FLASHBACK TO 1972

I had the strangest sense of déjà vu while watching the Bush twins speak at the Republican National Convention last night. I suddenly had a vision of Tricia and Julie Nixon... and all the party proles on the floor holding "W" signs seemed to be chanting "Four More Years! Four More Years!"

Jeezus, that was scary.

Hearing Laura Bush speak did nothing to dispel that vision, either. Pat Nixon, all the way. The only difference was that Tricky wouldn’t have introduced Pat by remote feed from a Little League game. No, he’d have been there himself, up close and personal, pressing the flesh with the backroom boys. Nixon was nominated back in the days when national political conventions actually nominated a candidate. When they actually meant something. When deals were cut in smoke-filled rooms. Now, it’s not so much a nomination but a coronation - the balloting is really just a formality. And the smokers are all huddled furtively outside the door.

Sometimes I miss Nixon. Couldn’t stand the son of a bitch... but what a great, all-purpose bad guy for us young’ns. Prosecuting a miserable, unpopular war. The Enemies List. Bombing Cambodia. Watergate. [Hmmm... unpopular war, eh?]

One time, She Who Must Be Obeyed and I were even on an airline flight with Tricky. And it was a really crappy flight... although one could make the case that the thunderstorms and turbulence were not his fault. Still: one more rotten Nixon association.

But in retrospect, he did one thing that still has huge repercussions today: he opened a dialogue with China.

From the one-big-happy-world-with-a-coupla-major-exceptions perspective we have today, it’s hard to imagine the American view of China in 1972. They were not a huge trading partner. They were no trading partner at all. A big, dark, scary mystery on the other side of the planet. Yes, scary. In the midst of the Cold War, these guys were even more hard-core Communist than the Russians... and we simply didn’t have a whole lot of contact with them.

But Nixon went right in and talked to Mao. No Democrat could’ve gotten away with it in those days, but Tricky had the right-wing cred to pull it off.

All of this is the subject of Nixon in China, a modern opera by John Adams. Great piece of music. It premiered at the Houston Grand Opera back in 1987 and first came to my attention thanks to Aaron, my bro-in-law who shares much of my twisted taste in music. This past March, a production was mounted by the Boston Lyric Opera, so I went up there to the Majestic Theatre to see it with Daughter Number One. Amazing.

And that brings us back to where I started this post: writing about seeing Jenna and Barbara Bush at the RNC lectern, shillin’ fer Daddy. Somehow, I don’t envision someone writing, fifteen or twenty years down the road, an opera about The Adventures o’ Chimpy. Bets, anyone?