This piece focuses on comparisons between the two presidencies. But one of the main reasons this is Worse Than Watergate is that the Republican Party today is united in support for Trump. 1/
In 1974, some major GOP figures, including, crucially, Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott, abandoned Nixon. Of course, that Congressional GOP included moderates...and even liberals. 2/
Today's GOP is united in support for Trump. At this point, I have a hard time imagining a single Republican vote for conviction were the House to impeach him. Heck, my money would be on McConnell simply refusing to hold a trial at all. 3/
This Republican support (aided, of course, by Republican control of both houses of Congress through last year and Republican control of the Senate through 2020) has enabled Trump's behavior and helped assure that this crisis will continue to get worse before it gets better. 4/
And one of the reasons that today's GOP is like this is that Nixon loyalists, though they lost the battle over the congressional GOP in '74, won the war for the soul of the party...and they won it in a rout. In both personnel and spirit, this is their party. 5/
A key step in THAT process was Ford's pardon of Nixon, an act which at the time was widely criticized by press and public and was credited with destroying Ford's presidency and losing him the '76 election. It assured that the nation would never truly reckon with Watergate. 6/
But over the next three decades, Ford's pardon was retconned as an act of bravery. The JFK gave him a Profile in Courage Award late in life in recognition of it. When he died, obituaries celebrated it as a great sacrifice for the nation, as Ford's finest hour. 7/
But the media and the nation got this right in 1974. Our current crisis has many springs and tributaries. But one of the most important of them is Gerald Ford's pardon of Richard Nixon. I suspect that we will continue paying its price for generations to come. 8/
Stories of reconciliation are seductive...esp for our nation’s elites. After the collapse of Reconstruction, it was much easier to celebrate a supposed Reconciliation than to grapple with the post-bellum victory it handed to the very forces that created the Confederacy. 9/
If the republic survives the Trump presidency, we must not make this mistake yet again. We must hold all those responsible to account. And that includes every single Republican in the House and the Senate. We need to salt the earth. We must resist the urge to just move on. 10/10
That's "the JFK Presidential Library"
(Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Twitter ;) )
(Have I mentioned lately how much I hate Twitter ;) )
