DON'T KNOW MUCH ABOUT HIS-TO-RY
It’s been a long time since I thought in any detail about the Watergate scandal, but it seemed like a good time to refresh my memory and bring some historical perspective to the Trump-Russia scandal.
In 1972, Richard Nixon was re-elected in a landslide, both in terms of popular and electoral votes. When he took the oath of office for his second term in 1973, Nixon’s approval stood at nearly 70%. But as Proverbs 16:18 says, “Pride goeth before destruction, and an haughty spirit before a fall.”
Donald Trump, as you surely remember, lost the 2016 popular vote by approximately 3 million, while winning in the electoral college. His approval rating right after his inauguration was 48%, which was worse than any other president in the history of the Gallup Poll.
Although it appeared that things were touch and go at the time, with the benefit of hindsight, it’s pretty clear that the start of the Senate Watergate hearings in May, 1973 was the beginning of the end of the Nixon presidency. In the four months between the inauguration and the onset of those hearings, Nixon’s approval rating had dropped below 50%. The one bright spot for Nixon at that point was that only 19% of the public supported removing him from office.
I’m going to call last Monday’s indictments from Special Counsel Robert Mueller the contemporary equivalent of the start of the Senate Watergate Committee. Donald Trump’s approval rating today stands at 33%, his all-time low. Support for impeachment has already reached 49%. Nixon’s pro-impeachment numbers didn’t get that high until three months before he was forced to resign.
Nixon’s approval numbers kept trending down as the summer of 1973 turned into fall, with a corresponding rise in support for removing him from office. Those two trend lines intersected right after the Saturday Night Massacre on October 20, 1973. That was when Nixon fired Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, and the Attorney General and Deputy Attorney General both resigned in protest. Nixon’s approval ratings never got above water after that. When he was finally forced to resign on August 8, 1974, his approval rate stood at 24%, while 57% wanted him gone
Does the history of Watergate offer any useful lessons as we wait to see how the Trump-Russia scandal plays out? I mean apart from the obvious conclusion that Donald Trump should draw, that firing Robert Mueller would be a terrible idea? There are two things that struck me as worth highlighting.
Spending some time thinking about 1973-74 reminded me of how iffy things often looked during Watergate. It was an emotional roller coaster right up to the end. Not only did it sometimes seem that Nixon would get away with it, there were also legitimate fears that he would start a nuclear war to try to save his presidency. The Secretary of Defense even ordered his generals to ignore any nuclear launch order until they got approval from him or the Secretary of State.
It’s also easy to forget that Richard Nixon had his base, just as Trump does today. Talk radio in 1973 was nowhere near the juggernaut that it is now, but it was around. Even then, it was a haven for right wingers. Clarence Manion and Paul (“now you know … the rest of the story”) Harvey called the investigation was a witch hunt. William F. Buckley and the National Review thought it was a leftist plot to force Nixon to govern as a liberal. Nixon’s speechwriter, William Safire (who also wrote speeches Vice President Spiro Agnew until he was forced to resign in a bribery scandal that had nothing to do with Watergate) wound up as a syndicated columnist for the New York Times. His life’s work became to rehabilitate Nixon by trivializing Watergate. He added a “-gate” suffix to every political scandal that came along. Safire was also one of the Times’ early Hillary Clinton haters, a habit that has persisted at the Times to this day.
Everything I’ve read suggests that it’s a virtual certainty that, while some work remains to be done, Robert Mueller already has ample evidence that Donald Trump, his family and his cronies, are criminals. And not only are they criminals, they’re stupid criminals. Thus far, they’ve been able to buy or bully their way out of trouble. It won’t be so easy this time around.
At this point, even if Trump were to fire Mueller, I’d expect Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein to appoint one of the members of his team as its new leader and tell them to carry on. And they’d have Mueller’s firing to add to the evidence of obstruction of justice.
Of course, the usual suspects are plotting. The Washington Post reports that Roger Stone and Steve Bannon are advising Donald Trump to fight back. Stone’s brilliant idea is to have Trump appoint a special prosecutor to investigate Hillary Clinton and the bogus uranium “scandal,” and then argue that Mueller was implicated in the uranium transaction because he was the Director of the FBI at the time. This, Stone claims, would allow Trump to say that Mueller had a conflict of interest and force him to recuse himself from the rest of the Trump-Russia investigation. Apart from its prima facie absurdity, the difficulty with this plan is that it has been leaked, and its motivation has been made public. Any court would rightly see it as a transparent attempt to obstruct justice.
Bannon’s plan is more prosaic. He wants Trump to defund Mueller’s operation. But that’s easier said than done. In September, Florida’s Rep. Ron DeSantis submitted an amendment to a spending bill that would limit the funding for the Special Counsel’s investigation to six months. House Republican leaders refused to bring the amendment to the floor for a vote. At this point, with indictments rolling in, it’s hard to imagine that Republicans could muster a majority to pass that sort of legislation. (Besides, if Mueller runs short of cash, I’ll bet he could raise millions of dollars via GoFundMe in a heartbeat.)
But the most desperate advice has come from the Wall Street Journal, which, to its everlasting disgrace, published on op-ed urging Trump to fire Mueller and issue a pre-emptive pardon to everyone, including himself. Yes, that’s the ticket – blow up the Constitution and take your chances on surviving the backlash.
Of course, there’s one other option, which happens to be the one his attorneys are recommending – just chill. Let Mueller get on with his work and see what happens. That would be the smart thing to do. But this is Donald Trump we’re talking about, so the smart thing seems the least likely scenario. Especially since Steve Bannon is also said to be urging Trump to replace his current legal team with a bomb thrower. Bannon likes big dramatic explosions, and you get the impression that if he can’t blow up Mueller, he’d settle for blowing up Trump.
Meanwhile, word on the street is that Robert Mueller may be ready to hand down more indictments very soon. To quote Donald Trump, Jr., “if that’s what you say, I love it.”