Through the Looking Glass ... Again

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"History doesn't repeat itself, but it does rhyme."

Mark Twain

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Forty years ago this summer, the Watergate scandal swallowed the presidency of Richard Nixon.

I was a boy when that happened, and I'll admit that I didn't understand all the issues involved, but there was one very simple fact that seemed obvious to me.

When Alexander Butterfield revealed the existence of the White House taping system in July 1973, it was obvious that there was a completely neutral eyewitness to the White House conversations about which lawmakers were asking — the tapes that had been made of those conversations.

Congressional investigators did not have to rely on flawed human memories. They could listen to the tapes, and those tapes could verify what was said and by whom. Anyone who had answered truthfully when asked about his involvement in the coverup would be exonerated. Anyone who had not answered those questions truthfully would be exposed as dishonest.

When the taping system's existence was revealed, I heard many of Nixon's defenders say that they wished he would release the tapes. They would prove he had been telling the truth, and the Watergate scandal would go away.

Well, that was the thinking, but Nixon steadfastly refused to release the tapes — and the longer he did, the more his support tended to erode. Then as now, perception was reality, and the growing perception was that Nixon had something to hide.

That perception turned out to be correct, but the American people, the vast majority of whom had voted for Nixon's re–election two years earlier, were hesitant to believe it. At the time — and still today — I believed that hesitance enabled Nixon to drag the scandal out a few more months.

If Nixon had been blessed with an engaging personality, like the present occupant of the White House, he might have been able to drag his feet long enough to finish his term. But Nixon's was a dark, brooding kind of personality, cold and prickly, not warm and fuzzy. He didn't inspire much loyalty — except from those who, for whatever reason, did his bidding (and paid for it).

Barack Obama, however, does have a warm and fuzzy personality. That is the real secret of his success. His ratings on that question about whether a president (or presidential candidate) cares about people like the respondent are always through the roof. That's what Obama's 2012 campaign was about, wasn't it? It was designed to persuade swing voters that Mitt Romney and the Republicans were elitist snobs who didn't care about ordinary folks — or, to be more precise, blacks, women, gays, immigrants, the poor.

Re–election campaigns tend to be about achievements, those that are finished and those that are works in progress. Well, that's the way they used to be.

While the fact that Obama made history as the first nonwhite president was a pleasant bonus, it wasn't the main reason why most people voted for him in 2008. He was elected mostly because of the terrible economy and the escalating jobs crisis, and Americans wanted to be out of two wars that were sucking up American lives and treasure at an alarming rate.

When times are bad, voters go for the other option.

In short, there were serious problems that needed to be resolved. Certain expectations came with the job, and voters decided, as they almost always do in such a situation, to go with the other party's nominee.

Economists later told America that the recession actually ended after about six months of Obama's presidency, and some kind of recovery should have taken place — but, if asked about it today, most Americans will say that they don't believe the recession ever ended — or, if it did, they don't believe there has been a recovery.

Obama couldn't run on his economic record. He had a more stable foreign policy record in September 2012 — and he may well have intended to run on that record — but then there was that attack on the embassy in Benghazi, and four Americans were killed, including the ambassador. He and Joe Biden continued to mention the fact that Osama bin Laden had been killed on his watch, but the race was close in the autumn of 2012.

Perhaps the Democrats felt the truth about Benghazi would undermine the case they had been making that Obama's foreign policy was succeeding. That is the argument the president's detractors have made, anyway.

That didn't work too well in 2012, but a lot has happened since then. Obama's second–term agenda hasn't been getting any traction — whether that is due, as the president contends, to obstructionism or his administration's own shortcomings, as in the rollout of Obamacare, is a subject for a different debate — and his party already is facing mounting problems in what always (from the perspective of history) figured to be a problematic sixth–year midterm election.

And now the release of emails from September 2012 have raised new and troubling questions about the administration's actions on the night of the attack — and how those actions may have been motivated by domestic political concerns.

House Republicans want to assemble a select committee to investigate, to ask the questions that the emails have raised, but their Democratic colleagues are not sure they will participate.

Seems to me that would be a lot like when Nixon refused to release the tapes.

