Nixon Strikes Back

Nixon did not suffer fools - or shirts - lightly.

Nixon Strikes Back The year was 1972. The Democratic Party was divided over its foreign policy stance, disorganized, and demoralized. The road was open for the re-election of Richard Nixon in one of the most overwhelming electoral victories in U.S. history. But Nixon took nothing for granted. Years of public scorn and ridicule - he was Time Magazine's Nobody of the Year from 1953 to 1961 - had conditioned the president to believe he was surrounded by powerful enemies, and that any success was merely momentary good fortune while the popular kids prepared to deliver another round of wedgies. McGovern scared him. Wallace scared him. The Black Panther Party - fractured, fratricidal, and moving into a lucrative salad dressing sideline - scared him. But what scared Nixon most of all was rock and roll. In December 1971, Youth International Party gadfly Jerry "Jerry" Rubin convened a meeting with top figures from the counterculture: former Beatle John Lennon and his wife, Yoko Ono; recently paroled White Panther Party leader John Sinclair; poet Allen Ginsberg; music critic AJ Weberman; and Youth International Party gadfly Jerry "Jerry" Rubin (Rubin believed it was radical to pretend he was two people named Jerry Rubin). This summit meeting produced, in addition to acrid clouds of fragrant marijuana smoke, a blueprint to humiliate and destroy Richard Nixon at his moment of triumph: the Republican National Convention, scheduled that summer in San Diego. One of tbe several Jerry Rubins wearing a cloak rendering him invisible to anyone wearing a suit. If you cannot see this picture, it is because you are wearing a suit. Rubin and Rubin's plan for this coup was what the hirsute foe of neckties called "a political Woodstock": a nationwide tour by top countercultural rock and roll acts, culminating in a massive free festival on the streets of San Diego during convention week. The Rubins envisioned 500,000 young people - enraged at the war in Vietnam, the treatment of blacks, and the lack of headbands on most Americans - shutting down the convention, driving the police to new heights of repression, and chasing Nixon from the race. This radical dream ended later that evening when someone ordered a pizza, but an account of it provided by a "deep cover" informer reached Nixon (declassified FBI files show that at the time, Sinclair, Lennon, Ono, Ginsberg, Weberman and one of the Jerry Rubins were all working as paid informants). Terrified at the prospect of summery blondes in peasant skirts and moustachioed literature majors giving him "swirlies" in front of a worldwide television audience while the atonal blare of acid rock music played over the loudspeakers, Nixon went into action. Calling his top advisors - Chief of Staff H.R. "Bob" Haldeman, White House Counsel John Dean, Attorney General John Mitchell, television personality Art Linkletter, and a vicious, barking German shepherd named Mangle - into one room, Nixon instructed them to come up with a plan to counteract this "political Woodstock." In his memoirs, Dean described what happened next: Mangle - who in later years was known as G. Gordon Liddy - came up with a plan called Operation Gemstone, in which the U.S. Air Force would fly over the nation's college campuses, dropping napalm on them. Simultaneously, a "ring of steel" would be set up around San Diego, and anyone attempting to enter - including Republican delegates and the president himself - would immediately be shot dead by guards, who would then immediately shoot themselves. The need to constantly refresh the supply of suicidal guards would lead to a draft and, ultimately, the reduction of the U.S. population to zero. Rejecting this plan as cost-prohibitive, Dean and Linkletter suggested an alternate, the contours of which remained secret until classified papers were discovered at the National Security Archive by Vince College Professor Samuel "Cheddar" Chambers when he was rooting around for some provolone. The plan was called Project Shine On You American Diamond, and if put into practice would have been the most radical use of presidential power since President Taft ordered women to wear tighter sweaters. Dean and Linkletter envisioned a multi-pronged program, described in a confidential memo, below: POTUS will form his own rock and roll combo with Haldeman, Dean, White House speechwriter William Safire, and disaffected Beach Boy Carl Wilson. POTUS will sing and play lead guitar. Haldeman will play saxophone. Other instruments will be determined on a need-to-know basis. The combo will be called Sunny Fog, and they will play a psychedelic strand of folk-rock that is at once "far out" and rooted in traditional blues-based song structures. Sunny Fog will release a single in March '72 called "Get Back Off Me, Woman," which will feature a charging, driving beat and an irresistible organ-driven riff. POTUS will wear a headband while performing the single on the Mike Douglas television talk show. During the performance, youthful members of the audience - pre-selected from among College Republicans - will shriek and faint. Douglas will describe the performance as "a real treat for you folks." "Get Back Off Me, Woman" will reach #1 in Billboard charts. Billboard editor is a donor to Campaign to Re-Elect President, and a member of a whites-only golf course. Sunny Fog's second single will emphasise the band's "dreamy" side, for the "heads" in the audience. It will be called "Pacific Shore." The tone of the song will be wistful and longing. In June, 1972, days before the eagerly anticipated release of Sunny Fog's debut on Elektra Records (to be entitled "Legends of the Former West"), POTUS will call a surprise press conference and announce he is firing Haldeman from Sunny Fog because of "bad vibes." Fans will be in shock. Resulting publicity, and white supremacist views of Billboard editor, will ensure top chart placing for album. POTUS will drive intense media speculation that he will soon decamp to Africa to write an opera. Third Sunny Fog single, "Guess I'm Movin' On," will divide Haldeman loyalists and those who like new lineup of band featuring White House aide Patrick Buchanan. Days before GOP convenes in San Diego, POTUS will electrify music world with statement broadcast on all three networks: Haldeman is rejoining Sunny Fog for reunion concert at GOP convention. POTUS announces reunion concert will be FREE OF CHARGE, and will also feature talents of beat groups Jefferson Starship, Richie Havens, and Robert Dylan. Fans of rock and roll beat music convene on San Diego for triumphant reunion concert. At pivotal moment - prior to performance of song "We've All Got to Chime Together" - Sunny Fog will drop through trapdoors to U.S. Navy hydrofoils, which will speed out into San Diego Bay. Concert hall will then immediately fill with carbon monoxide, neutralizing threat of counterculture communist elements and new Robert Dylan album. New Sunny Fog album - "Harbor Days" - pursues "jazzy" direction, received tepidly by fans and critics. Sunny Fog splits up; POTUS records ill-received solo album, is re-elected to White House in first-ever unanimous vote. Ultimately, of course, this ambitious plan never happened. Contemporary documents suggest that Nixon and Safire clashed over the group's musical direction in early rehearsals, with Nixon quitting the band one day and going home to plot the Watergate break-in. American history would never be the same.