What's a serious executive indiscretion?
| By elainethefirst - Feb 21st, 2006 at 3:11 pm EST |
Since it was revealed that the Bush Administration has been illegally wiretapping calls coming into or going out of phone numbers in the United States, there have been attempts to justify such an act as White House politics as usual. Such an "everybody does it" mentality can be traced back to the Watergate investigation of the early 1970s that led to the indictment and conviction of a numerous amount of high-levels employees of the Nixon administraion and the resignation of Nixon himself. Such an unprecedented affair did establish one precedent in the American consciousness: that all politicans are equally corrupt.
Ironically, the legacy of Watergate seems to be not a desire to root out presidential indiscretions a la Nixon, but the exact opposite: to let them pass because they are merely representative of politics as usual. Witness, for instance the Iran-Contra Affair, also an unprecedented and wholly illegal act wherein high-level aides in the Reagan Administration actively funnelled money from arms sales to Iran, one of the most rogue nations of our time to fund a violent rightist group in Nicaragua.
Not only has the legacy of Watergate resulted in the excusing of grave presidential indiscretions like Iran-Contra, but it has allowed politicized special interest groups to conflate minor indiscretions with major ones. Thus rabid interests spent the entire two terms of the Clinton Presidency trying to prove Clinton guilty of something, anything, finally forced to try and prosecute on a lie about an unfortunate but hardly impeachable affair with an intern. The rhetorical technique of using the "gate" from Watergate as a suffix to label something a political scandal (e.g. "Monicagate," "Travelgate") helped to conflate made-up indiscretions with the grave indiscretion that had forced Nixon to resign in 1974.
What needs to be cleared up in order to understand whether a president has abused their office is the conventional wisdom that "everybody does it." Does everybody really do it? In studying Nixon in a course this past quarter, that question has nagged me. Nixon's Administration had, as I have learned, yielded some foreign and domestic accomplishments: among them decreasing U.S. involvement in the disastorous Vietnam War, normalizing relations with China and Russia, establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. In retrospective accounts, Nixon has been portrayed by many liberals--even people who did not like him at the time--as our last progressive president. If Nixon's prime reason for resignation, which was the accumulation of irrefutable evidence that he actively tried to prevent a government investigation into the Watergate burglary, is simply politics as usual, Nixon could be viewed as a man who became a target of a nihilistic cynicism of the time. Revisionists have in fact persisted at this exercise.
Such revisionism makes it important to understand whether Nixon was just part of politics as usual, and therefore unfairly vilified by the press and a Democratic majority in Congress. I finally arrived at an answer that illuminated this question for me. In one of our books for the Nixon class, a book titled called The Presidency of Richard Nixon author Melvin Small provides some perspective on Watergate. After noting that Nixon's White House taping system was by no means unprecedented, Small goes on to note all that was unprecedented about the Nixon administration:
and on the National Security claim, which we are currently hearing from the Bush Administration:
and
Such a comparison between Nixon and other American Presidents vindicates clearly and succinctly that the Nixon Administration's indiscretions were unprecedented, that they weren't politics as usual.
Such a comparison is also relevant for us today in assessing whether the Bush administration ought to be investigated for their indiscretions which are, like Nixon's, numerous. John Dean, who was once Nixon's Chief White House Counsel, offers his perspective:
Dean goes on to describe how Bush's activities parallel Nixon's. If Nixon's administration was rightly accused of having committed unprecedented, impeachable offenses--as both Dean's and Melvin Small's analyses suggest--so to should Bush's administration.
So now that we have gotten that nagging question of whether Bush and Nixon were playing politics as usual out of the way, can a full and fair investigation of the Bush Adminstration indiscretion please commence?
Ironically, the legacy of Watergate seems to be not a desire to root out presidential indiscretions a la Nixon, but the exact opposite: to let them pass because they are merely representative of politics as usual. Witness, for instance the Iran-Contra Affair, also an unprecedented and wholly illegal act wherein high-level aides in the Reagan Administration actively funnelled money from arms sales to Iran, one of the most rogue nations of our time to fund a violent rightist group in Nicaragua.
Not only has the legacy of Watergate resulted in the excusing of grave presidential indiscretions like Iran-Contra, but it has allowed politicized special interest groups to conflate minor indiscretions with major ones. Thus rabid interests spent the entire two terms of the Clinton Presidency trying to prove Clinton guilty of something, anything, finally forced to try and prosecute on a lie about an unfortunate but hardly impeachable affair with an intern. The rhetorical technique of using the "gate" from Watergate as a suffix to label something a political scandal (e.g. "Monicagate," "Travelgate") helped to conflate made-up indiscretions with the grave indiscretion that had forced Nixon to resign in 1974.
What needs to be cleared up in order to understand whether a president has abused their office is the conventional wisdom that "everybody does it." Does everybody really do it? In studying Nixon in a course this past quarter, that question has nagged me. Nixon's Administration had, as I have learned, yielded some foreign and domestic accomplishments: among them decreasing U.S. involvement in the disastorous Vietnam War, normalizing relations with China and Russia, establishing the Environmental Protection Agency, among others. In retrospective accounts, Nixon has been portrayed by many liberals--even people who did not like him at the time--as our last progressive president. If Nixon's prime reason for resignation, which was the accumulation of irrefutable evidence that he actively tried to prevent a government investigation into the Watergate burglary, is simply politics as usual, Nixon could be viewed as a man who became a target of a nihilistic cynicism of the time. Revisionists have in fact persisted at this exercise.
