Alternative History: Nixon’s shadow.

President Nixon: Tragically Slain in Dallas, 1963.

PRESIDENT NIXON DEAD. SHOT IN DALLAS. VICE PRESIDENT CABOT LODGE SWORN IN AS PRESIDENT.

The murder of Richard M. Nixon on the 22nd November 1963 by Lee Harvey Oswald brought a meteoric political career to a cruelly abrupt end. The man who had risen from entering Congress in 1946 to defeating Senator John F. Kennedy in the razor thin election of 1960 was almost certain to be re-elected in 1964, given his adroit handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis, tough line on Vietnam (remembering Truman’s “losing China”) and his hard-line on civil rights solidifying black votes into the Republican column. The death of the young, cheerful and endearingly awkward war hero president stunned America.

Vice President Henry Cabot Lodge easily defeated Senator Lyndon Baines Johnson, running on a thinly veiled racist (against his own better judgement, he admitted years later) states rights campaign the following year. As history now shows, the Republican landslide of 1964 was the last good thing to happen to the former Massachusetts senator. Read more…

Did Glenn Beck strangle a male prostitute to death? No he didn’t. But let’s talk about it anyway.

One of the more disturbing things I’ve come across recently is this poll figure from the US saying that 18% of people polled believe that  President Obama is a Muslim. What’s particularly worrying, indeed surreal, is that the number of people who believe that he is a Christian (which he is, although I can’t believe we actually have to discuss this stuff) has dropped from 48% to 34%. In other words, people who actually were aware of the truth have now swung over to believing the lie.

What is truly scary about this is the Goebbels-size lie that it is, that no matter how much light is thrown on this nonsense it continues to grow, against all rational thought. It is hard enough trying to convince people of real things in the world, but for the President of the United States to actually have to expend time, energy and effort dealing with this nonsense is quite extraordinary. The other aspect of this thing is what a media created story this is. If you ran a poll asking whether Glenn Beck had once strangled a male prostitute to death (which he hasn’t, by the way) you will get a small percentage who will say that he has. If you then report that story, that creates attention for the ludicrous proposition, which almost guarantees that the next poll will show an even higher number of people believe that Glenn Beck once strangled a male prostitute to death. Then people start googling as to whether Glenn Beck strangled a male prostitute to death. Go on, do it now. Which now means that there is a media story that says that a growing number of people believe that Glenn Beck strangled a male prostitute to death, even though he didn’t, and the proposition is outrageous. This is how this crap gets traction. 

The one hope is the argument made by some pollsters that many voters tend to make an emotional call about a candidate, and then look for a rational reason to justify that belief. The fact is, the sort of people who believe that the President is Muslim regardless of the facts are people who will probably never vote for the guy even if he personally put a bullet ino the back of Osama Bin Laden’s head.  

Osama Bin Laden endorses Gingrich/Palin ticket in 2012

Evil bigoted terrorist mastermind Osama Bin Laden has endorsed former house speaker Newt Gingrich and former Gov. Sarah Palin for the Republican presidential nomination in 2012.

Speaking from secret cave lair no. 345, Bin Laden is quoted as saying: “I have spent a lifetime trying to convince young Muslims that the United States is prejudiced against  Islam. Then they go and elect Obama, a man who has some actual knowledge of Islam, and treat Muslim soldiers in the US army as equals. They even have a Muslim in Congress! This is what I’m up against, so I really appreciate Newt and Sarah stirring up bigotry over the Islamic Centre two blocks from Ground Zero. Seriously, I could not have written it better myself, well, other than “We surrender, Praise Allah!” But now I can go to young American Muslims fighting the Taliban in Afghanistan, who laud the US, and go “In your face, over here, working for the honky man!”. If I’m not trying to raise money to put Newt and Sarah into the White House in 2012, then my uncle’s a rabbi! It’s not as much a donation as an investment.”

The Gingrich/Palin approach to the proposed centre, thus ensuring that US Muslims know their place, is part of a radical new Republican approach to hot button issues the GOP hopes to showcase in the November midterm elections. Another issue is that of attitudes towards homosexuality, where Republican members of congress and formers chairs of the RNC are having gay sex regularly so as to be able to lecture family values voters on the evils of a hot gay banging with a buff intern named Chad. Repeatedly.

Supposing it wasn’t Ground Zero we were talking about.

Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin.

