I arrived in the US at the height of Watergate, a week or so after Nixon had sacked Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was investigating the break-in. I remember watching the president assuring the people he was “not a crook”.
Manhattan was awash with posters and bumper stickers attacking Nixon from every conceivable angle, including from behind. One caricature showed the president being raped by a fellow prison inmate, with the caption saying “Justice at last”.
But it was one bumper sticker that caught my eye, making me feel smug. It said “Impeach the Cox sacker”, and I was proud of myself for being sufficiently au courant with idiomatic English to understand the naughty pun.
I’m reminded of my youth by the current brouhaha involving another president, Donald Trump. The parallel, I hasten to add, has occurred not just to me but to just about every commentator. It’s that obvious.
For President Trump has just sacked FBI Director James Comey, who was investigating the more than intimate links between Trump’s associates and Putin’s junta.
Trump immediately stated that he himself wasn’t under investigation, but that sounded like a cop-out. Few people would believe that his closest advisers got in bed with Putin without Trump’s authorisation. His own business links with Putin’s government, which is to say organised crime, also merit more scrutiny than they have so far received.
There’s also another similarity between Nixon and Trump: the predominantly left-wing US media hate both regardless of any wrongdoing.
Nixon found himself on the receiving end of journalistic venom in 1948 when, as a young congressman, he interrogated the Soviet spy Alger Hiss on behalf of the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC). Nixon nailed Hiss to the wall, guaranteeing himself the enduring enmity of the press.
Many commentators were sure then that sooner or later the press would get Nixon, and so it eventually proved. This isn’t to suggest he did nothing wrong – what he did was illegal, no question about that.
But the press might have been less self-righteous had a similar indiscretion been committed by, say, one of the Kennedy brothers. In all likelihood the hacks would have sat on the story, as they sat for years on every story documenting JFK’s philandering or his closeness to some Mafia chieftains.
Trump is no pet of the media either, partly for all the promises he made during the campaign, all of them right-wing, most of them empty, and partly because he doesn’t bother to conceal his contempt for the profession.
Again, they probably wouldn’t be making such a big deal out of the president’s Russia links if the president were named Hillary Clinton. Hillary and her hubby-wubby were in cahoots with Putin too, but we don’t read about that every day, do we?
However, apart from similarities between Nixon and Trump, there are also vital differences. For Watergate looks like an innocent prank compared to the sort of crimes Trump and his people might be implicated in.
Yes, Nixon’s people, with his blessing, subverted the electoral process by stealing a nocturnal peek at the Democratic Party headquarters. But at least they were Americans acting on behalf of the US president.
Trump possibly and his staffers definitely might have received tangible help in realising their political ambitions not just from a foreign power, but a hostile one at that. And such a quid had to have a pro quo. Here we might be talking not just dirty tricks but high treason.
Three of Trump’s closest advisers, Carter Page, Paul Manafort and Michael Flynn, have had to resign in disgrace. Secretary of State Tillerson and Attorney General Sessions are under a huge cloud – all for the same reason.
So far no criminal charges have been brought but, if I were those gentlemen, I wouldn’t hold my breath. The investigation continues and getting rid of Comey isn’t going to stop it.
Michael Flynn’s case is especially interesting, and he’s likely to be the first one to find himself in the dock. In 2015-2016 Flynn received about $600 million in beautifully laundered Russian cash. Most of it came from the Russian Sviaz’ Bank, acting through Turkish and Dutch intermediaries.
From August, 2015, Flynn was on a salary of $11,250 a month. This came courtesy of various Russian setups, such as the freight company Volga-Dnepr and Kaspersky Laboratory, the latter a widely known FSB front.
The ostensible employers varied, but the sum remained revealingly the same – Putin’s KGB tradecraft let him down there. Thus Flynn received exactly the same amount as a fee for an interview he contributed to a documentary by the Putin propaganda channel RT.
The documentary was never shown and in all likelihood never shot. This was just another conduit for Flynn’s monthly stipend, this time coming from a TV channel specialising in venomous anti-American propaganda.
Gen. Flynn was honoured with a seat next to Putin at the banquet celebrating RT’s tenth anniversary. I’d suggest that for any American to attend such a function would be immoral. For a future National Security Adviser, it was nothing short of treasonous.
Now it’s accepted as a fact that Putin did all he could to ensure Trump’s election. Whether or not his KGB tricks had a decisive effect is open to question. That they were employed is not.
Paradoxically, another man giving Trump a helping hand was Comey, with his investigation into Hillary Clinton’s leaked e-mails. Much of that information came from Putin, and the two men effectively joined forces, if for different reasons.
I’d suggest that, regardless of whether or not Trump is guilty of inappropriate behaviour involving a hostile foreign power, sacking Comey was fundamentally idiotic.
If he was as incompetent as Trump has declared, he should have been fired either before the investigation started or after Trump’s name had been cleared. As it is, Trump looks like a guilty man trying to cover his tracks.
The investigation won’t go away, the incensed media won’t let it. Every step Trump has ever taken on Russian soil will be scrutinised with meticulous attention, every business deal he has had with Putin, every bit of financing he has received, ditto.
Anybody who knows how large-scale business, especially construction, is conducted in Russia will know that no one involved in it can be squeaky clean. Even assuming that Trump isn’t personally guilty of acting in Putin’s interests – and it’s a generous assumption – some dirt is bound to come up to the surface.
All in all, I’d be surprised if Trump serves out his term to the end. One can see the ghost of Richard Nixon floating through the air. Trump himself is aware of the parallel, remembering how Nixon was forced to release compromising tapes.
That’s why he threatened Comey that he had “better hope there are no tapes of our conversations.” What’s he scared of?
“But the press might have been less self-righteous had a similar indiscretion been committed by, say, one of the Kennedy brothers. In all likelihood the hacks would have sat on the story, as they sat for years on every story documenting JFK’s philandering or his closeness to some Mafia chieftains.”
This brings to mind Pres. and Mrs Obama. Talk about a free ride from the Press. Could they really have been as sickeningly perfect as they have been portrayed?
re the democratic suicide pact: What solution is there that is itself not seriously undemocratic or illiberal?
Any alternative to democracy would by definition be undemocratic, but bot necessarily illiberal. People living under the monarchs of yesteryear had much more liberty (a cognate of liberal) than we have now. And as far back as Plato and Aristotle political thinkers figured out that the best form of government is mixed, with guarantees checks and balances. They regarded pure democracy (which is what we have now) as a guaranteed path to mob rule, with the mob ruling either directly or through elites pandering to it. For details, may I recommend my book Democracy as a Neocon Trick?