Nixon and Trump: same fight, same hatred … and same fate?

A candidate who defends the silent majority, “the one who does not vociferate”. A republican who is shaking up his own party. A president heckled by the big universities and taken in flu by the press. A man caricatured, insulted, hated. It’s not (just) about Donald Trump. Nearly fifty years ago, Richard Nixon encountered more or less the same hostility as the real estate mogul today. In an invigorating and iconoclastic essay, the former diplomat Georges Ayache tells the story of “Tricky Dicky” (“Richard the faker”, his nickname), hated from his first election. Ayache, with the precision of a surgeon, dissects the way in which the hunt for Nixon took place as early as 1945. The wounded beast held out, was elected then re-elected, and carried out arguably the most ambitious foreign policy of the XX^e century. Then Watergate erupted, ousted Nixon from the White House, and permanently discredited a man and his record.

If it is mentioned only once, in the conclusion, Donald Trump sees his shadow hovering over the entire book: same media treatment, same discredit thrown, same qualifiers used. A few days before the American presidential election, Georges Ayache looks back on these two crossed destinies.

Point : Why are you interested in the fall of Richard Nixon? He fell because he had robbed the headquarters of the Democratic Party, the case is heard!

Georges Ayache: The Watergate is the end of the story. I wanted to go back to the beginning and understand how this man had been totally discredited to the point of being hated. I have tried to dig into the origins of this discredit and have come to the conclusion that long before Watergate, Nixon was the subject of repeated campaigns of denigration, of outright lying. All to make him a loathsome character. He’s guilty of Watergate, there’s no question, and I’m writing it, but the odds were already made on a 25-year-long press campaign – from the start the Washington Post depicted Nixon coming out of the sewers in his cartoons.

What we see in your book is that we await its downfall in the 1940s 

It started during his first campaign. In 1945, when he ran for California, he was accused of rigging an election. It stuck to his skin even though he never cheated! He was rude and used extreme means, but he was not the only one. We never forgave him that. Then comes the Hiss affair (Alger Hiss was accused of being a Soviet spy and Nixon, member of the commission, was one of his most bitter opponents and succeeded in having him condemned, Editor’s note). The Liberals never forgave him, and besides, it’s interesting to see that after Watergate, Nixon was struck off the New York Bar – which was quite normal – but the Massachusetts Bar reinstated. Hiss, praising his probity – when he had betrayed his country. There has always been a double standard with Nixon: what we passed to Kennedy, we didn’t do to Nixon. For example, during the Cuban Missile Crisis or the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy calls reporters to withhold information – national security was at stake. These are executed. Nixon will want to do the same for Vietnam, but the papers will not follow him.

Democrats still believe they deserve power and that Republicans are breaking into the White House.

You have found this sentence of an essayist, Edith Efron: “If Richard Nixon is the president of the United States today, it is in spite of the television stations ABC, CBS and NBC.” Together, they broadcast against him every day the equivalent of an editorial in the New York Times, five days a week, during the seven weeks of the electoral campaign. »It reminds us of a current tenant of the White House …

This media campaign will be so strong that it will win with nothing. And he has no state of grace. We will blame him for all the vices for which the previous Democratic administration is responsible. Before taking the oath, in January 1969, he was accused of the Vietnam War, although he had nothing to do with it since it was started by Kennedy and reinforced by Johnson. However, we read on the route of “Nixon assassin”. And this is where the rapprochement with Donald Trump is obvious: he did not set foot in the White House that we already want him to leave. Everything is therefore permitted. Democrats still believe they deserve power and that Republicans are breaking into the White House. They never got over the Roosevelt experience of being in power for 12 years and making the Republicans believe they were completely illegitimate. In 1950, they couldn’t do it against Eisenhower, who was a war hero, so they went on a rampage against Nixon.

Exactly, let’s talk about Trump. It is completely absent from your work, but it is there on every page, because the parallel in the media treatment and the reception of a whole section of the elites is the same as what Richard Nixon experienced.

I would even say that Trump’s detractors cut corners: from the start, in the first week of his mandate, psychiatrists declared him sick. There were the same grievances for Nixon, but later. We appeal to psychiatry to reverse a democratic vote.

We see that they have the same electorate, the same anti-elite discourse… Does the hatred come from there?

The origin is different. For Nixon, it was a personal dislike. It is the character who disturbed. Nixon’s America was certainly a country in flux, but it remained balanced and cohesive. Trump, on the other hand, arrives in a country where the divorce between the people and the elites is consummated – let us not forget that Hillary Clinton called Trump’s voters “deplorable.” Trump has become the herald of the little people – a paradox, because he is a billionaire – and the spokesperson for the little white workers, abandoned by the Democrats. He embodies this cleavage. Trump has a huge advantage over Nixon: he’s a billionaire and refuses to give up. Nixon was a little thing that constantly sought recognition.

Nixon carried out his policy. Trump has no policy. It works day by day.

In the exercise of power, there are differences, however: Nixon snubbed the press, Trump confronts him!

It’s not the same strategy. Richard Nixon is a classic politician. He carried out his policy. Trump has no policy. It works day by day: it is a pragmatist taken to its extreme. He needs the press to fuel the controversies. He tweets. It communicates empty to exist.

Is this why Nixon was triumphantly re-elected in 1972, free from any Watergate-related cheating, and why Trump is in trouble today?

Exactly. Trump’s record was relatively honorable before Covid. Nixon, on the other hand, had a fantastic track record, especially on foreign policy – even if the press, again, put him to Kissinger’s credit. He had a real vision, when we don’t know where Trump is going.

What is your take on this funny presidential campaign between a president hated by part of America and a Democratic candidate who is struggling to generate enthusiasm?

We will vote for a candidate by default. It must be said that Democratic Vice President Kamala Harris is more interesting than Joe Biden. If one of the two wins by a large margin, rather Biden, there will be no problem. If the election is close, and the press takes its desires for Biden’s triumph for reality, we risk having problems. It could even go to court and the decision could be made by the Supreme Court, which is predominantly Republican. What we can see is that this method of election is running out of steam. The system is no longer suitable and he may be the main victim of this election.