Nixon, Trump and their ‘wars on America’

I finished watching the six-hour “Watergate” docu-drama on the History channel last night and was starkly reminded of the stunning similarities between the scandal-ridden presidencies of Richard M. Nixon and Donald J. Trump.

For the record, I was a young newspaper reporter in 1972 when the so-called “plumbers” entered the Watergate Hotel in Washington, D.C., to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee, so I already knew a lot of what was covered in History’s three-part series, but seeing it acted out brought back the details of the bungled break-in, Nixon’s initial denials, his subsequent cover-up, his impending impeachment and finally his resignation on August 9, 1974.

I’m not going to recount the whole Watergate story here (Google it if you want; it’s a fascinating tale) but I am going to make two points that the television series made abundantly clear:   

(1) First, toward the end of the final episode, Bob Woodward – who along with Carl Bernstein reported the Watergate scandal for The Washington Post – described what he called the “five wars of Richard Nixon.”

The first was against the anti-war movement and the millions of people who were protesting America’s years-long war in Vietnam. The second was Nixon’s war against the free press, which he detested, and the third was a war against the Democratic Party which had threatened to deny him a second term -- what led to the Watergate break-in in the first place.

The fourth war was “a war against justice” marked by the administration’s all-out effort to cover up the scandal and obstruct justice by hindering the investigation by a special counsel named Archibald Cox, which came to a conclusion with the infamous “Saturday night massacre.”

Facing a subpoena to produce tape recordings of Oval Office conversations, Nixon ordered Attorney General Elliot Richardson and then Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus to fire the special prosecutor, but they both resigned in protest rather than carry out the order. Nixon finally ordered Solicitor General Robert Bork to fire the special counsel, and Bork complied.

Nixon’s fifth war, Woodward said, was “a war on history itself,” with Nixon telling Americans not to believe what they were seeing and hearing, even as evidence was presented and witnesses testified during Congressional hearings on the Watergate scandal. He even suggested we shouldn’t believe the words that flowed from his own Oval Office tape recordings.

(2) My second point is this: Take out the Vietnam War protests and you could easily describe the “four wars of Donald Trump.” For the two years of his presidency, Trump has waged a non-stop war against the news media, which he calls “fake news” and “the enemy of the people.” He has also gone to war against the Democratic Party, which he blames for his own flaws and mistakes, and against his own Justice Department for allowing and overseeing a special counsel investigation into an alleged conspiracy to rig the 2016 election.

He has attempted to obstruct the investigation at every turn and is widely believed to be on the verge of attempting to dismantle the investigation after the mid-term election tomorrow. If he should do that on a Saturday night, well…you get the idea.

Finally, Trump has also told us not to believe what we see and hear from those who dare to question his presidency. Call it his very own war on history.

So yeah, you could watch a documentary on Watergate, close your eyes and pretend you heard the name “Trump” every time they said “Nixon” and at times it kinda worked. Before Donald Trump was elected, I always thought the Watergate scandal was about the worst thing a president could ever do, but now I’m convinced that Trump is doing much worse.

I mean, think about it. Nixon’s crimes were committed because he wanted so badly to be re-elected that he parked his ethics and his morality at the curb. He didn’t use the presidency as a profit center to get rich while promoting his own golf courses and hotels, he didn’t fill his cabinet with incompetent cronies and former Fox News commentators bent on deconstructing the government, he didn’t alienate our allies while sucking up to tin-pot dictators around the world and he didn’t conspire with a foreign government to get himself elected.

Even Nixon didn’t lie six times a day every day of his presidency, he didn’t openly embrace white nationalism (Nixon was a quiet racist) and he never put migrating children from Central America into cages.

It took Nixon about six years to face impeachment before he resigned from the White House in disgrace. When you consider what he’s done in less than two years, Trump’s presidency is far worse than Nixon’s. In my mind, it’s not even close.