Safeguarding legacies of Nixon, Trump
Keepers of legacies have increasingly tough jobs given the instant-reaction demands of the internet age.
Even before the sun had begun to set over Yorba Linda, Calif., Tuesday, a local legacy keeper felt compelled to quickly but civilly make one thing perfectly clear to all those know-it-alls back East who were already using President Donald Trump’s sudden early evening firing of FBI Director James Comey to besmirch the already pre-smirched reputation of that peaceful town’s most globally famous son.
“FUN FACT: President Nixon never fired the Director of the FBI … #notNixonian,” the Richard Nixon Library tactfully tweeted. Washington’s pols and pundits were already labeling Trump’s move “Nixonian,” and no one was under the impression they meant it as a compliment, let alone a tribute.
Meanwhile, in Yorba Linda, the Nixon Library was hoping to avoid further tarnishing of the legacy of the only president who resigned (in disgrace to avoid certain impeachment and conviction)—by being linked with Trump. Their point was that Nixon fired the special prosecutor (Archibald Cox) who was investigating the Watergate scandal that ultimately brought down the president and his top advisors.
Trump, in contrast, merely fired the FBI director who reportedly had recently begun investigating more aggressively the extent of Trump campaign advisors’ financial and personal connections with Russians (government officials and Russians who are unofficial but well-connected). The FBI is investigating whether there are links between Trump’s inner circle and the Russian government’s efforts to cyber-steal and leak emails of Trump’s Democratic opponents to help Trump win the 2016 U.S. election campaign.
Last year, Trump was effusive in praising Comey after the FBI director took the unprecedented step—just 10 days before Election Day—of informing Congress that he had re-opened his old investigation of Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server for official business. FBI practice had always been to avoid any politically sensitive actions shortly before an election. Comey told Congress: “In connection with an unrelated case, the FBI has learned of the existence of emails that appear to be pertinent to the investigation.”
Here’s what that was about: The FBI had been probing Clinton aide Huma Abedin’s husband, former Rep. Anthony Weiner, in a case of suspected sexting with an underage girl. Agents had found on Weiner’s computer a number of emails (that could contain classified information) Abedin had forwarded to her husband so he could print them and she could then hand the paper copies to then-Secretary of State Clinton. When that news broke, so did Clinton’s electoral momentum in the polls—as it clearly raised new doubts about the Democratic nominee’s fitness and judgment. Two days before the election, Comey revealed there was nothing significant or new found in those emails, after all—most were just old emails had already seen on other computers. But Clinton’s campaign has since blamed Comey for her razor-thin defeat. Trump had praised Comey then for having shown he had “guts.”
Recently, a taut, emotional Comey tried to explain his October decision to a Senate Judiciary hearing. He said he was “mildly nauseous to think that we might have had some impact on the election.” And he made a whopper of a mistake, saying Abedin “forwarded hundreds and thousands of emails, some of which contain classified information.” No, the FBI later corrected, she had forwarded only a small number of emails.
Trump’s White House has variously changed its explanations as to when Trump decided Comey merited not praise, but firing. Comey got the news via TV while speaking to FBI agents in Los Angeles.
Wednesday, Trump’s advisers struggled to make clear none of this is as Nixonian as it seemed. Reporters were ushered into an Oval Office photo op that sent media eyes blinking and media minds boggling: There, sunk low in a high-backed chair, sat Nixon’s world famous former national security advisor and secretary of state: 93-year-old Henry Kissinger. On Nixon’s last night in the White House, Kissinger was with Nixon in the Lincoln Sitting Room. As Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein chronicled in “Final Days,” they kneeled, prayed, and Nixon wept.
Trump and Kissinger just sat in their chairs and chatted. But I’m convinced that Trump, in the bizarre way he reversed himself and suddenly fired Comey, has created at least one Nixonian outcome: It is inevitable the probe of Trump and the Russians will end up in the hands of a special prosecutor. It will happen because Washington still has a few prominent Republicans with the guts to tell Trump that a special prosecutor’s investigation is their best, and probably only, hope for regaining America’s trust.