“The controversy which has emerged regarding the building of a Jewish Center at this location is counterproductive to the healing process.  Therefore, under these unique circumstances, we believe the City of Tel Aviv would be better served if an alternative location could be found. In recommending that a different location be found for the Jewish Center, we are mindful that some legitimate questions have been raised about who is providing the funding to build it, and what connections, if any, its leaders might have with groups whose ideologies stand in contradiction to our shared values.  These questions deserve a response, and we hope those backing the project will be transparent and forthcoming.  But regardless of how they respond, the issue at stake is a broader one.  Proponents of the Jewish Center may have every right to build at this site, and may even have chosen the site to send a positive message about Judaism.  The bigotry some have expressed in attacking them is unfair, and wrong.  But ultimately this is not a question of rights, but a question of what is right.  In our judgment, building a Jewish Center in the shadow of the assasination spot of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin will cause some victims more pain – unnecessarily – and that is not right.”
A “what if?” statement based on the Anti Defamation League’s statement opposing the building of a Muslim centre near Ground Zero. A question: What would delight Bin Laden more? Seeing American Muslims being treated as equals in America, or seeing them being treated as second class citizens? 

Books worth reading: Reagan’s Revolution.

This side of the Atlantic never “got” Ronald Reagan. We thought he was a bit dim, full of cloying cliches and “aw, shucks” answers and we could never understand how he managed to get elected, and in landslides too. “Reagan’s Revolution” by Craig Shirley gives a pretty clear picture as to why the man absolutely turned modern American politics on its head by challenging for the Republican nomination in 1976.

What we in Europe don’t understand is that after Barry Goldwater’s clobbering by LBJ in 1964, conservative was a dirty word in American politics. The Republican Party had a solid liberal wing, led by New York governor Nelson Rockefeller, which pretty much dominated the party leadership until Reagan challenged, and narrowly lost against President Ford for the nomination. The book tells, in very expansive detail, the story of how Reagan, an unrivalled political communicator until the arrival of Bill Clinton in 1992, went over the heads of the party seniors and appealed to the conservative grassroots of the GOP, transforming the party as he went, and very nearly denying a sitting president his party’s nomination.

This, given the detail, is a book for the anoraks, and the author doesn’t hide his pro-Reagan feelings, although they don’t affect the telling of the story. But it is fascinating in telling the pretty untold story of how Reagan began a journey which resulted in a shift to the right in American politics which exists to this day. It is also a telling tale of what happens when a party leadership ignores its base.    

States’s Rights: A fictional tale of the end of the United States as we know it.

The margin by which President Obama was defeated in the 2012 Election was closer than had been expected, losing by 48% to 50% in the popular vote, and overall by failing to carry the state of Ohio in the electoral college. But what history would record as being even more notable than the defeat of the first African-American president was the victory of Wyoming governor James L. Tucker.

Unlike many of his predecessors as Republican nominee, Tucker was a true believer in the agenda he espoused as he had travelled the country seeking his party’s nomination. To him, the ending of abortion was not a political hot button to be used to rally the deepest red elements of the Republican coalition, but a moral imperative. Likewise, the dismantling of the federal government and the return to the states of federal power was not just a rallying cry for the hardliners. It was his agenda for government.

Within a week of after taking office, President Tucker was awoken at 2am to be informed that Supreme Court Justice Tenneman had died. Tenneman had been appointed by President Nixon as a moderate Republican. He had subsequently found himself, as a result of the sharp right turn of the Supreme Court in the early 21st century, to be the last liberal bulwark, the key vote who was keeping, amongst other things, Roe Vs Wade as the law of the land.

President Tucker realised immediately the significance of the event, and his nominee, a young, articulate and brilliant conservative mind was easily confirmed by the Republican Senate, just in time to rule on a challenge to Washington state’s liberal abortion law.

As expected, the political landscape changed when the court struck down the federal right to abortion.

Within weeks, the Republican majority in the House was moving a national ban on abortions except in the case of medical emergency. It passed easily, and was delayed in the Senate by filibusters from Democratic senators from Illinois, and New England before being overruled with the help of Democrats elected from the mid-west who were bombarded by anti-abortion activists in their home states.

The morning the President signed the National Protection of Innocent Life Act in the Rose Garden of the White House, the governors of New York, California, Massachusetts and a number of small states in the North East announced at a joint press conference that they would be simultaneously moving bills to protect a woman’s choice to have an abortion in their respective states.

