Disgraced former President Richard Nixon “is having a moment” among MAGA, as young conservatives seek to prop him up as a victim and repair his reputation. According to Nixon biographer Lee Huebner, the 37th president’s “politics of resentment and his pugilistic style clearly appeal to the populist right,” and “his antiestablishment sensibility is shared by President Donald Trump,” a longtime admirer of Nixon. But as Huebner explains in the Washington Post, “there is a fundamental difference between the two men” that MAGA is unlikely to appreciate: Nixon’s respect for democratic processes.
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As Huebner wrote on Monday, the attempts to vindicate Nixon go to the top of MAGA. Perhaps the most blatant example came from Vice President JD Vance, who said in June, “If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy.” But according to Huebner, the real lesson Trumpists should take from Nixon isn’t his willingness to break the law, but his surprising devotion to upholding the Constitution.
“One of the most troubling aspects of Trump-driven MAGA politics denies election results and works to undermine confidence in America’s electoral system,” writes Huebner. “And it likes to blame an amorphous, villainous ‘deep state’ for the nation’s political problems. Nixon, by contrast, battled against such impulses even though on one notable occasion doing so cost him a chance at the presidency, and on another cost him the presidency itself.”
According to Huebner, one should consider former President Bill Clinton’s call to remember Nixon “in totality,” when the former reminded at the latter’s funeral that Nixon’s life extended beyond Watergate. “As serious as his mistakes surely were, and as Clinton also implied, a great deal can be learned” from Nixon’s other actions. And in the era of Trump, “the element of his totality that may be most beneficial to appreciate right now involves two moments when Nixon refused to join Republicans who were urging him to deny election results and defy court rulings. His refusals bookended his career in presidential politics.”
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“The first such reckoning came in the 1960 presidential election, when Nixon, the vice president, finished in a virtual tie with his Democratic rival, Sen. John F. Kennedy,” explains Huebner. “A 118,000-vote margin for JFK out of 68 million votes cast. Kennedy’s success depended on his extremely narrow margins in two key states, Illinois and Texas, both of which had a history of dubious vote counting. A broad chorus of his supporters urged him to contest the result, but Nixon quickly conceded, reportedly telling a friend, ‘Our country cannot afford the agony of a constitutional crisis.’ He may have agreed privately that he had won enough votes to elect him, but he discouraged Republican officials who began investigating the results and publicly emphasized his support for an orderly transition of power.”
Then, 13 years later as his political career collapsed under Watergate, “Nixon again demonstrated his commitment to constitutional order,” writes Huebner. “When the Supreme Court on July 24, 1974, denied the president the use of executive privilege to protect Oval Office tape recordings, including the ‘smoking gun’ tape that did him in, Nixon did not hide the tape, or destroy it, as many had urged him to do. Nixon immediately decided not only to accept the decision but also to announce publicly that he was doing so.” Impeachment pressure mounting, Nixon resigned within two weeks.
With this in mind, concludes Huebner, MAGA should take a hard look at itself. As he writes, “Respect for democratic processes — specifically, election results and court rulings — is not in vogue today in some Washington circles, even among those who purport to admire Nixon. But such respect, especially when the chips were down, was a key part of Richard Nixon’s totality.”
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