Historical Current Affairs Analysis

 

The release in late 2008 of Ron Howard’s well directed but cleverly biased anti-Nixon film Frost Nixon is testament to the on-going campaign to ensure that President Nixon is unfairly vilified. The purpose of this article by Dr. David Bennett is to provide a broader historical context in which to analyse Richard Nixon’s political life and highlight his very important historical achievements

 

RN’s Historical Linkage to Woodrow Wilson

 

Richard Nixon (RN) had a keen sense of history, particularly with regard to American presidential history. It was therefore ironic that he ended up emulating his political hero, President Woodrow Wilson (1913-1921). RN’s admiration of Wilson was ironic not only because Wilson was a Democrat (RN was a staunch Republican) but also because Wilson’s historical legacy would also be later redeemed by his successors adopting his internationalist principles and ideals. In the case of Wilson, these ideals and principles were redeemed by the United States engaging in international affairs to promote democracy by entering World War II (1941).

The United States entry into World War I in 1917 ensured the victory of the Entente (led by Britain and France) over the Central Powers (Germany, Austria-Hungary and Ottoman Turkey) in 1918. The hope that democracy and self-determination in Europe would immediately result from Allied victory was a forlorn one due to the disconnect between President Wilson’s idealism and a continuing sense of Realpolitik and short sightedness on the part of the recently victorious Entente.

 

Such short sightedness was also manifested by British Prime Minister Lloyd George’s (1916-1922) refusal to intervene in the Russian Civil War (1918 to 1920) to assist the Whites against the Communists. The ensuing communist victory resulted in the emergence of a new anti-democratic force in the world which could have engulfed Europe had it not being for the amazing Polish victory in the Battle of Warsaw in 1920.

 

That the principle of self-determination which Wilson held dear would not be consistently adhered to was apparent from the Treaty of Trianon (1920) which deprived Hungary (which had only gained full independence in 1918) of two-thirds of her territory and population. This treaty was drawn up without any regard for the rights of Hungarians who lived in the territories which were awarded to the successor states.

 

The precedent of re-drawing national boundaries according to the interests of victorious powers at the expense of desires for national self-determination was set by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles. This treaty did have its beneficial aspects in that the interests of previously suppressed peoples, such as the Italians and Poles, were redressed. However the refusal to accredit Burmese, Egyptian and Vietnamese delegations to the Versailles Conference was reflective of the predominance of Anglo-French interests.

 

 

 

The Disastrous Consequences of American Isolationism

 

The greatest tragedy of the Versailles Conference was that a golden opportunity to bring in a new democratic world order was discarded and the groundwork for the outbreak of World War II in 1939 was thereby set. An immediate negative consequence of the Versailles Conference was that the political career of the courageous leader of the German conference delegation, Matthias Erzberger, was destroyed. (Erzberger, who was later assassinated, had reluctantly accepted the abolition of the German monarchy in 1918 on the basis that a German republic would receive more favourable treatment as part of a post-war democratic world order).

 

The bloody mindedness of Lloyd George (1916-1922) and the French Prime Minister George Clemenceau’s (1917 -1920) determination to punish Germany was an affront to Wilson who had risked his political career to take the United States into the war to help bring about a new world order. The only substantial concession which was granted to President Wilson was establishment of the League of Nations.

 

The League was envisaged by Wilson as a multilateral organisation which would conduct international affairs on a transparent basis according to the international rule of law. However, the British and French cynically used the establishment of the League to legitimize their control over new territories in the Middle East which they had gained from the previous Ottoman Empire on the basis that they were League of Nations ‘mandates’ as opposed to being new colonial territories.

 

The capacity of the League to mature from being a victor’s club to being a genuine multilateral force for international good as envisaged by President Wilson was tragically undermined by the refusal of the American Congress to ratify the United States admission to the League. This refusal resulted from the rise of isolationism in the United States due to Wilson’s failure to rein in the British and French at the Versailles Conference.

 

The failure of President Wilson’s foreign policy helped lead to a negative domestic reaction which resulted in the successive election of the administrations of Warren G Harding, John C Coolidge and Herbert C Hoover between 1921 and 1933. These three failed Republican administrations reflected the American people’s desire for an isolationist foreign policy and minimalist government in domestic and economic affairs.

 

The New Deal

 

The inadequacy of a laissez faire approach to economic affairs during this period was borne out by the onset of the Great Depression in 1929. The resulting election of Franklin D Roosevelt (FDR) to the presidency in 1932 was the beginning of the rehabilitation of Wilson’s historical legacy. FDR had been the undersecretary of the navy in the Wilson administration. The policies which FDR pursued to alleviate the ill-effects of the Great Depression during his administration (1933-1945) were known as the New Deal.

 

New Deal programs were essentially government activist policies aimed at stimulating employment growth or at the very least providing social services for a substantial proportion of the population which was threatened with destitution. The New Deal era was one characterised by idealism in which government bureaucrats (including a young RN) worked for relatively low salaries. The New Deal did not get the United States out of Depression as this came with the stimulus in war production which resulted from the United State’s entry into World War II in 1941. In the interim however the New Deal helped sustain the United States on a socio-economic basis.

 

The political ramifications of the New Deal were profound because an electoral coalition was assembled in the 1930s which ranged from negroes to southern conservative whites who gave their allegiance to the Democratic Party. Roosevelt was accordingly re-elected president in 1936 with the highest vote which had been achieved to date. FDR’s prestige was such that in 1940 he was able to break the precedent established by President George Washington that a president only serve to two terms by successfully seeking a third term.

 

World War II: The United States Breaks with Isolationism

 

For all FDR’s prestige, he was not able to overcome the predominant isolationism of the American people until the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbour in December 1941. Indeed, the President would have been hard pressed to have gained congressional approval for a Declaration of War against Germany had Hitler not pre-emptively declared war on the United States.

 

Just as the American public had united behind President Roosevelt to support his domestic policies they similarly rallied to support the war effort. The Republican Party did not make the mistake of again falling behind the times by continuing with its traditional post World War I isolationism. This was evidenced by the 1944 nomination of New York Governor and staunch internationalist Thomas E Dewey as the Republican presidential candidate.

 

Dewey’s nomination was due to the support of the most successful Republican politician during the New Deal era, the Italian American Mayor of New York (1933 to 1945), Fiorello La Guardia. La Guardia was a staunch opponent of Mussolini’s fascist Italian regime and a vocal critic of Hitler’s anti-Semitism after his rise to power in 1933. Because of La Guardia’s support key New Deal constituencies of Jewish and Italian votes transferred to elect the Republican candidate, Thomas E Dewey as New York Governor in 1942.

 

Dewey’s election was the first key defection of New Deal bloc votes to the Republican Party which raised the prospect of the Republicans eventually returning to power. This prospect was seemingly bolstered when the Republicans won the 1946 congressional elections. The potential shift to the Republicans was due to public wariness that President Harry S Truman was not up to the task of being president following his ascension to office on the death of President Roosevelt in April 1945.

 

The United States and the Cold War

 

Truman, however was to be one of the great presidents of the twentieth century. In contrast to FDR, who as a carry over from the Versailles Conference, had an irrational fear of continuing British imperial designs, Truman followed Winston Churchill’s counsel, that with the demise of Nazi Germany, the Soviet Union now threatened the world. Had President Truman not heeded the warning that Churchill gave in his famous 1946 ‘Iron Curtain’ speech in Fulton Missouri, then the United States may well have relapsed into isolationism.

 

Such a relapse may have been fatal because in all likelihood Soviet backed communism would have emerged as the dominant force in the world. Truman’s commitment to oppose communist totalitarianism was initially manifested by the unveiling of the Truman Doctrine in 1947 in which military aid was sent to Greece and Turkey. The formulation of the Marshall Plan in 1947 also provided crucial economic aid without which Western Europe may have succumbed to communism. These important policy initiatives received crucial bi-partisan support.

 

Although Truman had gained crucial Republican support in foreign affairs, this did not dampen the Republican Party’s desire to return to power. In the 1948 presidential election, Dewey again ran as the Republican Party presidential standard bearer but this time on a widespread assumption that he would inevitably win. President Truman’s chances of winning election were seemingly further undercut by an apparent break up of the New Deal coalition.

 

The split in the New Deal coalition was manifested by the respective presidential candidacies of the Dixiecrat Strom Thurmond representing southern conservative whites and of former Vice-President Henry A Wallace of the newly formed left-wing Progressive Party. It was very fortunate that FDR removed Wallace as his running mate in 1944 because his ludicrously naïve attitude toward the Soviet Union probably would have allowed the Soviets to have gained control of all of Europe in the immediate post-war period. For all of Henry Wallace’s initial naiveté he would later become a staunch anti-communist and he endorsed RN’s 1960 presidential candidacy. Furthermore, it should also be mentioned that Wallace was a staunch anti-racist who was ahead of his time by taking a principled stand against racial segregation.

 

 

President Truman won his re-election due to his amazingly energetic and famous ‘whistle stop’ train tour in which he reached out to millions of Americans. The crux of the president’s message was that the Republican Congress, elected in 1946, was a ‘do-nothing Congress’ and as such the Republican victory would result in the New Deal legacy being dismantled. Public wariness with regard to letting go of the New Deal was such that President Truman won the greatest upset election victory in American history and a Democratic Congress was returned.

 

 

The Republican Party’s Resurgence

 

Despite President Truman’s incredible 1948 victory his capacity to win re-election in 1952 was fatally undermined by political decomposition within his administration. However, Dewey’s 1948 defeat was a warning to the Republicans that they could not take victory in 1952 for granted. In fact, the Republicans faced probable defeat in the 1952 presidential race because the front runner for the Republican presidential nomination was Senator Robert A Taft of Ohio. Taft had been the principal opponent of the New Deal and was a strident isolationist.

