TO IMPEACHMENT
Nixon’s first political campaign, a successful run for Congress in 1946, would mirror in many ways Trump’s first campaign—for president of the United States. Fighting for average Jane and John Doe against a corrupt and even treasonous Washington establishment, Nixon campaigned as the outsider. He exploited voter fear and resentment by smearing his opponent Jerry Voorhis, a middle-of-the road Democrat, as a Communist sympathizer.28
Nixon rode his anti-Communism all the way to a seat in the U.S. Senate in 1950, defeating former movie star Helen Gahagan Douglas, who he branded as a Communist sympathizer. He distributed literature, printed in black ink on pink paper, with the dark warning that Douglas voted in lockstep with the socialist member of Congress Vito Marcantonio. Douglas forever became known as the “Pink Lady,” but Nixon couldn’t shake the name she had plastered on him: “Tricky Dick Nixon.”29
Right-wing extremists rallied to Nixon’s cause. Gerald L. K. Smith, the notorious anti-Semite, exhorted voters to reject a woman “who sleeps with a Jew,” a reference to the fact that her husband, Melvyn Douglas, had a Jewish father and a Christian mother. Nixon repudiated Smith’s support, but the damage was done.30
In 2016, the outpouring of support for Donald Trump by anti-Semites, neo-Nazis, and white nationalists far exceeded what Nixon experienced. For these extremists, the advent of Trump has “been an awakening,” in the words of Richard B. Spencer, who some journalists credit with coining the term “alt-right” to describe his movement. Like Nixon, Trump belatedly and tepidly rejected such support, but he openly courted it by appointing Steve Bannon as his campaign manager and then his chief White House strategist.31
As the CEO of Breitbart News, Bannon bragged that “We’re the platform for the alt-right.” Under his watch, Breitbart belittled conservative editor Bill Kristol, as a “Renegade Jew.” It warned that “Political Correctness Protects Muslim Rape Culture.” It smeared the NAACP, saying, “NAACP Joins Soros Army Planning DC Disruptions, Civil Disobedience, Mass Arrests,” and glorified the Confederacy saying, “Hoist It High and Proud: The Confederate Flag Proclaims a Glorious Heritage.” It equated feminism with “cancer,” and warned of a “Dangerous Faggot Tour” coming to college campuses.32
In 1952, after Eisenhower tapped him for the second spot on his presidential ticket, the press reported that Nixon’s business backers had set up a secret slush fund for him. “Tricky Dick” defused the scandal and demonstrated his mastery of showmanship and the media by delivering a brilliant televised speech that rather framed himself as a humble, uncorrupted man of still-modest means. The clincher came when Nixon admitted to receiving one gift, his little dog, Checkers. With this so-called “Checkers speech,” the most-watched television event to date, Nixon pulled off his first political comeback and saved his place on Eisenhower’s ticket. Donald Trump would later prove to be Nixon’s equal and even his superior in exploiting free media.33
In 1960, Nixon easily won the Republican nomination for president, but lost narrowly to his former House colleague John F. Kennedy. Kennedy’s narrow margins of victory in Illinois and Texas prompted Republicans to challenge the vote count in court despite an official disavowal from Nixon, who refused to disparage American democracy and was already planning his next political resurrection. Nevertheless, GOP Representative from Minnesota and former missionary Walter Judd preached a sermon on voter fraud that foreshadowed Donald Trump’s cry against the same more than a half century later: “A party can still lose an election if it is not sufficiently alert and tough in policing registrations and voting booths and counting procedures to make certain that only legitimate votes are cast and all votes legitimately cast are honestly counted.”34
After losing the presidency in 1960, Nixon lost again two years later when he ran for governor of California. In his post-election press conference, Nixon delivered a 15-minute self-absorbed, Trump-style harangue against his enemies in the press, whom he blamed for his loss. “You won’t have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference,” he said before walking away.35
Yet the resilient Nixon won another presidential nomination in 1968, when Michigan Governor George Romney, his closest rival, and the father of Mitt, wrecked his campaign by attributing earlier support for the War in Vietnam to “brainwashing” by American generals and diplomats. In his winning general election campaign, Nixon returned to the attack strategies that had served him well in his earlier campaigns for the U.S. House and Senate. Through his surrogate, vice presidential nominee Spiro Agnew, the governor of Maryland, he smeared his Democratic opponent Vice President Hubert Humphrey as “soft on inflation, soft on Communism, and soft on law and order.” Agnew belittled anti-war demonstrators as “spoiled brats” who “take their tactics from Castro and their money from Daddy.” Reprising the success of his “Checkers” speech Nixon expertly played the press, gaining wide-spread coverage often in carefully staged settings of his own choosing.36
Trump too is a creation of the media. He expertly played the media in his campaign as a show they could not ignore. According to a study by mediaQuant, in the year before the election, Trump received some $5 billion in free media coverage, compared to $3.2 billion for Hillary Clinton, an extraordinary edge of $1.8 billion.37
Once elected, Nixon’s paranoia, his obsession with secrecy and control, and his penchant for punishing enemies guided the organization of his administration. He ran his presidency through the National Security Council (NSC) and his White House staff, led by chief of staff Bob Haldeman and his aide John Ehrlichman. Trump too would place importance on his NSC and centralize decision-making in the White House.38
As President, Nixon’s loathing of any independent check on his presidency led to a deep-seated animosity toward the media. “The press is your enemy.” “Enemies,” he underscored. “Understand that? … Don’t help the bastards. Ever. Because they’re trying to stick the knife right in our groin.” Nixon threatened journalists with banishment from the White House. He went as far as to wiretap the phones of his own aides suspected of disloyalty and journalists he found particularly troublesome. His surrogate Agnew famously blasted the press as the “nattering nabobs of negativism.” “Our real game plan,” wrote political advisor Lyn Nofziger, “[is] making our own point in our own time and in our own ways that the press is liberal, pro-Democratic and biased.”39
IS THE LONG NIGHTMARE OVER?
Following Nixon’s resignation, Gerald Ford was now president, even though he had never been elected to any position higher than member of Congress from Grand Rapids, Michigan. In his most notable decision as president, Ford issued a full and unconditional pardon to Nixon for any crimes he may have committed against the United States. “Our long national nightmare is over,” he said. Ford was wrong. The nightmare of Watergate lives on in America’s collective memory, and resonates as a loud and clear warning to President Trump.40
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