For all the comparisons made between the scandals, much
separates them. Nixon’s fall was a classic tragedy. He was a man of substance,
with immense political experience and a record of presidential achievement in
both domestic politics and foreign policy. His own resentments and paranoia
about his perceived enemies propelled him into Watergate.
There’s no such substance with Trump. His presidency has
been one piece of tawdriness after another. To see the Trump tragedy, look to
the Americans who are so estranged from the country’s institutions that they
seem willing to risk blowing them up in order to be heard.
True, Nixon’s enemies would protest violently at the idea of
Nixon as a tragic figure, a man of virtue marred by a fatal flaw. They should
reconsider.
Prior to its ignominious end, Nixon’s presidency was one of
consequential domestic and foreign policy. The former included initiatives —
like peaceful school desegregation across the South, broadening civil rights
protections to include gender discrimination, lowering the voting age from 21 to 18, creating the
Occupational Safety and Health Administration, exponentially expanding the
National Endowment for the Arts — that would later lead The New York
Times’ Tom
Wicker, once targeted on Nixon’s “enemies list,”
to call him the “last liberal president.” The foreign policy achievements
included not just the historic opening of China but nuclear arms limitations
treaties with the Soviet Union and major action in the Middle East.
As with Watergate, the Trump investigation is now
approaching the immediate neighborhood of the president. But with Trump, unlike
Nixon, there will be little to place in the balance against the investigation’s
verdict.
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