 

Dewey was able to thwart Taft’s presidential party nomination by drafting the immensely popular former Allied Supreme Commander, General D Eisenhower, as the 1952 Republican presidential nominee. To placate the Taft old guard, Dewey helped engineer RN’s selection as the Republican vice-presidential nominee. Although much of Taft’s base was isolationist, it was still anti-communist and RN’s selection therefore helped mollify Taft supporters. Furthermore, because RN was gaining a reputation as a Republican Party stalwart, his selection helped endow the ticket with a degree of needed partisan support from party regulars.

 

Even before his 1952 vice-presidential selection, RN had made an impact on national politics as a congressman during the Alger Hiss case and for the publicity concerning his acrimonious but successful run for the Senate in 1950. The attributes of courage and tenacity which RN demonstrated up until his 1952 selection would be in abundance throughout his subsequent political career as vice-president, president and the periods in between and after. To gain insight into the character as RN, it is necessary to review his early life and rise to political prominence.

 

RN’s Early Life

 

Richard Milhouse Nixon was born in January 1913 in Yorba Linda, southern California. RN was the son of Hannah Nixon (nee Milhouse) and Frank Nixon. His mother Hannah was a Quaker and his father Frank (who converted to Quakerism) ran a lemon orchard in Yorba Linda before moving his family in 1922 to Whittier, California, to run a grocery store. In his painful August 1974 farewell speech as president, RN made reference to his father’s struggles as a small businessman. A particularly poignant aspect of RN’s farewell speech was his tribute to his mother’s kindness in nursing his twenty four year old brother Harold who died (in 1934) from tuberculosis. RN also spoke of how his mother deeply mourned the two boys that she was paid to nurse after they too died from tuberculosis.

 

The Nixon family usually voted Republican due to their Quakerism and admiration of President Abraham Lincoln (1861-1865), although Frank’s voting patterns varied. (Quakers up until the American Civil War stood out for their opposition to slavery. Furthermore, American blacks up until 1932, if they were not prevented from exercising their democratic franchise, tended to vote Republican). RN’s parents, however, voted for FDR’s re-election in 1936.

 

Up until the United State’s entry into World War II in 1941, RN’s major political conviction was his strong detestation of Adolf Hitler. Illogically, RN voted for the Republican presidential nominee in the 1940 election, the isolationist Wendell Wilkie. RN admired FDR but voted for Wilkie on the basis that a president should not breach the then convention that presidents not serve more than two terms. (The American Constitution was amended in 1951 to ensure that presidents can only serve a maximum of two terms).

 

RN as a young man was hard working both as a student and in assisting with the family grocery. A top achieving High School student, RN was admitted to Whittier College in 1930. In 1934 he went to Duke Law School on a scholarship and graduated in 1937, near the top of his class. (RN had also shown potential as a promising musician).The young lawyer worked in private law practice until he moved to Washington D.C. in January 1942 to take up a bureaucratic position with the Office of Price Administration (OPA) which was charged with combating inflation and consumer shortages.

 

RN Serves in World War II

 

Although RN as a Quaker was exempt from military service, he joined the navy in May 1942 and after undertaking administrative duties in the Pacific islands of New Caledonia and Bougainville, saw military action in the Green Island campaign of April 1944. During his time in the navy, Nixon unwound by playing poker. An astute poker player, RN reputedly not only made a considerable amount of money but also gained a psychological insight into people. RN observed that those who did the most talking were bluffing because they had a weak hand. In his 1971 State of the Union Address, RN used a poker analogy to explain his historic decision to take the US dollar off the gold standard.

 

Before being discharged from the military, RN received a wire in October 1945 from a Whittier businessman and family friend, Herman Perry, enquiring if he would like to stand as a Republican congressional candidate in the 1946 elections. RN’s eventual decision to run had the support of his wife Pat.

 

Pat Nixon

 

Pat Nixon, nee Ryan (who changed her first name from Thelma to Patricia) was a stalwart supporter of her husband and it is possible that RN might not have endured the ups and downs of his public life without his wife’s support. RN and Pat met in January 1938 and after more than two years of courtship by RN; they were married in June 1940.

 

The couple had two daughters Patricia and Julie who were born respectively in 1946 and 1948. Julie Nixon married David Eisenhower (the grandson of Dwight Eisenhower) in 1968 and Patricia married Edward Cox in 1971. The support that RN received from his family, particularly during the Watergate trauma, would be impressive and moving. Pat’s devotion to her husband was manifested when she helped him rally following a near fatal thrombosis attack in October 1974. RN in turn provided devoted support for his wife after she was partially paralysed by a stroke in July 1976.

 

RN was incorrect when he lamented in his 1978 memoirs that his wife’s achievements would be forgotten in the wake of his departure from office. According to Gallop opinion polls, even after her husband’s resignation, Pat Nixon remained one of the most admired first ladies in American history despite the fact that she did not crave either publicity or public acclaim. The depth of feeling toward Pat Nixon was demonstrated by the tumultuous reception she received when she addressed the Republican National Convention in Miami in August 1972. While political couples often flaunt their affection for each other for public consumption, no one could plausibly deny the depth of Pat and RN’s love and commitment to each other. Within a year of Pat’s death in June 1993, (she had suffered another stroke in 1983), RN died in April 1994.

 

RN’s Political Career Begins

 

The turbulent public career which lay before RN can be dated from his endorsement in April 1946 from the Committee of 100. This committee was made up of one hundred California local businessmen and their endorsement was crucial to RN winning the June 1946 primary to be the Republican congressional candidate. RN was able to win the Committee’s endorsement by articulating his perspective that it was time to move beyond the maintenance of war-time controls and that a free market economy would be the driver of post-war prosperity. RN’s victory over Democrat New Deal congressman of ten years, Jerry Voorhis, was due partly because of his debating skills and because of the immediate post-war swing to the Republicans in 1946.

 

As a freshman congressman, RN distinguished himself from the isolationists in Republican congressional ranks who had been part of the America First Movement. RN did this in 1947 by resisting strong pressure not to vote for military aid to Greece and Turkey and by voting to appropriate funds for the Marshall Plan.

 

RN’s resolution to support American involvement abroad had been bolstered by his 1947 tour of Western Europe. In Greece (which underwent a civil war between 1946 and 1949) RN came face to face with victims of communist abuses of human rights. RN was also disturbed by the emerging pro-communist political culture in Italy and his visits to Britain and France led him to the conclusion that these two exhausted nations lacked the resources to withstand the communist threat in Europe.

 

The Alger Hiss Affair

 

RN began to make his name both as an anti-communist and as an up and coming Republican leader because of his central involvement in the Alger Hiss affair. In hearings in August 1948 before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC), a senior editor with Time magazine Whittaker Chambers alleged that he had once belonged to a communist spy ring in the 1930s along with Alger Hiss. Hiss had been a senior official with the State Department, had been an aide of FDR’s at the February 1945 Yalta Conference of Allied leaders and had been one of the organisers of the June 1945 San Francisco Conference at which the United Nations was launched.

 

The suave Hiss appeared before the HUAC to deny that he had ever been a communist or that he had ever known Chambers. Hiss came across as the more credible witness rather than the dishevelled Chambers and there was pressure on the HUAC, to discard Chamber’s testimony. However, RN instinctively believed Chambers and through his incisive cross examination of Hiss before the HUAC RN was able to show that Hiss had known Chambers. Despite having exposed Hiss as a liar, RN was taken back by the Justice Department’s reluctance to charge Hiss with perjury.

 

Wearing a mantle of innocence, Hiss challenged Chambers to repeat his allegations in public so that they could be contested in a court of law. In the pre-trial exchange of papers, Chambers alleged that he had incriminating rolls of micro-film of State Department papers (‘the Pumpkin Papers’) passed onto him by Hiss in the 1930s which were on his farm in hollowed out pumpkins. Scientific testing indicated that these documents had been typed on Mrs. Hiss’s type writer and that the hand-written annotated comments on them came from Hiss.

 

The retrieval of the pumpkin papers led to a Grand Jury in the libel case to vote to indict Hiss as opposed to charges being laid by the pro- New Deal Justice Department. Furthermore, due to a statute of limitations, Hiss was tried for perjury, as opposed to espionage. In January 1950, Hiss was found guilty and sentenced to five years imprisonment. (Following Hiss’s death in 1996, Soviet archival material was released which confirmed that he had been a Soviet spy who had operated under the alias of ‘Ales’).

 

As Alger Hiss’s chief antagonist during the congressional hearings RN, had been negatively portrayed by the press which generally sympathised with Hiss who subliminally represented the New Deal legacy. Ironically the HUAC’s success in helping expose Hiss laid the groundwork for Senator Joseph, ‘Joe’, Mc Carthy, to discredit the anti-communist cause by making unsubstantiated allegations in the 1950s of high levels communist infiltration. The disrepute which Mc Carthy generated is still to be fully expunged as wariness of anti-communist vigilance in the 1950s is now caricatured as paranoia.

 

Although Chambers must be accorded chief credit for exposing Hiss, he could not have prevailed without RN’s support. The national exposure which RN gained from the Alger Hiss Affair provided him with the momentum to run for a national Senate seat representing his home state of California in 1950. The publicity that arose from RN’s successful run for Senate, much of it fuelled by a hostile press, would help lay the groundwork for his vice-presidential nomination in 1952.

 

RN Gains a National Profile

 

RN’s Senate campaign was coloured by the ferocity of his competition with his Democratic opponent Helen Douglas. She was a three term congresswoman and a strong New Deal supporter. As a Democrat, Douglas had strongly supported the United State’s commitment to winning World War II. While isolationism was not a problem within the Democratic Party during the struggle against Nazi Germany and militarist Japan, a division amongst Democrats arose in the immediate post-war period as to what the appropriate attitude should be toward the Soviet Union.

 

Douglas was a Democrat who was initially prepared to give the Soviet Union the benefit of the doubt and this was reflected by her 1947 vote against sending military aid to Greece and Turkey. While Douglas was to shift to an anti-communist stance, she took the strange and untenable position of maintaining that RN was soft on communism!