Such revisionism makes it important to understand whether Nixon was just part of politics as usual, and therefore unfairly vilified by the press and a Democratic majority in Congress. I finally arrived at an answer that illuminated this question for me. In one of our books for the Nixon class, a book titled called The Presidency of Richard Nixon author Melvin Small provides some perspective on Watergate. After noting that Nixon's White House taping system was by no means unprecedented, Small goes on to note all that was unprecedented about the Nixon administration:
The Nixon administration would be revealed to be the most scandal-ridden administration in American history. And those scandals did not involve merely looting the public treasury by public officials, as had occurred during the Grant and Harding administrations, or the irresponsible and reckless sexual peccadilloes of John F. Kennedy and Bill Clinton. They revolved around a variety of illegal and extralegal political actions directed by the president and his chief assistants, including the former attorney general of the United States, that attempted to subvert the American political system (273).
and on the National Security claim, which we are currently hearing from the Bush Administration:
National Security was not at stake here. The CIA's only involvement with the burglars involved the technical assitance that Hunt's friends in the agency had provided for the [Daniel] Ellsberg break-in and other intelligence gambits. Nixons' fraudulent employment of national security constituted his first major invovlement in an illegal scheme to curtail the Watergate investigation (277).
and
Watergate did not begin when CREEP operatives broke into Democratic headquarters in 1972. It began when Nixon took office, armed with a private slush fund, prepared to do battle by fair means and foul against his enemies. Although he felt he was merely playing political hardball, no president before or after ordered or participated in so many serious illegal and extralegal acts that violated constitutional principles. The wiretapping and surveillance of his enemies in politics and the media, his attempts to replace civil-service bureaucrats with loyal Republicans, his intervention in the Democratic primary politics, and his shakedown of corporate America for campaign contributions came close to undermining the entire political system (310).
Such a comparison between Nixon and other American Presidents vindicates clearly and succinctly that the Nixon Administration's indiscretions were unprecedented, that they weren't politics as usual.
Such a comparison is also relevant for us today in assessing whether the Bush administration ought to be investigated for their indiscretions which are, like Nixon's, numerous. John Dean, who was once Nixon's Chief White House Counsel, offers his perspective:
There can be no serious question that warrantless wiretapping, in violation of the law, is impeachable. After all, Nixon was charged in Article II of his bill of impeachment with illegal wiretapping for what he, too, claimed were national security reasons.
These parallel violations underscore the continuing, disturbing parallels between this Administration and the Nixon Administration - parallels I also discussed in a prior column.
Indeed, here, Bush may have outdone Nixon: Nixon's illegal surveillance was limited; Bush's, it is developing, may be extraordinarily broad in scope...later reports have suggested that NSA is "data mining" literally millions of calls - and has been given access by the telecommunications companies to "switching" stations through which foreign communications traffic flows.
In sum, this is big-time, Big Brother electronic surveillance.
Dean goes on to describe how Bush's activities parallel Nixon's. If Nixon's administration was rightly accused of having committed unprecedented, impeachable offenses--as both Dean's and Melvin Small's analyses suggest--so to should Bush's administration.
So now that we have gotten that nagging question of whether Bush and Nixon were playing politics as usual out of the way, can a full and fair investigation of the Bush Adminstration indiscretion please commence?
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Comments are closed for this post.
Nobody got tossed out over the Louisiana Purchase, for instance.
Me, personally? I'm a fan of FISA courts, executives that aren't overreaching and arrogant in their exercise of power, and the rule of law.
But at the end of the day, it's hard to get worked up about Bush at least doing something for once to fight terrorists.
People who cry "But the principle!..." aren't being serious about the American electorate. The ends don't fully justify the means, but they make a wider variety of means palatable.
When he's caught ordering break-ins at MoveOn headquarters, then we'll talk.
Weeeelllll.....Link
And also Link
So I guess we can talk, eh?
Surely you remember hearing at some time counter-terrorism operations being described as analogous to hunting for a needle in a haystack? Our intelligence analysts, already overburdened with a workload that they simply cannot handle at this point, now have to sift through information culled from conversations that may or may not have anything to do with terrorism, in addition to their duties concerning those we already suspect of terrorist activities.
But here's the thing: I could understand continuing this patently illegal program if it yielded positive results. The only problem is that, according to the FBI, this program is completely impractical and wasting the resources we have. Link
Let's not pretend that this is fighting terrorists. It's tough talk at best.
You realize this cuts both ways, right? People like you who cry "But the electorate!..." aren't being serious about the principles involved. While the laudability of the stated ends may increase the palatability of the varied means, that doesn't permit the means to trample the very freedoms that comprise the ends we seek. In other words, you're defending the idea that you can only save this village by destroying it.
I'm with Patrick Henry on this one:
So many posts scrolling by these days! But just a quip - luckily, there's little need to be serious about the principles involved. Patrick Henry did well for himself, but that was more a product of historical and situational factors than his life outlook being a good and universally applicable one.
Regarding the above - I've read the article you linked to before, and surveillance on organizations such as the ACLU and Anti-War activist groups, while alarming and all kinds of BadWrong, does not rise to anywhere near the level of a MoveOn break-in as stated above. Furthermore, the personal involvement of the President is a major issue when it comes to impeachment - the combo of those two factors (the difference in kind, the difference in presidential involvement) makes impeachment a relative non-starter.