“If only Dick Nixon were here today!”
Back in 1974, about the time I was first elected judge (thanks in large part to President Nixon’s Watergate problems), attorney Frank Wallace told me that “without integrity, a candidate for judge might have the finest legal mind, and the best judicial temperament and still be utterly unfit to serve as a judge.
Frank nailed it.
The same is true of presidents and candidates for president.
LBJ said our ships were attacked in the Tonkin Gulf; war followed and Americans were killed. When Presidents Clinton and Bush told us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, I believed them. So did a great many other Americans -- in and out of Congress. And more Americans were killed and maimed.
For those who are too young to recall, President Nixon did not make a “monumental blunder.” He flat-out lied to the American public, not to protect the nation from its enemies, but rather to save his own neck.
“People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I’m not a crook.”
Perhaps not, but he approved the cover up of a burglary at Democratic Headquarters at Washington’s Watergate complex on June 17, 1972, to bug Democrat offices.
Mr. Nixon at first downplayed the scandal, calling it “mere politics.” He labeled news stories linking the White House to the burglary as “biased and misleading.” He was lying.
But, then, White House aide, Alexander Butterfield, revealed to Congress that Mr. Nixon had a secret taping system in the Oval Office that recorded all his phone calls and conversations. Mr. Nixon provided transcripts of the tapes, but refused to give the actual tapes to Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, claiming executive privilege.
When Cox refused to back down, the president fired him. Eventually, Mr. Nixon’s lawyers turned over the audio tape, but it contained an 18½ minute gap! The president’s personal secretary claimed she accidentally erased that portion of the tape.
Throughout the affair, President Nixon claimed he had no prior knowledge of the burglary, and knew nothing of a cover up. But then, in early 1973, Mr. Nixon’s defense crumbled. A “new tape,” recorded not long after the break-in came, to light showing Nixon had been told of the White House’s connection to the Watergate burglaries soon after they had taken place, and that he had approved plans to thwart the investigation. When congressional leaders told him he would be impeached and convicted, President Nixon resigned.
To call his actions a “monumental blunder” is to convert President Nixon’s course of lies, deceit, and intentional misconduct into a mere mistake of judgment. Nixon was about to be impeached not for some mere lapse of judgment, but rather for intentionally lying to the American people and obstructing justice.
And now it’s happening again. A candidate for president has a secret -- non-official -- email system. When Congress demands to see her Benghazi emails, she labels the investigation “the biggest fairy tale I have ever seen” and rhetorically asks, “What difference does it make?”
When Congress asks for her emails, it is told they were all personal and have been erased, and then she tells the public, “’I think it’s pretty clear ... they ended up becoming a partisan arm of the Republican National Committee.”
Mrs. Clinton is using Nixon’s playbook. Both labeled the congressional investigations partisan politics. Nixon (or an aide) erased minutes from a tape and withheld other tapes. Mrs. Clinton has deleted thousands of emails, and withheld thousands of others from Congress for nearly four years! Mr. Nixon lied to cover up a “third-rate burglary.” Mrs. Clinton lies to keep the public in the dark as to what the American government was doing in Benghazi. All that is presently lacking is her connection to a crime -- such as the Watergate break-in.
But what if it turns out that Ambassador Stevens was, in violation of the law, engaged in smuggling Libyan weapons to the Syrian rebels? Remember the Iran/Contra affair? What if it turns out that the FBI determines that she has lied under oath to Congress, or under oath has intentionally mislead Congress? Isn’t perjuring yourself before Congress a felony?
If Mrs. Clinton intentionally lied to Congress and the people, does that “make a difference?” Shouldn’t our leaders tell us the truth? Or have Democrats forgotten their catchy little jingle, “Bush lied, soldiers died?” Or, is integrity required only of Republicans?
Democrats say the Benghazi hearings have gone on too long. I would suggest that they would have been over three and a half years ago had Mrs. Clinton simply given Congress her emails when first asked. There would have been no problems for Mrs. Clinton, had the president, Mrs. Clinton or Susan Rice simply told the truth about what our ambassador was doing in Benghazi, rather than inanely blaming an obscure “Internet video.”
Mrs. Clinton’s 11:12 p.m., Sept. 11, 2012 email to her daughter -- the night of the Benghazi attacks — conclusively proves that Mrs. Clinton knew the attack was a terrorist attack, and not video inspired: “Two of our young officers were killed in Benghazi by an al-Qaida-like group.”
If mainstream Republican are really longing for the days of good old Richard Nixon, all they have to do is switch parties and vote for Mrs. Clinton -- the second-coming of President Nixon.
Posted: Wednesday, November 4, 2015 12:00 am. QCOnline.com
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