Nixon: I Am Not A Crook
Trump: If I was a crook, I'd have a right be
In the swirling vortex of American politics, few figures have ignited as much intrigue and chaos as Richard Nixon. That is, until Donald J. Trump.
Like Nixon, Trump isn’t denying that he broke laws. He isn’t denying that he violated ethical or even moral standards. Nor is he denying he orchestrated what is likely America’s biggest taxpayer grift. Like Nixon, Trump is arguing that laws, ethics, and morality standards no longer apply to him by virtue of the presidency.
To understand where such a defense ends, we must first revisit America’s first experience with such utter bullshit.
Nixon 101: Get Yours First
Before his first run for President, Nixon had already shown a disdain for the idea that rules applied to men like him. Just weeks before the 1952 Presidential election, then Vice Presidential candidate Nixon, almost tanked General Eisenhower's shot at the White House when he was accused of fraudulently handling $18,000 dollars in campaign funds for personal use. That’s about $200,000 in today dollars. To save his career, Nixon took a major gamble. And he did so with telling his running mate.
Nixon sat in front of a camera for thirty minute speech, to defend himself. He named it the “Fund Speech,” however, it has gone down in history as the “Checkers Speech.” Nixon denied any and all misuse of the campaign contributions. He detailed his campaign expenditures and his personal situation. And then he concluded, “One other thing I should probably tell you…”
“We did get something, a gift, after the election. A man down in Texas heard Pat on the radio mention the fact that our two youngsters would like to have a dog. And believe it or not, the day before we left on this campaign trip we got a message from Union Station in Baltimore, saying they had a package for us. We went down to get it. You know what it was? It was a little cocker spaniel dog in a crate that he'd sent all the way from Texas, black and white, spotted. And our little girl Tricia, the six year old, named it Checkers. And you know, the kids, like all kids, love the dog, and I just want to say this, right now, that regardless of what they say about it, we're gonna keep it.”
There it was; Nixon’s masterclass on how to lie to the American public and it paid off.
The allegations were in fact true. There was a special pot of money and there is evidence that Nixon did use it to off-set his personal expenses. Nonetheless, the scandal blew over because the media over played their hand and because Nixon’s response was pitch perfect. It paid off because Democratic presidential candidate, Adlia Stevenson, was doing the same thing and, therefore, couldn’t make any hay out of it.
The Checkers speech didn’t just salvage Nixon’s political aspirations. It also emboldened him. A forensic look at the 1972 presidential election by the New York Times, reported “The cost of the general election alone, about $104 million, compared with $44 million spent in 1968, $25 million in 1964 and $20 million in 1960.” Had that election occurred today, it would cost over $738 million dollars.
The New York Times went on to report that the large and contentious Democratic primary battle, left McGovern with about half of the resources available to Nixon. The idea that about one-third of Nixon’s contributions came from big donors was a real problem for McGovern. According to the late Dr. Herbert E. Alexander, director of Citizens Campaign Finance Institute and author of “Financing the 1972 Election,” just one hundred and fifty three contributors amassed Nixon $20 million. All of which was stock piled until the general election when it could then be one hundred percent trained on whichever Democrat emerged from the primary.
According to Jill Abramson’s 2010 article in the New York Times, Richard Nixon had a bevy of undisclosed donors but that was going to change in April of 1972 when new laws were to take effect. “Fred Wertheimer, a longtime supporter of campaign finance regulation, was, at the time, lawyer for Common Cause. He vividly recalls the weeks leading up to April 7, 1972, before a new campaign finance law went into effect requiring the disclosure of the names of individual donors. “Contributors,” he said, “were literally flying into Washington with satchels of cash.”
The President’s list of secret donors, nicknamed Rose Mary’s Baby, was finally made public upon court order after Wertheimer brought legal action. “Among those on the list were William Keeler, the chief executive of Phillips Petroleum, who pleaded guilty, during the post-Watergate prosecutions, to making an illegal corporate donation.” It is still illegal for candidates to take contributions from companies but, as Abramson described in her post Citizens United reporting, the Supreme Court decision “allows corporations for the first time to finance ads that directly support or oppose political candidates. And tax laws and loopholes have permitted a shadow campaign network of Republican-leaning nonprofit groups to collect a flood of anonymous donations and spend it widely.”
