The Last Time We Had A Constitutional Crisis

Tonight is the first night the investigation hearings into the coup attempt on January 6, 2021 will be televised on prime-time TV.  I am hoping to be able to watch the whole thing with TB.  The Rethuglicans have been doing back flips trying to spread false information, to distract and to deflect.  They’re probably scared to death about what will be revealed.

 

My question is: will anything be done about it?

 

There was another period of time in which a President committed illegal acts to circumvent an election.  On June 17, 1972 a security guard working across the street from the Watergate Office Building in Washington D.C. saw some suspicious behavior going on and called the police.  The police arrested some very inept burglars broke into the Democratic National Headquarters, located inside the Watergate.

 

I’d finished up my junior year of high school and we’d just suffered a great deal of flooding and damage from Tropical Storm Agnes, downgraded from a hurricane.  We had days and days of intense rain, and the rivers and streams overflowed their banks and flooded parts of Baltimore and surrounding counties.  In fact, my last days of school were cancelled because there were fears that the nearby Loch Raven Dam would give way.  Anyway, I was more impacted by Agnes than I was about whatever shenanigans went on at the Watergate.

 

Slowly but surely, though, a conspiracy began to unravel.  The Justice Department was investigating the five idiots, called “The Plumbers”.  The most effective journalists to bring the sordid story to the public were Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein of the Washington Post.  They had an unnamed source that advised them to “follow the money”, which led them to the Committee to Re-Elect the President.  Originally it was known by the acronym CRP but as the investigation progressed, it became known as CREEP.

 

President Nixon denied any wrongdoing from the get-go.  It was those crazy Plumbers.  “I am not a crook,” he declared.  However, there were enough questions and concerns that the House and then the Senate began to look into what had happened.  During the summer of 1972, I watched the Senate Watergate hearings faithfully.

 

The committee was chaired by elderly Senator Sam Ervin, a folksy Southern gentleman who could be funny but stern whenever appropriate.  The co-chair was Senator Howard Baker of Tennessee.  Senator Baker came up with the question on everyone’s minds: “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

 

There were some remarkable, memorable witnesses.  John Dean dropped the big bombshell that not only did President Nixon know about the break-in, he actively participated in the coverup after the Plumbers were arrested.  Dean was so young then, stoic and mostly stony-faced, as he recounted meetings with Nixon, Attorney General Mitchell, aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman and others in which they discussed how to make it all go away.

 

But Watergate wouldn’t go away.

 

Haldeman and Ehrlichman, nicknamed Herdleman, refused to turn on the President.  They were defiant, as I remember.

 

And then Alexander Butterfield was interviewed.  The Minority Counsel, Republican Fred Thompson, asked Butterfield if he was aware of any listening devices in the Oval Office.  There was a slight pause, Butterfield blinked, and then said yes. 

 

That blew everything wide open.  The White House was subpoenaed for the tapes; President Nixon and staff stonewalled.  When the tapes were finally turned over, there was a crucial 18-minute gap in one of the recordings.  Nixon’s loyal secretary, Rosemary Woods, tried to cover for her boss for posing for a picture to show how it could happen.  The picture was so ridiculous it was almost funny.

 

Still, President Nixon was determined not to resign.  In Congress, both the Democrats and the Republicans agreed this could not stand and began to move together to impeach Nixon.  Nixon did not want to be impeached and so he resigned on August 9, 1974.  Vice-President Gerald Ford took office and pardoned Nixon, saying he wanted to spare the country from more trauma.  He wasn’t re-elected.

 

By the end of it all, I was thoroughly disgusted and disappointed in President Nixon.  He’d accomplished much with foreign policy in spite of being and unpopular man at home.  I learned that he was a vindictive, paranoid man who kept an enemies’ list.  He was a flawed, pathetic law breaker.  There hasn’t been one like him until 45.

In 1972-74, there was bi-partisanship in Congress.  During the hearings, the Republicans on the committee stuck up for the President initially but at the end of the sorry mess, they were ready for Nixon to get out.

 

I wish I could say the same about that formerly glorious Grand Old Party but I can’t.  They have become a pack of greedy, cold-hearted, and downright evil butt kissers of a former (hate to say it) president who ended up a traitor because he couldn’t accept he’d lost the election.

 

So.  We’ll see if there are any consequences this time.