My understanding is that the Democrats cannot be compelled to participate in the committee's hearings, but the Republicans still would hold them. Do the Democrats really want to let every assertion that is made go unchallenged? And in a midterm election year?

As I understand it, a select committee does not have the authority to charge anyone with anything, but, like the Senate Watergate Committee 40 years ago, it can call witnesses and issue subpoenas.

If no one is there to defend the administration, it will feed a perception that can only add to Democrats' electoral woes.

On the other hand, Republicans need to be careful. The wind is at their backs on this one, but they need to avoid appearing too political. If they make their argument about transparency and good, law–abiding government, it will help their cause.

As will Nixon's true legacy in all of this — the case of United States v. Nixon.

When Clinton Hit Back

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"What we're doing is sending a message against the people who were responsible for planning this operation. ... [If] anybody asks the same people to do it again, they will remember this message."

Secretary of Defense Les Aspin
Washington Post
June 1993

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Believe it or not, there was a time — not so long ago — when American presidents wouldn't hesitate to act if a single American was threatened, much less actually injured or killed.

Such a case occurred 20 years ago today.

To put it in context: A couple of months earlier, former President George H.W. Bush — the man Bill Clinton had beaten in the previous year's presidential election — was in Kuwait to commemorate the conclusion of the Persian Gulf War. Seventeen people were arrested and charged with conspiring to kill Bush with explosives that were hidden in a vehicle.

No explosions occurred. No one was hurt. But Clinton was convinced, largely because of information gathered and analyzed by American foreign and domestic intelligence operatives, that the plot originated in Iraq — and 20 years ago today, he used American military might for the first time, ordering nearly two dozen cruise missile strikes on Iraqi intelligence facilities.

The strikes were meant both as retaliation for the plot and warning not to attempt anything like it again. But Clinton didn't shoot first and ask questions afterward. He explored numerous options, even those he felt did not go far enough. Eventually he selected one on the recommendation of the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

"I felt we would have been justified in hitting Iraq harder," Clinton wrote in his presidential memoirs, "but [Colin] Powell made a persuasive case that the attack would deter further Iraqi terrorism and that dropping bombs on more targets, including presidential palaces, would have been unlikely to kill Saddam Hussein and almost certain to kill more innocent people."

Most of the missiles hit their intended targets, but a few overshot, and eight civilians were killed.

"It was a stark reminder," Clinton wrote, "that no matter how careful the planning and how accurate the weapons, when that kind of firepower is unleashed, there are usually unintended consequences."

The occasion of this anniversary has led me to think about two recent events that tell me much of what I need to know about U.S. policy in the 21st century.

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First, the evasive stance taken by Barack Obama and the members of his administration after the deadly attacks on the embassy in Benghazi last year tells me the executive branch is not willing to stand up for Americans abroad, be they dead or alive — unless there are clear benefits in doing so.

Second, Obama's recent argument in a speech at the National Defense University that the war on terror must end as all wars do shows a staggering naivete. Rhetorically, it sounds good, but the problem is that the war on terror is not a conventional war with armies and generals. It cannot be resolved in conventional ways — if, in fact, it can be resolved at all.

When you are dealing with terrorists, you are not dealing with anything as organized or concentrated as a single army or nation. Your enemies could be from anywhere on the globe — including your own back yard — and as long as even one is on the loose, so is the danger.

Sympathizers with the opposition have always been around — there were Nazi and Japanese sympathizers in America during World War II — but they weren't generally viewed as combatants unless they took some kind of aggressive action.

By the very nature of their activities, terrorists must be regarded — automatically — as combatants.

The idea that America can arbitrarily declare the war on terror over is as imperialistic as any I have heard, and it tells terrorists around the world, OK, we're going back to sleep now. It harkens back to a time when the prevailing attitude was that we were always in the right; therefore, we were entitled to impose our will on others. We — and only we — could decide when a war began and when it ended.

It was the same attitude — the concept of manifest destiny — that directed the westward expansion in the 19th century. America is entitled to seize what it wants.

American imperialism — as well as hubris — is what the terrorists really would like to see destroyed.

Those Second-Term Blues

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About 7½ months ago, following Mitt Romney's decisive victory over Barack Obama in their first presidential debate, I observed that what Americans saw on their TV screens was completely at odds with the narrative they had been spoon fed by the Obama administration.

