I have a certain fascination with Kenneth Dahlberg. He raised money for Richard Nixon’s re-election campaign and was a critical player in the Watergate scandal. After the break-in was discovered, investigators found that a $25,000 check from Dahlberg had been deposited in the bank account of one of the burglars. As is documented (apparently quite accurately) in probably the most exciting scene in the film All the President’s Men, Dahlberg simply gave the check (a bundle of smaller donations) to Maurice Stans, the head of finance for Nixon’s Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CRP, which everyone who didn’t like Nixon called “creep”).

Maurice Stans was an interesting character. He was Secretary of Commerce from the beginning of 1969 to the beginning of 1972, when he stepped down to help out on Nixon’s campaign. He was basically an accountant. He had worked in the Eisenhower administration. Now he claimed throughout his very long and pampered life that he didn’t know where the money was going. But I find this hard to believe. CRP had a huge slush fund. Nixon had a million dollars in the White House safe. Now if I had been chair of finance for CRP, I think you could rightly believe that I had no idea because I’m clueless. But Stans was an accountant. As it is, it seems that everyone at the Washington CRP office knew something was going on, even if they didn’t know what.

Regardless, Stans was indicted for perjury and obstruction of justice, but never convicted. He pleaded guilty to reporting violations of the Federal Election Campaign Act and had to pay a small (for him) fine. And that was the end of that.

So here is Dahlberg, who is a Republican at a time when it didn’t mean you were a horrible or just deeply ignorant person, who is helping to get his party’s president re-elected. It’s a patriotic act. He believes in the Republican agenda. He isn’t doing it for his direct personal benefit. He’s being a good citizen. And he finds himself in the middle of a criminal conspiracy. It’s just amazing.

Of course, Dahlberg was never indicted or anything. I think that everyone knew all along that he didn’t know what was going on. But it’s kind of interesting that CRP would not deposit the donation into its slush fund and rather just sign over a campaign check to a criminal. This could have been done because they thought Dahlberg was a patsy. But I suspect they did it out of a combination of hubris and incompetence. As Deep Throat says in the film, “Forget the myths the media has created about the White House. The truth is, these are not very bright guys.” (Remember during the George W Bush administration how everyone talked about how brilliant Karl Rove was, but he turned out to be a mediocrity, just like them all.)

What I found interesting was that Kenneth Dahlberg was a World War II hero. He was a fighter pilot in Europe and was credited with 15 aerial victories. In the course of all of that, he was shot down three times himself. He got a ridiculous number of metals, including the Distinguished Service Cross, the second-highest award the army gives out. He had a very eventful war. He was also a very successful businessman — one who actually made things (in particular, hearing aids).

I think it all fits a certain kind of profile of a man who, though very much not like me, was a decent man — trying to do what was right.

Afterword: Theoretical Kenneth Dahlberg

Beliefs are cultural. I think Kenneth Dahlberg was a good and noble man in terms of his business dealings and his politics. He was 55 in 1972, so I think he was, if anything, naive. But if he had been born 40 years later, he would be the same kind of outsourcing, “greed is good,” “demagogue everything for the sake of my tax cuts” jerk that is the Republican Party today. But as the man he was in his own time, he was good — even a hero.

Tomorrow, I will publish an article on how not to attack Bernie Sanders, Who Cares About Bernie Sanders’ Healthcare Plan? Today, I’m going to discuss the right way to attack Bernie Sanders.

Brian Buetler wrote a really good article this morning, Bernie Sanders Will Be Unelectable If He Keeps This Up. And it gets at a really important point about the Sanders campaign. One thing I’ve liked about the Democratic campaign thus far has been the mutual respect that the two main candidates have shown, and how it has been all a question about the best way to achieve our shared liberal goals.

Let’s not forget that the most important liberal policies are widely shared. When it comes to economic matters, people are for a far more fair system than we now have. And when it comes to reproductive rights, people come down firmly on the pro-choice side. (This is often obscured because the anti-choice movement is good pushing the discussion to the edges of the issue: intact dilation and extraction and fetal tissue.) These are not just things that Democrats agree on; they are things that Republicans largely agree on — especially on the economic side.

So the greatest mistake we can make is to turn this into a primary about purity. Screw purity! A huge issue for me is the minimum wage. Sanders is pushing for a $15 minimum wage. Clinton is pushing for a $12 minimum wage. These are not ideological positions. I’m with Bernie: $15 is what we should be going for. It represents a living wage. But $12 is a worthy goal too. And for people working minimum wage in California (where it is, high by American standards at $10 per hour), $12 would be a very big deal. My concern is that asking for $12 does not get you to $12. But regardless, the issue is not ideological.

And this is especially true when there is a large and growing movement in the Republican Party that we should have no minimum wage at all. Based upon their very primitive libertarian thinking with their Frédéric Bastiat thought experiments, all our unemployment problems would go away if only people could take jobs for a buck fifty a day. So it’s really important that we not lose perspective here.

I don’t like to see tweets like this from the Sanders campaign yesterday:

You can be a moderate. You can be a progressive. But you cannot be a moderate and a progressive.

— Bernie Sanders (@BernieSanders) February 3, 2016

It was followed up with a series of even worse tweets of the form, “Most progressives I know don’t…” This was responded to cogently by Alex Katz, “Most progressives I know supported the Brady Bill and common sense gun control. Not #BernieSanders.” Now it just so happens that I care far more about economics because I believe economic inequality kills far more people than guns or cars or anything else you can mention. But this is madness to claim that the progressive issues I care most about are what make me pure while I apologize away my heresies.

Brian Beutler’s article is not really meant to attack Bernie Sanders. For one thing, I think he’s highly sympathetic towards Sanders. But he’s providing some excellent reminder to the Sanders campaign that this is not how you win primaries — not to mention general elections.

Recap: How to Attack Bernie Sanders

We know how not to attack Bernie Sanders. Jonathan Chait and Paul Krugman have shown us the way to their eternal shame. But Beutler summarized David Roberts’ criticisms:

I would add to this that I do think it is a problem for the Democratic Party to not nominate a woman. The last time we nominated a woman, it was Geraldine Ferraro, 32 years ago — for vice-president. This too concerns me.

None of this means that I now support Hillary Clinton for president. I wear my Bernie Sanders shirt proudly. I will almost certainly proudly cast my vote for Sanders on 7 June (after the primary is effectively over). But I don’t want to see this turn into a purity contest. I’ve written before, Yes, Hillary Clinton Is a Real Liberal. Now let’s get back to the real substantive campaign that we have thus far had.