 

To bolster her anti-communist bona fides, Douglas took the amazing step of refusing campaign support from the then president of the Screen Actor’s Guild (SAG), Ronald Reagan! Even though Reagan had taken a strong stand against communism as SAG president and had enunciated his anti-communism before the HUAC, the Douglas campaign was wary that Reagan’s reputation as a ‘New Dealer’ would hinder their candidate’s attempts to recast herself.

 

The exclusion of Reagan from the Douglas campaign was the first step in bringing the man into the Republican camp who would in turn eventually bring over millions of one-time Democrats to the Republican side. A scorned Reagan therefore campaigned for RN during the 1950 Senate race and he would support the three succeeding Republican national tickets and became a registered Republican in 1962. In the light of the tribulations which were to later come in RN’s political life, Reagan’s cross-over to the Republican side had profound ramifications.

 

Eisenhower’s Running Mate

 

As previously mentioned RN was selected as Eisenhower’s running mate. The 1952 presidential race was noteworthy because there was a prospect of electing a Republican president for the first time in twenty years. Eisenhower, however, had little sentimental attachment to the Republican Party. It was Eisenhower’s ambiguous feelings toward his adopted party and general contempt toward professional politicians which probably underpinned his ambivalent attitude toward RN as his running mate. This ambivalence became apparent during the so-called fund crisis which emerged during the 1952 presidential campaign.

 

The fund crisis arose from the revelation that RN had a campaign fund which was financed by California businessmen. Such a fund was legitimate so long as it was only used for campaign purposes and no convincing evidence was ever produced that this was not the case. However, a campaign was initiated in the press which cast aspersions about the fund and intimated that RN was corrupt. Had Eisenhower given way to pressure to drop RN, than the Republican presidential campaign may well have unravelled.

 

That Eisenhower did not drop his running mate from the ticket was not due to internal fortitude on his part but the tenacity of RN. During the fund crisis, Eisenhower intimated to RN that he should withdraw from the ticket. RN responded with a televised address (which was paid for by the Republican National Committee, the RNC) which became known as the ‘checkers speech’. In this speech, in which Pat sat with her husband, RN conceded that the only personal gain that his family had made from his political activities was the acquisition of a dog called ‘Checkers’ which had been donated by a supporter and that he intended to keep for his daughters.

 

The chequers speech resulted in an avalanche of telegrams and phone calls to the RNC which compelled Eisenhower to keep RN on the ticket. Although the Democrat presidential candidate, Illinois Governor Adlai Stevenson was unable to match Eisenhower’s popularity he did establish himself as the guardian of the New Deal legacy which would result in him being re-nominated in 1956. Stevenson, was able to secure his political base because of his intense partisan attacks on RN during the 1952 campaign.

 

RN as Vice-President

 

RN’s political legacy as vice-president (1953 to 1961) was to transform this previously relatively unimportant political position (unless one succeeded to the presidency due to unforseen circumstances) into the second most important position in American politics. This was achieved by RN filling in for the much older Eisenhower during periods of presidential ill-health and by undertaking official, and at times, dangerous overseas trips.

 

Another important reason why the role of vice-president was transformed was due to the impact of having a partisan vice-president, such as RN, serving with an essentially non-partisan president. As a retired army general, Eisenhower was contemptuous of professional party politicians which RN seemingly embodied. There were also cabinet secretaries and presidential advisors in the Eisenhower administration, such as the president’s brother Milton, who had similarly contemptuous attitudes toward partisan Republicans.

 

From President Eisenhower’s perspective, his role was to competently administer the government and safeguard national security interests as opposed to making political waves. The political gap which ensued was therefore filled by RN. In the November 1954 mid-term congressional elections, RN courageously campaigned for the Republican Party in the face of probable electoral defeat.

 

Although the Democrats regained control of Congress in 1954, thereby reversing the Republican congressional majority gained in 1952, the scale of the Republican defeat was mitigated by RN’s vigorous campaigning for Republican Party candidates. The base which RN subsequently gained within the Republican Party effectively thwarted Eisenhower’s subtle attempt in 1956 to remove him from their victorious presidential ticket.

 

The political courage which RN had demonstrated in 1954 was replicated in the 1958 congressional elections when he again campaigned for the Republican Party. The election reverses for the Republican Party were adverse to the extent that they helped ensure that a Democratic Party congressional majority would be entrenched until 1994. The results of the 1958 congressional elections demonstrated that, even with a Republican incumbent in the White House, the Democratic Party was clearly the majority party. Indeed, during this period, for every registered Republican voter there were two registered Democrats.

 

RN’s decision to campaign for his party in the 1958 congressional elections had mixed results for him. The positive consequence for RN was that the gratitude he secured from party regulars ensured his lock on the 1960 Republican presidential nomination. However, as a partisan political figure from a minority party, RN seemed destined for political defeat in the 1960 presidential election.

 

RN’s political fortunes were turned round by the positive publicity which he gained from his famous ‘kitchen debate’ with the Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, in July 1959. This impromptu and animated debate between RN and Khrushchev occurred at the American trade pavilion in Moscow. The debate concerned the question whether the capitalist system or the communist system would prevail over the other in the future. The strength which RN displayed in standing up to Khrushchev ensured that he entered the 1960 presidential race as the front runner and that foreign policy and national security would be the key issues in that presidential race.

 

The 1960 Presidential Election

 

The 1960 presidential election in which RN faced off against the Democrat presidential nominee, John Fitzpatrick Kennedy (JFK), is now regarded as one of the most exciting elections in American history. RN was to lose the 1960 race due to the slickness and ruthlessness of the Kennedy machine. Utilizing funds raised by his father, Joseph ‘Joe’, JFK assembled a very talented political team which helped him secure the Democratic presidential nomination over the seemingly more politically entrenched Senators, Lyndon B Johnson (LBJ), Hubert H Humphrey and Adlai Stevenson.

 

Because foreign policy and national security were the key issues in the presidential election, JFK took a strong line against international communism and warned that the United States was falling behind the Soviet Union. The novel aspect of a Democrat presidential candidate blasting a Republican administration for apparently being soft on communism was manifested by JFK’s repeated references to the Eisenhower administration’s failure to thwart Fidel Castro’s establishment of a communist dictatorship in Cuba. Despite JFK’s impassioned rhetoric concerning Cuba, his administration would doom Brigade 2506 which was composed of Cuban exiles when it landed in the Bay of Pigs in April 1961 by denying crucial American air support.

 

The Kennedy strategy of undermining RN’s key advantage in foreign affairs and national security while drawing in the Democratic base seemed to be working. To consolidate the Democratic Party base, JFK shrewdly recruited LBJ as his running mate in order to secure crucial southern bloc votes.

 

By contrast, RN blundered by selecting Henry Cabot Lodge as his running mate. Lodge was a former senator and diplomat who, as a key Republican Party operative, had helped engineer Eisenhower’s 1952 presidential nomination and had since maintained cordial relations with the outgoing president. The Republican vice-presidential nominee however could not match LBJ’s campaigning capacity and had no voting base which he could harness.

 

Lodge’s much vaunted foreign policy expertise was being neutralized by the Kennedy campaign’s focus on foreign and national security issues. As American ambassador to South Vietnam, Lodge would be complicit in supporting the Kennedy endorsed coup against President Ngo Dinh Diem in November 1963 in which the South Vietnamese president and his brother Ngo Dinh Nhu were murdered.

 

Whatever the merits of supporting the coup against the Diem regime, the Ngo brothers’ lives could and should have been protected by the United States. As American ambassador to South Vietnam, Lodge could have arranged the safe passage of the Ngo brothers into exile. Lodge’s singular failure to safeguard the lives of the Ngo brothers contrasted with the actions of the last American ambassador to Saigon, Graham Martin. Ambassador Martin, a registered Democrat and RN admirer, arranged the escape of South Vietnamese leaders and officials in April 1975.

 

‘Nixonburgers’: The Vilification Begins

 

The Vietnam trauma however lay in the future and the American public was generally riveted by the 1960 presidential race, such as the televised presidential debates in which Kennedy’s style triumphed over RN’s policy substance. Such is the continuing mystique of the Kennedy campaign that one of its key myths, derived from a dirty trick, is still being used. In the recent Frost Nixon movie, one of Frost’s staff (Bob Zelnick) makes a passing and insulting reference to RN’s brother, Donald.

 

The movie’s brief mention of the apolitical Donald Nixon (who died in 1987) could well refer to the story which was raised in the press in the last two weeks of the 1960 campaign that Donald had received an interest free loan in early 1957 of $ 205,000 from the multi-millionaire Howard Hughes. This loan was technically lent to RN’s mother Hannah and was provided to expand Donald Nixon’s grocery business. This loan was unsolicited by Donald Nixon, who naively accepted it.

 

The Frost Nixon film also has a scene in which RN supposedly rings Frost before the crucial interview on Watergate. In the discussion, Frost makes reference to cheese burgers. This reference to cheeseburgers could have been an allusion to the ‘Nixonburgers’ that Donald sold.

 

The practical political upshot of news of the Hughes loan was to discredit RN both in the 1960 presidential race and during his 1962 California gubernatorial race by implying that he had compromising illicit financial political ties to Hughes. Even after RN departed from office as vice-president in 1961, JFK’s brother, Robert, as Attorney-General, ordered an investigation into the Hughes loan and a review of the finances of Donald and Hannah Nixon. This harassment was aimed at undermining RN who in the immediate post-election period was still the most important partisan Republican figure.

 

The pressure of the election campaign was apparent when RN publicly and prematurely conceded the election, to Pat’s obvious distress, despite the fact the narrowness of JFK’s lead and that all the votes were still to come in. The premature concession resulted in the withdrawal of Republican scrutineers in Chicago and Texas where there were subsequent reports that the vote count had been tampered with. Local Republican leaders launched legal challenges against alleged instances of electoral fraud across the country but these were not sustained due to opposition from RN at the instigation of Eisenhower.