“It creates all the appearances of dirty dealings and undue influence because our candidates are awash in funds the public is ignorant about,” said Roger Witten, a partner in the New York office of Wilmer Hale, who served as assistant special prosecutor in the Watergate special prosecution force. “This is the problem that was supposedly addressed after Watergate.”
Trumps self-dealing, dark-money, and lies are straight out of the Nixon playbook. The strongest tie that binds the two men? Roger Stone.
Nixon 201: Fuzzy Math
Nixon made his mark by becoming the 37th President of the United States. Two-thousand and thirty-four days later, he would resign the Office of the President of the United States of America in disgrace.
Ah, Watergate.
For maximum plausibility, Richard Nixon was splashing about in his buddy’s South Florida pool. Charles Rebozo was known as “Bebe.” Nixon and Bebe spent a lot of time together. Don Fulsom’s book “Nixon's Darkest Secrets: The Inside Story of America's Most Troubled President” describes a friendship that was about the only thing that could successfully steady Nixon’s emotions.
In fact, the President claims to have learned of the break-in at Watergate while with Bebe and the men were together in the West Wing when Nixon decided to resign. After Nixon’s resignation triggered financial hardships for his family, it was Bebe Rebozo, who owned Key Biscayne Bank, who came to the rescue.
Of course, Trumps use and misuse of lending laws is straight out of the Nixon playbook.
Nixon 301: Lie So Hard
In a January 2017 piece for the Smithsonian Magazine, Jason Daly detailed the October 1968 Paris Peace Talks, when “the U.S. was ready to agree to cease bombing Hanoi, the capital of North Vietnam, in exchange for concessions that would halt the decades-long conflict...” Turns out peace wasn’t helpful to Nixon as he was was trying to convince voters that he and he alone could bring troops home from Vietnam.
To that end, Nixon deployed Anna Chennault. The LBJ Presidential Library describes Chenault as “one of the most visible intermediaries between the Nixon campaign and the South Vietnamese.” President Johnson called the “back-channel communication” treason but there was little he could do publicly without exposing his own backhanded dealings in Vietnam.
Although, until the day he died, Nixon denied any involvement there was on-going speculation that the “Chennault Affair” was indeed Nixon’s bloodiest, dirtiest trick. As a result, it has been easier for most people to believe his denial. The alternative was just too unimaginable. Even for Nixon.
But in 2013, the FBI declassified information confirming that it was true. Nixon aide Anna Chennault repeatedly urged the South Vietnamese Ambassador to “just hang through the election.” In other words, by proxy (and perhaps in partnership with the Chinese government), Nixon did encouraged the continuation of the war in Vietnam until he could secure the Presidency.
The 1968 breakdown of the Paris Peace Talks resulted in five more years of direct combat in Vietnam.
Between 1969 and March 29, 1973 when Master Sgt. Beilke was the las to leave Vietnam, America lost over 20,000 of her bravest. Untold numbers were wounded for life. Nixon, who died in 1994, never faced any consequences - at least here on Earth - for that particular immoral act.
In contrast to Nixon, after Master Sergeant Beilke retired from the United States Army, he continued to work on behalf of military veterans until he was killed in the Pentagon on September 11, 2001.
Nixon’s reliance on disinformation never ceased. United States Marine turned research analyst, Daniel Ellsberg was assigned to analyze America’s relationship with Vietnam between 1945 and 1968 at the RAND Corporation think-tank. The top secret report was ordered by Robert McNamara, Secretary of Defense for both the Kennedy and Johnson administrations. When Ellsberg became alarmed at what he discovered, he notified key members of Congress. None of them took action. That’s when he felt compelled to leak the 7,000-page report to The New York Times.
The “Pentagon Papers” detailed the role Presidents’ Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson played in America’s escalating involvement in Vietnam. As news began to circulate, Nixon grew paranoid and obsessive. He was waiting for the hammer to drop on his administration. Information, perhaps, that “would expose Nixon’s secret, and potentially impeachable, actions and plans.”