"And, in my experience," I wrote, "when people conclude that they have been deceived about one thing, they become suspicious of other things that are said by that person or whoever is authorized to speak on that person's behalf."

I still believe that even though the truth of it wasn't immediately apparent — because, also in my experience, it can take awhile for these things to sink in.

Obama went on to win the election, but I believe the seeds of distrust were planted in some voters' minds that night. I think that goes a long way toward explaining why Obama was the first president in nearly a century to win a second term by smaller popular and electoral vote margins than he received the first time.

(Note: I'm not saying that was the only reason why Romney lost. He made his share of mistakes, and the Republican Party has some problems that it needs to address with certain demographic groups. But the fact remains that the Obama campaign focused on negative campaigning to the exclusion of emphasizing a vision for the future to an extent that has rarely been seen in presidential politics — and seldom from Democrats.)

It was not a resounding victory for the president. It was a tepid endorsement, much like the one George W. Bush received in 2004. And, like Bush, Obama's residual good will appears to be eroding.

Comparisons to other presidents in recent memory who lost the confidence of the people may still be a bit premature, but I keep coming back to the fact that, in my lifetime, no other recently re–elected president has been hit with three major scandals at once so early in his second term.

All three of the scandals — the failure to even attempt to defend the embassy in Benghazi and the Americans in it; the use of the IRS as a weapon against organizations because of their political leanings; and the thoroughly unjustifiable seizure of reporters' phone records by the Department of Justice — are affronts to this country's commitment to freedom and justice.

Frankly, they all concern me — but, perhaps because I am a journalist, I am most offended by the misuse of the Department of Justice. If there is no freedom of the press, then there is no freedom. Period.

Who knows what else lurks just beneath the surface in this White House?

Second terms, as I have observed here before, are notorious for being disasters, but there is usually more of a honeymoon between the election and the onset of the administration's decline. This administration, however, seems to be intent on setting a record for rapid implosion.

Obama took the oath of office to begin his second term almost four months ago, and he started suffering legislative setbacks almost immediately. He has never articulated an agenda for the second term — he avoided doing so during the campaign — and the scandals that are now overwhelming his presidency all appear to have begun with a narcissistic obsession with himself rather than a desire to further a political ideology.

Certainly, he was never motivated by anything resembling a desire to serve the will of the people. That is something that appears to be dawning on some Americans for the first time.

Even so, it should surprise no one when this presidency collapses like a house of cards.

Of Course, It's Political

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It seems oddly appropriate that the House hearings into Benghazi began last week — less than two weeks before the 40th anniversary of the start of the Senate Watergate Committee hearings.

I've heard Benghazi compared to Watergate. I've heard some defenders of the Obama administration protest that "other administrations" did worse, which was, perhaps, the most egregious non–denial denial that was used during the Watergate investigation. And my answer to those Obama supporters who have used it is the same one I heard my parents give to Nixon's defenders 40 years ago — "This isn't about what other administrations did. This is about what this administration did."

Perhaps the most persistent question I've heard has been, "Is it political?" And the obvious answer is: Well, of course, it's political.

I believe Tip O'Neill was right when he said, "All politics is local." But the flip side is that there is, at the very least, a political aspect to everything. Thus, everything is politics. It may not be politics as many people understand the term. It can loosely be described as some kind of policy or protocol — maybe it is sexual politics or racial politics, not necessarily governmental politics — whatever one person or group uses for leverage over another.

Ever since Benghazi, I have heard defenders of the Obama administration use feeble excuses to deflect attention — and they were successful enough to win a narrow re–election in November — but the more we learn about what really happened, the more unavoidable becomes the conclusion that the handling of the attack on the U.S. embassy was motivated entirely by politics.

That was what motivated Richard Nixon and his subordinates as well — politics. It is what motivates every officeholder who ends up being caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Barack Obama is not an exception.

I don't know if Obama is paranoid — or, if he is, if he is as paranoid as Nixon was. Most presidents wind up being psychoanalyzed after their presidencies are over; accordingly, I prefer to leave such evaluations to future historians/psychologists.

