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THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 26, 2009
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 OPINION 
17

In Obama's Dover Trip, Echoes of Nixon

War kept both awake; Nixon's 4am walkabout more 'heartrending'

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(Newser) – President Obama’s predawn trip to welcome home fallen Americans today has echoes of Richard Nixon’s 4am stroll to the Lincoln Memorial in 1970, hours before a huge anti-war protest. “What both Obama and Nixon had in common was that a war kept them awake,” Amy Davidson writes, noting, “There’s something unsettling about presidents wandering around in the night.”

“Obama’s trip to Dover lacked the spontaneity that made Nixon’s walk so strange and compelling and also a little heartrending,” she blogs for the New Yorker. “Obama was surrounded by the dead, and Nixon by the living. … A few hours later, the students joined a hundred thousand others in a march about Vietnam in which they shouted that he was a murderer. Obama is not there yet.”

President Richard Nixon is seen in a 1973 photo.
President Richard Nixon is seen in a 1973 photo.   (AP Photo)
President Obama is the last of the official party to walk off of a military transport plane carrying the remains of a solider killed in Afghanistan.
President Obama is the last of the official party to walk off of a military transport plane carrying the remains of a solider killed in Afghanistan.   (AP Photo)
President Barack Obama, first row right, and others in the official party walk onto a military transport plane early this morning at Dover Air Force Base.
President Barack Obama, first row right, and others in the official party walk onto a military transport plane early this morning at Dover Air Force Base.   (AP Photo)
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17 comments
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kokuaguy
Oct 29, 09 9:19 PM CDT
Yes, Nixon was elected based on his campaign promise of having a "secret plan" to end the way, and after tens of thousands more had died in a war he expanded it was right for him to be a tortured soul (or to pretend to be one for public consumption.) President Obama is showing respect for the fallen, in a way that the prior Commander in Chief, who began these two wars, seemed to be uncomfortable doing in public. Reply
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IN RESPONSE:
RobN
Oct 29, 09 11:33 PM CDT
I'm sorry but this is simply not true. Like him or not, Bush met with hundreds of family members of fallen soldiers. Maybe he didn't do it with the cameras around, but I find it hard to believe that's a bad thing. Even Cindy Sheehan wrote about what a touching meeting she had with GB although she later decided that story didn't mesh with her political viewpoint and altered the story. Google Bush and grieving families if you're actually interested in the facts. Several articles by Newsweek and on MSNBC to that effect.
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+1
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pete_ess
Oct 30, 09 1:34 AM CDT
Sorry, RobN, I find that seriously gruesome. When you have the power to END the killing and the dying, and instead you let more people die, you kill more people and THEN you fraternise with the grieving and pretend to care!?! I find that sick and bizarre.
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carol
Oct 30, 09 2:00 AM CDT
Lets not forget the 3000 innocent victims in the World Trade Center. What do you possibly think BO would have done had he been president on 9/11?
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-2
IN RESPONSE:
geneparmesan
Oct 30, 09 3:23 AM CDT
Lets also not forget, W did give up golf for these dead soldiers, so...theres that.
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