Wednesday, January 8, 1997
POLITICS:
Clinton’s and Gingrich’s actions are mere ‘playground stuff’By
Marianne Means
Hearst Newspapers
Only by remembering history can we avoid repeating it, and so it
is a good thing that Richard Nixon, the modern yardstick by which
the behavior of all other politicians is measured, is forever with
us.
To judge from the Oval Office tapes of his conversations, nobody
else comes close to his mendacity and depravity. They wouldn’t
dare.
Nixon’s ghost hovers as we wallow in the shameful shenanigans of
a House speaker who has confessed to ethical errors and a president
who is constantly investigated for money-grubbing practices and
other alleged abuses of power.
As 201 hours of Nixon’s secretly taped conversations become
public bit by bit, we are reminded that there are greater evils
than misleading House committees or indulging in smarmy business
deals, suspect campaign fund-raising and careless staffing
habits.
This does not excuse the current scandals or the ever-escalating
partisan thirst for revenge that they spawn. But it does suggest
tempers are overheated. This isn’t the worst of times after
all.
The only president to resign in disgrace to escape impeachment
was caught red-handed in gross misdeeds far more appalling than
those of our present flawed leaders.
There is little equation between the magnitude of the Nixon
crimes known as Watergate and Bill Clinton’s business deals known
as Whitewater, beyond the coincidental similarity of name. (Let
alone all those other scandals cutely dubbed Travelgate, Filegate
and so forth.)
The Nixon tapes confirm in fresh and specific detail, in the
president’s own voice, already-known criminal goings-on in the
Nixon White House that provoked a constitutional crisis. But
without the tapes we could not imagine the full extent of his
personal involvement, the nastiness of his mind and the ferocity of
his venom.
As reporters listen to the tapes recently made available by the
National Archives, the rehabilitated reputation Nixon carefully
nurtured for 20 years before his death irrevocably collapses. It
isn’t the impact of any single tape that is so corrosive; it is the
tapes’ cumulative effect of political corruption across the
board.
And we haven’t heard the half of it yet. There are still 3,500
hours of untranscribed tapes to go.
Nixon was forced to resign in 1974 because subpoenaed records
revealed that he participated in a felonious White House cover-up
of a 1972 burglary of the Democratic National Committee
headquarters in the Watergate office building. But there was no
hard evidence that Nixon himself might have ordered the burglary;
18 minutes of a tape dealing with the subject had been mysteriously
erased.
The newly released tapes reveal that Nixon had no qualms about
stealing what he wanted. He ordered other burglaries a year before
the Watergate break-in. He demanded that aides "break in" to the
Brookings Institution, a liberal think tank, and "blow the
safe."
He similarly ordered that the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s
psychiatrist be rifled. He wanted information for a smear campaign
against Ellsberg, who had leaked the Pentagon Papers on the Vietnam
War to the press, and Nixon promised to "direct it myself." The
Brookings robbery never took place, but the psychiatrist’s office
burglary did occur.
Nixon is also heard plotting to target his enemies for Internal
Revenue Service audits, discussing the imperative of selecting a
"ruthless" IRS director who would "do what he’s told, (and) that
every income tax return I want to see I see, that he will go after
our enemies and not go after our friends."
Abuse of the IRS was one of the impeachment counts against
Nixon. Even though the IRS director he selected insists he never
took any unfounded action against Nixon’s enemies, the mere demand
from the White House was an outrageous violation of law.
Neither Clinton nor any subsequent president has similarly been
charged with harassing "enemies" with IRS audits.
Nixon particularly singled out rich Jewish contributors to
Democratic causes, asking an aide, "Are we going after their tax
returns? I only hope that we’re doing a little persecuting."
Then there was the plot to secretly "buy" a black candidate in
the 1972 election to run as an independent to drain off Democratic
votes. Nixon and his aides discussed providing undercover financial
help to lure Jesse Jackson or some other prominent civil rights
leader into the race. This never happened.
And Nixon is heard to set a cash price on ambassadorships at a
$250,000 minimum. Buying such jobs is illegal. In every
administration, including Clinton’s, choice posts frequently go to
big contributors rather than career foreign service officers. But
the preference is vaguely based on rewarding friendship rather than
selling out for a specific price tag.
The latest revelation last week involves a "deal" Nixon
discussed with his aides that resolved a Justice Department
antitrust suit against ITT in terms that may have been favorable to
the firm shortly before ITT Sheraton pledged $400,000 toward a
campaign to bring the 1972 GOP convention to San Diego.
Noting that money is "part of the ballgame," Nixon warns that
after the settlement, ITT should not be approached for a
contribution "right now" but "later."
Heaven knows what other sickening conduct will pop out from the
remaining tapes not yet transcribed. This is merely a small sample,
but it certainly establishes Nixon’s approach to his job.