Learning from Nixon
This makes me smile, because it’s precisely the conversation my Trump-supporting mother and I have on the subject. It’s true, Trump has congressional Republicans’ support at this moment in time. And that will remain the case…..until it doesn’t anymore.
What happened to Nixon went down in a matter of just a few hours, and he was on a helicopter the next day.
Are there important differences between then and now? Of course, several:
• There was essentially one voice of news, and it was objective, at least by the standards of today. People could not tune into cable news shows that provided them 24 hour per day re-enforcement of what they already believed and wanted to hear, and we certainly didn’t have anything remotely like Fox News, with its near-complete absence of factual reporting.
• The matter on which Nixon lost his job was a minor peccadillo compared to what Trump is accused of.
• Though there may have been instances in the 1970s when loyalty superseded integrity, they were rare. Now it’s the centralizing force behind an entire political party. Similarly, corruption, the exchange of money for favors, is at least an order of magnitude more pronounced now than it was then.
• The electorate was far better educated then, and therefore harder to bamboozle. The torrent of lies we get every day from the president would have been received with a belly-laugh then. Now, 40% of American voters believe that their leader had the largest inauguration in U.S. history, and hundreds of other equally unsupported pieces of BS.
It’s hard to know what will happen here, but predicting the future based on the past isn’t a strong idea; at least we learned that much from Nixon.
Craig,
Why torture yourself with these ongoing fantasies?
There are no GOP renegades, quite the contrary, at least four House Democrats won’t vote for impeachment and the number of dissidents is growing amid Democrats legislators. Support for impeachment has collapsed among the American people.
President Nixon willfully,knowingly conspired with his staff to cover up a burglary of the DNC campaign. He then continued to lie until he lost GOP support in both houses.
Tragically, it has never been alleged he had any knowledge of the burglary itself.
In contrast, President Trump asked, on a President to President basis, about the confirmed improper and possibly corrupt activity of a former US VP.
There is no “abuse of power” . The President of the Ukraine hasn’t complained of any pressure (and he is the only person qualified to complain).
If there was no credible reason to investigate Joe Biden it might be a little improper for the President to make the request, but still not illegal, but perhaps unwisely using his position.
However, the evidence is against Joe Biden and his son is overwhelming! Especially since some evidence is direct from the horse’s mouth. Joe Biden openly boasted of improper interference on his son’s behalf. The evidence of years of corruption by his son and the illegal utilization of US government resources to obtain financial and corrupt enrichment to the Biden family, is established beyond question.
Under such circumstances, it is not only the right but the duty of the US President to carry out such an investigation.
The US constitution leaves the question of how the President conducts the conducts those inquiries to Presidential judgement.
In such matters the constitution is quite clear to whom the US President is accountable for his actions. The President is accountable to the US people at the ballot box, not a partisan group of legislators and media.
The Obama administration is beginning to look very dodgy and his legacy tarnished.
Impeaching President Trump is beginning to look like a desperate attempt to frustrate the President restoring from restoring constitutional authority over the Washington elite and covering up corrupt criminal behaviour by the DNC and leading Democrats.
I do not think Joe Biden is an inherently bad person, but he should leave public life for the sake of his party and his family.