On May 13, 1958, while on a trip to Latin America, Vice President Richard M. Nixon found his limousine under attack by an angry mob in Caracas, Venezuela.  The incident was so provocative that President Eisenhower ordered elements of the 101st Airborne Division to mobilize, as well as sending an aircraft carrier to Venezuelan waters.  [...]

Written for the The Daily Caller. Do Republicans need to grow up — again? Shortly after Richard Nixon’s “last press conference” on the night of his defeat in the 1962 California gubernatorial race — when he uttered the infamous phrase, “you won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore” — ABC News aired a program with [...]

The snow had fallen in massive quantities the night before and the temperature had plummeted to single digits. And the man who had provided steady and unruffled guidance to the United States of America during a potentially turbulent time, likely found himself watching the weather every bit as much as his sense of duty drove [...]

On Monday, November 3, 1969, President Richard M. Nixon sat at his desk in the Oval Office as the clock crawled toward 9:30 p.m. He was reviewing the words he would momentarily share with the American people.  There wasn’t a Teleprompter in sight. Nixon instinctively understood that it would be one of the most important [...]

For years, during campaign after campaign, moderate Republicans—in various shades of pastel—have preached a big-tent gospel, one that insisted on conservatives being good soldiers in support of the GOP.  And the record has shown that conservative minded Republicans have managed to hold their noses and vote for candidates who didn’t always reflect their values.  They [...]

One day in 1974, as Spring began to give way to Summer, Frank Gannon—wordsmith and White House Fellow—took a walk in Washington, largely to get away from the stress induced by the Nixon White House’s ever-increasing Watergate milieu. He found his way to an old theater—one that happened to be featuring a triple billing of [...]

In September of 1775, five months after the battles of Lexington and Concord, and while the shot heard ‘round the world later immortalized by Ralph Waldo Emerson still echoed, some Continental Army volunteers gathered at a church in the small coastal Massachusetts town of Newburyport, located almost 30 miles northeast of Boston.  They were about [...]

The site of the first debate between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon is not only in desperate need of rehabilitation and preservation—it may one day have an appointment with a wrecking ball. Of course, many reading this will be tempted to Google just where the two presidential candidates squared off nearly 50 years [...]

Winston Churchill became Prime Minister of Great Britain at the age of 65 on this date in 1940. May 10, 1940 was a moment of dynamism militarily and politically as Hitler’s forces swept across Belgium en route to France. One purported bulwark—the famed Maginot Line—quickly became a relic, while one supposed relic—Mr. Churchill—began his finest [...]

Whatever his obvious faults and flaws, it is somewhat understandable that Richard Nixon would ruminate about how Jack Kennedy got away with a lot during his assassination-shortened presidency. And there is no doubt that the 37th President of the United States saw all of the “Camelot” hype as mythology born of cynical public relations. While [...]

Maybe they’re on to something across the pond. It was announced the other day that the next national election in Great Britain will take place on May 6, and the stakes will be high. A 30-day campaign—can you imagine that? Of course, the reality over there, as here at home, is that political posturing is [...]

After several anxious days of waiting—watching out my office window for the faithful U. S. Postal truck—I finally received mine. Have you gotten yours? I sure hope so, because there isn’t much time—We The People—134 million households of us—have a deadline. In fact, there is a very special day coming up. It’s called Census Day [...]

In the immediate aftermath of the Bay of Pigs fiasco in 1961, President John F. Kennedy stood before the nation accepting the total blame for what had happened. He referred to an old saying about victory having a thousand fathers, but defeat being an orphan, and identified himself as the responsible officer in the government. [...]

The other day, President Barack Obama met with the Tibetan Dali Lama in the White House—doing so in the Map Room as opposed to the Oval Office in an apparent attempt to mute any “official” aura for the meeting. It was sort of like trying to kowtow to one audience while powwowing with another. Likely [...]