It does seem to me, though, that anyone who seeks the presidency must have an enormous ego simply to think he (or she) can handle what must be unrelenting pressure. In a democracy, most such pressure is bound to come from the president's loyal opposition — and each president has plenty of that.

Consequently, any president who seeks a second term must have an ego that is so big we mere mortals can't comprehend it. Because that person has already faced the unique challenges of the presidency — and has concluded that he (and perhaps he alone) is qualified to face them.

I'm no psychiatrist, but it seems to me that an ego can be a powerful — as well as a fragile — thing. Protecting it becomes essential in an election year. I understand that. It was necessary for Nixon 41 years ago, when the burglary at the Democratic National Headquarters threatened to derail his re–election campaign.

Basically the same thing happened with Benghazi.

Nixon's actions were harder for me to fathom. He enjoyed a much higher approval rating than Obama, but, beneath it all, he was not well liked — and he knew it. He really was paranoid — and I suppose he knew that, too. Self–loathing seemed to stream from his pores.

And Nixon never enjoyed the fawning adulation of the media that Obama has. As much as the modern media (mostly the broadcast media) adores Obama, it hated Nixon that much.

But he must have had a huge ego to think he could handle all the problems that existed in the United States and the world when he was elected to the presidency. I have come to believe that it was all politics to him.

Politics is a dirty word in many circles. Some folks voted for Obama when he first ran for president because they didn't perceive him as being — wait for it — political. Isn't that a quaint notion?

I suppose it is a truism, however, that nearly everything in life is driven by politics — even if it isn't overtly so.

Accordingly, even the most modestly realistic person must acknowledge that Washington, D.C., is a political place. It is occupied by politicians. They may not have started adult life as politicians. They may have started as lawyers or doctors or community organizers, but if they have been elected to a federal post, they're politicians.

And that, I think, makes them more sensitive to political concerns than most — no matter how clumsily they may try to appease those considerations.

The Benghazi coverup worked for awhile, but it has been unraveling.

Perhaps the foremost political analyst in America today, Michael Barone of the Washington Examiner, has been critical of the Obama presidency in the past, but this weekend he was asking what Obama and Hillary Clinton were thinking when they were blaming an allegedly offensive video for a protest that spiraled out of control.

That isn't a bad question to be asking, even though we know — don't we? — the answer: Politics.

As it was with the Nixon administration, though, I suppose we'll have to be subjected to months of non–denial denials before we figure out for ourselves what the truth is.

A Big Election About Small Things

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"If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."

Barack Obama
2008 Democratic National Convention

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Presidential elections are seldom about what they should be about.

I probably should have learned that on this day in 1972 — or, at least, not long thereafter.

As I have mentioned here before, my mother was a huge supporter of George McGovern, the quixotic Democratic nominee who ran against President Richard Nixon that year. McGovern tried to run on the big issues of the day — the biggest of which was the Vietnam War, which had so divided America four years earlier when Nixon had been elected president.

And I frequently went with Mom when she was campaigning door to door for McGovern that fall.

She admired the fact that McGovern spoke about the difficult issues of war and peace, poverty and prosperity, and, while I don't remember McGovern's loss on this day being a surprise to her, as I mentioned on the occasion of McGovern's death last month, she must have known what was coming. Everyone did.

It was a different time, which is something, I suppose, that younger Americans simply cannot understand any more than they can understand how their elders used to listen to recordings on discs several times the size of modern CDs that were deceptively heavy and could only be played with — of all things — needles.

It was the last election in which the major party nominees did not debate at least once — Nixon had learned his lesson from the experience of debating John F. Kennedy and declined all such offers.

Such a move probably would be greeted by a huge public outcry today. Modern voters expect presidential candidates to debate each other, but it merited only a couple of references by most observers and then it was dropped when it drew no traction.

Neither, for that matter, did the Watergate break–in and coverup. Oh, Watergate was mentioned from time to time, but, as Jason Robards observed in the movie version of "All the President's Men" — "Half the country never even heard of the word 'Watergate.' Nobody gives a s***."

And that is my memory of the general attitude toward the break–in. It was one of those things that may happen in a political campaign. It was deplorable, everyone agreed; the people who participated in the planning and the execution of the plan should be brought to justice, but it wasn't the candidate's fault. The candidate, especially if he was an incumbent, could not possibly be expected to know everything that went on within his campaign organization and in his name.

