So Chauncey de Vega, not one of the brighter lights of Salon, is concerned that the news over the weekend (Donald Trump is a Russian asset! Who knew?) won't finally be the penny that drops and makes the majority of the American public....think like Chauncey de Vega. Apparently like a TV murder mystery we the audience (read: the governed) are supposed to be absolutely convinced of the guilt of the murderer in the final five minutes of the show, and he is supposed to be punished accordingly (usually off stage, but justice is swift and final once the cops make their case, right? Right?). Those of us with memories long enough to recall Watergate know it doesn't work that swiftly, nor that surely.
Consider that the majority of the American public already, per a CNN poll, blame the government shutdown on Donald Trump by 66%. Why, then, hasn't the shutdown ended? Why hasn't Mitch McConnell put any House passed bill to a vote and sent it to Trump to veto, so the override process can begin and the Vox Populi be heard in the land?
Three guesses, the first two don't count.
And surely, when the American people finally agree by 66% (a significant majority in any calculation) that Donald Trump is a Russian asset and that this fact is "the 'greatest scandal' in US history," then justice will soon, if not immediately, be done. Right?
I'm not arguing with deVega's claim that "tens of millions of white Americans agree with Donald Trump and the Republican Party — and by implication or association, also Vladimir Putin and the Russian government,: or his presentation of the concepts of "learned helplessness" or "participatory totalitarianism." Except to the extent I'm arguing such claims are sheer nonsense and squid ink for "Why Doesn't Everybody Think Like ME?!" I'm trying to fathom the mechanism he thinks would translate this sudden (and miraculous) single-mindedness of millions of Americans into the proper punishment of Donald Trump. How, exactly, does that happen?
To consider the example of Watergate a moment:
June 17, 1972That timeline quickly grows tedious with detail; let's spare ourselves and cut to the chase:
Five men are arrested while trying to bug the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate, a hotel and office building in Washington, D.C. A day later, White House press secretary Ronald Ziegler famously called the Watergate break-in a “third-rate burglary.” At a press conference June 22, President Nixon denied that the White House was involved in the incident.
Aug. 1, 1972
The Washington Post reported that a $25,000 check intended for Nixon’s 1972 reelection campaign was deposited in the bank account of one of the Watergate burglars. It was one of the first developments linking the DNC break-in to Nixon’s campaign.
April 30, 1973
The scandal reaches the White House, as senior White House aides H.R. Haldeman and John Ehrlichman resign over Watergate. Attorney General Richard Kleindienst also resigns, and John Dean, the White House counsel, gets fired.
Still too tedious? Be patient:
Oct. 20, 1973That denial, by the way, is about as effective as Trump's failure to deny anything. Or his assertion that he's happy to let the notes of his meetings with Putin be revealed, confident in the knowledge no such notes any longer exist.
The day that becomes known as the “Saturday Night Massacre.” Attorney General Richardson and Deputy Attorney General William Ruckelshaus resign in the same night after refusing Nixon’s order to fire Cox. Robert Bork, the solicitor general who was acting as attorney general, then followed Nixon’s order and fired Cox. Nixon’s push to oust Cox, who was leading the independent investigation into the White House misconduct, sparked intense criticism across the political spectrum. Four weeks later, on Nov. 17, Nixon issued his memorable denial: “I’m not a crook."
July 27-30, 1974
The House Judiciary Committee passes three articles of impeachment against Nixon, for obstruction of justice, misuse of power and contempt of Congress. By approving the charges, the committee sent the impeachment to the floor for a full House vote, but it never occurred.
Aug. 8, 1974
Nixon resigns. In his resignation speech, Nixon said: “I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body. But as president, I must put the interest of America first.”
Yeah, Trump is never going to say anything that self-effacing (well, for Trump it would be). But pay close attention to that timeline, and note it completely ignores the resignation of VP Spiro Agnew, who resigned as part of a plea deal on criminal charges from Maryland. That resignation was 10 days before the "Saturday Night Massacre," And this time line elides a huge number of stories and revelations from people like John Dean, Haldeman and Ehrlichmann, and the cast of yahoos and grifters that had accumulated around CREEP (Committee to Re-Elect the President) in 1972. This timeline, in other words, is almost too simplistic, and yet with the utter collapse of Nixon's administration, it was still almost a year from the Saturday Night Massacre, and after the Watergate tapes were published (I used to have a copy of the transcripts, and I'm sorry, simply as an historical artifact, I don't still have them), before Nixon finally was shown the handwriting on the wall. And even then I knew people who thought Nixon was railroaded. And then Ford pardoned Nixon, and what happened to Ford? He simply was never elected POTUS. GHWBush pardoned a number of shady characters on his way out the door a few years later, mostly to cover his own ass which was flapping in the criminal breeze at the time. I finally heard that mentioned this morning on NPR, long after all the obsequies of his memorials were fish wrap and lining bird cages. There is a mechanism for accountability at the highest levels (impeachment, rarely; elections, more often; criminal charges, more rarely than impeachment, it seems) and there is the slow adjustment of public opinion (which adjusts back, as everything in America since 1969 has taught me), and there is absolutely no mechanism for the majority of people affected to come-to-Jesus and see things as I do, more a legal mechanism for putting that agreement into political practice. Word comes today that the Labour Party in Britain is hoping to force a vote of no confidence over Teresa May's Brexit vote, in hopes of forcing elections they might win. We don't have that system in America, for better or worse. Unless the DOJ decides Trump's crimes are so egregious he must be charged with criminal offenses (and there are serious problems with having a national security concern in the person of the POTUS; very serious problems), and unless the House and Senate decide Trump must be removed from office, there isn't much the American people can do. Even Ted Cruz has gone back to being a sycophantic Trump supporter and offering a stronger defense of Steve King of Indiana than almost any other public official wants to offer. He knows he's back in office for at least 6 more years, what does he have to lose?
Public pressure, to paraphrase Howland Owl, ain't so new, and it ain't so clear. Newt Gingrich was on NPR this morning, re-writing his own history in public office to blame others (curious how much he sounded like Trump; or is it that Trump now sounds like Gingrich?), reminding us all he is the author of our current Troubles. But if he is the author, We The People are the willing audience. The times they may be a'changin' again (signs point to "Yes!") but even those changes won't be enough to force Trump from the White House to face the pitch forks and torches of the outraged People.
It just doesn't work that way. Sometimes we just don't all agree on who the crook really is.
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