Nixon didn't lose the support of the GOP over the break in at the Watergate. The Democrats controlled both houses of congress, so the investigations were not the "see no evil" monkey shows that have annoyed Trump, they were the real deal. Nixon aids couldn't just tell the judicial committee "no, it isn't executive privilege I guess, but I am just not gonna answer." So there was nasty stuff about what Nixon and his minions were doing coming out every day.
With his staff unable to just not answer, they lied. Congress knew they lied. Everybody knew they lied. And the purpose of the special prosecutor was to prove they lied and throw them in jail. But another thing that everyone, including Nixon, knew was that at least some of those weasels who had been willing to lie to congress would not be interested in going to jail for it, and they would roll to avoid it; testifying that Nixon had suborned them into perjury to congress. So he attacked the separation of powers directly, by trying to stop the investigation in order to protect his minions. With a Democrat majority there was no question that the House would impeach, and with a Democrat majority in the Senate there were going to be no delays or shenanigans to keep it off the floor. Senate Republicans were either going to have to find him guilty, which he obviously was, or claim to find him innocent in the face of insurmountable evidence. Either way, in November they would have been annihilated for whatever they did.
So he lost the Senate Republicans, and they let him know that he'd lost them. Faced with, on the one hand, the indignity of being impeached and removed from office, and on the other with the absolute destruction of the GOP if there had been an actual floor vote in the Senate on articles of impeachment, he bailed.
To me the answer, simply and concisely stated is this:
It's really that simple. If the Democrats controlled both houses of Congress, the system would be working as intended, and Trump would have already been impeached.
Our made up ideals and truths work just fine... as long as we follow them and hold our own accountable to them. The Republicans don't/won't so cynicism understandably rules the day. Get rid of the Republicans and our values return. The false-equivalence, whataboutism and cognitive dissonance is what fuels the cynicism.
Let's suppose the GOP does as badly as they possibly could in November. In the Senate, they defeat no Democrats and lose NV, AZ, and TN, bringing about a 52-48 Democratic majority. The Dems also win the House 235-200.
Under this environment, Trump probably would be impeached for one or more of the various impeachable offenses he has committed. The Senate subpoenas various Trump minions and holds serious investigations. Lots of compromising real facts spill out, along with alternative facts of course.
Do you think there's a significant chance that enough Senate Republicans would turn on Trump that his removal from office would be assured, as happened to Nixon in 1974?
I strongly suspect the answer is no, unless Trump's approval rating finally buckles and falls below ~30%. Opposing Trump, no matter how egregious his behavior, tends to cost elected Republicans their primaries, and will continue to do so unless a big chunk of the base finally turns - which is a pipe dream absent an economic collapse. Things appear to have changed so that there really isn't anything the president can do that would ensure his removal.
Timsup2nothin said:
And if you've seen X-Men: Days of Future Past you know that at the time there were "three networks, plus PBS." No fake news, just the news, and Nixon's nastiness was in everyone's living room at six o'clock every night.
That's of course a big part of what was different. The news media in the mid-20th century were more centralized than they ever were before or since. Newspapers in the 19th century had a variety of opinions, were clearly and loudly biased, and sort of created bubbles of "alternative facts" not totally unlike the present. But the radio era, and especially the early TV era, really seemed to feature everyone following roughly the same core narrative, with the newspapers having become relatively tame, the fairness doctrine ruling the radio, and the fairness doctrine plus the tiny number of channels controlling what was heard on TV news.
Nowadays, it seems strange to imagine people sitting around their TV and just believing whatever the anchors of the Big Three networks said was fundamentally true and presented neutrally, but apparently that was sort of the case in the past.
Boots, they aren't naive. They just had a generation older than them that very much understood the costs of not making those hokey "made up" ideals a truth. I'd say having no draft looming makes our ascendant generations blind to the costs of unremitting destructive cynicism. It's been a luxury that we all have been allowed to forget.
Yeah, I certainly wouldn't accuse the Great Depression/WWII generation of naivety. But the 1946-1965 era seems like a bizarrely trusting time to me, with some of that trust going on to survive Vietnam and only dying with Watergate. As above, the centralized nature of the news media would have been a big part of that.
A draft is a powerful deterrent to starting pointless, unending wars. Other than that, though, it's hard to see how it would do much to encourage basic civility and norm-following among politicians. Maybe the "we're all in this together" nature of it causes people to see each other more as fellow citizens who may disagree rather than mortal enemies, IDK. I kind of suspect that feeling came more from the aftereffects of WWII and the ongoing nature of the Cold War, rather than because the draft was either in effect or a very real possibility throughout that era.
We've had at least some evidence against this since before I was born, "rule of law society" has not 100% applied to any president in recent memory. You can make a legit case that present scenario is more visible and/or has higher prevalence and scrutiny, but if we're seeing anything new it's a matter of rate/scale, not occurrence vs not.
Wouldn't hurt to do things properly regardless though.
Of course it's a matter of rate and scale, and no society has ever had perfect rule of law. I just didn't realize, pre-Trump, that the rule of law regarding the US president is so weak.
They were farmers engaged in legal crops.Addictive drugs weren't illegal until the late 19th Century.
Do you think Donald Trump actually kept that promise?!
I can't find it right now, but I once came across a detailed explanation stating that "holding office" referred to the President, VP, and cabinet heads, but not to rank-and-file bureaucrats, legislators & judges.
