Debate and Switch

I’ve mentioned here a couple of times how I’m once more teaching an American Studies class called “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics.” The class covers Nixon’s drama-filled political career, with a bit of emphasis (especially early on) on his poker playing.

We end up spending a fair amount of time in the class remarking upon how tactics used in campaigns and/or while serving in office often can resemble or at least recall poker strategies. The course additionally provides a detailed introduction to American political history from just after WWII to the mid-1970s -- the start of the Cold War era up through the end of the Vietnam conflict. And since during that period Nixon was a vice president for eight years, ran for president three times and won twice, and served as president for five-and-a-half years, there’s a lot of focus on the White House and the presidency’s centrality to American politics.

I’d never taught the course during a presidential election, and so had been looking forward to the chance to do so this fall semester. We’ve had some kind of uncanny moments already, such as when I happened to have assigned a viewing of the first debate between John F. Kennedy and Nixon the same week the of the first debate between Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump.

There have also been opportunities to discuss some of the references to Nixon that have come up both in coverage of the campaigns and even from representatives of each major party. Of course, any comparison of a candidate to Nixon is understandably meant as a criticism, especially when the comparison comes from the Democrats or Republicans.

For instance, not long ago Trump was attempting to liken Clinton’s email saga to Watergate. Meanwhile Democratic VP candidate Tim Kaine compared Trump’s apparent encouragement to the Russians to hack the Democratic National Committee’s servers to the Watergate break-ins, too.

There have been other moments when we’ve been encouraged to bring up the current race when discussing things like Nixon’s early hard-fought campaigns (and their “dirty tricks”), the Alger Hiss spy case, the “fund crisis” and Nixon’s “Checkers” speech, and the ’60 campaign and election. (We’re only now getting to 1968.)

The whole “#TrumpTape” craziness over the weekend -- and rumors of additional tapes -- again somewhat evokes what became the major issue of Watergate, namely the revelation of the secret White House audio recordings and subsequent, protracted legal battle to force the Nixon administration release them.

But truthfully, most of the parallels tend to feel more than a little forced, I think. Why? Because thanks to the Republicans’ unbelievable choice for a nominee, this year’s presidential race is essentially sui generis, meaning any comparison tends to fall apart as we try vainly to pretend Trump even faintly resembles the weakest “real” candidate ever put forward by a major party.

As you might imagine, when my students watch and comment on the 1960 debate between RMN and JFK they are noticing many, many differences with what they are seeing today. Indeed, the contrast couldn’t be more stark, starting with the respect shown between the candidates, the civility of the proceedings, and the generally elevated level of discourse.

If you’ve never seen any of the four debates from 1960, go watch the first 10 minutes of the first one to see what my students are talking about when listing these differences. Then think about the unpleasant, badly moderated, stress-inducing and mostly useless ordeal a lot of us endured last night.

I mean, they call them “debates,” and for the sake of convenience I guess that’s what we have to refer to them as, too. But that’s obviously not what they are.

Future historians will inevitably point back to 2016 and show how what we ended up with this year could be traced back to that first televised debate on September 26, 1960, the night “style” began to challenge “substance” in a more vivid, conspicuous way than had been realized previously when it came to presidential politics. Might be easier to show the connection a half-century from now, although some are already working on making the argument, I’m sure.

Meanwhile for those of us living through 2016, it’s getting harder and harder to see any connection with the past -- never mind worrying about what the future holds.

Photos: “Presidential seal,” Ted, CC BY-SA 2.0; Kennedy-Nixon First Presidential Debate, 1960, JFK Library.

Poker in the Warren Commission Report

Poker is mentioned exactly one time in the Report of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy, or at least in the summary of the Commission’s findings first presented to Lyndon B. Johnson on September 24, 1964.

That is to say, in the 888-page report in which the commission determined both that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone when killing John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963 and that Jack Ruby also acted alone when killing Oswald two days later, there is only one somewhat incidental mention of poker in any of the eight lengthy chapters and 18 appendices. (I can’t say the same about the 26 volumes of supporting documents published in November 1964.)

The mention comes near the end of Chapter VI, titled “Investigation of Possible Conspiracy,” appearing in the chapter’s latter section that focuses on the “Possible Conspiracy Involving Jack Ruby.” After describing Ruby’s background and in particular his activities during the two days preceding his shooting of Oswald in the basement of the Dallas Municipal Building, a subsection dealing with “Ruby’s Background and Associations” includes summaries of a few different witnesses’ testimonies regarding the possibility that Ruby and Oswald knew each other prior to the events of that weekend. (The Commission concludes they did not.)

If you’ve ever read through the Warren Commission’s report -- whether you agree with its conclusions about Oswald and Ruby or not -- you know that it almost reads like some kind of sacred text designed at every turn to bolster the faith of the reader in the truth of its conclusions. Hundreds of potentially worrisome possibilities are brought up one after another and then meticulously countered, sometimes with concrete evidence negating their significance or (often) with authoritative pronouncements why a particular individual’s testimony should be considered unreliable.

This is the procedure followed with regard to the testimony of a man named Willbryn Waldon (Robert) Litchfield II who claimed to have seen a man resembling Oswald at Ruby’s Carousel Club “in late October or early November 1963.” Litchfield is one of several witnesses who made such a claim following Ruby’s shooting of Oswald, though the Commission concludes none of the witnesses to be convincing.

In Litchfield’s case, his remembering the man he thought to be Oswald as “having pockmarks on the right side of his chin” helped weaken his claim, as “Oswald did not have such identifying marks.” “Moreover,” the report continues, “the Commission has substantial doubts concerning Litchfield’s credibility.” (This is a very common formulation used in the report, by the way -- that is, to present indirect evidence encouraging the reader not to take seriously those whose claims potentially complicate the report’s central theses.)

The fact that Litchfield failed to mention his having seen Oswald when present during an FBI interview of another witness previously raised an eyebrow of concern for the Commission regarding his worthiness as a witness. So, too, does his having been previously charged with forging checks, a detail incidentally included as a damning aside: “Litchfield, who had twice been convicted for offenses involving forged checks, testified that he first recalled that Oswald resembled the visitor he saw at the Carousel Club while watching a television showing on Sunday morning, November 24, of the shooting of Ruby.”

Continuing from there, the reader learns that Litchfield wasn’t alone when watching TV that Sunday morning -- he was playing a poker game.

“At that time Litchfield was playing poker with three friends, and he testified that he promptly informed them of the resemblance he observed. However, none of the other three poker companions remembered Litchfield’s making such a remark; and two added that Litchfield’s statements were often untrustworthy.”

That last bit -- the final mention of Litchfield in the Report proper -- is somewhat humorous to read. Two poker companions reporting his statements were often untrustworthy? Statements like, “You should fold, I made my straight” or “Go ahead and call me, I’ve got nothing”?

Out of curiosity, I did look up Litchfield’s testimony as it appears in Volume XIV of the supporting documents, delivered to the Commission on April 16, 1964.

There one learns Litchfield -- who went by Bobby -- identified himself as a 30-year-old professional bowler and bowling instructor who also sells bowling equipment and trophies. Prior to that he was a bookseller, though said he lost his job “due to my past record” -- namely, because when he was 19 he “forged some hot checks and paid them off.” He then voluntarily describes the charges he faced to the Commission, including how he served some prison time as well.