His paranoia led him make a bad judgement call. He aggressively attacked the media which drew attention to a story that had not been getting much traction. Then there was a government injunction prohibiting The New York Times from publishing any more details. “In a striking show of media defiance, nineteen papers published portions of the Pentagon Papers.” That’s when the Supreme Court got involved with 6-3 decision that sided with The New York Times.
Nixon lashed out on Ellsberg who leaked the information to begin with. “The government indicted him under the Espionage Act, not for leaking secret documents to a foreign agent, but for giving them to the press and public.” As tempers flared in the White House, Nixon and his advisor’s decided legal action wasn’t enough. Ellsberg “had to be destroyed.” President Nixon ordered his Chief of Staff to stay the course. “You can’t let the Jew steal that stuff and get away with it. You understand?”
Daniel Ellsberg, if convicted, would die in prison as a traitor to his nation. The court cleared him of all wrongdoing after Ellsberg attorneys provided evidence that the Nixon “Plumbers,” - so called because they fixed leaks - broke into the psychiatric office of the doctor who conducted Ellsberg’s psychiatric profile. They were looking for dirt on Ellsberg’s sex life. Ellsberg’s name was cleared and he walked out of the courtroom. Nine months later “the Plumbers” were busted breaking into the Democratic Headquarter Office in the Watergate building.
As the pressure mounted in 1974, Nixon deployed a series of nonsensical defenses. The most famous being - "I am not a crook!" So, that was a lie. The Watergate tapes, those infamous recordings, revealed the truth. Nixon manipulated, intimidated, and schemed behind closed doors. In true irony, Americans may not have ever known the truth if Nixon’s paranoia hadn’t compelled him to bug the entire White House.
It’s hard to say if people like Nixon and Trump lie because they are paranoid of they lies caused the paranoia. Either way, lies and paranoia do seem to be twin flames.
Nixon 301: Avoid Consequences
Eisenhower’s selection of Nixon as his VP was a calculated move by Eisenhower, who needed to leverage Nixon’s reputation as a fighter of communism. A reputation he earned by exposing everyday (and as it turned out, innocent) Americans who he believed to be Communists. Nixon repaid President Eisenhower’s favor with loyalty publicly, however, the work of Jeffrey Frank - “Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage” - explains that, behind the scenes, Nixon and Eisenhower disagreed on major issues.
Nixon argued in support of sending American troops into Vietnam. Eisenhower, who was also concerned about Indochina falling into Communism, was adamantly opposed to engaging in the French War. They also disagreed on Brown v. Board of Education. Nixon supported the decision. Eisenhower did not.
When Eisenhower had a stroke, it was his written directive to Nixon that became the driving force behind the Presidential Succession Agreement. Eisenhower didn’t want to hang his Vice President but he sure didn’t want him to be President either. The next time the 25th Amendment would be entertained was in January of 2020, when Vice President Pence was called upon to certify the election of President Joe Biden.
But Eisenhower wasn’t done. On the way out the door, the President publicly humiliated his Vice President when he was asked about the influence Nixon had on Eisenhower’s decision-making. The President responded, “Give me a week, I’m sure I could think of something.”
Remember, then Vice Presidential candidate, Richard Nixon had been put under investigation for using campaign cash to bedazzle his personal life. Eisenhower wanted to replace Nixon but Nixon out maneuvered Eisenhower by pleading his case directly to the American people in his Checkers Speech. Apparently, the former General turned President could hold a grudge.
Trump, as did Nixon, has shown a willingness to put their needs above all others including family, friends and, allies. And when it’s time to burn the bridge, both men have shown a heightened willingness to burn the bridge-maker too.
But the bill always comes due.
In 1977, Nixon embarked on a series of interviews with journalist David Frost that seemed to be a performative attempt at resurrection. With urgency, Richard Nixon recounted his presidency with a mixture of bravado and remorse. To succeed at reclaiming his legacy, Nixon needed to come off as penitent. He would have to abandon his entire aggressive - “I am not a crook” - victimhood defense from the previous years. He did try. “I let down my friends,” he said with a quiver in his voice. It was a spectacular failure and it was worth every one of the $1,000,000.00 the network paid Tricky Dick.
In a unique show of personal accountability, Nixon would later recognize; “I gave them the sword.” If Donald Trump will ever achieve a moment of personal responsibility is yet to be seen.