 

Eisenhower feared that a recount would dangerously divide the nation and RN consequently did not press the issue. Unusually, for an out-going president, Eisenhower was still immensely popular. Had Eisenhower consistently campaigned for the Nixon-Lodge ticket, instead of only in the last week, the Republican ticket may well have prevailed.

 

Controversy concerning the Bush-Cheney ticket’s election victory in November 2000 may add to the negative portrayal of George W Bush’s presidency. However it is improbable that controversy concerning the 1960 election result will ever be a reference point in popular culture as an egregious abuse of democracy.

 

RN’s Wilderness Years: 1962-1968

 

Whatever the legitimacy concerning JFK’s electoral victory, his January 1961 inauguration speech (‘Ask not what your country can do for you but what can you do for your country’) was inspirational and an indicator that his administration would be an internationalist one. RN however was faced the difficult challenge of returning to private life after nearly twenty years of either being in the military or in public office. The former vice-president moved to Los Angeles to practice as a lawyer. Due to RN’s political prominence, he was prevailed upon by Californian Republicans to run for governor in 1962 against Democrat incumbent Edmund (‘Pat’) G Brown.

 

The 1962 election was lost because it did not seem credible that a national figure such as RN would honour his pledge to serve a full term as governor and that he would have the necessary interest to commit himself to the seemingly parochial nature of the office. The bitterness of RN’s ‘last press conference’ in which he conceded defeat in the California election seemingly heralded the end of his career.

 

The ramifications of RN’s defeat in the 1962 California election were profound. The seeming political demise of the nation’s leading Republican paved the way for the stridently conservative Senator Barry M Goldwater of Arizona to win the 1964 Republican presidential nomination. Goldwater refused to conciliate with his liberal rival for the party nomination New York Governor Nelson A Rockefeller despite the fact that he too was staunchly anti-communist.

 

Goldwater’s bellicose victory speech at the 1964 San Francisco Republican Party Convention helped legitimize President Johnson’s (LBJ succeeded Kennedy following his November 1963 assassination) portrayal of Goldwater as a dangerous fanatic who could not be trusted with his finger on the nuclear button. The Republican rout in the presidential popular vote was also replicated in the Congress with the party losing thirty eight House of Representatives seats.

 

Nonetheless, out of the Republican debacle, Ronald Reagan emerged as a political figure to be watched. At the San Francisco Convention, Reagan delivered a stirring speech (entitled ‘Rendezvous with Destiny’) in which he warned against the dangers of an encroaching state. With this speech Reagan began to assume Goldwater’s leadership mantle as the leader of the American conservative movement.

 

With his election to a presidential term in his own right, LBJ embarked upon the most ambitious legislative agenda since the New Deal which was dubbed the ‘Great Society’. Under the Great Society civil rights and Medicare legislation was passed and funds were allocated to address urban and rural poverty.

 

LBJ’s liberal domestic agenda was also matched by an internationalist foreign policy in which the United States committed troops to save South Vietnam from a communist takeover. Unfortunately strains emerged for LBJ with regard to his balancing respective domestic and foreign policy commitments. A vocal and growing ‘anti-war’ protest movement, primarily among university students, began to emerge which attacked the American commitment in Vietnam. Public unease concerning American involvement in Vietnam was driven by a lack of clarity as to the purpose concerning the commitment and by hostility toward the military draft.

 

 

President Johnson’s political position was severely undermined by the adverse results from the 1966 midterm elections in which the Republicans picked up forty-eight congressional seats. These advances were primarily a pendulum swing in which traditionally Republican seats returned to the fold. RN contributed to this swing by vigorously campaigning to the point where he virtually fulfilled a role approximating that of the ‘leader of the opposition’. Due to his central role in the 1966 Republican campaign, RN gained a political base which comfortably delivered him his party’s presidential nomination in 1968.

 

A particularly important 1966 election result was that of Ronald Reagan’s election as governor of California. Reagan’s election victory was newsworthy because he defeated Governor Pat Brown whom RN had lost to four years earlier. The pattern of Reagan reversing RN’s political defeats was manifested and commenced with his 1966 victory.

 

American Isolationism Re-Emerges

 

The flawed analysis that the 1966 elections were a repudiation of LBJ’s Vietnam commitment helped fuel an ‘anti-war’ backlash in the Democratic Party. Accordingly, Senator Eugene (‘Gene’) J Mc Carthy of Minnesota announced his candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination against LBJ in 1967. Mc McCarthy’s nomination campaign was strongly supported by ‘anti-war’ university student volunteers.

 

 

Mc Carthy garnered an impressive 42% of the vote in the March 1968 New Hampshire primary against LBJ’s 49%. The senator’s strong showing was due to the momentum he received from media misreporting of the communist Tet offensive of the preceding month which made the military situation in South Vietnam look hopeless.

 

LBJ’s announcement at the end of March 1968 that he would not seek his party’s presidential nomination was a terrible political mistake because it considerably strengthened the ‘anti-war’ movement by making it look as though it was in the political ascendancy. This movement was not interested in genuine social reform, as President Johnson was, but rather in perpetuating angst. Therefore, the ‘anti-war’ movement could only measure success in terms of American foreign policy failure in which people in Third World nations fell under communist rule.

 

The Johnson withdrawal led to New York Senator Robert F Kennedy announcing his candidacy for the Democratic Party nomination which he seemed to be on track to winning after his victory in the June California Democratic primary. Senator Kennedy’s assassination at his victory speech helped endow the political year of 1968 with a feeling of trauma which would bolster the conclusion that the Vietnam commitment was a mistake.

 

The ‘anti-war’ stance that Senator Robert Kennedy assumed was at odds with his late brother’s internationalism which had led to America’s involvement in Vietnam. The shift to an isolationist position by Robert Kennedy was reminiscent of his father’s support for British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s policy of Appeasement in 1938 when Joe Kennedy was ambassador to the United Kingdom. The Kennedy family’s reversion to isolationism was consolidated by Senator Edward (‘Ted’) Kennedy’s role in blocking aid after 1973 to South Vietnam following the final withdrawal of American troops and this ensured this nation’s military collapse in 1975.

 

Robert Kennedy’s assassination left the Democratic presidential nomination wide open at the party’s July 1968 Chicago Convention. Although he had not entered any primaries, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey was still able to still win the Democratic nomination because party state leaders at the convention swung their delegations behind Humphrey. The vehement opposition of ‘anti-war’ delegates and the violence of the demonstrators outside the convention seemed to destroy party unity and with it the prospects of a Humphrey victory in November.

 

The 1968 Presidential Election

 

By contrast, RN’s nomination at the Republican Party’s Convention in Miami was orderly but enthusiastic. An aura of party unity was conveyed after RN fended off half-hearted but amiable presidential challenges, chiefly from Ronald Reagan and Nelson Rockefeller. The only real drama surrounding the convention concerned speculation of who would be selected as RN’s running mate.

 

The choice of Maryland Governor Spiro T Agnew as RN’s running mate was surprising and shrewd. Agnew’s selection was a surprise because he had been a strong supporter of Nelson Rockefeller. The selection was shrewd because Agnew’s home state was strategically located in electoral terms as a southern border state. Agnew, a Greek American and one-time Democrat, had prevailed as a Republican in a traditionally Democrat state. As a state official, Agnew had demonstrated courage in opposing racial segregation.

 

Due to his vocal attacks on ‘anti-war’ demonstrators and the media, Agnew as vice president became the darling of the Republican Party’s right wing. It was due to Agnew’s newly acquired right wing base in the Republican Party that RN dared not drop him as his running mate in 1972. RN came to believe that Agnew did not have the qualities to succeed to the presidency and he shut the vice-president out of policy making. Agnew however was compelled to resign as vice president in October 1973 after pleading no contest to tax fraud during his time as governor of Maryland. Although Agnew was not drawn into the Watergate quagmire, the circumstances surrounding his departure helped tarnish RN’s presidency.

 

The Nixon-Agnew ticket seemed destined for an easy victory in November 1968 and the major unpredictable factor was speculation of what impact the third party candidacy of pro-segregation southern based George C Wallace would have. Wallace’s candidacy was a threat to both RN and Humphrey but could only have affected the election result had Wallace gained the balance of power in terms of Electoral College votes – a possibility which was narrowly averted.

 

The eventual narrowness of the presidential race was due to the determination with which Humphrey doggedly fought back. Displaying tremendous courage, akin to President Truman’s, Humphrey stared down ‘anti-war’ demonstrators and in the process began to harness the Democratic Party’s national base which was still broader than the Republican Party’s. The integrity which Humphrey demonstrated in 1968 was similar to that he had previously displayed in opposing segregation at the 1948 Democratic Convention and in fighting the communist infiltration of his Minnesota based Democratic Farmer Labor Party.

 

Countering North Vietnamese Manipulation

 

Humphrey proved to be a worthy opponent of RN and may have been elected in 1968 had it not been President Johnson’s very unfortunate attempt to swing the election in his vice-president’s favour due to North Vietnamese manipulation. In October 1968, the Soviets relayed a North Vietnamese offer to the Johnson administration of their preparedness to commence direct negotiations in return for a bombing halt.

 

A bombing halt was announced in late October 1968 and subsequent expectations of negotiations seemed to have swung the election in Humphrey’s favour. Had Humphrey been elected president in such circumstances, it is difficult to envisage how it could have been politically feasible for him not to have sold South Vietnam out in proposed negotiations to be held in Paris in 1969.

 

An American betrayal of South Vietnam in 1969 could well have precipitated a collapse of the American position in the Third World and therefore enabled the Soviets to avoid the collapse of their position in Eastern Europe twenty years later. The maintenance of the United States’ position in the Third World following the fall of Saigon in April 1975 was due to RN’s foreign policy accomplishments. These accomplishments included saving Israel in 1973, clinching Egypt’s de facto re-alignment to the United States in 1974 and exploiting the Sino-Soviet split following an historic presidential visit to mainland China in February 1972.