Litchfield was unemployed and between jobs, then, during the latter half of 1963. When asked about that period in his life, there’s an interesting detour in the conversation concerning a woman named Bertha Cheek whom the interviewer thinks managed the apartment building where Litchfield was living, although Litchfield points out she didn’t. It is revealed that Litchfield knew Cheek, however, and in fact despite Litchfield’s being married the two apparently had an affair.

He says he visited Cheek “spasmodically from September to October and November of 1963” (a funny word choice), and that what began as some sort of business deal turned into a different kind of negotiation in which (says Litchfield) “I would have had to divorce my wife and had to have married her for any other further business to have been transacted.”

Why did the Commission know about Bertha Cheek and ask Litchfield questions about her once he mentioned where he had lived? She was the sister of Earlene Roberts, Lee Harvey Oswald’s landlady. In fact, she’d just testified herself two days before Litchfield did. (This stuff happens constantly whenever you dig even a little bit below the surface of the Dallas-Fort Worth area, circa late 1963 -- everyone seems to have at least some connection to everyone else.)

So Litchfield had had an affair with the sister of Oswald’s landlady (which is curious, but doesn’t necessarily mean a thing). Meanwhile he certainly knew Ruby, and testified he’d known him since 1959. He also described to the Commission having visited the Carousel Club a couple of times where he actually discussed with Ruby the possibility of buying the Carousel. The last visit was in mid-October, he says. When asked if that was the last time he ever saw Ruby, Litchfield says “it was until I saw him on television -- I happened to be playing poker then.”

Litchfield then explains how he and “a bunch of fellows from the bowling alley” usually played poker every Saturday night. “We started about 9:30 and the game continued all through the night -- one of those $2 limit games and we were still playing on Sunday.” He then explains how the game was interrupted when one of the other player’s wives came by “and said something about Ruby had shot Oswald on television.”

They turned the television on and saw “they were rerunning all of this and a big hullabaloo over it and that was the next time I saw Jack.” The poker game, then, must have been going around 14 hours by then as Ruby shot Oswald at 11:21 a.m. CST.

Litchfield continues: “Somebody said, ‘I think I’ve seen that Oswald around somewhere,’ and I made the statement, ‘Yes, I think I have seen him too,’ and that was the extent of it. Nothing more was said.” He adds that he later repeated the statement to two FBI agents and apparently was given a polygraph test as well, which Litchfield believed he failed.

They go on at length after that, with Litchfield giving the names of a couple of his poker buddies and the conversation eventually winding back to Bertha Cheek and the interview asking Litchfield if he knew she was Earlene Roberts’s sister (he vaguely remembers Earlene’s name and that he might have spoken to her on the phone once).

Litchfield also notes that the poker game would continue until about 6:30 p.m. on Sunday. The game just went on and on and on. So, too, does the report and all of its thousands of threads, winding all about and together creating the most tangled knot imaginable.

I mean, seriously... talk about a partial information game.

Image: Report of the Warren Commission on the Assassination of President Kennedy (1964), Amazon.

Living Through Another Cuba

Lot of focus on Cuba this week, what with President Barack Obama’s visit, the exhibition baseball game between the Tampa Bay Rays and the Cuban national team, the Rolling Stones concert tonight, and other associated activities. While certainly historic, it’s hard to gauge in the moment whether these events are positive or not both for the Cuban people and for the United States’ relationship with the country going forward.

There’s much ambiguity on both sides here -- like watching a poker game play out without knowing either player’s hole cards nor getting to see any showdowns.

All of it is nonetheless very intriguing to follow, especially for someone who is already often reading and thinking about U.S. politics of the 1960s and so spends perhaps more time than most learning about the Cuban Revolution and Fidel Castro’s takeover, the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the continued complicated responses by the U.S. to Cuba over subsequent years and decades.

The ouster of Fulgencio Batista’s regime -- officially occurring on January 1, 1959 -- also meant the end of the “Havana high life” culture marked by casinos, gambling, numerous nightclubs, and the significant influence of organized crime. It’s a scene memorably depicted in Sydney Pollack’s 1990 film Havana whose protagonist is an American poker player played by Robert Redford (which I wrote about here before).

Perhaps influenced by these recent posts about “poker’s precursors,” I found myself wondering a little bit today about the history of poker in Cuba. I’ve read that following Castro’s takeover playing cards were banned altogether by the communist regime, which would considerably mute the development of poker and other card games post-1959 (even if games were no doubt still played). But looking back to the 1950s and before, I wondered a bit about how poker was played on the islands, including what variants were popular.

The games appearing in Havana resemble games played in the U.S. during that time (e.g., we see Redford’s character playing five-card draw in the film). One would assume both draw and stud were the favored games during the first half of the century and before, with other games like the Spanish game of mus -- a game that turns up in several Central American countries -- undoubtedly also making an appearance during Cuba’s earlier history.

There’s another popular Cuban game called “cubilete” that is actually a dice-based game though involves poker-related elements. The dice are in fact marked “ace,” “king,” “queen,” “jack,” “gallegos,” and “negros” -- that’s the order they are ranked (i.e., A-K-Q-J-G-N). Players take turns rolling and trying to make high hands. I believe aces are wild, but I’m not up on other details of scoring and game play. (Some irresponsible, unresearched speculation perhaps suggests “cubilete” represented a way to play poker without cards.)

In any event, I will continue to follow this seemingly new chapter in Cuba’s story and U.S. relations with its neighbor to the south.

The Cuban Missile Crisis is often discussed as having been a kind of heads-up poker game between John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev -- with the highest-stakes imaginable. I suppose the events of this past week might also be regarded as small-pot hands being played by a couple of wary opponents, with neither side appearing to go for much value just yet.

(That post title, of course, comes from the similarly-titled XTC tune, written at a time much closer to the crisis to which alludes -- in 1980 amid the ongoing Cold War -- than to today.)

Photo: “Sunset over Hotel Nacional, 2014,” LukaszKatlewa. CC BY-SA 3.0.

Threats

I’m interrupting my brief survey of card games considered to be poker’s “precursors” to share something else today. Back at it tomorrow.

This past weekend, just by chance, I happened to reread Julius Caesar. Took Shakespeare courses in college and taught him here and there amid some lit surveys (usually just the sonnets), but it had been a while since I’d meaningfully spent time with the Bard.

The 400th anniversary of Shakespeare’s death is coming up next month, and with that in mind I decided to download the Complete Works on my Kindle. Without much forethought at all I randomly decided to begin with Caesar. It’s the first step in a plan to read through all 37 plays over the course of the coming year, kind of a belated reprise of my earlier Shakespeare studies.

I say I chose Caesar “randomly,” although it only took a scene or two for me to doubt whether or not there might have been some subconscious motive to the selection. To put it another way, that I might have been fated to make such a choice.

Shakespeare is timeless, which is why four centuries later his plays and poems continue to resonate and provide consistent insight regarding the human condition. That said, the echoes with current events were so loud they threatened to overwhelm what Caesar, Cassius, Brutus, Antony, and others were saying.

Julius Caesar tells the story of a political assassination, based on the actual slaying of Caesar in 44 B.C. that signaled the end of the Roman Republic and subsequent dawning of the Roman Empire first led by Augustus. The play follows a familiar narrative trajectory starting with the conspirators’ plotting Caesar’s murder, the killing itself (coming at the start of the third of five acts), then concluding with the seemingly inevitable battle between Caesar’s killers and those seeking revenge for his murder.

Over the last couple of years I’ve spent probably more time than is healthy studying the Kennedy assassination, reading about and watching coverage of the event while constantly sorting through all of the many theories regarding what actually happened. I even read through the Warren Commission Report not long ago, or at least the summary prefacing the 26 volumes of so-called supporting documents. It began as an innocent digression from my “Nixon studies,” but the JFK rabbit hole can be a hard one to dig out of sometimes.

