Fraternity A Journey in Search of Five Presidents

ONE Voices Here is what they said--some of it. "I don't allow my feelings to be hurt," Richard Nixon said. "I learned very early on that you must not allow it to get to you. And as the years have gone on--and this used to infuriate my critics during the White House years--I made the decision not to respond, no matter how rough the attacks were." I asked him about those two famous catchphrases--"Tricky Dick," and "Would you buy a used car from this man?" They had been thrown off so glibly, so routinely, for so many years by so many people who may have assumed that there was not really anyone on the receiving end, at least anyone who was listening. I wondered about the person who was, indeed, on the receiving end--Nixon himself. Had he ever heard the lines--the "Tricky Dick" and "used-car" lines? "Oh, my, yes," Nixon said. "Yeah." Were his feelings ever hurt? "If I had feelings," Nixon said, "I probably wouldn't have even survived." Here, along the journey, is what they said--some of it: "I went to visit a middle school," Jimmy Carter said. "One of the bright young girls asked me why there's an old person who loses Social Security payments. I told her that couldn't happen--once you start drawing Social Security you don't lose it unless your income goes up. "She said, 'No, my granddaddy doesn't make anything, and he lost his Social Security.' And I said, 'Sweetheart, you must be mistaken.' She said to me, 'Mr. Carter, you are mistaken.' She said, 'My granddaddy lives on the bridge over by the new domed stadium, and since he doesn't have a mailing address they cut off his Social Security.'" Carter was talking about the mysteries of compassion--why the need to help others kicks in in some people's lives, and why others are able to walk away from the troubles of people who don't have enough--or at least are able to turn their heads, in the hopes of not seeing the troubles. He said that the question from the girl in the middle school--the girl whose grandfather lived on the bridge--was not a question he would have heard in the schools of his own, more affluent, grandchildren, in their own, more prosperous, communities. "I think most of us find it difficult to cross the barrier that we erect around ourselves," Carter said. "We prefer naturally to be among folks just like us, so we feel at home and we talk the same language, we wear the same clothes, drive the same kind of cars, go to the same kind of schools, live in the same neighborhoods, and we feel that that circle of friends won't put a burden on us. "You know. They won't make us feel guilty. They won't make us feel obligated." Here is some of what they said: "We were out at a hotel in Hawaii," George Bush--the first President Bush, George Herbert Walker Bush--said. "Maui." This was after he had left the presidency, he said. He and his wife had gone for a walk on the beach early in the morning, just to get some exercise and talk to each other and look at the water before the sun was all the way up, before the sand was full of tourists and vacationers. At a time of the morning when they could still have some solitude and privacy. So George and Barbara Bush were walking near the ocean. "And they had, on the beach, carved deep into the sand, a swastika," he said. He said he didn't know who had done it. "And in the middle of it, the Star of David," Bush said. "And next to it, another swastika. "I got so mad--it was six in the morning, and I was walking with these Secret Service agents, and I was almost just crying." He said he was unable to continue with his walk. The hotel, he said, waGreene, Bob is the author of 'Fraternity A Journey in Search of Five Presidents', published 2004 under ISBN 9781400054640 and ISBN 1400054648.