Political Pathology: Once again, the United States risks falling under the spell of a man pathologically incapable of quarantining his own disreputable impulses from the immense powers of the supreme political office he is seeking.
IN THE FINAL, desperate days of the Nixon Administration, a
crucial instruction was communicated to the commanders of military bases in or
near the American capital. Any
presidential order pertaining to the disposition of units under their
command should be obeyed only if it was countersigned by James Schlesinger, the
Secretary of Defence.
That was how seriously the situation had deteriorated in the
early months of 1974. Senior figures in the government of the United States
were taking grim precautions against the possibility that Richard Nixon, acting
in his capacity as Commander-in-Chief of the armed forces, might attempt to
forestall his imminent impeachment by ordering tanks onto the streets of
Washington DC.
Why was the prospect of such an unprecedented abuse of
presidential power considered plausible? The answer lies in what came to be
known as the “Saturday Night Massacre”.
On Saturday, 20 October 1973, President Nixon ordered his
Attorney General, Elliot Richardson, to sack Archibald Cox, the Independent
Special Prosecutor appointed by the Justice Department to investigate the
Watergate scandal. Cox’s investigation had advanced perilously close to the
Oval Office and Nixon wanted him gone.
Richardson refused to obey the President’s order and immediately
tended his resignation. Upon being given the same instruction, the Deputy
Attorney General of the United States, William Ruckelhaus, also refused and
resigned. Undaunted, Nixon ordered the Solicitor General of the United States,
Robert Bork, brought to the White House. After swearing-in Bork as his new
Attorney General, Nixon immediately ordered him to sack Cox. With considerable
reluctance, Bork complied.
It was the Saturday Night Massacre that finally drove
American public opinion towards impeachment. The President’s evident contempt
for the US Constitution and the Rule of Law made the Watergate accusations
all-too-believable. The events of 20 October also caused a number of senior
White House officials and Cabinet members to wonder just how far Nixon would be
prepared to go to avoid impeachment, arraignment, almost certain conviction,
and, quite possibly, incarceration.
For students of American history these forty-year-old events
have been pulled into sharp focus by Donald Trump’s threat to put Hillary
Clinton in jail. Routinely castigating his opponent as “Crooked Hillary”, Trump
used the occasion of last Sunday’s Second Presidential Debate to inform his
opponent that: “If I win, I am going to instruct my attorney general to get a
special prosecutor to look into your situation.” When Clinton responded: “It’s
just awfully good that someone with the temperament of Donald Trump is not in
charge of the law in our country.” Trump shot back: “Because you’d be in jail.”
This is a chillingly Nixonian exchange. Once again, the
United States risks falling under the spell of a man pathologically incapable
of quarantining his own disreputable impulses from the immense powers of the
supreme political office he is seeking.
The attempt to establish an “imperial presidency”, began in
1937 with Franklin Roosevelt’s unsuccessful bid to pack the Supreme Court. By
the end of the 1960s, it was threatening to turn the American Constitution into
a museum piece.
The Watergate scandal and Nixon’s downfall had vindicated
the Founding Fathers’ commitment to the doctrine of the “separation of powers”. Under the US
Constitution, a President Trump has no more right to hire a special prosecutor
than President Nixon had to fire one. In a democracy, presidents don’t put people
in jail, courts do – and only after the accused has been found guilty, at a
fair trial, according to law.
Unfortunately, two generations of Americans have grown to
maturity since the Saturday Night Massacre, and the lessons of Watergate are
only now recalled by ageing Baby Boomers.
But if the “great silent majority” that re-elected Nixon in
1972 were voting for a strong leader to quell the waning “youth revolt” and
restore “law and order” (i.e. repress African-Americans) the ambitions of the
marginalised white males currently cheering-on Donald Trump are much more
perilous.
What Trump’s supporters want is an America purged of all the
social gains achieved by blacks, women and gays since the 1960s. An America
ready to wall-up Latino immigrants below the Rio Grande. An America in which
Muslims are neither seen nor heard.
This is the America they bellow for so raucously whenever
their putative Emperor/President promises to “Make America Great Again”.
And because Hillary Clinton is standing in his way: “Lock
her up!”
This essay was
originally published in The Waikato Times, The Taranaki Daily News, The
Timaru Herald, The Otago Daily Times and The Greymouth Star of Friday, 14 October 2016.
