Nelson Rockefeller

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“Then, One Year, A Powerful Meteor Struck The Planet”

March 12, 2012 in Excerpts, Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

If moderate conservatives like Jeb Bush are unable to rescue the Republican Party from its own extremism, if Presidential nomination victories become consistently Pyrrhic and disqualifying, will we see the emergence of a more centrist conservative party? Or is the madness of the GOP just a cycling out that will ultimately run its course? Nobody can sum up the Republicans’ recent rocky road and the fork that led it to its precarious current position more eloquently than Louis Menand does this week in the opening of his New Yorker piece, “Money Pol.” An excerpt:

“Once, when winters were cold and the world seemed large, creatures roamed the earth who were permissive on social issues and at ease with big government, yet remained ever faithful to the gods of business and finance. Their principles were abstract but broad-minded: tolerance, free trade, and a belief in something called the American Way. Their personal tastes were conventional. They were surprisingly allergic to indecorum, and disinclined to question the status quo. But they were not small-town or provincial; they were Wall Streeters, not Main Streeters. Their vista was international. They were private-sector types who answered the call to public service. They were liberal Republicans. Nelson Rockefeller was such a creature. So were Prescott Bush, William Scranton, Charles Percy, John Lindsay, Mark Hatfield, Elliot Richardson, and George Romney.

Then, one year, a powerful meteor struck the planet, and, virtually overnight, the entire species was wiped out. The meteor’s name was Ronald Reagan. Political paleontologists, looking back at the fossil record, can detect signs pointing to the organism’s imminent extinction that predate the Reagan era. Richard Nixon, for example, showed that a pro-business, big-government Republican, by appealing to suburban anti-Communism and white working-class resentment, could take a populist road to the White House. Men like Rockefeller and Romney despised Nixon; but they could never beat him. Liberal Republicans did not like to get into the political mud.”

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Nelson Rockefeller, 1964: “The Republican Party must repudiate these people.”

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“We Have Increased The Amount Of Money For Handling The Problem Of Dangerous Drugs”

January 25, 2012 in Politics, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

President Richard Nixon in New York City, 1972, at the beginning of the war on drugs, encouraging the absurd Rockefeller Drug Laws, pledging public funds to be wasted on a futile cause. But while Nixon was there at the beginning, the prohibition of drugs has been a bipartisan folly ever since, one that allows campaigning politicians to tell citizens a lie they want to hear. The truth is professional poison. And that comes from someone who has no interest in drugs and doesn’t think anyone should use them.

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“Colonial Authorities Described For Him The Enormous Search Already Under Way”

December 12, 2011 in Excerpts, Science/Tech, Urban Studies, Videos | Permalink

“They had moved extra patrol boats in, chartered air search planes from as far away as Australia and sent policeman sloshing through coastal swamps to look for Mike.” (Image by Harvard.)

Michael Rockefeller may not have been devoured by crocodiles or cannibals but he was most definitely swallowed whole by the rugged expanses of New Guinea in 1961. The wealthy young scion of Governor Nelson Rockefeller was in that country studying the culture and art of the Asmat people when he and his associate found themselves stranded in a canoe. Rockefeller decided to try to swim 12 miles to shore. He was never seen again, his body never recovered, and sensational theories about his disappearance began to emerge. From a 1961 Life article by Richard B. Stolley about the fruitless rescue mission:

“The full horror of this primitive country where his son was lost struck Governor Nelson Rockefeller only after he had seen it himself. En route from New York with his daughter, Mary Strawbridge, he was cheered by news that his son’s companion, Dutch Anthropologist Rene Wassing, had been saved. When the governor’s chartered jetliner landed at Biak, on the north side of the island, colonial authorities described for him the enormous search already under way. They had moved extra patrol boats in, chartered air search planes from as far away as Australia and sent policeman sloshing through coastal swamps to look for Mike and to urge the friendly Asmat natives to do the same.

A Dutch admiral told Rockefeller that the Navy had put a seaman into Flamingo Bay, where Mike disappeared, with two metal gasoline cans like those Mike had used. By holding the cans in front of him, the sailor could swim quite rapidly, and the experiment proved that young Rockefeller might easily have reached shore. Everywhere in New Guinea, compassionate Dutch officials treated Rockefeller not so much with deference due a man who is one of the most powerful leaders in the U.S. but with the sympathy deserved by a father who has lost a son.”

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The subject of an In Search Of… episode:

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