As he signed the bill, the president was very clear. Abortion was now illegal under federal law, and the federal government would enforce the law. Two days later, the bills passed the state legislatures in record time, and each governor announced that, fearful that the president would federalise the national guards, that state police would protect each clinic from interference under state law. The governors then announced that they would challenge the federal government’s right to legislate for abortion as a breach of the tenth amendment to the constitution, which reserved to the states all powers not specifically reserved to the federal government.

The Supreme Court, recognising the developing seriousness of the matter, cleared its docket and announced that it would hear the case in seven days, which, to the relief of all, gave the president an opportunity to hold off on enforcing the new law.

The Attorney General of the United States argued in front of the court, pleading the right of the government to act. The lawyer representing the state governors, a Harvard law professor, quoted the supreme court’s own ruling nullifying Roe Vs Wade and suggesting that if the constitution did not permit an inferred right to abortion, then it did not infer a right to the federal government to override the state governments on abortion either.

One week after the hearings, America stopped what it was doing to watch the court make its ruling.

Chief Justice Roberts reviewed the case and the arguments, and ruled that whilst it could, under its right to regulate commerce, prevent citizens from travelling to seek an abortion, it could not regulate abortion services within those states themselves. Liberals were ecstatic, conservatives furious, with social conservatives furiously attacking states-righters. When it emerged that it was President Tucker’s new nominee who had cast the deciding vote, and that the new United States Vs the State of California ruling would now clear the way for any state that wished to legalise same-sex marriage and campaign finance reform, a fistfight between angry conservatives and goading liberals broke out on the floor of the House of Representatives, requiring the speaker to summon Capitol Police officers to clear the chamber.   

What seemed to be missed by most commentators was the fact that the Supreme Court was effectively putting into law what was the reality of the modern American political landscape. Since the early 1990s and the demonising of President Clinton by elements of the extreme right, followed by the visceral hatred of President Bush by the hard left, a culture existed that was relatively new to the United States. Despite the ructions of the late 1960s, most Americans accepted the principle that although they may disagree on politics, they were in fact all still citizens of the same nation and worthy of each other’s respect. Yet the new landscape, goaded on by “news” providers who were effectively the mouthpieces of different political viewpoints, had created a situation where many citizens were only ever exposed to political discourse targeted at their own prejudices, and were encouraged to regard those of other political persuasions as less American, possibly even morally inferior, and certainly not worth attempting to understand. Indeed those moderates who attempted to do so were to be regarded as suspicious RINOs or DINOs (Republicans/Democrats In Name Only) and therefore possible traitors.

It was an environment almost purpose built to generate conflict, in that the Supreme Court had now put in place a framework which would result in Americans living in different states potentially living radically different day to day lives from each other, indeed lives which fellow Americans in other states would regard as being as foreign as those of people living in other countries. 

It was this atmosphere which had finally led to the election of James L. Tucker as president, pursuing an agenda more ideological and divisive than any of his predecessors. Speaking on television the following evening, he accepted the ruling of the supreme court, and pointed out that at least half of the states in the union (Although covering less than 35% of the population) now banned abortion in the majority of cases, which he regarded as a major victory. He suggested that the country move onto the other major ideological issue his administration identified, the control of the deficit through the dismantling of the “socialist” federal bureaucracy. If the president had hoped that confronting such an issue would win him back the support of bitterly angry social conservatives, he was greatly mistaken. The massive cuts to the federal budget, when defence spending was excluded, meant the almost complete dismantling of the Medicare and Medicaid system, as well as action to reduce the cost of the Social Security pension system.

Republican congressmen visiting their districts were shaken to discover that  constituents who had demanded the savaging of the bloated tax devouring federal government were all in favour of slashing spending going to other people, but not to them. A poster, appearing at an angry public rally, demanding that the government  “keep its hands off my Medicare!” summed up the contradiction.

Returning to Washington, the president’s party leaders in the Congress were adamant. The cuts were not politically viable. Looking around for alternatives, the president was clear. He had been elected to reduce the size of the federal budget, and he was going to do so. Along with his proposed dismantling of the departments of energy and education, two bugbears of the conservative right, the president announced a slew of state agencies, from the EPA to the Park Service, that would be abolished, and their functions devolved to the states. As he addressed the nation, he pointed out his traditional conservative belief that the federal government existed to keep the people safe from foreign attack, keep the currency secure, and assist interstate commerce, and everything else was up to the states.

The Republican leadership and their allies in business were stunned. It was all well and good saying these things during a primary election, and at the Republican National Convention, but to actually do them? Yet the president’s message was going down a storm amongst the Republican grass roots, and members of congress were terrified to face down the president’s populist agenda with mid-term primaries approaching, dominated by raw meat voters.