 

The heroine who saved the situation in 1968 was Anna Chennault, chairwoman of the campaign group Republican Women for Nixon. (Chennault was the Chinese widow of Claire Chennault who had been the commander of the Flying Tigers, an air squadron of American volunteers which had fought in the Chinese Nationalist air force between 1941 and 1942.)

 

Although Mrs. Chennault suspected that she was being bugged by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI), she held her nerve and sent through a communication to President Nguyen Van Thieu of South Vietnam in late October 1968 that he should announce his government’s boycott of any proposed Paris negotiations. President Thieu’s announcement that his government would boycott any proposed international negotiations in Paris in 1969 probably swung the presidential election in RN’s favour who was elected by a victory margin of just over one percent of the popular vote.

 

Although the South Vietnamese boycott announcement probably swung the election in RN’s favour, the momentum was such that negotiations still went ahead in Paris in 1969. The new Nixon administration, which assumed office in January 1969, did have the option of selling South Vietnam out at Paris in 1969. This would have been facilitated by acquiescing to the North Vietnamese push of forcing the South Vietnamese government into a coalition with the communist dominated National Liberation Front (NLF) as a prelude to an American military withdrawal.

 

Peace with Honour: RN Refuses to Abandon South Vietnam

 

RN’s decision not to opt for the dishonourable and strategically stupid course of betraying South Vietnam in Paris 1969 was foreshadowed by his appointment of Dr. Henry Kissinger as the new administration’s National Security Adviser. Kissinger (who also assumed the post of Secretary of State in 1973) was originally a German Jewish refugee who had fled Hitler’s Germany in the 1930s. A respected Harvard University academic in foreign policy and national security matters, Kissinger was originally an advisor to the Rockefeller camp.

 

At this time, to be a ‘liberal’ Republican was to be a staunch anti-communist internationalist which Rockefeller was, as some one who came from the La Guardia- Dewey stream. RN and Kissinger’s attempts to facilitate an American military withdrawal from Indo-China while attempting to avoid an ensuing communist takeover – ‘peace with honour’- resulted in their being maliciously maligned. The vitriol which RN and Kissinger encountered would be a reflection of the phenomenon which occurred during the Vietnam War: initial liberal internationalists, such as Democratic Senator Frank F Church of Idaho, transforming into rabid opponents to the extent of callously negating the fatal consequences for human rights and democracy in the case of communist victory.

 

The essence of RN’s Vietnam strategy was to withdraw American troops from South Vietnam by the end of 1972 while ensuring that the South Vietnamese army was trained and equipped to fill the vacuum. This strategy was known as ‘Vietnamization’ and was part of the Nixon Doctrine. The new doctrine was unveiled by RN at his 1969 Guam Summit with President Thieu. This doctrine was intended to ensure that allied countries would assume responsibility for military affairs in countering communist aggression while the United States fulfilled a supporting role by providing economic and military aid as opposed to sending troops.

 

For all the ‘anti-war’ protest movement’s strident intensity against RN during his first term, there seemed to be an absence of the realization that his administration was withdrawing American troops from Vietnam. The protest movement was essentially the vehicle to generate an extreme left-wing social movement whose primary objective was to undermine American national security. The effectiveness of this movement was due to widespread public unease regarding the draft and the residual strength of traditional American isolationism.

 

 

America’s Vietnam Commitment under RN

 

Between 1969 and 1972, RN’s administration committed substantial resources to ensuring South Vietnam’s ultimate survival. In this period American aid was provided in training and equipping the South Vietnamese army. American technical advice and finance supported a very successful land reform program. The American directed counter insurgency Phoenix program was also successful in breaking the communist guerrilla insurgency. As part of the Phoenix program, South Vietnamese village militias, the ‘Popular Forces’, were established. These forces were effective in securing villages against the communist infiltration.

 

Unfortunately, RN’s administration fell into a communist trap by undertaking secret negotiations with North Vietnam between 1970 and 1972. Kissinger was the chief American negotiator and he undertook secret negotiations with senior North Vietnamese Politburo member Le Duc Tho. The Kissinger/Tho talks were ostensibly concerned with reaching a political settlement. While Kissinger was sincere in attempting to find a political solution Tho would skilfully use the talks to place a wedge between the United States and South Vietnam.

 

Believing that Tho might be serious about arriving at a political solution to the conflict, Kissinger engaged in these talks for over two years. The central issue which Tho focused on was Thieu’s removal from office and the formation of a coalition government in Saigon which included the NLF.

 

Due to the success of the Vietnamization program the North Vietnamese changed military strategy and launched a conventional invasion of South Vietnam in March 1972. North Vietnamese troops and military hardware were sent into South Vietnam through the Ho Chi Minh Trail. This ‘trail’ was in fact a series of thousands of trails and tunnels which meandered through Cambodia and Laos into South Vietnam.

 

American combat troops were not involved in countering North Vietnamese aggression and the South Vietnamese army, with American air support, held its own against the 1972 invasion. The invasion was undertaken in an American election year to place more pressure on the United States to dessert South Vietnam.

 

With the military advantage seemingly with South Vietnam, Tho dropped his strident demand for Thieu’s removal and the formation of a coalition government. Furthermore, Tho agreed that international elections would be held in South Vietnam under the supervision of a tripartite national council composed of representatives of the Thieu regime, the NLF and an ill-defined ‘third force’.

 

The snag however was that once a cease-fire took effect, North Vietnamese troops would be allowed to remain in their jungle sanctuaries. Despite a proposed ban on sending more troops and equipment down the Ho Chi Minh Trail only, the most naïve would have believed that Hanoi would honour such a stipulation. Therefore at the point at which the Americans were to disengage, North Vietnam would be militarily well positioned.

 

President Thieu understandably balked at acquiescing to an agreement which did not also facilitate the withdrawal of North Vietnamese troops. Having engineered a rapture between Washington and Saigon, the North Vietnamese badly miscalculated by breaking off the talks with the United States. RN responded by ordering massive bombings of North Vietnamese military and industrial facilities. Because this bombing campaign was undertaken in December 1972, it became known as the ‘Christmas bombings’.

 

The effects of the bombing campaign were to compel Hanoi and to re-assure Saigon to sign the Paris Accords of January 1973 which formally brought the Vietnam War to an end. But this formal cessation of hostilities was just that, a formality. The reality was that the Paris Accords were an expedient by which the principal participants could obtain their respective immediate objectives. For the United States the Paris Accords facilitated the final withdrawal of its troops and the repatriation of its prisoners, both of which were achieved by March 1973.

 

US Congressional Sabotage Dooms South Vietnam

 

In the case of the Thieu regime, which had the most to lose and the least to gain from the negotiating process, the Paris Accords left it in place because it did not facilitate the establishment of a coalition government which included the NLF. From Hanoi’s perspective, the fundamental concession which it gained was the continued stationing of its troops in jungle sanctuaries along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The real issue for South Vietnam was therefore whether the United States would continue to provide adequate levels of military aid and/or provide needed air support in the event of a military crisis.

 

No sooner had the Paris Accords been signed then regular North Vietnamese troops re-commenced coming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail. The massive – and congested – influx of NVA military conveys streaming down the Ho Chi Minh Trail provided the United States with a golden opportunity to fatally incapacitate North Vietnam’s military capacity by undertaking a short and sharp bombing campaign.

 

RN would later regret his failure to order the bombing of the Ho Chi Minh Trail in April 1973. This was because by the end of that month, his political authority to protect South Vietnam had been fatally undermined because of the onslaught of the Watergate scandal (sic). The US Congress’s slashing of military aid to South Vietnam in November 1973 effectively denied that country the capacity to effectively resist the North Vietnamese influx of new troops from this point on. Denied needed American aid, South Vietnam was overun at the end of April 1975 following the communist Spring Offensive of March 1975.

 

Also distressing was the conversion of Laos at the end of 1975 from being a constitutional monarchy, under the prime ministership of the decent Prince Souvanna Phouma, into a repressive communist republic. Communist consolidation of power in Laos was followed by the persecution of the Hmong minorty hill tribes who were subjected to chemical warefare. Furthermore, the regicide of members the deeply loved captive Loation Royal Family between 1977 and 1982, including  King Savang Vatthana and Queen Khamphoui, due to willful neglect while imprisoned  in a labour camp alienated the communist regime from the Loatian people to the extent that political reform could never be undertaken.

 

 

The Avoidable Genocide: The Tragedy of Cambodia

 

The fall of South Vietnam and Laos to communism in 1975 was calamitous but the suffering of Cambodia under the communist Pol Pot regime between 1975 and 1978 was catastrophic. In this period, up to two million people died, having being either killed or starved to death. This was out of a population of seven million!

 

In late April 1970, a joint American/South Vietnamese force undertook a military incursion into the North Vietnamese occupied parts of eastern Cambodia to take out military sancturies. Even though the objective of the incursion was to help facilitate an American withdrawal from South Vietnam, there was an outpouring of protest across the United States. The question arises, if the 1970 American ‘invasion’ of Cambodia could precipitate massive demonstrations, why weren’t there any substantial demonstrations in the United States against the genocide which took place in Cambodia between 1975 and late 1978?

 

The answer to the above rhetorical question is that condemnation of communist genocide during the period of Pol Pot’ s rule would have been tantamount to an admission by opponents of American involvement in Indo-China that they were wrong about the adverse consequences of a communist victory. During the Cambodian genocide, the ‘right wing’Readers Digest conspicuously stood out among the media for alerting the world as to what was happening. The limited mainstream American media coverage of the Cambodian genocide, during this period, such as it was, focused on scapegoating RN or Kissinger for being responsible.