One of the more complicated conspiracy theories entertained by some regarding Kennedy’s killing describes it as an “inside job” involving many individuals and agencies within his administration, a scenario somewhat resembling what happens in Caesar where those closest to the dictator decide it to be in the public’s interest that he be eliminated. “We shall be called purgers, not murderers,” goes the rationalizing line.

Early on we hear Cassius lamenting how “this man is now become a god” despite being “of such a feeble temper” and unworthy of his power. Brutus agrees he’d “rather be a villager than to repute himself a son of Rome under these hard conditions.” Indeed, at the end of the play, after Brutus has died, Antony credits him somewhat as the only one of the conspirators who acted not out of envy (like Cassius) but out of “a general honest thought and common good to all.”

Such is the perspective assigned to JFK’s killers, or so argue those favoring such a theory. There are several other moments, too, that evoke JFK’s assassination, or at least they do for those of us who find themselves occupied by some of its details.

For example, during the celebration over the defeat of Pompey, Caesar’s repeatedly refuses to accept the crown of Rome from Antony, a scene that gets replicated in a superficial though uncanny way on the morning of November 22, 1963 at the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce breakfast shortly after Kennedy delivered what would turn out to be his last speech. I refer to the moment when the Chamber’s president Raymond Buck gave JFK the gift of a cowboy hat for “some protection against the rain” and Kennedy’s refusal to wear it despite the crowd’s insistent urging.

As I say above, though, the play’s parallels with the contemporary political situation and in particular the increasingly antagonistic presidential race were the most conspicuous for me on this reading. I’m thinking in particular about the current G.O.P. frontrunner and the increasing “alarum” being raised both by the party he represents and by the opposing one, too, over the prospects of his continuing to accumulate delegates and momentum and perhaps even the nomination.

All campaigns consist largely of promises, with each promise falling somewhere on a spectrum between vague and specific, as well as between fantastical and realistic. Candidates gauge voters’ reactions in the form of polls and votes and nudge themselves accordingly up and down each axis to find what seems a favorable position from which to stump. This year, though, one candidate has instead consistently favored threats over promises -- some vague and fantastical, some specific and real -- which in turn has caused others to remark upon the threat he represents by doing so.

Threats are a constant theme in Julius Caesar. The conspirators begin by describing to each other the threat posed by Caesar’s rule, from which come their own threat of violence against him. Caesar meanwhile expresses trepidation to Antony, recognizing Cassius as a threat primarily because “he thinks too much” and “such men are dangerous.” “Such men as he be never at heart’s ease whiles they behold a greater than themselves,” Caesar continues. “And therefore are they very dangerous.”

A little after Casca is talking to Brutus about how fervently Caesar’s supporters are, noting how he seemingly can do no wrong in their eyes. Despite his refusing of the crown, they still showered love on him, Casca explains. “If Caesar had stabbed their mothers, they would have done no less,” says Casca, causing today’s reader to think of other, similar statements regarding supporters of a certain candidate.

There’s talk, too, about how power might change Caesar, discussion that resembles somewhat speculation about how a candidate making promises (or threats) while campaigning might act differently while in office. For Brutus, the worry is that once he reaches the top of the ladder Caesar will turn his back on those down below. He’s like a “serpent’s egg” concludes Brutus -- better to “kill him in the shell.”

Back at Caesar’s, he speaks a little more boldly to his wife, Calpurnia, about those who might oppose him. “The things that threaten’d me ne’er look’d but on my back,” he says to her, “when they shall see the face of Caesar, they are vanished.” Calpurnia isn’t convinced, beckoning him not to attend a meeting at the senate-house, but Caesar won’t hear it, saying he’d be “a beast without a heart if he should stay home to-day for fear.”

He goes to the senate-house and is killed, the threat against him having been realized. Thereafter come further threats between the anti- and pro-Caesar camps, as well as Caesar’s ghost coming to visit Brutus and threaten his well being. The play then ends in bloodshed with Caesar’s death being avenged and, interestingly, most of the deaths shown on stage resulting from suicides.

Today is yet another “Super Tuesday,” with both parties’ primaries happening in a few more states, including my own. I voted this morning, in fact, a relatively easy process as my polling station is only just a couple of miles up the road from the farm.

Hard not to feel a certain foreboding, though, what with all of the threats being bandied about, including threats of violence (from candidates and from their supporters). The results of today’s doling of delegates will affect what happens next, which will seem a promise for some and a threat to others. I look up at the calendar and realize another coincidence suggesting my choice of Caesar to read having been unsettlingly appropriate.

I refer, of course, to the soothsayer’s threatening line from early in the play.

“Beware the ides of March.”

Photos: Julius Caesar (dir. Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1953) (top); still from JFK Fort Worth Breakfast November 22 1963 TV coverage, KRLD-TV (middle).

When Nixon’s Ace in the Hole Turned Into a Blank

Following last night’s debate between Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders, CNN aired what will be the first of a series of shows called Race to the White House looking at past elections, in this case focusing on the 1960 race between John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon.

I’m currently teaching my course “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics,” and in fact we were just reading about and discussing the 1960 race, including watching lengthy excerpts from the first JFK-RMN debate. I made sure to let my students know about last night’s program, then, for a couple of reasons.

For one, since we had only just gotten through discussing the race I thought they’d find it interesting to compare what we’d learned with what was included in the hour-long show. Secondly, I like reminding them how even though we’re studying people and events from a half-century ago, many are still interested in these things and believe them to be relevant today -- as indicated by CNN giving an hour of prime time to the ’60 race.

The ads for last night’s show made it seem as though the focus would be on the historic first debate (of four) between Kennedy and Nixon that took place on September 26, 1960, a notion furthered by the fact that the show was being paired with the Dems’ debate. In truth, though, the debate only earned a tiny bit of attention during the hour, fleetingly discussed for just a few minutes during the latter half of the show.

The rest of the hour was spent covering the respective candidates’ campaigns via commentary from a few academics and others, the showing of numerous clips from 1960, and some fleeting reenactments employed to enhance the story. Kevin Spacey -- evoking his House of Cards role as U.S. president -- is the narrator for the series, and was heard at the start of the hour suggesting (somewhat misleadingly) that Nixon was hopelessly outmatched by Kennedy as a politician and campaigner.

“You think you know the rules,” he says as we watch an actor portraying Nixon in shadowy profile. “But what happens when you discover you don’t even know how to play the game?”

Following such a line, it isn’t surprising to see a lot of emphasis thereafter on Kennedy’s right moves and Nixon’s wrong ones during the campaign. That said, the show provides some balance as well, illustrating in a necessarily cursory way pros and cons for both candidates. Near the end it is emphasized that JFK was as adept as RMN was when it came to “dirty tricks,” although the show doesn’t really dwell on too many examples (other than alluding to possible voter fraud in Illinois and Texas tilting the election JFK’s way).

Nixon’s eagerness to debate Kennedy is correctly presented as a misstep. During the quick presentation of the first debate, Nixon’s five-o’clock shadow and flop sweat is of course highlighted, and in fact there’s even a quick pre-debate clip of Nixon saying “think I better shave.” The much-repeated line about those listening on radio thinking Nixon “won” the debate while TV viewers favored JFK is uncritically repeated again, something that started as a few anecdotes and got blown up into some sort of ultimate signifier of not just the debate but the entire campaign and election.

