Tag Archives: Richard Nixon

national news, political news

Impeachment? Not likely with this Congress

John Podesta knows a thing or two about impeachment. He served as White House chief of staff for a president who was impeached by the House of Representatives and put on trial in the Senate.

Podesta has looked at the political landscape and reports that he doesn’t see impeachment on the horizon for Donald J. Trump.

I have to agree with his assessment.

The issue is the makeup of the body that would file articles of impeachment.

Podesta seems to think, according to his comments to the Washington Post, that Trump might deserve to be impeached, but he doesn’t think the current House has the guts to do it. He allegedly sought to quash an FBI investigation into his campaign’s relationship with Russia. The Justice Department has assigned a special counsel to look at the matter.

Consider the 20th century’s two big impeachment moments.

* One of them occurred in 1974. The House was in control of Democrats. The president, Richard Nixon, was a Republican. Nixon stood accused of obstructing justice in the Watergate scandal. The House Judiciary Committee, with its Democratic majority, approved articles of impeachment and referred them to the full House.

President Nixon’s impeachment was a done deal. It took a stern lecture from the late Republican Sen. Barry Goldwater to persuade the president to give up the fight; Nixon quit the presidency the next day.

* The other occurred in 1998. Republicans controlled the House and the Senate. The special prosecutor, Kenneth Starr, began his probe by looking at a real estate matter involving President Clinton and his wife, Hillary — both of whom are Democrats. He expanded it to include an extramarital dalliance the president was having with a young woman. He summoned the president to testify before a federal grand jury; the president was untruthful.

He was impeached on obstruction and perjury charges. The Senate acquitted him. Again, politics — just as it did in 1974 — played a role in moving the impeachment forward.

Would the Republicans who control Congress have the stones to impeach a fellow Republican who also happens to be president? Podesta doesn’t think so. Neither do I.

Impeachment is a political exercise in the extreme. Sure, the members of Congress talk a good game about seeking justice, to punish the president for committing “high crimes and misdemeanors.”

The reality is that it all rests on politics.

The previous century provided ample evidence of the politics associated with this serious matter. I have no reason to believe — at least not yet — that anything has changed.

national news, political news

No matter the result, blowback will be ugly

Donald J. Trump’s current political troubles are likely to end one of two ways.

The special counsel and two congressional committees will find criminal conduct involving the president, his campaign and the Russian government — and he’ll be impeached and possibly convicted.

Or …

The special counsel and those committees will come up empty and will decide there’s no “there” there. The president will be absolved of wrongdoing and he’ll complete his term in office.

Either outcome bodes ugly for those of who have an interest in government, in politics and in public policy. The ugliness will be the result of the president’s reaction to either outcome.

History already has shown that Trump cannot — or will not — let go of the past. Witness his continual recitation of his stunning, shocking victory in the 2016 presidential election.

Consider the potential outcomes:

Trump gets impeached and then convicted. The president will not go quietly. He will not leave office as President Nixon did in August 1974 and then disappear for years. We won’t see Trump fly away aboard Marine One from the White House lawn, grinning broadly, waving to his friends, White House staff and political supporters.

Oh, no. He’ll be angry. He’ll be lashing out continually against the media, Democrats, turncoat Republicans, Congress in general. He might even call for the abolition of the U.S. Constitution for all I know.

Once in some form of retirement, he’ll be tweeting his fingers to the bone. He’ll be dishing out insults by the minute, let alone the hour. He’ll threaten to sue anyone for any reason that comes to mind.

And the media he hates — allegedly — will lap it up, report it dutifully and give him all the platform he needs to seek some form of revenge against the system that “betrayed” him.

If the president is impeached and then acquitted by the Senate, well, ratchet all of the previous up by a factor of, oh, several thousand.

The president is clean. This outcome could be just as ugly as the other one.

Think of how the president is going to play this one out. He’ll stage campaign-style rallies. He’ll savage the media and his political enemies. He likely could re-tell the story of his “historic” electoral victory over Hillary Rodham Clinton. The president is not likely to accept victory like a gentleman, praise the system for doing its job, thank the special counsel, Robert Mueller, for his service to the country and wish him well as he returns to private law practice.

The president will seethe and stew over the very idea that he would be the subject of an FBI probe, of an investigation by the legislative branch of government.

Moreover, he’ll do all of it in public. He likely would seize the limelight at every opportunity. He’ll create opportunities when they don’t present themselves.

All of this is my way of telling you that no matter the outcome of these investigations, we — the American public — are going to be disserved by the president of the United States.

Just as he showed during the 2016 GOP primary campaign, he exhibited a clearly defined “sore loser” trait. When he won the whole thing, he has shown as well that he is a “sore winner.”

