Eerie echoes of Nixon’s crash
One of my favorite cousins recently sent me this email: “I write this with sadness in my heart. I regret voting for Trump. I miss Ronald Reagan. I miss the feeling I felt about America in the 80’s. I’m embarrassed every time Trump opens his mouth or sends out a tweet.”
Make no mistake, my cousin hasn’t gone Democrat. My cousin is simply a Republican who stopped clinging to a crummy choice. I am proud of my cousin. Better now than never.
This is only a microcosm, of course. But a microcosm of America, borne out by polls (you know, the Fake News polls) that shows President Trump’s support, only a minority even on election day, is a smaller minority now. I don’t know what to call it — a stampede, an exodus, just some departures — but a bevy of backers are bailing out.
Like Republican senators who now publicly question their party leader’s moral authority and competence. And corporate heads who have fled from presidential councils that would give them a voice in policy. And the conservative commentator who publicly wrote, “I voted for Trump. And I sorely regret it.” Just like my cousin.
Even the chiefs of our military services have gently challenged the commander-inchief, breaking their normally non-political posture by explicitly condemning racist hatred after their boss equivocated. For good measure, several major American charities cancelled plans this past week for events at Mar-a-Lago.
This doesn’t mean the administration is unraveling. But back in the 1970s in Washington, I covered Watergate, when the Nixon administration did unravel, and it’s not preposterous to project parallels. A White House preoccupied with its president’s low popularity. Counselors and cabinet officers plotting behind the president’s back. Appointees resigning. Congressmen revolting. The paralysis of government. Eventually people wouldn’t even return Richard Nixon’s calls.
The defections of just the past few weeks span the spectrum of support that any president needs. You lose that critical mass, you can lose the ability to lead. That’s what happened to Nixon. Donald Trump can claim to be the best president ever, but when it comes to major legislative goals, he’s a failure so far.
He has only himself to blame. Remember President Bush at Ground Zero? Remember Obama at the Charleston church? That’s called leadership. Now, instead, we have a president who burns more bridges than he builds. Unity’s not in his vocabulary. He fosters feuds with friends, for heaven’s sake. Even Mitch McConnell is now badmouthing him.
No one need say “I told you so.” We’ve all known that the man will maliciously lash out at the slightest provocation; he told us so himself. We’ve known that he will lie as easily as he breathes; in The Art of the Deal, he told us that too. But millions of Americans shut their eyes real tight and hoped against hope that Trump would change. He even assured us he would: “I will be so presidential, you will be so bored.” Oh, what we’d give, Mr. President, especially after your vitriolic speech Tuesday in Phoenix, for a little boredom.
President Trump still could turn everything around. Monday night’s Afghanistan speech, although heavy on hope, was well conceived and well delivered. But we all know from experience that there’s a titanic difference between scripted Trump and spontaneous Trump. We also know that the odds of winning this stalemate, so far from home and relying on unsteady allies against unrelenting enemies, probably are no better under this president than they were under the two before him.
Tennessee Republican Sen. Bob Corker — once on Trump’s short-list for vice president — last week was blunt: “The preside nt has not yet been able to demonstrate the stability nor some of the competence that he needs to be successful.” South Carolina Republican Sen. Tim Scott was equally blunt: Trump’s “moral authority is compromised.” Colorado’s Cory Gardner castigated the president: “We must call evil by its name.”
This is how the end of Nixon’s presidency began. That was in Nixon’s sixth year. Trump isn’t through his first.