Nixon Didn’t Stain

Richard Nixon is synonymous with Presidential crookedness in the USA. But this is more indicative of the political culture of the day than of Nixon’s offenses. In retrospect, Nixon’s political dirty tricks seem quaint compared to what goes on now. And minor compared to what Nixon must have learned in the 1960 Presidential race from the High Voodoo Priest John F Kennedy, with his raising the dead of Chicago to the polls. Nixon’s reputation, I think, has more to do with Nixon being a very unlikeable person; with his shifty beard and low, so low dog manipulating. I’ve written before, in these spaces, of the quaint differences in standards between what’s expected of the layer of average people below the law and of those people of a layer seemingly above the law.

The difference, this column will argue, was that the political culture of the nation was a lot healthier: people’s expectations were that the Office of the President was entitled to respect, the Office would suffer disrepute to have a sitting perjurer, and so the Republican constituency forced the Republicans to force Nixon out honorably. Again, quaint in that it was thought at the time that a President could not be seen to be bald-faced perjurer. Had the Republicans not done the right, and hard thing, the evolution of dysfunctional political warfare in the USA would have been advanced by a generation. Our low expectations of government credibility would have been advanced a generation.

There are a lot of details and debates to be had in a subject as broad as “political culture,” and by no means does this piece captures anything like the comprehensive breadth of it. Still, individual actions of disgrace and honor do matter.

There was no Constitutional crisis because the Republican Party did the right thing. Imagine the damage to our political culture had the Republicans told the Congressional impeachment proceeding to “go screw, political dirty tricks are commonplace.” Nixon was ousted because of a perjurious cover-up, which is just what Bill Clinton did. And the democrats told the Congressional impeachment proceeding to “go screw, sexual infidelities among members of congress are commonplace.” I believe this was crossing an American political Rubicon. Incidentally, Monica Lewinsky maintains she is “patient zero;” the first cyber bully victim, as she describes in this must-see TED talk.

Because of the decay of American political culture, as manifest by this nightmare election with two uniquely reviled candidates, I think, in retrospect from a two decade vantage point, that a Bill Clinton resignation and an Al Gore Presidency would have mitigated some of our nbational division, to some degree at least. At that point in his administration Bill Clinton was not indispensable; as De Gaulle said “The graveyards are full of indispensable people.” Al Gore would have made a fine President. Who knows: there has been no whiff of individual scandal or corruption in the eight years of the Obama administration, so maybe the impression of complete political discredit can be stalled off yet. Again, individual actions of honor and disgrace DO matter.

At the time of the Clinton impeachment I held the “pox on both of your houses” position: President Clinton’s behavior did not rise to the level of “high crime or misdemeanor” called for by the Constitution; the Republicans were grinding a political axe. Everyone knows politicians are liars, braggarts and above all, cheaters. It can be said that, whatever else he is guilty of, Nixon primed us for cynicism.

On the other hand, we had a ridiculously brazen perjurer in the White House, a President with a depraved notion of sexual risk. The Democrats’ position of advocacy on the issue of women’s workplace sexual harassment breathtakingly undercut by their hypocrisy in defending Clinton because he was a fount of their power, the very thing these laws are supposed to remedy: redressing sexual power imbalances. (And man, are they paying for that now.)

Plus, the Republicans could say “Wait a minute: we forced out our perjurer, now it’s your turn.” After all, the 1972 Democratic Party Nixon tried to sabotage is an abstract thing, long dead. Ms Lewinsky is a living, breathing human being, with her American birthright of equality before the law violated and her reputation permanently smeared by the most powerful family in the country. There should be no such thing as a political crime that should rise over the rights of a citizen. Plus, the Democratic Party might have married words with action in a way that would not have permanently cost them my respect.

The scandals of the G.W. Bush administration are for another blog post, though I will say they are vast and disgusting. (And W. is home, painting cat portraits, where he belongs, and is not about to get any more chances for misadventure.)

It may be hard to define “political culture,” but that doesn’t mean we can’t recognize political cultural disease when we see it. Now the sickness has metastasized to a pass: The Nation is divided as if by Witchcraft, somehow by two candidates nobody should have reason to like. This is the alchemy of political culture. Going forward, each side will question the legitimacy of the other for reasons both reasonable and unreasonable. The election of either of these two cannot possible beguile anyone out of their partisan trench. Now we have to add in the possibility of Trump-Rump quasi National Front Republican divide if Trump won’t manfully accept a loss and brays fraud come November 9.

A Clinton Presidency will not see the Republicans loose the Email impeachment bone they will gnaw for God knows how long. And, if we count that as a Constitutional crisis, we get this eye-opening fact of the new black-magic of our politics: Ours, mankind’s oldest known system of continuous Democratic Government, will have had to face four Constitutional crises: The Civil War and the Post Civil War Johnson impeachment (arguably continuous with the Civil War); The Nixon impeachment (Not a crisis, solved by the Republicans acting honorably); Bill Clintons impeachment; Hilary Clintons’ foreseeable impeachment. Of the four Constitutional crises in our two hundred twenty-nine year history, we find half of them involve The Clintons. Imagine the dysfunction if we were a generation advanced in this disease. Shudder to imagine what the disease will be like a generation hence. Then, think of how our independent institutions have been dragged down: the IRS has long been involved in scandal on both sides, and now it seems the FBI has been stained with Clinton filth as well. The Supreme Court is on shaky ground as a respected institution. And one of our two despised candidates will decide the balance of the Court for the next Generation. All of this decay of legitimacy has occurred within the last two decades. Again, beggar your imagination to imagine the dysfunction to come.

Why is this a libertarian argument? Because the death of civil political culture, libertarians would argue, is the inevitable result when factions grab their arms and choose a side to compete for “special power;” strictly political powers, those powers outside the ones that occur by non-coercive cultural and economic evolution. Ask any parent: considerations given to one child will soon be fought for by all. Also, the political fights of a generation ago involved far fewer factors, and by extension factions, than the ones we have now. If Government dispenses power, all issues are ones of political power, and the struggles become all-important. And, like warfare, the struggles evolve in lethality.

So we go from Democrats challenging the legitimacy of Bush’s victory in 2000 and a strictly partisan vote at the Supreme Court in Gore v Bush, (something of a valid complaint that would have been more valid had Gore called for a state-wide recount instead of in hand-picked Democratic enclaves) to the evolution of Trump preemptively calling shenanigans on our whole ancient electoral system. This is the kind of thing that happens in Mexico and Pakistan. This rancor is the inevitable result of our ever-concentrating political power. The libertarian argument in favor of divided Government is a blog log for another day. (But, as a Parthian shot: the last time we had major bi-partisan cooperation and consensus, we got the second Gulf War). Deep political divides have mattered very much before: President Lincoln gets the last word:

A house divided against itself cannot stand,

and all that.

Again, this article maintains that the political rot has as much to do with us as it does them. We, the people, constitute the “political culture;” the Clintons and Trump are a symptom of our diseased civility and honor, not a cause. Ultimately, in a Democratic Republic, people get the politicians they deserve.