Thus, I am not looking forward to the end of this investigation, no matter how it turns out.

national news

Bluff or no bluff about those recordings?

Donald John Trump might be trying to pull of the costliest bluff in U.S. political history.

He has mentioned the word “tape recordings” relating to his conversation with former FBI Director James Comey. The nation’s capital is now buzzing with reports about whether the president actually recorded the conversation he had with Comey.

White House press secretary Sean Spicer has declined to answer directly the question about the existence of recording devices.

So … has the president recorded conversations in the Oval Office or not? If he has, then is there more to learn?

Those of us of a certain age remember a fellow named Alexander Butterfield. He worked in the White House during the Nixon administration. The Watergate scandal was beginning to overtake President Nixon in 1973-74. Butterfield, in testimony before the Senate Select Watergate Committee, blabbed to the world about the existence of Oval Office recording devices.

What did they reveal? Oh, all kinds of things that revealed that the president was using the power of his office to obstruct justice.

The rest is history, you know?

What has the current president done to preserve his comings and goings for posterity? What on Earth might such recordings — if they exist — reveal about his alleged connection to, oh, Russian government officials?

Yet another question for the president to answer. If only he would.

media news, national news, political news

Do as Trump says, not as he does

Donald J. Trump cracks me up.

Except that I’m not laughing with the president, but rather I’m laughing at him for the preposterous declarations he makes about the media — and what he does before and after he makes them.

Trump stood before the Conservative Political Action Conference audience this week and excoriated the media — the “enemy of the people,” remember — for using anonymous sources.

What, then, occurred that makes this attack so laughable?

His White House staff talked to a select group of media on the grounds that they be allowed to speak anonymously.

D’oh! Huh? Eh? What the … ?

Trump’s CPAC rant was the latest ramping up of his war against the media, the folks whose task is to report to their own constituents what is going on with the White House, the president’s staff and, by golly, the president himself.

This ridiculous and nonsensical rant in which he blasts the media for granting anonymity to sources only demonstrates the president’s utter ignorance of the traditional role between the media and the White House.

It’s supposed to be adversarial. Every single president — regardless of party or ideology — has bitched about his treatment by the media. Some have taken that complaint to more intense levels than others; President Nixon’s troubles come to mind.

However, every single one of them has said essentially the same thing: The media treat me unfairly; they’re too harsh; they’re too probing; they pry too much and too deeply.

The treatment Trump is getting is really no different than what has occurred since the founding of the Republic.

Now, for him to blast the media for granting anonymity — while allowing his staff to request it of the media — simply makes me shake my head in sheer amazement at this president’s ignorance.

national news, political news

Democrats to grass roots: Cool it with the ‘I-word’ talk

The “I-word” might be gaining some traction among rank-and-file Americans who profess worry — even fear — of Donald J. Trump.

Democratic Party officials are issuing a wise word of caution. Avoid the rush toward an impeachment of the president of the United States.

I happen to agree with the Democratic Party elders/wise folks.

Impeachment is a serious matter. It’s only occurred twice in the 228-year history of the Republic. The 17th president, Andrew Johnson, came within a single vote in the Senate of being tossed out; the 42nd president, Bill Clinton, was acquitted by healthier margins on all three counts heard during his Senate trial. A third president, Richard Nixon, was on the verge of being impeached before he resigned in disgrace in 1974.

Trump has stirred plenty of enmity during his single month in office. To suggest that he ought to be impeached is at best far too premature an act to even consider; at worst, well, it might be a fool’s errand.

As Politico reports: “’We need to assemble all of the facts, and right now there are a lot of questions about the president’s personal, financial and political ties with the Russian government before the election, but also whether there were any assurances made,’ said California Rep. Eric Swalwell, a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. ‘Before you can use the ‘I’ word, you really need to collect all the facts.’

“’The ‘I’ word we should be focused on,’ added Pennsylvania Rep. Brendan Boyle, ‘is ‘investigations.'”

I happen to share the concerns of many of my fellow Americans about the questions that are looming large over the Trump administration. So soon after the president’s inauguration, Americans would be wise to give the guy some time to clear out some of the wreckage he has brought upon himself and his administration.

I want to offer a slightly conciliatory word here. Trump became president with zero experience in government. He hadn’t spent a single moment of his life in public service until he placed his hand on the Bible and took the oath of office of the presidency.

It might be too much to ask that a zillionaire businessman/TV celebrity could know all the nuance and complexity of forming a government as massive as the one he now commands.

He has made some remarkable missteps in just a few weeks on the job. He has said some amazingly stupid things and made some ridiculous gestures. Are any of them impeachable? No.

