Michael Vadon and Nick-D
During the 1973 Watergate crisis involving Richard M. Nixon, a lead editorial in ‘The Progressive’ asked, “Will we permit our highest and most powerful office—an office whose occupant can literally decide the future and even the survival of the nation and the world—to remain in the hands of a man who has, in the words of the American Civil Liberties Union, ‘made one thing perfectly clear: He will function above the law whenever he can get away with it?’ ”
Thursday marks the fiftieth day since The Washington Post broke the story that President Donald Trump was withholding military aid from Ukraine pending its delivery of found or fabricated dirt on Trump’s presumptive number one 2020 opponent, former Vice President Joe Biden. That set the stage for the impeachment drama now playing out in Congress. And things aren’t looking so good for the Dissembler-in-Chief.
Three polls out this week from Fox News, NBC-Wall Street Journal and Washington Post-ABC News all show that 49 percent of the American public supports impeaching Trump and between 45-47 percent are opposed.
The Fox News poll also asked, if the House finds sufficient evidence to impeach, “What should happen to President Trump?” Some 51 percent said he should be either removed from office by the Senate or that he should resign; 43 percent said voters should decide. Despite the “partisan witch hunt” frame being manufactured by Trump, 22 percent of Republicans and 63 percent of independents either support Trump leaving office before 2020 or are undecided.
For comparison sake, let’s look at the only President to actually be driven out of office by the threat of impeachment, Richard Nixon, who resigned about fifteen months after the first televised Congressional hearing looking into Watergate. (Keeping in mind that public Congressional hearings haven’t started yet in Trump’s case.)
Ollie Atkins
After two months of televised hearings on Watergate, a Gallup poll revealed only 24 percent thought Nixon should resign. After the “Saturday Night Massacre,” which took place about six months after the start of the hearings, only 37 percent were on board with giving Tricky Dick the hook.
(The term Saturday Night Massacre refers to a series of events on October 20, 1973, when Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson to fire independent special prosecutor Archibald Cox. After Richardson refused and immediately resigned, Nixon turned to Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire Cox—same result. Nixon then ordered the third-most-senior official at the Justice Department, Solicitor General Robert Bork, to fire Cox. Bork ultimately complied.)
During Watergate, Gallup didn’t produce a single poll with more than 50 percent supporting removing Nixon until Nixon had already resigned. Even then, only 57 percent supported Nixon leaving office.
One constantly repeated theory for explaining this difference is that Republicans in 1973 supposedly had backbones and were speaking out against the President. But in 2017, Mark Nevin published an expansive academic article thoroughly debunking this myth.
“Despite eighteen months of investigations, disclosures, and polls showing that Watergate was having a devastating effect on GOP prospects, most congressional Republicans supported Nixon until August 1974,” Nevin wrote. “[C]ongressional Republicans, with surprisingly few exceptions, publicly proclaimed Nixon’s innocence and opposed either his resignation or impeachment until nearly the end.”
Nevin also debunks the myth that 1964 Republican Presidential nominee and then-U.S. Senator Barry Goldwater was a stand out, putting country over party. After the Saturday Night Massacre, Goldwater accused Cox of having a “political undertone” and said he’d seen nothing done by Nixon that rose to the level of impeachment. Although in the end, Goldwater did urge Nixon to resign, he never publicly called on the President to resign or indicated support for impeachment.
Plus, many people don’t realize that Watergate was an issue focused on by Democrat George McGovern during the 1972 campaign. The voters already knew much about it and shrugged, yet many brave souls continued to push forward and hold Nixon—a President who started his second term with a 67 percent job approval rating—accountable.
On the other hand, you have Trump: A guy who inherited a booming economy, yet has spent his entire presidency with an approval rating around 40 percent. He got elected because Russian help was asked for, and received, got busted for this Russian help, and then got caught asking another foreign government to tilt another election in his favor.
Trump is a wildly unpopular President, facing a country where half the population already thinks he should be removed—before the public portion of the impeachment proceedings begin in earnest.
It’s really not fair to Nixon to compare him to Trump.
The only question now: Will Trump’s Republican allies learn the lessons of Watergate and not be the last ones to jump off the Titanic?