It was the Republican Governor of Texas, Steve Jemmy, who suddenly realised the problem. One of the president’s biggest supporters, he grasped quickly the fact that the federal government’s  withdrawal from “interfering” in the states meant that someone had to provide those services. Texas, traditionally a small government, low regulation state, had been benefiting, nevertheless, from federal largesse in terms of infrastructure spending on roads and bridges and other transport structures such as airports, and also providing social services to the state’s rapidly expanding (and politically influential) Latino population who took a much more friendly attitude to big government than traditional Texans. On top of that, the president was quick to point out that Texas would have to foot the bill for all the additional border policing that its governors were constantly demanding.

As it happened, Texas, its oil industry booming, could well afford to fund most of these services, but only through either additional taxation (which he knew the people of Texas would not stand for) or else Texans reducing their contribution to the federal budget through their federal income tax.

When Governor Jemmy raised the issue at a dinner of the Texas Oilman Association, he got cheered to the rafters, especially when he announced that he was going to Washington to address the issue directly with President Tucker. And, he pointed out, “Texas reserves the right to decide her own destiny” a remark which was ominously noted and analysed by the media to mean only one thing: Secession.

Jemmy was quick to discover that he would not be alone. The governors of New York, Florida and California were quickly in contact, and between the four of them they crafted an agenda to meet with the president.                        

Tucker was firm. He had been elected to end the era of big government and prevent ever again the “creeping socialism” of Barack Obama and his fellow travellers, and that meant dismantling the federal bureaucracy to reduce the deficit. But it also meant that if the people, through the congress, still wanted their social security and medicare and massive defence spending, which they claimed they did, as well as paying off the massive debts run up during the last Republican administration and during the bank bailouts, then they had to at least continue paying the taxes they were paying now to Washington.

But, the governors argued, if Washington is not going to provide all those other services, then we have to, and that means we need the money in our states, not going to Washington.

The argument continued late into the night until Governor Jemmy stood up, cowboy booted legs firmly planted in the Oval Office carpet.

“ I’m sorry, Mr President, but Texas is not going to carry the can for the socialism of other states.” He declared, without a glimmer of shame or embarrassment. 

Back in Texas, the governor addressed the state, and put on his best grim face, announcing that Texas was now expecting its citizens to pay 80% of their federal income tax to the state of Texas.

President Tucker declared that the action was illegal, and announced that he would personally order the arrest of Governor Jemmy if he did not pay his income taxes as required by federal law.

Jemmy  refused, and television screens were filled with dramatic scenes in Austin when Texas Rangers arrested and detained federal IRS agents sent to arrest the governor. FBI agents, despatched to free the detained agents, found themselves detained by heavily armed Texas National Guardsmen who refused the president’s order to federalise.

The president, consulting the joint chiefs of staff about the possibility of despatching US forces into Texas under the Insurrection Act was informed that the joint chiefs objected “ with all strength possible” to the possibility, and would resign if instructed to deploy US forces against the state of Texas.

Tucker consulted with the leaders of the smaller states who, whilst not happy with Tucker’s dismantling of the federal government, nevertheless knew how vital the tax revenue of the large states was to the union, and agreed to  support the president. He then issued an ultimatum to the governor of Texas.

“Texas,” He said “ cannot have it both ways. It cannot claim the benefits, indeed the privilege of being one of these united states if it is not willing to pay its fair share towards a national debt it contributed to, same as every other state. Therefore, it is time for the people of Texas to decide. They are either part of the  United States, and will obey our laws, or they can secede from this union. It is up to Texas to decide. I intend to request the US supreme court determine as to whether a state which refuses to obey the constitution is in fact still a state of the union, or has in effect left the union. If this is the case, and the court finds in the favour of the government, the governors of the four adjoining states have informed me that they will close their borders to Texas, and treat its citizens as citizens of a foreign power. Furthermore, I will withdraw all US military and other federal agencies on that day from the state, and instruct the US Border Patrol to secure the Texas border with the four adjoining states.”

It was then that the president made his mistake. Not realising that a camera was still running after the broadcast ended, Tucker made a jovial remark about the governor of Texas not having the guts to consult his own people. The clip made its way onto the internet, where it stoked outrage in Texas, and caused the governor to declare that if the supreme court found in favour of the government, he would indeed consult the people of his state on the question.