But he’s got this personal enrichment matter he must clear up. That “emoluments clause” that bars presidents from profiting from relationships with foreign governments is pretty clear. The president hasn’t done nearly enough to clear himself of that mess.

He had better get busy.

The fired-up grass roots Americans who are hell bent on impeaching the president had best listen to the political elders who know about these matters.

Their advice? Cool it.

media news

It’s the temperament, man … the temperamant

I’ve been trying to determine when I’ve ever seen a president of the United States treat the media in the manner being displayed by the current one.

I cannot remember a single time. Not even during President Richard Nixon’s time in the White House.

Donald Trump has shown utter contempt and disrespect for the men and women assigned to cover the White House for their various news organizations.

It manifests itself when he gets a question he dislikes. He tells reporters to “sit down, that’s enough” when they seek to elaborate on their question, to fill in a blank or two. No, the president will have none of it.

Forget for a moment that he calls them “dishonest” out loud, in public, to their face … and then expects these fellow human beings to treat him with kid gloves.

The disrespect — as I’ve witnessed it — is unlike anything I’ve ever witnessed, even from afar.

If we march back through time — starting from Barack Obama and going backward — I cannot remember a president acting the way this one does in front of the media.

There was one memorable, testy exchange in the 1970s between then-CBS News correspondent Dan Rather and President Nixon. The president was getting entangled in the Watergate scandal and Rather asked him a pointed question. Some members of the press gallery chuckled, some even clapped. Nixon asked Rather, “Are you running for something?” Rather responded, “No, Mr. President, are you?”

Presidents usually have strained relations with the media. They dislike negative coverage, as does any politician — no matter what they might say. As I’ve watched presidential/media relationships from a distance over the years, I have noticed a sometimes cool cordiality between the Big Man and the media that cover him.

What we’re getting now is open hostility and an exhibition of extremely bad manners from the guy who needs the media as least as much as they need him.

I’m trying to imagine what will occur if and/or when the crap really hits the fan at the White House. I fear the president will go berserk.

Didn’t someone mention temperament as a quality we look for in a president of the United States of America?

legal news

Trump makes history by firing acting AG

I had not heard of Sally Yates until today.

Now she becomes something of political hero in the eyes of millions of Americans — thanks to Donald J. Trump’s decision tonight to fire her from her job as acting U.S. attorney general.

What did the former assistant AG do? She declined to argue on behalf of the president’s decision to ban refugees trying to enter this country from seven Muslim-majority nations.

Yates questioned whether the executive order was lawful. Oh, yes — she is a holdover from the Obama administration’s Department of Justice.

My head continues to spin. My eyes are bugging out. My heart is palpitating.

Ten days into his presidency and Donald Trump’s penchant for pandemonium has claimed its first victim.

http://www.politico.com/story/2017/01/trump-immigration-executive-order-234401

Yates was holding down the DOJ post until Jeff Sessions was to be approved by the U.S. Senate.

I’m not yet sure about the legality of the executive order. Perhaps the former assistant AG is right; perhaps she is wrong. Whatever the case, the president chose to fire her summarily without first trying to persuade her that she really ought to do the job she was supposed to do.

Some folks around Washington are bringing up some dark memories. Can you recall the Saturday Night Massacre, when President Nixon sought to remove a special prosecutor who was examining the Watergate caper? Do you recall he then fired — in succession — the attorney general and his assistant AG who refused to dismiss the independent counsel?

The task then fell to the U.S. solicitor general, a fellow named Robert Bork, who went on to earn his own place in our nation’s history.

Honeymoon for this president? It is officially over.

national news, political news

Honeymoon? There is none for Trump

Have you ever seen a presidential transition that has hit as many land mines as the one that is about to conclude?

Donald J. Trump is going to become president of the United States with a public opinion approval rating in the 30s. Yes, that’s right: 30-plus percent of Americans approve of the 45th president. Meanwhile, the 44th president — Barack H. Obama — is about to leave the White House with an approval rating in the mid-50 percent range, which isn’t great, but it’s a damn sight better than what he was registering for much of his second term.

Presidential honeymoon period? There ain’t going to be one for Donald Trump.

Questions are piling onto questions about the new president. They include:

* Potential conflicts of interest involving his myriad business interests and the president-elect’s stubborn refusal to divest himself of the fortune he has amassed through real estate ventures around the world.

* Allegations of Russian spooks hacking into Democratic Party electronic files while looking for dirt to toss as that party’s presidential nominee, Hillary Rodham Clinton.

* The quality of some of Trump’s Cabinet nominees, such as the secretary of state-designate, Rex Tillerson, who is close to Russian President Vladimir Putin; housing secretary-designate Ben Carson, who once declared himself to unqualified to lead a federal agency; education secretary-designate Betsy DeVos, an avowed critic of public education; EPA administrator-designate Scott Pruitt, who detests the very agency he is being asked to oversee; attorney general-designate Jeff Sessions, who once was denied a federal judgeship because of his stated views on civil rights.

