You’ll read a lot about how the 50th anniversary of the Watergate case has fitted into public hearings held by the House committee investigating the January 6, 2021 insurrection at the US Capitol, which began Thursday.
There’s a lot to compare between the two presidents accused of influencing elections nearly half a century apart.
Efforts to undermine elections
Former President Richard Nixon’s covert efforts to meddle in the 1972 election echo Donald Trump’s public effort to overturn the 2020 election.
But this is not a case of history repeating itself. Trump’s effort was arguably more brazen and more dangerous, as it threatened the peaceful transfer of power for the first time since the civil war, when southern states seceded from the Union after Abraham Lincoln’s victory in 1860.
January 6 Hearings vs. Watergate Hearings
The House hearings on the January 6 attacks are made for TV — literally, there’s a TV producer helping to tell the story — and designed to re-engage audiences in the near-miss of American democracy.
They will create a record of facts at a time when Democrats and Republicans cannot agree on what is real. They will potentially sue the Department of Justice for things recorded on video and already in the public record.
The Watergate hearings, on the other hand, paved the way and helped uncover the existing conspiracy.
Held by a Senate special committee nearly a year after White House-backed agents invaded Democratic National Committee headquarters, the hearings captured the nation’s attention.
Watergate Hearings Featured a High-ranking Nixon Administration Whistleblower
Trump’s top aides have refused to cooperate with the House committee investigating the January 6 attack.
In contrast, at the Watergate hearings, Nixon’s White House adviser, John Dean, turned in the president and told the world about a conspiracy hatched in the White House. His impressive testimony in June 1973 was the mainstay of the hearings.
Watergate Hearings Started a Chain Reaction
The Watergate hearings also discovered the existence of the now-infamous tapes of Nixon’s White House conversations that corroborated Dean’s testimony.
Nixon’s effort to keep these tapes out of the public eye led to the “Saturday Night Massacre” in October 1973, in which both top Justice Department officials resigned in protest.
What to Expect from the Chamber’s January 6 Hearings
While new information is expected to be shared at the House hearings, the basic narrative is already known.
Many Americans have already heard the audio of Trump asking election officials in Georgia to “find” votes for him. They know that the protesters were trying to disrupt the Electoral College vote count. They’ve already seen reports of Republicans and Fox TV commentators texting their chief of staff, Mark Meadows, begging for help that didn’t come from Trump on Jan.
It could be former vice president Mike Pence’s top advisers who will provide compelling testimony at the January 6 House hearings. Pence, who presided over the counting of electoral votes on January 6, 2021, was targeted by protesters.
Senate Republicans Never Turned Against Trump Like They Did Nixon
Nixon resigned because he had no power to win impeachment. Republican senators told him that he had lost nearly all of his support among Republicans in the Senate and would be thrown out of power in an impeachment trial if he did not resign.
“Mr. President, you have five votes. And one of them isn’t mine,” Arizona’s then Senator Barry Goldwater told Nixon at the White House, according to Washington Post journalist Bob Woodward in the “Watergate: Blueprint for Scandal” documentary series, reproduced by CNN in the United States.
Trump won impeachment twice: while in office and shortly after he left. All but seven Senate Republicans — even many of those who criticized Trump after the Capitol invasion, such as Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky — would not vote to disqualify Trump from running for president again.
More than a year later, most Republicans have stopped criticizing Trump.
The difference between then and now
Trump wields more absolute power over Republicans than Nixon did, which is a symptom or a contributing factor to the crippling power of partisanship in politics today.
This may be the most important difference between the Watergate scandal and the January 6 investigation.
“What America and the world saw in 1974 was the most powerful man in the world losing his job,” says historian Timothy Naftali, a professor at New York University and former director of the Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Museum. “And for anyone who had doubts about the strength of the US Constitution, what they witnessed removed those doubts.”
Trump survived impeachment and did not resign. But he lost his job when voters expelled him from office. The question today is whether his refusal to accept that loss will raise new doubts about the strength of the Constitution.
Journalist Carl Bernstein compared Nixon and Trump during an appearance along with Woodward on CNN’s “Reliable Sources” program on Sunday (5). He said Trump’s misdeeds make him “the first insurgent president of the United States” and eclipse the criminal misbehavior of Nixon.
But the root of your sins is the same.
“Both crimes began by undermining the most basic element of democracy,” Bernstein said, “free and fair elections.”
Source: CNN Brasil