Other more meaningful moments from the 1960 campaign are highlighted, including JFK’s address to the Greater Houston Ministerial Association, Martin Luther King’s arrest in Georgia and JFK’s phone call to Coretta, and a couple of Nixon’s “bad luck” moments including being hospitalized for two full weeks at the end of August and beginning of September.

Nixon’s hospitalization resulted from an infection that resulted from his banging his knee on a car door during a stop in Greensboro, NC in mid-August, part of his foolhardy effort to visit all 50 states during the campaign -- something he insisted on doing even after his injury and hospitalization.

In his discussion of the 1960 campaign in Six Crises (written shortly afterwards), Nixon concludes with a list of 16 things he “should have” done, all decisions which in his mind likely contributed to costing him the election. He does not include campaigning in all 50 states among the list of items, though he does lead it off with “I should have refused to debate Kennedy.”

For the second item on the list, and perhaps the second-most important one in retrospect, Nixon says “I should have used Eisenhower more in the campaign.” There is brief reference to Ike having been largely absent from the campaign near the end of the CNN program. With less than a week to go before the election, Spacey’s narration suggests the Nixon campaign had been cleverly waiting to use Eisenhower at the very last to produce a greater effect.

“Nixon has one last card to play,” he says, “his old boss, ex-General and President Dwight D. Eisenhower.” Despite the card-playing metaphor, no indication is made to the fact that both Ike and Nixon were poker players.

We see shots from the ticker tape parade of November 2nd in which Ike finally appeared with Nixon, an event which is said to have given Nixon a late boost as Election Day drew near. I anticipated another turn in the story here -- one explaining how this “one last card” wasn’t nearly as effective as it might have been. But the program moved in a different direction.

This might have been the biggest omission from the show, actually. Not only was Eisenhower mostly absent from the campaign, but in late August 1960 (just a week after Nixon bumped his knee in Greensboro), Eisenhower infamously concluded his weekly press conference with a line that would greatly hurt RMN in the weeks leading up to the debate.

“We understand that the power of decision is entirely yours, Mr. President,” began a reporter, leading up to what would be the last question of the presser. “I just wondered if you could give us an example of a major idea of his [i.e., Nixon's] that you had adopted in that role, as the decider and final, uh....”

About to leave, Eisenhower said “If you give me a week, I might think of one. I don’t remember.”

Afterwards Eisenhower would say he didn’t mean to suggest he actually needed a week to come up with an idea of Nixon’s his administration had found useful. Rather he was just referring to the fact that he’d be giving another press conference a week later and they could continue the discussion then.

But the damage was done. In fact, in that first debate a month later Nixon would be asked early on about Eisenhower’s statement, putting RMN on the defensive right away. And not long after that, the Kennedy campaign built a television ad around Ike’s line -- take a look:

I was a little surprised CNN didn’t touch on this part of the story of the 1960 campaign, the moment when Nixon’s “ace in the hole” suddenly turned into a useless blank. Still, for those unfamiliar with the 1960 race there was enough in the program perhaps to whet your appetite to learn more.

Image: Graphic from CNN advertisement, Race for the White House, 3/6/16 episode.

Campaign Strategy and Button Mashing

Tonight comes another of the Republican presidential candidates’ debates, the seventh one so far. This one is in Des Moines, with the Iowa caucuses -- the first votes of the major parties’ primary season -- just a few days away on February 1.

The GOP debate would’ve been in the news this week, anyway, but is getting some extra attention thanks to current frontrunner Donald Trump’s announcement earlier this week he wouldn’t be participating due to his ongoing feuding with the host network, FoxNews.

The decision by Trump not to debate has inspired some discussion of campaign strategy, with pundits sharing all sorts of ideas regarding whether his non-participation will amount to a positive or a negative for Trump both in Iowa and going forward.

I find these discussions interesting to follow mostly because of how much time I’ve spent reading about and studying Richard Nixon’s various campaigns from the first 1946 Congressional campaign all of the way through his last 1972 run for reelection.

The “game” (as it were) has changed markedly, of course, with all of the old strategies mostly being inapplicable to today’s political landscape. That said, there are still analogues here and there, including the role of debates and whether they are good or bad for particular candidates.

Nixon, of course, famously welcomed the opportunity to debate John F. Kennedy in 1960, having experienced much success doing so versus various (less savvy) opponents in earlier campaigns. Then later in both 1968 and 1972, Nixon chose against participating in debates with Democratic candidates versus whom he was ahead in the polls, with most seeing those decisions as correctly made as far as risk-versus-reward was concerned.

As if to inspire such comparisons even further, at this very moment I’m seeing Evan Thomas, author of the recent Being Nixon: A Man Divided, popping up on FoxNews being asked what he thinks Nixon would think about Trump not debating. (Thomas unsurprisingly says he thinks Nixon would approve.)

Regarding Trump’s “strategy” (or lack thereof) as it relates to his decision not to attend the Iowa debate, Nate Silver of FiveThirtyEight tweeted a comment a couple of days ago that perhaps betrayed his own online poker-playing background:

“Still not sure if Trump is the most brilliant political tactician of his era or just a guy randomly mashing buttons,” opined Silver.

The comment evokes the idea of an amateurish or untutored poker player making what seem “random” decisions that don’t add up to a coherent understanding, contrasting that with a knowledgeable player (or “tactician”) whose unorthodox moves you’d have to trust as being part of a larger, complex design.

“Button-masher” perhaps seems to fit Trump (here involved deeply in his first serious political campaign) more readily than does “brilliant political tactician,” but I think like all of the candidates he probably falls somewhere in between these two extremes.

As did presidential candidates in earlier decades, too, for that matter.

Images: “Press this button,” Howard Lake (adapted). CC BY-SA 2.0 (top); @NateSilver538 (bottom).

Poker and the Debates

I’ve been pretty immersed in presidential campaigns this summer. I’m not talking about the ones for 2016. Rather, the ones from 1960, 1968, and 1972.

That’s because I’m continuing to prepare for a class I’ll be teaching in the fall, kind of an offshoot from the “Poker in American Film and Culture” one that I taught (and have written about here) for about four years or so in the American Studies program at UNC-Charlotte. Gonna take a break from that for a bit to try a different course this fall, one called “Tricky Dick: Richard Nixon, Poker, and Politics.”

The main focus of the new course is obviously Nixon and his three-decade long odyssey of a political career, with much discussion along the way of the Cold War, Vietnam, and Watergate (natch). We’ll use Nixon’s poker-playing background as a starting point for the class, subsequently linking many of the strategies he employed in the context of campaigns, domestic policy, and international diplomacy (and war) with what he had to say about poker.

I’ll share more about the class later on. Today, though, I am thinking about how even though we’re 15 months or so away from the 2016 presidential election, the “race” (as it were) has already begun in earnest, it seems, with the Republicans having the first of what I assume will probably be two dozen or more debates before the G.O.P. finally decides on a candidate.

In fact, there are two debates today -- a kind of “undercard” one involving seven candidates this afternoon, then the prime time one tonight with 10 more. Seems crazily early for it, but four years ago the G.O.P. started up with the debates even earlier, the first one having happened in May 2011 (pictured above).

The 1960 election turned heavily on the debates between Nixon and John F. Kennedy, of course, with the first of the four having the greatest impact and Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow” becoming an iconic image much referenced thereafter. There’s a lot more to the story of the JFK-RMN heads-up battle that year, although I will say I am greatly looking forward to having students watch that first debate and discussing with them some of the moves both players make in it.