I am not predicting this will happen, but I won’t be surprised in the least if Donald Trump — somehow! — is unable to finish his term as president. There’s already dull roar developing about impeachment, given all the potential for missteps.

I have lived long enough to have witnessed a couple of presidential crises that tore the nation to pieces. The first of them came close to a presidential impeachment before President Nixon resigned during the Watergate crisis; the second of them occurred with an actual impeachment and Senate trial of President Clinton over a sexual relationship he had with a White House intern.

Tradition always has granted presidents a honeymoon period. They enter the Oval Office flush with high praise and hope. Donald Trump will have squandered that good feeling with his response to the criticism he has received. He tweets his rapid-fire reactions to seemingly every critical comment leveled at him.

So help me I am trying to give this guy some semblance of benefit.

Damn! I do not feel good about the presidential hand-off all of America is about to witness.

International news, national news, political news

‘Tricky Dick’ surely earned his moniker

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Political chicanery certainly isn’t a new phenomenon.

Now, though, the world is learning that when it comes to matters of war and peace, not even the prospect of peace that could end years of bloodshed and the loss of thousands of American lives is above the hideous intervention of one prominent politician.

It appears to be confirmed now that President-elect Richard Nixon sought to derail a last-minute peace deal that President Lyndon Johnson sought to broker with North Vietnam near the end of his presidency.

Notes acquired by journalist John Farrell suggest that Nixon’s intervention in those peace talks are far worse than anything the future president would do during the Watergate scandal that forced him to quit his office in August 1974.

According to the New York Times: “In a telephone conversation with H. R. Haldeman, who would go on to become White House chief of staff, Nixon gave instructions that a friendly intermediary should keep ‘working on’ South Vietnamese leaders to persuade them not to agree to a deal before the election, according to the notes, taken by Mr. Haldeman.”

LBJ was seeking to start peace talks that could have brought the fighting to a much earlier end. Nixon, according to Farrell’s upcoming book, didn’t want the Democratic president to succeed and give a boost to Vice President Hubert Humphrey, who was Nixon’s primary opponent in the 1968 presidential race. To block any possible boost to Humphrey’s campaign, Nixon finagled a way to keep the South Vietnamese away from the peace table until after the election.

Can you say “treason”?

http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/politics/nixon-tried-to-spoil-johnson%e2%80%99s-vietnam-peace-talks-in-%e2%80%9968-notes-show/ar-BBxPrcF?li=BBnb7Kz

This is so profoundly offensive to learn of this so many years later, I almost don’t know where to begin.

So, I won’t go into too much detail here. I do, though, want to suggest that the moniker “Tricky Dick” now seems more appropriate than ever.

The idea that a president-elect would interfere directly with a sitting president’s initiative to seek an end to warfare that was killing Americans crosses the line with both feet that defines treason.

Nixon campaigned in 1968 on the promise to deliver a “secret plan” to end the Vietnam War. Of course, he wouldn’t tell us that the plan involved derailing his predecessor’s effort and then drag the war effort on for another five years.

The link I attached to this blog post goes into amazing detail about what Farrell discovered at the Nixon presidential library. Take a look at it.

Warning: It might turn your stomach as much as it did mine.

national news, political news

‘Our Constitution works …’

You want a feeling of dire straits in the greatest nation on Earth?

This 11-minute video ought to remind us all that we have a resilient nation, with a government cobbled together by a document that is as stout as ever.

I mention this because of those who insist we are about to enter an “unprecedented” era of crisis with the inauguration of Donald J. Trump as president of the United States.

Not so.

On Aug. 8, 1974, the nation watched one president resign and another one take office.

Gerald R. Ford ascended to the presidency after being appointed vice president less than a year earlier; the man he replaced as VP had pleaded no contest to corruption charges. Before that he was a congressman from Grand Rapids, Mich., whose No. 1 ambition was to become speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives.

Fate would steer Gerald Ford down an entirely different path.

As president, he told us that “our long national nightmare is over.” Richard Nixon was flying off to private life in California as President Ford took the reins of power.

And as the new president told us, “Our Constitution works.”

Indeed it does.

I harbor deep reservations and concern about whether the new president is up to the job he is about to assume.

However, I take comfort in the words that an earlier president, Gerald Ford, delivered as we sought to recover from a constitutional crisis the likes of which the nation had never before endured.

We certainly did recover. Whatever missteps the new president makes as he begins his term, I remain confident that our Constitution will continue to work just as our founders intended.

You have to keep the faith.