the Lincoln Sitting Room. Still ahead was the president’s old armored limousine, the gun Elvis Presley presented in the Oval Office and, to the right and straight ahead, empty space once occupied by a Watergate exhibit that implied the scandal that ended Nixon’s presidency had been a sly Democratic coup.

Installed by Nixon’s friends, it was dismantled when responsibility for the museum passed to the National Archives, which is preparing a fact-based replacement. (”This isn’t North Korea,” the new director said.)

The facts of the anecdote about shutting down the Watergate exhibit are correct, even if the reporter’s characterization  leans toward editorializing.  That’s fine — it’s tough to present the other side.  What we’re more curious about is the North Korea contrast.

The Library’s director is Timothy Naftali.  Does the name sound vaguely familiar?  It should to readers of the Huffington Post, where he’s been a blogger.

And here’s what Naftali once wrote about North Korea:

Not surprisingly the Bush administration’s Shock and Awe policy toward Pyongyang failed. We Americans are generally not very sensitive to how our power is perceived by outsiders. We scare people by our every existence. We have the most modern military and the largest economy in the world and we have Microsoft, Hollywood and Google. So, whatever we do we will be the target of envy and other countries will seek alliances or additional power on their own to keep us in check. But when we actually decide to scare other countries, as George Bush did with his Axis of Evil speech, then we are guaranteed to propel tin-pot dictators to go to great lengths to try to scare us in return.

Sounds like America does a lot of scaring, according to the government’s Nixon Library director.  Or it could be harmless nostalgia for the good old days or Realpolitik diplomacy.  You know, the kind we had when Henry Kissinger and his boss Richard Nixon were in charge.

Iconic political moments from the beach.

Richard Nixon…

Barack Obama …

and brand new, from the Florida primary, ABC News’ Senior National Correspondent & Senior Political Correspondent Jake Tapper…

That’s Deerfield Beach, Florida, near Boca Raton … and Jake’s inside an electoral map of the presidential campaign.

So, did rules dictate that a union guy had to draw the map for Tapper? Nope. Jake tells Extreme Mortman: “I drew it. History major, art minor.”

Jake also informs us: “We used seashells for Sacramento, Albany and Tallahassee.”

Which makes us hope that, for Super Tuesday coverage, ABC News doesn’t send Jake to cover New Jersey from the Jersey shore. Not much you can make out of washed-up syringes.

Associated Press photographer Charles Tasnadi has died.
He gave us this …

… years before we’d see this:

We never pass up an easy opportunity to show you the Greatest.  Photo.  Ever.  And to ask the Greatest.  Question.  Ever:  Which of these two famous fellows is high on dilaudid?
Today’s excuse comes courtesy of Anne Schroeder Mullins’ sensational “Shenanigans” gossip column in Politico  (by the way, they dropped the “The.”  It’s no longer “The Politico.”  Now, just “Politico.”  Just like it’s no longer “The Shenanigans.” Anyway, here’s the item …):

Last week, the speaker’s office had a staff party celebrating the day Nixon met Elvis, which we hear was immortalized on the Hill by Pelosi’s chief of staff, who, as a tribute, sang “Blue Christmas.”  (Blue as in Democratic, of course.)

Our old friends and colleagues from Hotline days, Julie and Neil Swanson, just launched a wonderful new project called RetroPresident (RetroPresident.com) …

a new product line celebrating the legends of American politics. Following the popularity of retro or vintage sports clothing, RetroPresident offers its own apparel and merchandise line featuring accurate reproductions of presidential campaign logos featuring a wide range of presidential campaign greats.

An easy way to plug Nixon’s 1960 campaign?  You better believe it!