Some may not realize there were no debates again until 1976, at least among the presidential candidates. Lyndon B. Johnson was such a prohibitive favorite in 1964, he easily saw how debating Barry Goldwater would be of little value to him -- only a way to lose “chips.” For similar reasons, Nixon opted not to debate George McGovern in 1972, although he’d say he was too busy visiting China and Moscow and running the country to stoop to campaigning (or scrutinizing the criminal activities of the Committee for the Re-Election of the President that would eventually contribute to his downfall).

In 1968 the race was much tighter, and while Hubert Humphrey did challenge Nixon to a debate, the latter opted against doing so, in part because of what had happened in 1960. There was one debate between Robert F. Kennedy and Eugene McCarthy on June 1 that year, three days before the California primary. RFK won California, and during his victory speech challenged McCarthy to another debate just moments before sadly being gunned down by an assassin and dying early on June 6.

Looking back on those earlier campaigns, while there was certainly maneuvering happening 15 months out, announcements of candidacies and the engagement of campaigns were all still a good ways off -- never mind anyone actually talking about or having debates.

It’s nonetheless curious to consider the scene at present, including the current position of Donald Trump, the celebrity candidate whose current frontrunner status in G.O.P. polls can only be negatively affected by any direct engagement with his opponents, including in the context of a debate. There’s a kind of funny article on Five Thirty Eight this week ticking off “potential threats to Trump” which is, in fact, merely a list of the necessary stages of the campaign between now and the Republican National Convention in July 2016.

In other words, it seems more or less clear this is a game Trump can’t possibly win. Even so, it’s also clear he will probably continue playing it for as long as he’s able to keep rebuying.

One Thing Leads To Another

From the house to the car to the plane to the car to the hotel I went, and here I am. Again

It was a super quick flight down to Jacksonville late yesterday afternoon. I think we weren’t in the air but for an hour at most, meaning it took much longer just getting to the airport and then again getting all squared away with the rental car to drive to my home-away-from-home for the next few days just down the road from the bestbet Jacksonville.

I’m reading Stephen King’s 11/22/63 on the Kindle currently, knocking out another portion of the lengthy book yesterday to close in on the finish. I read every King novel there was as a teenager, meaning everything up through Pet Sematary (including the Bachman books), I think, then didn’t pay too much attention to his fiction thereafter, although I did enjoy his book about writing. Kind of like digging a band’s early records as a young person, then leaving off after both you and the band get older.

You might remember I was talking about rereading Don Delillo’s Libra on a trip back in the spring, another speculative fiction about the Kennedy assassination. Since the 50th anniversary almost a year ago, I’ve gotten myself kind of hooked on JFK-related materials, including the endless trove of videos on YouTube both about the assassination and its coverage and all of the aftermath, theories, and other ephemera. An event the elusive truth of which will always be more head-spinning than any fiction that treats it.

King’s book isn’t nearly as “literary” as Delillo’s, of course, although it’s kept me turning the pages. I like much of it thus far, and have even found a couple of moments quite moving (particularly early on). The time-travel conceit is interestingly handled, encouraging a lot of “What would I do?” kind of thinking along the way.

Perhaps because the main character is an English teacher, I’m identifying with him a bit more than I would otherwise. That may also be a reason why I’ve found myself occasionally thinking along the way about how all forms of fictional storytelling -- and reading -- are kind of like “time travel” (and/or “place travel”), if you think about it.

There are frequent references to the butterfly effect as this 2011 man wanders about during the late 1950s and early 1960s, a concept that often occurs to us during poker tournaments where every action has at least a small effect on everything else. There’s also some gambling here and there as the protagonist places some bets on the World Series and other sporting events -- sure things, because he actually does know their outcomes.

I’m eager to finish the book, but will have to set it down for the next few days as I’m again going to be working some long ones as the WPT bestbet Bounty Scramble plays out. I’ll be stopping in here to add a few tidbits about that story over the next few days, too.

Such is the chain of circumstance I find myself following, one that I control only somewhat.

Chess vs. Poker in the Cold War: Planning Ahead vs. Reacting to the Last Hand

On February 5, 1961, Oskar Morgenstern wrote an article for The New York Times titled “The Cold War Is Cold Poker” that argued for poker -- and against chess -- as the game best suited to parallel the ongoing diplomatic conflict between the U.S. and U.S.S.R.

“The cold war is sometimes compared to a giant chess game between ourselves and the Soviet Union, and Russia’s disturbingly frequent successes are sometimes attributed to the national preoccupation with chess,” Morgenstern begins. “The analogy, however, is quite false, for while chess is a formidable game of almost unbelievable complexity, it lacks salient features of the political and military struggles with which it is compared.”

Morgenstern argues that since “chess is the Russian national pastime and poker is ours, we ought to be more skillful than they in applying its precepts to the cold-war struggle.” Alas (in his view) that had not been the case by early 1961. Thus does he proceed to argue in favor of the country’s leaders becoming more studious about poker strategy, particularly highlighting the need to learn how bluff effectively (and responsibly) and to learn how to recognize the Soviets’ bluffs, too.

“The problem of how, on the one hand, to make a threat effective and, on the other, to recognize a genuine threat by your opponent is one of the most fundamental of the day,” writes Morgenstern.

As the co-author with John von Neumann of the groundbreaking and influential Theory of Games and Economic Behavior (1944), the German-born economist had by then thought at great length about how certain games usefully mimic strategies employed by individuals and groups -- including governments -- in various economic, political, and military contexts.

An early essay by von Neumann “On the Theory of Parlor Games” (1928) explored how poker’s bluffing element helped make the game suitable to study as a means to learn more about deceptive behaviors in other contexts. That essay was expanded upon considerably into a chapter called “Poker and Bluffing” in Theory of Games and Economic Behavior, with the pair’s work often being cited as having pioneered what would come to be called game theory.

Morgenstern would go on to work as an advisor for Eisenhower, while Von Neumann would likewise be involved in Cold War strategy while chairing a secret Intercontinental Ballistic Missile Committee before his death in 1957. Thus by 1961 Morgenstern had well developed his “Cold War is Cold Poker” idea, and he lays it out in full in the NYT piece.

It was an influential argument. Kennedy would get variously credited with having reaffirmed the “we play poker, they play chess” idea, further underscoring both cultural differences and the contrasting strategic approaches of the two super powers toward each other. And further promoting the “poker provides a better approach” argument as well.

Reading backwards onto Cold War history, that strategic divide frequently gets presented in ways that are favorable to the U.S., with adopting a poker-like strategy often made to seem more practically useful given its more conspicuous attention to bluffing than is the case with chess. The fact that chess is “a game of complete information” (as Morgenstern points out) makes it less suitable than a partial information game like poker that “describes better what goes on in political reality where countries with opposing aims and ideals watch each other’s every move with unveiled suspicion.”

Those retrospectively viewing the conflict today (with knowledge of its ultimate outcome) -- and indeed, contemporaries commenting on it then like Morgenstern -- therefore mostly champion the America’s “poker” approach as preferable to Soviets’ “chess” tactics.

Not everyone was agreeing with Morgenstern, however, that poker was necessarily a better source of Cold War strategy for the U.S. than was chess. A letter to the NYT by Louis Wiznitzer dated February 26, 1961 responded to Morgenstern’s article by saying its pro-poker position “sums up pretty much the essential reasons why the United States has been steadily losing the cold war in the last twelve years.”