 

A disturbing part of the Frost Nixon film (which is set in 1977) was the clear attempt to aportion blame to RN for the communist Khmer Rouge’s brutality. This misappropriation of blame became a propaganda art form after 1979 with the release of documentaries by John Pilger and Noam Chomsky. (Pilger at least acknowledged the extent of the genocide while Chomsky’s Orwellian Manufacturing Consent actually revised down the number of people who died). While David Puttnam’s 1984 film The Killing Fields highlighted the Cambodian genocide to the western world this film also attempted to misappropriate responsibility to RN.

 

It is outrageous that RN and Kissinger are attacked for culpability for the Cambodian genocide when they attempted to prevent a communist takeover. The following overview of Cambodian history and politics provides an analysis of the injustice of misappropriating blame to RN and Kissinger and as a warning against abandoning countries to brutal insurgencies.

 

Modern Khmer Political History

 

The seminal figure in modern Cambodian history is undoubtedly Prince Norodom Sihanouk. Sihanouk was installed by the Vichy French in 1941 as King of Cambodia. The canny Sihanouk gained great personal presitige when he manoevred the French into granting de jure independence in 1953 ( actual Cambodian independence came with the collapse of the French position in Vietnam in 1954). Utilizing the presitige he had gained, Sihanouk abdicated in 1955 (and was succeeded by his father as king!) and formed an avowedly left-wing populist party called the Buddist Socialist Community, the Sangkum, which was accredited with winning all the seats in the 1955 parliamentary elections.

 

Sihanouk ruled Cambodia as a one party state between 1955 and 1970. Between 1955 and 1960, Sihanouk served intermittently as prime minister. Following the death of his father King Nordom Suramarit in 1960, Sihanouk succeeded to the newly created position of Chief of State. Following the 1963 overthrow of Diem of South Vietnam in an American backed coup, Sihanouk terminated American aid to deny the Americans the possible leverage to overthrow him. Believing that a communist victory in South Vietnam was inevitable due to the chaos that Diem’s overthrow had generated, Sihanouk informally ceded substantial swathes of territory in eastern Cambodia to the North Vietnamese who established supply bases along the border with South Vietnam.

 

The adverse Khmer nationalist re-action to the North Vietnamese encroachment on Cambodian sovereignty led to the right wing faction of the Sangkum Party winning all the parliamentaty seats in the 1966 parliamentary elections. This faction of the Sangkum was primarily descended from the Democratic Party which had dominated Cambodian politics between 1947 and 1953 and which Sihanouk had pulverized in the 1955 elections and then absorbed into the Sangkum.

 

To prevent a threat to his power emerging, Sihanouk appointed General Non Nol prime minister following the 1966 elections. Non Nol’s anti-communism placated the new National Assembly while his loyalty to Sihanouk ensured that the prince’s power would not be undermined. Having steadied Sihanouk’s political position, Non Nol loyally resigned as prime minister in 1967 while remaining as army commander.

 

RN’s annoucement that American troops would be withdrawn at the end of his first term resulted in Sihanouk seeking to secure the withdrawal of North Vitnamese troops from Cambodia. To place pressure on the North Vietnamese, Sihanouk re-appointed Lon Nol prime minister in August 1969 in addition to the posts he already held as defence minister and army commander. The new government promptly re-established diplomatic relations with the United States and continue to turn a blind eye to the American bombing of North Vietnamese sancturies in eastern Cambodia.

 

The ‘secret bombing’ of Cambodia has been portrayed as the beginning of the sinister American enterprise which laid the groundwork for the Khmer Rouge takeover. This bombing campaign commenced in March 1969 and was permitted by Sihanouk to put pressure on the North Vietnamese to leave. Sihanouk also permitted the bombing campaign against North Vietnamese dominated jungle sancturies on the basis that no Cambodians would be hit and this condition was met. The bombings were also ‘secret’ because the North Vietnamese did not denounce the campaign for to have done so would have constituted an admission that they had troops in Cambodia.

 

Sihanouk departed Cambodia in early 1970 as part of his discreet international campaign to secure a North Vietnamese withdrawal from his country. While he was away, the Lol Nol government encouraged demonstrations outside the North Vietnamese and NLF embassies in Phnom Penh to place pressure on the Vietnamese communists to withdraw their troops from eastern Cambodia. Fearing that Sihanouk would dismiss the government as part of a deal to secure a North Vietnamese withdrawal (Sihanouk was on an official visit to the Soviet Union at the time) and with rumours that a pro-Sihanouk military coup was going to be staged, Sihanouk’s cousin and then Interior Minister, Prince Sirik Matak, forced a reluctant Lon Nol to depose Sihanouk.

 

Sihanouk’s deposition was not so much a ‘military coup’ but as Kissinger put it, a case of the Sihanouk government deposing Sihanouk. A vote was taken by the National Assembly on the 18^th of March 1970 which removed Sihanouk as Chief of State and replaced him with Cheng Heng, the Speaker of the National Assembly. (Unfortunately, the National Assembly also declared Cambodia a republic in October 1970 and the nation became officially known as the ‘Khmer Republic’). The circumstances concerning Sihanouk’s removal were reflective of the fact that his fall was not part of an American backed military coup but rather that it was due to the intricacies of Cambodian politics.

 

Cambodia was plunged into war by the decision of the Lon Nol government to align with the United States. Lon Nol refused to allow weapons to continue to be unloaded from the port city of Sihanoukville to supply the communist Vietnamese. The Cambodian premier also desptached troops, many of whom were enthusiastic young and untrained volunteers, to evict the North Vietnamese from Cambodia. Notionally, it was not unreasonable for the Cambodian government to desire to re-occupy its own territory. However, in the case of Cambodia, it was strategically stupid to take on the North Vietnamese army (the NVA) who Laos’s ‘Red Prince’ Souphanouvong dubbed ‘the Prussians of South East Asia’.

 

By mid April 1970, the NVA had wiped the floor with the Cambodian army and was on the brink of taking the Cambodian capital Phnom Penn. A North Vietnamese takeover of Cambodia would have thwarted the Vietnamization program and resulted in the Khmer people falling under foreign rule. The joint American-South Vietnamese incursion into Cambodia in late April 1970 not only prevented a North Vietnamese takeover of Cambodia but also ensured the success of the Vietnamization program. American and South Vietnamese troops were withdrawn from Cambodia by the end of June 1970.

 

Between April 1970 and March 1972 the NVA provided crucial support to the armed forces of the Khmer Rouge dominated FUNK with a military edge over the Cambodian army. (FUNK was the French acronym for the National Front of Kampuchea). FUNK was originally composed of genuine Sihanouk loyalists, the Khmer Rouge and the Hanoi controlled Khmer communists, the Khmer Minh.

 

Substantial North Vietnamese military involvement in Cambodia ended following North Vietnam’s conventional invasion of South Vietnam in March 1972. Due to direct Chinese military aid, the Chinese backed Khmer Rouge emerged as the dominant component within FUNK. This dominance was consolidated by Khmer Rouge purges within FUNK to which the North Vietnamese turned a blind eye so as to avoid losing Chinese military aid. FUNK orginally had widespread support in the countryside where Sihanouk was revered while support for the ‘Khmer Republic’ initially came from the cites where Sihanouk had been detested for his corruption.

 

 

 

The ‘Khmer Republic’: RN Tries to Save Cambodia

 

One of the reasons that the Cambodian diaster occurred was because American politicians took their eye off the ball with regard to that country’s internal situation. RN did not display similar negligence and indeed he almost prevented the rise of Pol Pot. An analysis of the ‘Khmer Republic’s’politics supports this conclusion. The central figure in the ‘republic’s’ politics was Lon Nol. What was ironic about Nol Nol was that he had essentially been a creation of Sihanouk’s. The Prince however failed to realize that although Lon Nol was an empty vessel he could manipulate, his political opponents could do the same.

 

During his first two years of nomimal power Lon Nol was essentially a frontman for the new ‘republic’s’ two most powerful politicians, Sirik Matak and In Tam. Lon Nol, who was promoted to the rank of Marshal by the National Assembly in 1971, did undertake disastrous military campaigns which were respectively known as Chenla I and Chenla II. In the main however, Lon Nol was predominatly dependant upon the key politicians who had instigated Sihanouk’s deposition and what leverage he had was derived from internal division within their ranks.

 

The National Assembly was converted in October 1971 into a constituent assembly and charged with the task of drawing up a new republican consitution. It was expected that Sirik Matak and In Tam would thrash it out in presidential elections to be held on 1972 under a new republican constitution.

 

However, on March 10^th 1972, Lon Nol’s younger brother Colonel Lon Non essentially seized power (a type of coup in which Lon Non overthrew the Lon Nol government) when he had his older brother assume the position of Chief of State and dissolve the cabinet. The proposed republican constitution was discarded and another one was submitted and approved in a dubious referendum held in April and a subsequent presidential election was conducted in June.

 

Although Lon Non had Sirik Matak placed under house arrest, this prince still maintained covert communication with Lon Nol who essentially appropriated his political base. Even with Sirik Matak’s support base, Lon Nol could not have won the June 1972 presidential elelctions against In Tam and Keo An had his brother not tampered with the vote count. All the seats in the ensuing September legislative elections were then won by Lon Non’s Socio-Republican Party due to a boycott by In Tam’s revived Democratic Party and Sirik Matak’s Republican Party (sic). (The Republican Party was really a covert monarchist party which secretly supported Sirik Matak’s ambition to one day become king, having been passed over by the French in 1941).

 

As intriguing as the above political machinations were they could not obscure the fact that by March 1973 the Khmer Rouge were on the brink of taking Phnom Penn. Despite strong congressional pressure to disengage from Indo-China altogether following the January 1973 Paris Accords, RN refused to allow Cambodia to fall into the hands of the Khmer Rouge.

