With all the hatred, rancor and vitriol flowing out of the halls of Congress of late, you wonder if it's always been this way. Has there always been this much division and sheer disgust for opposing schools of political and philosophical thought in Washington politics since the time of Washington?

The answer is no. If anything, it's been a recent phenomenon, no doubt fueled by the Media and its "Age Of Springer" mentality. By interest groups, and by malcontents.

I ran across this interview with then-House Majority Leader Thomas P. "Tip" O'Neil, given on the Washington Straight Talk Program of April 28, 1975. Among the subjects discussed, was the relationship O'Neill had with members of the opposing party. In talking about President Ford, he said this:

Thomas P “Tip” O’Neill: “Well of course the economy has gone bad and I don’t agree with his (Pres. Ford's) theory as far as the Vietnamese War is concerned. There’s one thing about Gerry Ford, interestingly enough, we’re social friends and we play Golf together I was in the House with him for 23 years. One of the great factors for America is, it’s different from other nations of the world that I can differ in my philosophy in government and yet I can still be friendly with the man. Other countries of the world don’t do that. I remember when Gerry Ford was elected . . .was sworn in as President of the United States, he made a telephone call to me one day concerning Mister Nixon. And he told me what he was going to and I told him I thought he was wrong at that particular time, and we talked about our Golf game and we talked about how his wife was feeling and how my Millie was and I said ‘Gerry, isn’t . .Mister President, isn’t it great that you and I can talk like this and yet, I said come sometime after the Summer and you’ll be a candidate for re-election possibly and I’ll be goin’ around the country I said, tearin’ you to ribbons, you and your philosophy and your policies and that you think of the days of the high-button shoe and that your satisfied with the status quo. But that’s America. He’s got a tough job. His philosophy is not my philosophy and I . . . .

Paul Duke (Interviewer): “Does he come to you for advice?”

O’Neill: “I wouldn’t say that he . . .well, to this degree – when we have leadership meetings there is indeed a dialog. Something that never happened under Mister Nixon.

Those days are long gone, but sheer attrition may make them return.

As gas inches up to (and past in some places like Los Angeles) $4.00 a gallon, I remembered the last time there was a major outcry over prices at the pump. In 1973 the major culprit were the Oil companies and the major culprit now appears to be . . . yep, the oil companies.

Granted, the situation in the Middle East is uneasy at best, but it was in 1973 as well. However, in 1973 we weren't used to it. America enjoyed a seemingly limitless source of energy and oil and the crisis that confronted us then was pretty dramatic. So dramatic that NBC News devoted an entire 3 hours of Primetime programming to covering the story. Something that would never happen today. But in 1973 it was cause for major concern.

So today I'm going to run that entire show, all three hours. It's split up over three players and, even though I doubt you'll want to sit around and listen to it online, you will no doubt be better off downloading it and listening to it over several beers.

The story goes like this with highlights below:

Hour 1:

Frank McGee (NBC News – Talking about Nuclear Power Plants): “If the emergency cooling system failed, if there were a meltdown, some scientists think an area half the size of Pennsylvania might be contaminated, 100,000 people might die.”

Nuclear Power Plant Spokesperson: “There is no industry the world has ever known that has such safety features built into it. And there is no activity, no industry, no technology that has ever been developed that has such stringent rules for operation.”

Public Safety advocate: “There’s a large majority of the reactor experts that the AEC (Atomic Energy Commission) relies on who have the most serious doubts about these safety assurances. We have hundreds of documents that have been suppressed by the AEC whose source was the safety community and these demonstrate very clearly that the controversy over the AEC’s claims is very deep and very serious.”

Bear in mind that six years later we had that episode at Three Mile Island - the Pennsylvania reference by McGee is purely ironic>

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I don't think a week has gone by in history without some crisis developing, or some settlement reached with regards to the Middle East.

On March 12th in 1979 talks were going on in Israel between Menachem Begin and Jimmy Carter, with an emergency session being held on this day. Speculation among Middle East watchers was President Carter to spend an extra day trying to hammer something out.

And to go along with the negotiations were reports of continued violence in the West Bank, anti-Carter riots around Jerusalem and a general feeling of tension while some sort of peace process was being arrived at.

And if that weren't enough, talk on Capitol Hill centered around what was being described as a disastrous Energy policy and a looming crisis by way of Arab Oil. Only time would tell on that one.

Meanwhile, news from overseas, aside from the Peace talks, centered around continued Rhodesian attacks on rebel bases in Zimbabwe and the Women of Tehran turning out en masse to protest the latest edicts from the Ayatollah regime regarding a severe curtailing of civil rights for women and a reintroduction of the Chador as required apparel for all Iranian Women.