People today — perhaps foolishly, given what we learned about human nature from that episode in our history — expect better than that from their candidates. They wouldn't stand for any of the old–school shenanigans and dirty tricks that, in hindsight, marked all of Nixon's campaigns in one way or another.

"It was customary, during and after the campaign, to say that the American people did not care," wrote Theodore H. White in "The Making of the President 1972."

"Wise men agreed, and the polls supported them, that it meant little — that Americans had become callous, too cynical to worry about morality in government."

White was torn on the issue in what was the final volume in his "The Making of the President" series. Based on his observations from the campaign trail, White wrote, people were concerned about what they were hearing about the president's men and what they had been up to.

And, based on the number of voters who came to the polls compared to four years earlier, White concluded that Nixon "failed to maximize his potential support."

"[I]t is possible," White wrote, "that at least 3 or 4 million Americans were so disillusioned by both candidates that they chose not to vote at all."

For those who did vote, however, there was "an open choice of ideas, a free choice of directions, and they chose Richard Nixon."

And, while some people did try to make the 1972 election about the big things — the war, the economy, Watergate — my memory is that the Nixon campaign focused on small things — inconsistencies in McGovern's voting record or verbal missteps — and didn't spend too much time talking about what Nixon had done or what he hoped to do.

Nixon had told voters in 1968 that he had a "secret plan" to end the war in six months, a plan he could not reveal because of the sensitivity of the information and the strategy. The war was still going on in 1972. He had failed to achieve the thing that most Americans wanted more than anything else.

If the campaign had been about that, Nixon probably would have faced — in the words of one of his successors — a "one–term proposition." And, privately, Nixon was bitter about the war with which Kennedy and Johnson had saddled him.

There were arguments that Nixon could have made that there had been real improvements on long–term propositions — because ending the war and reviving a sagging economy that was just beginning to experience long–term issues on energy really were long–term problems. It was unrealistic to regard them as anything else.

Of course, promising to end the war in six months was unrealistic and probably ill–advised, but even more ill–advised was any decision to vote based solely on that remark. McGovern did mention that promise from time to time in 1972, but my memory is that most people were dismissive of it. I don't remember any fist fights breaking out over the pledge.

Nixon could — and did — focus on big accomplishments, like forging new relationships with the Chinese and the Russians. But, mostly, his campaign was about little things.

Much like the campaign that just concluded.

While their political philosophies were different, Mitt Romney reminds me a lot of George McGovern — a decent man who sought to speak about big things but was frequently mischaracterized and belittled, first in his own party and then in the general election.

Romney handled it better than McGovern did. He didn't have to drop his running mate, after all. But, nevertheless, his was the first major–party ticket to lose both its home states since the 1972 election.

(Paul Ryan, of course, is a native of Wisconsin, but plausible arguments could be made that Romney's home state could be Michigan, the state of his birth, or Massachusetts, the state that elected him its governor. For the purpose of the argument, though, it doesn't matter. The GOP lost both.)

And Romney didn't lose in a huge landslide. It was a squeaker by historical standards. Obama's successful re–election was the most tepid I have witnessed in my lifetime — and he is the fifth president in that time to be re–elected.

Of course, three sitting presidents (including Gerald Ford, who is an exception because he was never elected president or vice president) have been rejected by the voters, too.

I believed Obama would join them. I was wrong.

He may yet join Nixon. I believe there is a lot about the attack on the U.S. embassy in Benghazi that has not been revealed. I don't know if it will be revealed before Obama's term is over. That may depend upon whether mainstream journalists are willing to explore the troubling questions that have been raised, no matter where those questions may lead them.

It should be a source of enduring shame to journalists the way they have often shilled for the administration and failed to act as the watchdogs of the truth they are supposed to be. (I see more egregious examples of this in broadcast journalism than I do in print — but, unfortunately, Americans seem less inclined to read than ever.)

It was the role of watchdog, perhaps more than any other, that attracted me to journalism when I was young — the dogged determination of the press to pursue Watergate wherever it took them. I hope American journalists will rediscover the value of that role.

Perhaps then, if we allow a big election to be defined by little things, it will not be because the press did not do its job.