 

RN’s resolution was demonstrated by American aerial bombing of Khmer Rouge positions around the Cambodian capital. Due to its military leverage, the United States was able to compel Lon Non to depart into exile in April 1973 and the ensuing political vaccum was filled by ‘President’ Lon Nol appointing In Tam prime minister of a cabinet composed of the new prime minister’s able supporters and those of Sirik Matak. The effect of American air support in stifling a determined communist attempt to take the capital in May 1973 provided the United States with the leverage to ensure that legislative and executive power was ‘temporarily’vested in a new High Political Council.

 

This council was composed of Lon Nol, Sirik Matak, In Tam and Cheng Heng. Due to the leverage that came from American air power, the United States was in a position in June 1973 to potentially engineer Lon Nol’s departure into exile and help establish a new coalition government between Sihanouk and the remaining members of the High Political Council.

 

Had such a government being established it would have had the support of Hanoi which was now weary of the Khmer Rouge, China which staunchly supported Sihanouk because of his friendship with Chinese Premier Chou En Lai and the Soviet Union which had strategic links with Lon Non (whose political interests were represented during his exile by Senate President Saukum Khoy). This foreign backing combined with the threat of American bombing provided the scope to forestall a Khmer Rouge takeover.

 

Cambodia 1973: Defeat Snatched from the Jaws of Victory

 

At this crucial stage, however, Democrat Senate Majority Leader Mike J Mansfield of Montana intervened. Mansfield threatened to prevent the American government from functioning by placing riders on all government legislation unless the bombing campaign in Cambodia was halted. In 1971, Mansfield had tried to set dates by which time American troops were to be withdrawn from South Vietnam and he had also attempted to slash American troop numbers in Western Europe.

 

Due to Mansfield’s blackmail, RN was forced to accede to an August 15^th 1973 deadline by which time funding for American air support in Cambodia would be cut off. Until the bombing cut off, Pol Pot had the Khmer Rouge launch near suicidal attacks on Phnom Penn to prevent even a possibility of there being a negotiated settlement. These attacks severely undermined the Khmer Rouge’s military strength due to the exercise of American air power. But with the cessation of the bombing campaign and due to steep cuts in American military aid by the US Congress, it would be only a matter of time before the Khmer Rouge recovered to take Phnom Penn which they did in April 1975.

 

Ignorance of the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal intentions could not be legitmately invoked to justify not taking steps to prevent their coming to power. A report by a US State Department expert on Cambodia, Kenneth Quinn, was available from February 1974. This report alerted the world to the Khmer Rouge’s genocidal intentions as Quinn’s analysis was based on credible reports of refugees from Khmer Rouge occupied territory.

 

Despite congressional induced impotence, the American ambassador to Cambodia, John Gunther Dean, who took up his position in 1974, attempted through his friendship with Sirik Matak to promote internal government reform. A political vaccum had been created following Lon Nol’s dissolution of the High National Council in November 1973 and the appointment of a loyalist cabinet headed by Long Boret the following month.

 

These unusually prompt and forceful actions by Lon Nol were precipitated by an air force pilot trying to kill him by bombing the ‘Presidential Palace’ in November 1973. This attack was undertaken to facilitate Prince Sihanouk’s restoration before the Khmer Rouge took the capital. In the time remaining until Phnom Penn’s fall, ‘Khmer Republic’ politics essentially became a struggle between Ambassador Gunther Dean and Lon Non, who had returned in 1974.

 

For all Gunther Dean’s struggles with Lon Non, he still offered to evacuate him and other senior ‘Khmer Republic’ officials when he left Cambodia on the 12^th of April 1975. Most of these officials and politicians, including Lon Non, courageously refused, knowing what their fates would be after the capital fell. The most poignant and graceful refusal came from Sirik Matak. Feeling a sense of responsibility for having compelled him to depose Sihanouk, Sirik Matak took Lon Nol to Indonesia before returning to Cambodia of his own accord. All in all, the Cambodian diaster was a tragedy because it was so avoidable.

 

A Twentieth Century Commodore Perry: RN Goes to China:

 

The pressures wrought by the Vietnam War meant that, in foreign relations, RN and Kissinger forewent any ideas of challenging Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe. Instead, they concerntrated on the United States winning the Cold War in the Third World or at least holding its own. However, the pressures and complications precipitated by the Vietnam War motivated RN and Kissinger to initiate contact with mainland China to exploit the Sino-Soviet split.

 

 

The historical importance of RN’s journey to mainland China in February 1972 was something which even his most strident critics do not deny. However, there is a tendency to overlook the historical ramifications of RN’s trip on Chinese domestic politics and recent political history. China at this time was in the ideological grip of Chairman Mao Tse Tung’s ‘Cultural Revolution’ (sic).

 

In the early 1970s, it was not certain if China would throw off the shackles of Mao’s diastrous policies. By establishing a link between China and the United States, RN helped lay the groundwork for China’ s post Mao leaders to appreciate the strategic utility of opening up to the outside world and of consequently undertaking fundamental socio-economic reforms. In this respect, RN’s 1972 visit, and subsequent visits to China as a private citizen, had an historical impact similar to that of US Commodore Matthew Perry’s visits (albiet initially forced) to Japan in the 1850s.

 

 

RN and Détente

 

A geopolitical consequence of RN’s 1972 China visit was that the Soviet Union sought political accommodation with the United States despite the Vietnam challenge. RN’s May 1972 Moscow Summit was the beginning of the policy of Détente. Under this policy, the artificial division of Europe was unfortuantely recognized and scientific and cultural contacts between the Soviet bloc and the West were encouraged.

 

It is to be hoped that a ‘spheres of influence’ approach will not be followed by the Obama administration in which the United States allows powerful nations such as China and Russia to dominate geographical areas in return for the United States to do the same. All nations, regardless of their size have a right to have their sovereignty respected. Interference by one nation in another’s affairs is only acceptable in the pursuit of democracy and human rights. The Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir (1969 to 1974) observed that peace is not achieved by sacrificing small nations.

 

The major ramification of Détente was the negotiation of the Stategic Arms Limitation (SALT) treaties concerning the levels at which nuclear weapons would be deployed. The conservative Right in the United States was critical of RN’s and Kissinger’s Détente policy. This policy was pursued by the United States because it did not seem plausible then that Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe could ever be reversed.

 

The advantages which the Soviets reaped from Détente, such as manipulating the SALT agreements, were a result of American weakness which arose as a disastrous consequence of Watergate. Nonetheless Détente helped lead to Soviet bloc nations signing the Helsinki human rights accords in 1975 which in turn generated Helsinki Watch dissident groups in Eastern Europe who helped bring down communism in the late 1980s.

 

For all the criticism to which RN and Kissinger were subjected to concerning Detente, both were always staunchly anti-communist. This was demonstrated by their strong support after leaving office for the Reagan administration’s foreign policies which fatally undermined Soviet dominance in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s. Indeed RN’s initiation of Détente combined with his anti-communism helped make him a revered figure in post-communist Russia.

 

 

 

RN’s First Term

 

Despite his foreign policy triumphs and his administration’s competent economic management, RN’s 1972 re-election was dependant upon whom the Democrats nominated for president. This was because the Democrats were still the dominant political party as FDR’s New Deal coalition was still essentially intact. RN therefore did not undertake any substantially ‘right wing’ domestic policies during his first term. The possible exception to this policy approach was RN’s decision to take the American dollar off the gold standard in 1971 to promote international free trade.

 

In RN’s first term, there was no major reversal of LBJ’s Great Society programs. The Enviromental Protection Agency (EPA), established in 1968, was consolidated and the civil rights reforms of the Great Society were maintained. The Nixon administration promoted the rights and interests of Native American Indians and court decisions facilitating ‘busing’, i.e. the racial integration of schools were faithfully adhered to. Relatively cordial relations between the Nixon administration and organised labour were also maintained, in part because of the strong anti-communism of George Meaney, who was president of the American Federation of Labor –Congress of Central Organisations (AFL-CIO) at this time.

 

For all RN’s domestic policy moderation, substantial opposition to his administration emerged during his first term. This opposition was due to RN’s frequent vetoes of congressional spending programs which he considered to be inflationary. Rancorous disputes between RN and Congress concerning presidential Supreme Court nominations also undermined possible bi-partisan unity during the first term.

 

RN’s first term was also characterised by stained relations with the press. The most prominent dispute between the administration and the press was RN’s unsuccessful attempt in 1971 to prevent the New York Times  from publishing the leaked ‘Pentagon Papers’ (which concerned Vietnam policy making by previous administrations). This dispute set the tone of press’s hostility and bias againist the Nixon administration during the Watergate crisis.

 

The 1972 Presidential Election

 

 

Even without the emergence of Watergate, the 1972 election would still be interesting. The political year of 1972 commenced with RN’s re-election being uncertain and ended on a note of uncertainity despite his massive re-election. Although RN won an overwhelming re-election as president, Americans still returned a Democratic Congress which was orientated toward taking the United States toward the left due the impact of the failed Democrat presidential candidacy of Senator George Mc Govern of South Dakota. The possible political direction of the United States vis a vis a struggle between the president or Congress would be determined by Watergate.

 

That the 1972 presidential election was still competitive regardless of RN’s first term record was reflected by the fact that there were eleven prospective nominees for the Democratic Party nomination. (One of the those candidates was my American political hero, the late Senator Henry (‘Scoop’) M Jackson of Washington state). In early 1972, RN’s re-election seemed problematic due to continued Democratic Party dominance and widespread respect for the Democrat front runner for the party presidential nomination, Senator Edmund S Muskie of Maine.

 

Senator Muskie had been Senator Humphrey’s running mate in the 1968 presidential election and he was widely respected for his intelligence, integirity and calm demeanour. However, just before the first presidential primary in New Hampshire in February Senator Muskie was teary eyed as he denouced William Loeb, the editor of the far right and subsequently ludicrously misnamed New Hampshire newspaper the Manchester Union Leader. Senator Muskie’s emotional reaction to an article in this paper that his wife had a drinking problem fatally undercut his reputation for calmness and he lost his front runner status.

