| | | Trump is pretending that his pressure on Ukraine’s president was about fighting corruption when we all know that he fosters corruption. He sins in the saintliest areas. It was just announced that he had to pay $2 million to eight charities after admitting that he diverted funds from his foundation to his campaign and to cover business debts.\]
The essential difference between Nixon and Trump lies not in their misconduct or in their unsuitability for office, but in the grim refusal of today’s Republican Party to notice wrongdoing and its determination to stand by Trump come what may.
The famous quote that everyone remembers from Watergate (said by a Republican!) is, “What did the president know, and when did he know it?” That is never asked this time around, as Representative Eric Swalwell has noted, because we largely agree that President Trump knew everything from the start. It was Trump himself who pressured Ukraine and, in a rough transcript we have all seen, who asked Ukraine to investigate the Bidens.
Another difference from Watergate is that Nixon’s abuses did not directly damage national security or cost lives. In contrast, Trump’s suspension of vital military assistance may have added to the Ukrainian death toll and certainly helped Russia.
After the Watergate break-in, there was no immediate epiphanyabout its seriousness. Nixon was re-elected that fall by a huge margin. A year later, more Americans said they were more concerned by Chappaquiddick (where a young woman in Edward Kennedy’s car drowned) than by Watergate. It wasn’t until just before Nixon’s resignation that a majority favored his removal from office.
ADVERTISEMENT
Continue reading the main story
Yet now we regard Nixon’s behavior with widespread revulsion, and someday I believe we will feel similarly about Trump’s. I worry about the political consequences of impeachment, but still favor it as a way to create accountability and establish norms against abuses of power to interfere in elections.
What’s different from Watergate is not the nature of the misconduct, but the shamelessness of the defense. |
|