The governors of the other large states kept under the political and media radar as  the supreme court debated the issue. All were aware of the impact of the decision. They all needed money to fund services in their states, yet knew that the federal government needed that tax income to fund itself and the massive national debt. But what of the unspoken question: If Texas seceded from the union, would that absolve Texas of responsibility towards the debt? All their legal advisors were divided on the question. The borrower was nominally the United States Government, not the Republic of Texas. But this raised an even bigger question. If Texas could shirk off its share of the national debt, did that not mean that its share would have to be carried by the remaining states? Which left them all thinking the same thing: If Texas can do that, can we? Like a gang of frat-boys enjoying a lavish dinner in a fancy restaurant, it was becoming aware to them that the last guy to run out the door was going to be stuck with the check. 

President Tucker was thinking the same thing. Could Texas be punished, to force it to pay its share of the national debt? It could be blockaded economically, through tariffs on Texan exports, but Texas’ neighbours needed to trade with the state themselves, and Texas was a prosperous state in its own right. The military  option was off the table. The American people would not tolerate the use of US forces against even a former US state.

The Supreme Court ruled that the government, under the sixteenth amendment, had a right to raise income taxes, and that a state which refused to cooperate was engaged in an act of insurrection. With that, Governor Jemmy put the vote to the people, looking for the power to negotiate an amicable separation from the United States. Three weeks later, he got his mandate in a sweeping victory, and issued a call for a gathering of state governors to consider the future.

The Constitutional Convention of 2015 met despite the refusal of President Tucker to attend.  The Governors of Texas and California surprised their fellow governors and the media by jointly calling for the United States to consider the model of the European Union, essentially a weak confederal model where free trade and other interstate issues were shared, but where the states were very much the masters over a weak federal government. On reading this, the President was beside himself with rage, immediately flying to Philedelphia to address the convention, whether the governors liked it or not, and declaring to his staff that he’d address the people from the steps of the hall himself if he was prevented from speaking.

The governors deferred, and Tucker gave a speech which became referred to as the “federalist’s last hurrah.” He savaged the proposals, asking how the US would maintain its military power. “ This,” he declared, “is the end of the United States as a superpower.”

The governor of California, a liberal Democrat, replied that the states could enter into a NATO style defence pact, and that it would be up to individual states to decide, like NATO, as to whether they wished to contribute to overseas operations.  The governor of Texas also pointed out that individual states could now deal, in their own ways, with contentious issues like gays in the military in their own way. “Hell, if California wants a gays-only army, that’s their business!” He roared to cheers from other southern governors.   

The Renew America bill amending the US Constitution easily passed both houses of the congress, supported by both liberals and conservatives. President Tucker, as promised, vetoed the bill, but his veto was overruled and the bill sent to the state assemblies, where it passed easily.

The presidential election of 2016 was a curiously low-key affair, given the drama of the previous years.  The President, now occupying a job much more akin to that of secretary general of a trade association, easily defeated his main rival from the ultra-right wing American Party, a Fox News hothead who wanted to restore the constitution by force and crossed the line from having guts to being actually nuts. Most serious political leaders were now no longer involved if US federal politics, instead contesting statewide elections. Both the governors of California and Texas were received as heads of state when they visited Europe later that year, with their state flags flapping as their motorcades flew through London, Paris and Berlin, and the US flag very much in second place. 

The big states applied to join the WTO, United Nations and NATO in their own right, despatching ambassadors throughout the world. Perhaps not surprisingly, Texas decided not to join the UN.

The tiny states now found themselves at a disadvantage, having to pick up the tab for representing themselves on the world stage as the United States, now starved of funds, proceeded to close its network of ambassadors.  

Ironically, most of these states, predominantly rural, and deeply conservative, had been strongly Republican states who had preached the free market and opposition to socialism. What they now discovered was that they had all being subsidised by the traditional Democratic (and productive) states. The new, looser US began a massive dismantling of both the social security and massive defence spending of the US, in an attempt to stave off default on massive debts. The US Goverment, starved of tax revenue, effectively defaulted on the national debt, causing the US dollar to collapse, which aided exports to some degree but caused a very steep decline in the living standards of most, and huge poverty amongst senior citizens no longer receiving federal social security. The problem was compounded by the larger more prosperous states introducing visa regimes to prevent citizens of less well off states moving to take advantage of more generous welfare programmes elsewhere. 