And when the talk wasn't focused on the potential energy crisis or the Middle East, Capitol Hill was focusing on calls for a Constitutional Amendment to the Balanced Budget, with John Stennis leading the charge. And if Jimmy Carter didn't have enough trouble, Republican Presidential hopefuls Howard Baker and Bob Dole were busy making political hay from calls for an investigation of the Carter Family Peanut business based on an FBI investigation that alleged Prodigal Brother Billy was busy cooking books at the warehouse.

And so spiraled this March 12th in 1979 as reported on CBS Radio via their 8:00 am-9:00 am (PST) network news and The World Tonight.

This week of March 1, 1975 was an interesting one, not the least for vice-President Nelson Rockefeller's famous quote about the possibility of running in 1980:

Vice-President Rockefeller: “I don’t think anyone gives a good God-damn, if you’ll forgive me, about 1980 politics. And I think you make a tremendous mistake even thinking about it. I think it shows a loss of focus of the crisis proportion of the problems we face today, and I resent it as a politician that people think that all I’m interested in is politics when I’m trying to solve the problems, or help the President to meet the problems of today.”

Aside from Rockefeller's protests, the week was full of talk of compromise between Democrats and Republicans (naturally), the Gas Tax (naturally), The Energy Crisis (naturally) the emergency budget (that again), foreign aid to Cambodia and the prospects of Gerald Ford running for re-election in 1980 (he said yeah). All that and the month hadn't even started yet.

Here is the broadcast of Washington Week In Review with Neil Strawser and CBS News from March 1, 1975.

Considering Nixon's actual resignation didn't take place until August of the following year, it seems incredible to imagine how the Watergate scandal would drag out for another nine months before he did.

But this week in November of 1973, ending on the 24th, it was going full blast.

President Nixon: “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well I’m not a crook. I’ve earned everything I’ve got”.

Yep, this was the week he said that. And there was also the Energy Crisis to consider, which wasn't going to go away anytime soon. The question of whether to ration gas or hike up the tax was under consideration. Ironically, it would wind up being both after a while.

No winning there. Well, not unless you were an oil company.

(In case you were getting all dewey-eyed for the 70s)

Before George P. Schultz landed in the Reagan Administration as Secretary of State, he served for a while as Treasury Secretary under Richard Nixon, right during the fabled Energy Crisis of the 1970s.

Granted, we hadn't gone through this kind of thing before. It was 1973 and we were about to be distracted in a big way by Watergate, but the thought of skyrocketing gas prices, panic buying at the pumps and oil companies raking in massive profits just hadn't happened this way before or to this extent.

And so everyone, including Schultz was busy scratching their heads wondering what to do as is evidence by this exchange during his appearance on Meet The Press from December 2, 1973.

Irving R. Levine (NBC News): “Would not higher prices for gasoline favor higher income groups to the disadvantage of lower paid people?”

Schultz: “Not necessarily. The . . obviously you have a family budget with so much purchase of gasoline and fuel oil, and to the extent that lower income groups use proportionate to their income a little bit more than higher income groups, it has some of that effect. But I don’t think it’s a major problem in the family budget.”

Levine: “ But would not a lower . . .

Schultz: “It’s much more of a problem than if we don’t pay the price that is necessary and we don’t have any fuel.”

Levine: “But would not a person with a big income feel free to buy whatever amount of gas is necessary to do the driving that he wishes to do, where a lower income person would not be able to?”

Schultz: “That is true of all kinds of things that are reflected in the buying power of people at different incomes.”

Levine: “ Do You oppose rationing entirely, even as a last resort?

Schultz: “Well I said it should be the absolute last resort, and I’m not really sure that it is a genuine alternative in the sense of being really a workable type of system. Of course there are various kinds of rationing, and depending on how its designed it could work better or worse. I think it is worth remembering that toward the end of World War Two we had patriotic fervor and so on, we had six thousand people in OPA, enforcing . .getting after people in the black market, which I think gives you an idea the difficulties of a rationing system.”

Okay, no simple answer. But the disconnect associated with "well, only higher income people drive" strikes me as typical Republican response. Even during the course of the interview, Schultz offers a few snide asides about higher and lower economic brackets. And of course, he was very much in favor of letting the marketplace go insane.

Remember the definition of insanity - doing the same thing over and over expecting different results - or as a friend put it, doing the same thing over and over and knowing what the results are going to be.