“Whereas the Communists are waging a game of chess, with moves as scientifically planned as possible,” noted Wiznitzer, “the Americans are improvising poker moves and bluffs, without a master plan or aim, and depending more or less on their last hand, or reacting to the enemy’s bet.” Since “politics is not a game nor simply an art” but rather a “science,” he insists, the long-range thinking of chess is actually preferable to the overly reactive game of poker.

“You cannot beat chess with poker,” he concludes.

It’s an interesting response, and the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion less than two months later -- soon recognized as a woefully shortsighted “play” with especially damaging consequences for the U.S. -- probably helped convince many that Witnitzer, not Morgenstern, was on the right side of this debate at the time.

Travel Report: LAPT7 Peru, Arrival -- Holding It Together

Have made it safely to Lima, Peru, the 3,200-mile trip (or whatever it is) going about as smoothly as I could have hoped. All flights were on time, my shuttle to the hotel was waiting for me, and the accommodations very comfortable for my six-night stay here in Miraflores.

Reading material for the long flight from Miami to Lima mostly consisted of my working through a four-decade old paperback of David Halberstam’s excellent The Best and the Brightest, a book written during the early 1970s that attempts to explain how the U.S. found itself gradually getting involved in the Vietnam morass despite myriad indicators that such a course was not recommended.

The 800-plus page book is so old the binding is completely shot, forcing me to hold the sucker with both hands when reading and to use a rubberband to hold it together when I’m not. An emblem for Vietnam, that.

Besides being well written and researched, Halberstam is unafraid as well to include his own sharply-drawn judgments along the way, which both helps clarify the mistakes he’s describing while adding an extra layer of intrigue to the narrative. Despite writing so soon after (and during) the events he’s describing, he lends the story useful perspective, allowing those of us reading much later to appreciate the novel-like twists and turns that inexorably led to successive administrations’ poor decisions regarding southeast Asia.

Most of my casual reading of late has been about political history, with Nixon and Kennedy having become touchstones for me. I suppose all presidents’ stories provide seemingly endless threads of interest thanks to their connectedness with practically all aspects of American culture, but there’s something about these two in particular -- perhaps the most fascinating heads-up political opponents of the century -- that intrigues me to no end.

Will be especially busy this week and so anticipate only firing off short bursts here to share brief anecdotes, likely pointing you to the PokerStars blog as I do where I’ll be filing my LAPT Peru Grand Final reports. There won’t be any politics over there, I can assure, but a lot of interesting conflicts, negotiations, and resolutions over the cards and chips. More to come.

The New Frontier and the Bay of Pigs

This morning I was up early feeding and taking care of barn business, and entirely at random dialed up an old Mort Sahl LP, one of about a half-dozen on my iPod -- The New Frontier (1961). I mentioned getting into these records a while back as part of one of the detours I’ve found myself going down with these Nixon studies in which I’ve been engaged.

Like pretty much all of Sahl’s records, I believe, this one is recorded live and captures a single performance, in this case at “the hungry i” nightclub in San Francisco where Sahl frequently performed.

“Here we are on the new frontier,” Sahl opens, getting a chuckle as he pauses afterwards. “Cuba,” he continues, and gets a bigger laugh.

The “new frontier” of course referred to John F. Kennedy’s administration, then only a few months old, and the ambitious goals and “vigah” (as JFK would say) characterizing it. Kennedy first used the phrase when accepting the Democratic party’s nomination for president in July 1960 where he spoke of “a new frontier -- the frontier of the 1960s -- a frontier of unknown opportunities and perils, a frontier of unfulfilled hopes and threats.”

That same speech finds Kennedy characterizing his Republican counterpart Nixon as an unworthy successor to Eisenhower, and in fact Kennedy employs a poker reference during that section of his speech that also evokes domestic programs of the most recent Democratic presidents, Franklin D. Roosevelt and Harry Truman.

“We know that it will not be easy to campaign against a man who has spoken or voted on every known side of every known issue,” says JFK of Tricky Dick. “Mr. Nixon may feel it is his turn now, after the New Deal and the Fair Deal -- but before he deals, someone had better cut the cards.”

Getting back to Sahl, his cynical reapplication of the “new frontier” idea to Cuba refers to the volatile climate then present in the spring of 1961 and the U.S.’s perception of the danger posed by the Fidel Castro-led Communist country located about 90 miles off the shore of Florida.

Just a little later, Sahl expresses that cynicism again when he jokingly speaks of being in Florida and residents there telling him “he’s a real threat, Castro, because you can see the island.” “I used to look and I’d say ‘Well, I still can’t see it.’ And they’d say, ‘Well, it’s right behind that aircraft carrier.’” That line gets a big laugh, too.

Sahl also refers at the very start of the record to the Academy Awards taking place the night of his show. That got me curious to look up when exactly that might have been, and it just so happens today is the anniversary -- April 17, 1961 -- kind of a weird coincidence. Then I realized that today is also the anniversary of the start of the Bay of Pigs, the failed attempt to overthrow the Castro regime that marked a major early misstep by Kennedy.

“The invasion of Cuba is on,” says Sahl, referring to the news of that very day. Still early, it’s clear from the way he speaks of it that the American public isn’t yet aware of what exactly is happening.

Sahl mentions as well a speech given that afternoon by former presidential candidate and newly-appointed U.N. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson in which Stevenson declared there was no U.S. involvement in the invasion. In the speech, Stevenson -- who lost presidential elections twice to Eisenhower in 1952 and 1956 -- is essentially repeating a CIA cover story that the Cuban exiles leading the invasion were rebels operating on their own and with no U.S. help.

“He said that Castro can look to our government for help if he’s been rejected by his own people,” says Sahl, paraphrasing from Stevenson’s speech of that day. “And uh... Stevenson should know.” (About such rejection, that is.)

It wouldn’t be long before the invasion would fail and Kennedy would own up to the involvement of the U.S. in the plot just a few days later (on April 21). Thus was Stevenson made to look especially bad for his claim that afternoon, and in fact would consider resigning his position though was eventually encouraged to stay on. And, of course, Kennedy and his administration would take a big hit, too.

The Bay of Pigs would set the stage for the Cuban Missile Crisis that took place about a year-and-a-half later, a historical event that we discuss in my “Poker in American Film and Culture” class thanks to its frequent comparison to a poker hand full of bluffs and re-bluffs between Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev.

Anyhow, just wanted to share that weird coincidence of having dialed up Sahl’s record on the anniversary of it having been recorded. Here is that opening to Sahl’s The New Frontier, if you’re curious to hear it yourself:

Coincidences, Patterns, and Poker in Delillo’s Libra

On my most recent round of tourney trippin’ I carried along a copy of Don Delillo’s 1988 novel Libra, the one in which he imagines a fictional version of the JFK assassination.

Delillo works from the assumption that the CIA-led plot that many have explored (and which many subscribe to) was indeed in place and from that point of view fleshes out many of the characters involved, including, of course, the “patsy” Lee Harvey Oswald. He adds some twists, however, to the idea, thereby creating what could be considered a unique, speculative investigation into what happened in Dallas.

I first read Libra not long after it came out in 1988, the 25th anniversary of the assassination. I don’t think I reread it since, so about 25 more years have passed between my readings.

I enjoyed it then as I did this time, perhaps finding the book all the more compelling now that I’m more knowledgeable about the contextual history and even many of the real-life equivalents of the characters who come up in the story. It’s much more engaging (to me) than, say, Oliver Stone’s JFK which I never liked very much -- not because of the film’s controversial entertaining of conspiracies (and spotlighting of Jim Garrison), but because (to me) it’s just a boring, talky movie.

