Russia-gate Nixon matters in the age of Trump
The parallels between the two scandal-hit US presidents are self-evident – but Donald Trump has a far better chance than his forebear of remaining in office, says John A Farrell
It begins with a break-in at Democratic Party headquarters. There are protests in the streets. War with the press. A megalomaniacal Republican president, elected by an aggrieved minority of the American electorate, sacks the officers leading the investigation of his campaign’s links to the crime.
There are cries of “Cover up!” A special prosecutor is appointed and a bill of impeachment, alleging that the president has obstructed justice, is filed in the US House of Representatives.
As that notable American philosopher, catcher Yogi Berra of the New York Yankees, is said to have said: “It’s déjà vu all over again.” And yet there are important differences in the seemingly parallel sagas of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump. And how they are resolved may ultimately determine if Trump meets Nixon’s fate, and how the US proceeds.
The catastrophic Watergate break-in, of course, involved flesh-and-blood burglars; bumblers in suits and rubber gloves, caught by police at Democratic headquarters. Their bungling brought nothing to Nixon but woe.
The 2015 Russian rifling of the Democratic Party’s computers is quite a different story, with quite differing results. That break-in, and the subsequent dispersal of damaging material, was conducted by offshore hackers, allegedly in concert with a foreign power, with as-yet unknown assistance from American confederates.
And, unlike Nixon and his burglars, Russian President Vladimir Putin has gained much from this digital coup de main: Trump’s election; Hillary Clinton’s humiliating defeat and, if not yet the fatal undermining of Nato, then at least the fulfilment of the old naval toast: “Confusion to our enemies!”
So, analogies have limits. If history sometimes rhymes, it never faultlessly repeats. There are always wrinkles, and in the creases sometimes lie the most revealing lessons. The Left, especially, should remember this.
US liberals are giddy at last week’s revelations that three Trump confidantes – his son Donald Jr, son-inlaw Jared Kushner and top campaign strategist Paul Manafort – met with a lawyer they’d been told was an agent of the Russian leadership, conveying a pail of mud to cast at Mrs Clinton.
Amid fevered talk of treason, an article of impeachment was introduced by Representative Brad Sherman, a Democrat from California and, in this era of instant gratification, it was widely predicted in the precincts of the Left that Congress would act, and act quickly. Ding, dong, the witch seemed dead.
Not so fast. For there are numbers to keep in mind as one compares Trump’s troubles to those of Richard Nixon. Begin with 67. That is the number of senators – two-thirds of the 100-member body – that it takes to convict a US president and drive him from office. It’s a tough nut, especially now, as there are 54 Republican senators in control of the chamber, part of the biggest congressional majority that the Republicans have enjoyed since before the Great Depression. Trump’s party rules Congress; in Nixon’s years in office, it was his foes.
The arithmetic in the House is different. A simple majority is all that’s required to impeach a chief executive and send him to a Senate trial. Yet House Republicans now hold a 240-194 edge. Nixon, of course, was not impeached. Before the House could vote, he resigned. And the two US presidents who were impeached – Bill Clinton in 1998 and Andrew Johnson in 1868 – survived their Senate trials. In both cases, the call for impeachment seemed tainted by political bloodlust.
And so, here’s the verdict of history: to be successful, an impeachment must be bipartisan.
It was not Democrats, but the House and Senate Republican leaders and their 1964 presidential standard-bearer, Republican senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona, who called on Nixon in August 1974 to report that he had lost his party’s support, faced conviction in a Senate trial, and so persuaded him to resign.
There are constitutional remedies for removal of presidents who are incapacitated, but they also require Republican participation. Until the make-up of the Congress drastically changes, only a drastic change in sentiment within the Republican Party can boot Trump from office. And – barring striking allegations of wrongdoing, supported by evidence from Special Counsel Robert Mueller – that currently seems unlikely.
But what about resignation? If their party faced certain political ruin, wouldn’t Senate Republican leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky and House Speaker Paul Ryan of Wisconsin, like Goldwater and the others in 1974, make the trip down Pennsylvania Avenue, to urge Donald Trump to make Mar-a-Lago a more permanent address?
The Republicans have behaved honourably, in the main, in dealing with the Russian disruption of the US elections. Trump rages and blusters that it is all “fake news”, but Republican-led committees have held public hearings and grilled witnesses. A Republican Attorney General recused himself, and Mueller was appointed with Republican concurrence.
Trump retains his populist appeal, but there is limited evidence that Republican senators and governors have embraced the dictum of Trump’s more extreme supporters (Fox News, Tea Party), that the enemy (Russia) of my enemy (Clinton) is my friend.
And then there is this. Nixon liked to joke that Spiro Agnew, his vice-president, was impeachment insurance – as Agnew had all of Nixon’s baser traits and none of his best. That is not the case now.
Trump’s vice-president, Michael Pence, as a former Republican governor and a previous member of the GOP House leadership, is liked within the party and by many in the media. A Pence administration, rid of Trump’s alienating antics and the cloud of the Russian hacking scandal, might make progress on the Republican political agenda, pleasing its donor class and lobbyists.
What might trigger an insurrection? An inescapably damning report from Mueller and indictments of Trump’s confidantes might suffice. Democratic sweeps in November’s state elections in Virginia and New Jersey could raise enough alarm in Republican circles to make regicide an option. So, most certainly, would a Democratic triumph in the 2018 congressional elections.
The Senate seems out of reach, but a Democratic takeover of the House would give its party’s leaders the power to open investigations, schedule hearings and subpoena witnesses. They could make Trump’s existence a purgatory, if not Hades, and bruise the Republican brand in the run up to 2020.
But remember, there’s a reason Trump is president. It’s much the same reason that Nixon survived for more than two years after the Watergate burglars were arrested. The Democratic base in the working class has eroded – due to economic change, globalisation and the skilled Republican manipulation of race and culture – leaving the party in the hands of a liberal, multi-racial coalition whose roots can be traced back to Democratic senator George McGovern’s guerrilla-like march to the presidential nomination (and landslide defeat to Nixon’s hands) in 1972.
Nixon, Ronald Reagan, George HW Bush, George W Bush and now Donald Trump have exploited the opening created by McGovern, luring blue- and white-collar workers into what Nixon famously christened his “great silent majority”.
The liberal elite is now ageing, wealthy, soft and complacent. They look to the courts, the media and charismatic presidential campaigns to win their victories – not to the hard work that is required (at which Republicans currently excel) to win state legislative seats, governors’ offices and majorities in Congress.
Barack Obama’s victories spurred hopes among Democrats that a fresh coalition of young voters, minorities, gays, women and immigrants would join with the remnants of the McGovern coalition and dominate US politics.
The long-term trends seem to favour them. But after eight years of unrelenting attack, Obama and his Democrats showed fatigue. They still “beat” Trump by more than two million in the popular voting, but lost the Electoral College, Congress, two-thirds of the statehouses and philosophical control of the US Supreme Court.
While the Trump/Nixon analogies are fun and seductive, the Left should remember (as, take note Mr President, McConnell and Ryan undoubtedly recognise) how quickly national parties can rebound from apparent disaster.
The Republicans went from Goldwater’s dismal loss in 1964 to Nixon’s narrow victory in 1968 and landslide triumph in 1972.
And it was but six years after Nixon’s resignation that Reagan completed the Republican revival, and ushered in a new, conservative, golden era for his party.
Now it is the Obama coalition’s turn to prove itself, by showing Nixonian resilience. “It is only a beginning, always,” he liked to say.
That is the real test in American politics. That is where to keep your eye.
‘Amid fevered talk of treason, it was widely predicted Congress would act’