I listened to the great Watergate podcast produced by Slate today, Slow Burn, episode 5, True Believers and I found it truly compelling. I was just a kid when the Watergate hearings were taking up whole afternoons on TV, totally boring. I kept imagining some giant gate holding back a ton of water. That's why this podcast really opens up the detail of "all the crazy stuff," as the host puts it, that went on in this great conspiracy. Since his early days in politics, Nixon was no stranger to dirty campaign tricks, earning the nickname Tricky Dick during his Senate campaign when he flooded voters mailboxes with "pink pamphlets" smearing his opponent with suggestions of leanings to the Communist party. Basically the incredibly divisive tribalism at the heart of today's blue/red partisan politics can be traced back decades and Nixon laid the ground work. We find many Nixon operatives, young at the time, who are still embedded in the GOP today, or acting as fringe elements stirred up by the Trump campaign, like Roger Stone.
Does Nixon's Silent Majority, which was his code for "regular Mom and Pop" Americans, the conservative and fearful parents of the newly emergent hippies, does this concept hold true for Trump? With the backdrop of the war in Vietnam, the tense standoff between the generations of the late 1960s was probably much more intense than the infighting we find online today. This was a time, it should be remembered, that after 4 students were killed at Kent State in 1970, many working class Nixon supporters would viciously remark, "We'll get 5 of you hippie scum next time." In the Slow Burn podcast, Leon Neyfakh, the host, makes it clear that Nixon supporters, by and large, did not care about the break in of the Democratic National Committee, basically supporting their "tough guy" right or wrong. We're in a similar position now with Trump supporters castigating liberals as snowflake Clintonites and backing anti-democratic currents in the Trump administration. There's a sense that they feel, just like many of Nixon's supporters did, that the nation is changing too quickly, with gay marriage, transsexual rights, and perhaps the hardest part, 8 years of the first black president, Obama, who they despise because he represents change they are desperate not to face. Mostly the betrayed class of the white poor in America have been sold a bill of goods since the era of Jim Crow and even before, that they would always reap the benefits of their white privilege and seek the promise of an American Dream typified by Norman Rockwell's magazine covers. They blame the Clintons and Obamas of the world for betraying them, but Trump's tax plan is the most brutal piece of class warfare legislation passed in my lifetime.
Listening to Nixon speak though, one major difference is clear. Nixon was eloquent in his speeches. Behind the scenes he was vulgar and ruthless but he felt a sense of duty and decorum was needed for the office. The war in Vietnam, especially the bombing of Cambodia under Kissinger, amounted to crimes against humanity, but Nixon was also instrumental in shifting the dollar away from the gold standard and opening trade talks with China under Mao. The biting irony of the comparison with Trump is that Nixon, though a conspiracy monger obsessed with conspiracy, also had a strategic mind and thought more long term. He bowed out when the pressure became too great, with the understanding Ford would pardon him almost immediately. The same thing recently happened, one should note, with Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe. Trump's strategic roots are also from the McCarthy era, he learned all his ploys from Roy Cohn, McCarthy's chief counsel during the hearings. This is the legacy Trump represents, these ghosts of over half a century past that still haunt American culture. But Trump is a complete vulgarian, lying in bed eating cheeseburgers and drinking Diet Coke, going golfing almost every day. His press conferences are laughable charades of normalcy, presented with all the elan of a two-bit third world dictator with the vocabulary of a 12 year old. If he were still just running his sleazy real estate deals we could ignore him, but as long as he remains in the White House, chaos reigns around the world. Its the beginning of the end of empire and I for one do not cheer on its demise. IMHO its no laughing matter.
Listen to the Slate podcast from the beginning to feel the parallels with the situation today.