Anyhow, this time through I came across one minor poker reference in Libra I thought I’d share.

Amid some backstory involving a couple of the conspirators, including the notorious David Ferrie, one shares a story about having a dream about someone -- Jack Ruby -- and then weirdly running into him the next day. Ferrie responds with a quickly-delivered thesis about “coincidence.”

“We don’t know what to call it, so we say coincidence,” he begins, but adds “It goes deeper.”

“You’re a gambler. You get a feeling about a horse, a poker hand. There’s a hidden principle. Every process contains its own outcome. Sometimes we tap in. We see it, we know.”

It’s a digression from the subject of their meeting, but it sounds an obvious theme of the entire book, namely, that human existence is so complicated that patterns, coincidences, and other things we don’t know what to call but which seem to hint at some sort of hidden meaning or coherence to our scrambled lives are bound to occur. And a dramatic event like the assassination -- “the seven seconds that broke the back of the American century” (as it is referred to a few pages later) -- helps bring that truth to the surface.

Libra addresses other existential questions in satisfying ways as well, giving the reader a lot to take away from it. A lot to count on, you might say, which is ironic as the story it tells is all about uncertainty.

Post-JFK

I’ve been writing here off and on over the last several months about my “Nixon studies” -- that is, my research into the life of Richard M. Nixon and in particular into his poker playing and how the game of poker might be considered as a lens of sorts for understanding certain events in his political career.

The goal of these studies -- beyond merely feeding my curiosity about American history and politics, which has been accomplished many times over already -- is to write a short book about Nixon, the poker player. His story is so fascinating and full of strange twists and improbable turns, though, it is easy to get sidetracked by other side roads along which the significance of the poker angle becomes less apparent or recedes to the point of being insignificant.

These last couple of weeks my Nixon studies have been marked by a few detours concerning John F. Kennedy, in particular his assassination which of course happened 50 years ago today. I’ve been influenced by others’ recent references to the anniversary, as well as by the occasional television specials focused on the event that have picked up in frequency over the last couple of weeks.

JFK of course figures prominently in Nixon’s story, with their heads-up battle in the 1960 election representing an initial setback in a political career that had to that point been characterized by uninterrupted success for Nixon, though his eight-year tenure as Vice President had slowed his momentum by then.

For those alive on Friday, November 22, 1963 and whose memories stretch back that far, all recall vividly details of the moment they learned of what happened on Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas at 12:30 p.m. that day. The rest of us were subsequently born into a post-JFK world and in different ways gradually became aware of the history that preceded us.

I vaguely recall learning about the man on the half-dollar coin as a child, then later about what happened to him. Eventually I came to learn about Lee Harvey Oswald, Jack Ruby, and the rest. I remember my grandfather telling me he firmly believed Lyndon B. Johnson had been the responsible party. I had a paperback copy of the Warren Commission report at one point which I read through. I read other accounts, Don Delillo’s fiction Libra, saw Oliver Stone’s JFK, and like many have returned to the story again and again over the years.

Now with YouTube and other online resources we can relive much of those crazed few days in Dallas, including lots of original TV and radio, both local and national. A place called the Texas School Book Repository figures prominently in the story of the assassination, but now we all share an enormous virtual repository where there is no end to the accounts, analyses, images, audio, video, and other materials related to the event.

Not long ago I watched on YouTube the History channel’s JFK: 3 Shots That Changed the World from a few years back (airing again on the channel this afternoon), which over the course of three-plus hours and two parts compiles lots of primary source material without any comment other than through the editing choices and a brooding, spooky soundtrack.

The story it presents begins the morning of the 22nd, moves to the first reports of the shooting, lingers over the delirium that followed, then during the final hour surges forward year by year and decade by decade to show the assassination’s relentless hold on our imaginations, a hold fueled primarily by unanswered questions about what happened.

I recommend that History channel special (here’s Part 1 & here’s Part 2). It’s hard not to be moved by it. And angered and confused and frustrated and everything else. The first hour or so is especially gripping, with everything leading up to the killing tinged with shudder-producing forboding.

I’m referring to seeing the Texas Schoolboys Choir serenading Kennedy prior to his last speech before the Fort Worth Chamber of Commerce with a rendition of “The Eyes of Texas” with its ominous sounding lines “the eyes of Texas are upon you / And you cannot get away.” Or Raymond Buck, the Chamber of Commerce president, giving Kennedy the gift of a white cowboy hat. “We couldn't let you leave Fort Worth without some protection against the rain,” he tells Kennedy who then despite some goading from the crowd resists putting on the hat, perhaps so as not to mess up his hair.

“And to protect you against local enemies,” Buck continues, “in the manner that you are protecting this nation against our foreign enemies, and to keep the rattlesnakes on Vice President Johnson’s ranch from striking you, we want to present you with this pair of boots.”

Soon Kennedy takes the short flight from Fort Worth to Dallas, landing at Love Field where hundreds await his arrival. There’s the sequence of he and Jackie leaving the limo for a time to shake hands, the crowd swarming in a way that is unsettling. Then it’s back into the car for the last ride, and soon come the shots, those first news reports, and the initial shocked reactions.

Watching it unfold, it is difficult not to be filled with sadness. I think of how frightening it all seems, compounded by the chaos of the error-filled hours and days following the assassination where for those who lived through it the whole pretense of civilized society must have seemed on the verge of tearing apart. It all seems impossible, the product of a mad world at once primitive and naive and complex and sinister.

When my grandfather confidently fingered LBJ, I wasn’t old enough to understand why he might. Later I would become acquainted with the various conspiracy theories (including ones involving LBJ), although now I find that like most people the more I learn about Kennedy’s assassination the less clear it becomes.

Twenty-five years ago Errol Morris made one of my all-time favorite films, The Thin Blue Line, about another murder mystery in Dallas. Yesterday he released an interesting short via The New York Times called “November 22, 1963” in which he invites Six Seconds in Dallas author Josiah “Tink” Thompson to talk about the JFK assassination and how with the passage of time it becomes increasingly opaque.

To get back to Nixon, some might be surprised to learn he was in Dallas on November 22, 1963. No shinola.

By then Nixon had lost another campaign, the one for governor of California in 1962 after which he’d famously tell reporters “You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore.” Back in private life, Nixon was working for a New York law firm that represented Pepsi-Cola. It was that relationship that brought him to a convention of American Bottlers of Carbonated Beverages in Dallas, at which Pepsi was also having a corporate meeting.

There's video of Nixon speaking in Dallas on November 21, voicing very critical, partisan opinions regarding both JFK and LBJ. He’d leave Dallas the next morning, flying from the same Love Field Airport where JFK would arrive just a few hours later. At midday -- just after the assassination -- Nixon was landing at Idlewild Airport in New York, renamed JFK a month later.

Nixon’s presence in Dallas just prior to the assassination has predictably been folded into various conspiracy theories, with Nixon’s own inconsistent accounts of where he was when he heard the news of the assassination adding further encouragement. That’s right -- while everyone else remembers precisely where he or she was at that moment, when it came to recounting his memory of it Nixon had multiple versions of the story.

There are other stories regarding Nixon and the assassination, including his having known Jack Ruby many years prior to 1963 (a link sometimes brought up in connection with the LBJ conspiracies). According to Oswald’s widow, Marina, he had also allegedly intended to kill Nixon back in April 1963 when Nixon may or may not have scheduled a trip to Dallas that he never took, a story Nixon alludes to in his memoirs.

