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In Obama's Dover Trip, Echoes of Nixon

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

By Will McCahill,  Newser Staff

Posted Oct 29, 2009 9:00 PM CDT
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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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COMMENTS
Showing 3 of 12 comments
DontLikeYou___
Oct 30, 2009 12:24 PM CDT
The comments from leftists about this article are simply disgusting. To lose your humanity because of your political views makes one less than human. Congratulations lefties.... animals.
RockyPneumonia
Oct 30, 2009 11:43 AM CDT
Yeah, Rob; to hell with all those people who died in his little vanity war. After all, he was only the president of those who voted for him, right?
carol
Oct 30, 2009 7:00 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?
Politics • US

 
Richard Nixon • Dover Air Force Base • Vietnam War • caskets • President Obama

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