By 2018, large tracts of the former US resembled a small, forgotten South American country that continued to function but had clearly seen better days. The crime rate soared, to the extent that most states now permitted citizens to openly carry firearms in all public places, and it was rare for a day to pass without a gun battle between teachers and students in colleges, or in supermarkets between security guards and suspicious customers, normally triggered by misunderstandings and escalations compounded by citizens reaching for their weapons in reaction to other citizens reaching for theirs. In some states, with the constitution now neutered to the level of being suggested guidelines, homosexuality was made illegal and foreigners and those of a non-Christian faith were regarded with suspicion, with many required to leave the state, which had an effect on the economic productivity and foreign investment. US military prowess was now dispersed to the state national guards, and despite the fact that it remained a nuclear power, the US could defend itself, but not much else. Both California and Texas announced that they had taken charge of a large portion of the US nuclear arsenal, and that their governors now had operational control. 

When President Tucker’s successor, a former US Interior Secretary met his EU counterpart, a former Bulgarian deputy foreign minister, at the G25 summit in Shanghai, both men had to wear special badges so that security officials would know who they were. President Wu of China did not have to wear one.  

© 2010

Vaughn Meader.

There is a deeply black comic remark made in the 1960s that on 22 November 1963, two New England men were killed by Lee Harvey Oswald. The second was Vaughn Meader. To put it in context, comedian Lenny Bruce, a week after the assasination, apparently opened his show with the line “Vaughn Meader is screwed!”

Vaughn Meader was THE JFK impersonator during Camelot, and as you can see here, he was genuinely funny. He had previously recorded a JFK based comedy album, The First Family, which was one of the biggest selling records of 1962/63, and which President Kennedy supposedly gave out as Christmas gifts. When asked as to whether he was “mad” about the impersonation, Kennedy remarked:  ” Well, eh, I think it actually sounds more like Teddy, so now he’s mad!”   

When the president was murdered, Meader’s career went off a cliff. He was a talented comedian and mimic, but the public, and the television networks could not seperate him from the memory of President Kennedy, and he was effectively barred from television, eventually becoming a country and western singer in his native Maine, dying in 2004. 

Yet ANOTHER US anti-gay activist caught with gay lover.

Best of all, his excuse: “I’ve had surgery, I can’t lift luggage, so I hired him”

The gift that just keeps on giving. Here.

An interesting book you should read: Leadership

A good read if you’re interested in municipal government. That’s not a joke, by the way.

Americans do this kind of book well, and “Leadership” by Rudy Giuliani is worth dipping into, especially as Dublin approaches it’s first ever directly elected Mayor. I listened to it on audiobook (I travel a lot with work) and it is an interesting overview as to how he ran the city, and then dealt with the Sept 11 crisis.

What works about the book is actually the parts that are not about 9/11, but how he dealt with the day to day problems of running the capital of the world, and there are interesting ideas that the future mayor of Dublin could look at. When he strays into international politics, on the other hand, his opinions jar, particularly his absolute support for Israel right or wrong. I’m pro-Israel myself, and even I found it hard to digest. His attitude actually mirrors the attitude of the hardline anti-Israeli lobby in Ireland: Like them, he doesn’t really give much of a damn about the other side.   

Great Political Characters: Edwin Edwards

Edwin Edwards: Corrupt Governor and Kicker of KKK Ass.

Former four term Lousiana governor Edwin W. Edwards is currently in prison for being indicted in 1998 for racketeering, extortion, mail fraud and wire fraud. He was without doubt a crook and deserved to go to jail.

And yet, in 1965 he was one of the few Southern congressmen to vote for the Voting Rights Act. As governor, he was the first Louisiana governor to appoint blacks and women to serious political office. But his real achievement, for which liberals will always have mixed feelings for as a  man for  whom the stench of corruption constantly hung around, came in 1991. Having lost office in 1987, one local reporter had remarked that the only way Edwin Edwards would ever be elected again would be if  he were to run against Hitler.

Funny that, because in 1991 David Duke, former Grand Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, won the Republican nomination. Edwards faced off against him in a contest that achieved such national attention that President George Bush (snr) asked Republican voters to vote for Edwards. A common slogan, “Vote for the lizard, not the wizard” appeared on bumper stickers about the state.

Best line in the campaign went to Edwards, who had a reputation as a bit of a ladies man, who remarked  “The only thing we have in common (referring to Duke) is that we have both been wizards beneath the sheets.” He won 61% of the vote.

Edwards was a crook, and left Lousiana worse off. But he whipped a Nazi’s ass, and that’s got to count for something.