Despite my grandfather’s suggestive influence, I’ve never been that convinced by any one theory regarding what exactly happened 50 years ago today. Whether Oswald acted alone or in concert with others, there was most definitely a conspiracy in the broadest sense of the word that day -- as in many, many factors worked together to create a context in which something that had seemed impossible could come true.

As Thompson tells Morris, “I know this happened one way rather than another. It had to happen one way, right?” And while the photos and films taken that day seem to get us closer to what that one way was (as Thompson suggests), they -- and all of the other evidence (credible and spurious) -- confuse us, too, creating a perplexing palimpsest that makes it harder and harder to see anything clearly.

The assassination and all of the questions surrounding it have cast a long, half-century-long shadow under which we’ve all lived. Many correctly point to the day as inaugurating an era marked by violence, distrust, and uncertainty. The only world most of us have known.

“We’re not talking now about a poker game” (Kennedy & Nixon)

Was pulling together a new “Pop Poker” column for PokerListings this week regarding presidential debates and how they so readily get compared to heads-up poker matches. The piece went up yesterday, if you’re curious.

I’m old enough to be awestruck by how quickly and simply we can access information these days. That is to say, I remember how much effort and energy it would have taken to research and write even a casual piece about the history of presidential debates without the ease afforded by today’s internet.

With just a few keystrokes we can search full transcripts of every debate there ever was (since 1960, anyway, when they began to be televised). Heck, we can watch most of them, too.

Anyhow, as I say, I was digging through various items this week and found myself distracted for a while reading some speeches and other material related to the 1960 presidential campaign, the one that ultimately pitted John F. Kennedy versus Richard Nixon.

Nixon we all know was a serious poker player prior to embarking on his political career. The story of him winning significant sums while serving in the Navy and in fact funding his first Congressional campaign with his winnings has been told many times over. And while Nixon often tried to downplay his poker-playing experience and ability once he assumed public office, he nonetheless made references to poker constantly in speeches and communications before, during, and after his presidency.

Anyhow, when looking at some of the speeches Kennedy and Nixon were delivering during the final weeks leading up to the 1960 election, I noticed curious bit of back-and-forthing in which both candidates brought up poker, albeit metaphorically.

The first reference came from Kennedy in a relatively short speech delivered at the Sheraton Hotel in Washington, DC about a week before that first debate in late September. In that speech Kennedy mostly addressed foreign policy and the Communist threat, with just a few quick words about the economy coming in near the end.

Regarding the former, Kennedy argued that “the next President must promptly send to the Congress a special message requesting the funds and the authority necessary to give us a nuclear capacity second to none, making us invulnerable to any attack.... Only then can we get Mr. Khrushchev and the Chinese Communists to talk about disarmament, because having the second best defensive hand in the 1960s will be like having the second best poker hand.”

Six days later Kennedy and Nixon had that first debate in Chicago, the one in which Nixon’s “five o’clock shadow” is said by many to have doomed him. No poker metaphors were employed that night.

About a week after that (and before the second debate), Nixon gave a speech in early October in Elizabeth, New Jersey in which he touched on several points, including what he viewed as differences between himself and his opponent.

After bringing up Kennedy and another speech he’d recently made, Nixon stepped back and kind of self-reflexively tried to characterize the whole process of candidates going out and trying to convince voters in this fashion.

“You know, it’s the custom when presidential candidates travel through a country, a custom which is often cartooned about and editorialized about and written about a great deal, to see who can outpromise the other,” said Nixon.

“One fellow comes in and says, ‘I promise you this,’ and the next one comes in and says ‘I raise you,’ and the third one comes in and says ‘I call you.’ But whatever the case may be, we’re not talking now about a poker game. We’re talking about what’s best for the country.”

Nixon isn’t specifically referring to Kennedy’s use of a poker analogy to characterize the Cold War arms race, although given the close proximity of the speeches it feels like Nixon is perhaps trying to suggest that there’s something unsavory about comparing nuclear conflict to a card game.

I’m reading between the lines, of course. And as I say, Nixon himself so often references poker himself when making various points it becomes all the more curious to see him sound as though he might be trying to criticize doing so.

Anyhow, that was just one of several items I found myself lingering over this week. I’m starting to think it could be fun to pull together a short monograph about Nixon and poker, telling the story of his poker playing and compiling all of his references to the game.

Such a fascinating, complicated, and wildly-flawed figure was Nixon -- and so comprehensively chronicled, too. (I wonder, for instance, how many times poker came up during those 3,700 hours’ worth of tapes?)

On This Date in History

Was reading the morning paper today, and as always is the case on November 22nd, there were stories about John F. Kennedy. It was 45 years ago today Kennedy took that last ride through Dealey Plaza. Caught a bit of one of those conspiracy theory shows this week, too, this one devoted to sorting out via disturbingly vivid reenactments whether others besides Oswald may have been involved in the president’s killing.

In the poker world, today marks another anniversary. It was ten years ago today that a desk clerk at the Oasis Motel discovered a destitute Stu Ungar had died of coronary atherosclerosis, his condition having been “brought on by his lifestyle” of heavy drug taking (so said the coroner). While Ungar’s name is often evoked in the poker world even today, the anniversary of his death usually doesn’t gain much notice. The fact that it has been a decade, though, has caused some to stop and marvel at both the length of time since Ungar’s passing as well as the profound changes that have taken place in poker since that fall day in 1998.

For those interested in learning more about Ungar, I again recommend One of a Kind by Nolan Dalla and Peter Alson. The book originally began as an autobiography, with Dalla interviewing Ungar on several occasions during the summer and fall of 1998. After Ungar’s passing, Dalla brought Alson on board and the pair did a terrific job reworking the interviews into a coherent chronicle of Ungar’s “rise and fall” (as the subtitle describes his life).

For a full review of One of a Kind, click here.

Can’t really see much reason to compare Ungar and Kennedy if not for the coincidence of their death dates. Kennedy was just 46 on the day he died; Ungar was 45. I suppose with both we wonder what the world would have been like had they survived, though I think with Ungar that argument frequently gets overstated. Poker players speculate about how Ungar’s hyper-aggressive tournament style would have served him against today’s crop of players, and while he may well have enjoyed a significant share of success, thereby further establishing his place as one of the greats, one can only hypothesize.

Would Ungar’s presence on the scene have altered the history of poker’s development over the last ten years in significant ways? Perhaps. Ungar’s connections ran deep, and just about every major player whose career in poker extends back either to Ungar’s heyday (the early 80s, when he won back-to-back WSOP Main Events) or his swan song (the 1997 WSOP comeback victory) could be said to have at least had some contact with the man, in some cases quite significant. Am more inclined, though, to think the poker “boom” and all that followed probably wouldn’t have played out that much differently.

For those of us born in the 60s or after, the spectre of “JFK” has always been there hovering behind us in history, an utterly astonishing emblem of “what might have been” (and/or America’s violent nature). For poker players today, most of whom picked up the game since Ungar’s death, the “Kid” has also -- in a way -- been quietly haunting the game, particularly as the rise of aggressive tournament play has helped evoke his memory as the prototypical “young gun.”

To be honest, though, when thinking of the coincidence of Ungar and Kennedy having both died on the same date, I’m more inclined to contrast the two than look for similarities. Particularly with regard to their respective deaths.

One was spectacularly brutal and public, occurring at a moment of intense power and vitality, and unmistakably affecting the lives of millions.

The other was private, desperate, the culmination of a long downward spiral, coming well after whatever potency or influence the man had left had deserted him.

Both are to be lamented.