 

The two candidates who moved into the void were polar opposites, Senator George Mc Govern and Alabama Governor George Wallace. The viability of Senator Mc Govern’s candidacy was that he had a tight and committed campaign team and the advantage he had in selecting delegates in non primary states. In these states, delgates were selected by caucuses according to the recommendations of the 1971 Mc Govern Commission. This commission was established as a response to the debacle of the 1968 Chicago Democratic Convention.

 

The strength of Governor Wallace’s campaign was derived from his populist skill in running on local issues where primaries were being held which enabled him to considerably expand beyond his ‘Deep South’ political base. Governor Wallace emerged as a viable contender by exploiting anti-busing sentiment to win the important Florida primary. However, the governor was paralyzed after being shot in May while campaigning in Maryland. Governor Wallace’s withdrawal would help RN gain the allegiance of millions of voters who might not have otherwise have voted for him.

 

Senator Mc Govern’s quest for the Democratic nomination was almost thwarted by Senator Humphrey who assembled an essentially ‘anybody but Mc Govern’ coalition. Senator Humphrey’s narrow loss to Senator Mc Govern at the deciding June California primary unfortunately delivered the latter’s presidential nomination. The bitterness of the Democratic nomination campaign however provided RN’s campaign with the capacity to gain millions of traditional Democratic votes in the November presidential election.

 

Due to the strengh of the Democratic Party base, RN pursued a strategy of being a president above the partisan fray. RN’s re-election committee was therefore known as the Committee to Re-elect the President (CRP). The Nixon campaign focused on Mc Govern’s radical left –wing agenda to isolate him from the political mainstream. Senator Mc Govern’s chief political asset was his perceived personal integrity. The duplitious way in which Senator Mc Govern removed his respected running mate, Senator Thomas F Eagleton of Missouri, after it was revealed that he had once undergone psychiatric treatment for depression and exhaustion, severely undermined Mc Govern’s credibility.

 

Denial of a Mandate: Watergate Unleashed

 

Although RN was re-elected in a landslide with 60% of the vote the Democrats increased their majority in the Congress. The disparity in the respective presidential and congressional votes was due to RN’s decision to project a non-partisan image. With the advent of Watergate and in the wake of subsequent events this was an unfortunate strategy because RN would have been better served in his second term by a stronger Republican base in the Congress.

 

It should also be pointed out, that contray to popular myth, Watergate was not exposed by two intrepid investigative reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward of the Washington Post . Bernstein’s and Woodward’s successive ‘revelations’ and those of their mysterious, if not fictional mole, ‘Deep Throat’, obscured the fact that the American Congress drove the dynamics of the Watergate affair.

 

The Watergate affair and the connection of staff from the CRP was a major story from the beginning of news of the Watergate bugulary breaking in June 1972. The Washington Post in 1972 ran with the issue of supposed White House invovlement in the Watergate bugulary right up until election day. Indeed Watergate was the major issue that Mc Govern used against RN in the 1972 election campaign. The potency of Watergate to destroy RN in his second term would be driven by Congress with the aid of media bias.

 

RN had won an overwhelming presidential election victory and had a reformist second term agenda, the New American Revolution, which threatened the New Deal legacy that had underpinned Democratic national dominance. Therefore, in RN’s second term, Democtatic congressional leaders ran with Watergate to politically cripple and ultimately destroy him.

 

The Watergate affair commenced on the 17^th of June 1972 after five burglars were apprehended breaking into and trying to bug the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) at the Watergate Office Building in Washington D.C. The five burgalars in addition to other men who were involved in wiretapping were convicted in January 1973. Because these men were either directly or indirectly employed by CRP, suspicion arose that administration figures or even RN were involved in the bugulary.

 

The Democratic Party Congressional majority voted in January 1973 to establish a special investigative committee into the Watergate break in. The subsequent Senate Select Committee to investigate Watergate was established in May 1973 and was chaired by Democratic North Carolina Senator Sam J Ervin. At the end of the preceding month, the Watergate affair began to paralyze the administration when RN was forced to accept the resignations of White House Chief of Staff, Harry R Haldeman and White House Assistant on Domestic Affairs, John D Ehrlichman.

 

 

 

Paralysis Sets In

 

The resignations of Ehrlichman and Haldeman on April 30^th 1973 were precipitated by the admission of one of the Watergate burglars, James Mc Cord, that it was due to political pressure that he had pleaded guility and remained silent concerning CRP involvement in the Watergate burgulary. On the same day that Haldeman and Ehrlichman resigned, the Senate confirmed Elliot L Richardson as the new Attorney General. He in turn appointed Archibald Cox to the new position of Special Prosecutor into the Watergate enquiry.

 

The departures of Ehrlichman and Haldeman were bitter blows to RN and his deep reluctance to let them go was one of the reasons why Watergate became such a disaster. The powerful and presitigous position of White House Chief of Staff was created by RN when he became president in 1969. Wearied by ‘anti-war’ protesters and immersed in foreign policy issues, RN delegated considerable leeway to Ehrlichman and Haldeman. Ehrlichman by the end of RN’s first term was even been touted as the Henry Kissinger of domestic policy.

 

RN’s attachment to Ehrlichman and Haldeman was also derived from his determination to stop leaks and ‘run a tight ship’ from the White House. This determination was reinforced by the 1971 Pentagon Papers furore which probably led to RN’s decsion that year to have conversations in the Oval Office tape recorded. The tightness with which the White House was run under Ehrlichman and Haldeman was dubbed by some White House staffers as the ‘Berlin Wall’. This internal discord help shatter the unity which was needed with the onset of the Watergate investigations conducted by the Ervin Committee and the Special Prosecutor’s Office.

 

The major rupture with regard to White House staff unity was the June 1973 televised testimony of former White House Counsel John W Dean – who RN had sacked on April 30^{th _} that the president was involved in the Watergate cover up.

 

The revelation by White House aide Alexander Butterfield in testimony in July 1973 before the Ervin Committee that there was a taping system in the White House led to an almost year long battle with the two successive special prosecutors (Cox and his successor Leon Jaworski) to gain access to the White House tapes.

 

 

 

The Wolves Descend

 

The Watergate affair reached apocalytic proportions on the 20^th of October 1973 when Attorney General Elliot Richardson and his deputy William Ruckelshaus resigned rather than acede to RN’s request that Cox be dismissed as Special Prosecutor after Cox demanded that the White House tapes be handed over to him. (Solicitor General Robert Bork, the third ranking official in the Justice Department carried out the dismissal). This incident became known as the ‘Saturday Night Massacare’.

 

 

Mention should be made that during the time of the ‘Saturday Night Massacare’ (October 1973), RN delivered vital emergency aid to Israel which had just come under attack from Egypt and Syria. The shuttle diplomacy which Secretary of State Henry Kissinger undertook between the combatants facilitated a cease fire. Israeli Prime Minister Golda Meir’s courageous decision to agree to a a cease-fire and allow the Egyptians to hold some of the territory which they had gained provided Egyptian President Anwar Sadat with the flexibility to make his historic visit to Israel in 1977.

 

The 1977 Sadat visit in turn set the scene for President James (‘Jimmy’) E Carter to mediate the Camp David Peace Accords between Egypt and Israel in 1979 which was the major positive foreign policy achievement of his presidency. Egypt, on a de facto basis, moved into an alliance with the United States following RN’s June 1974 visit to Cairo which was his major achievement for that difficult year. Despite RN and Kissinger’s seminal role in laying the ground work for the Middle East peace process, neither were invited to the White House lawns for the signing of the agreement between Israeli Prime Minister Yitzak Rabin and Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat in September 1993.

 

The impact of Watergate in detracting from RN’s forign policy achievements was dramatically embedded by memories of related events such as the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’. This incident has been potrayed as a stark example of RN obstructing justice. However, the creation of the new position of Special Prosecutor had been instigated by Senator Senator Ted Kennedy who had also strongly backed Cox’s appointment. Cox himself had previously worked for Senator Ted Kennedy’s two brothers and some of his staff had also worked for Senator Robert Kennedy. The uproar which ensued following the ‘Saturday Night Massacre’ obscured the partisan political influences which had precipitated the formation of investigations into Watergate.

 

The credibility or otherwise of the Watergate enquires essentially rested on the infamous ‘smoking gun’ tape of June 23^rd 1972 in which RN discussed with Haldeman how to ensure that either the White House or the CRP was not linked to the Watergate burgulary. The tragedy of the ‘smoking gun’ tape is that it became the hook by which RN became ensnared in Watergate and made other unsubstantiated allegations against him appear credible.

 

The Supreme Court unamimously decided on the July 24^th 1974 that the White House tapes, including the incriminating ‘smoking gun’ tape be handed over to the special prosecutor. The playing of the smoking gun tape on August the 5^th 1974 ensured that RN had no choice but to resign to avoid impeachment which he unfortunately did on August the 9^th 1974. (RN resigned despite determined and loving opposition from his daughter Julie). To save RN from on-going persection, President Gerald R Ford mercifully pardoned him the following month.

 

Misconstruing Contexts: The ‘Smoking Gun’ Tape

 

The ‘smoking gun tape’ was the incriminating tape because in it RN discussed with Haldeman the option of paying hush money to the burglars and the mechanics of how this could be arranged without the money being traced. RN also discussed stopping the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) from pursuing leads which might incriminate the CRP. As reprehensible as the discussion matter was in the ‘smoking gun’ tape, RN’s involvement in a ‘Watergate cover up’ did not actually extend beyond canvassing the aforementioned options.

 

The broader perspective which the ‘smoking gun’ tape and other White House tapes established was that RN did not instigate the Watergate burglary or have prior knowledge of it. Ironically, RN’s attempt to show that his administration and campaign was not involved in the Watergate burglary actually led to him being engulfed by the affair in his second term.

 

The morally dubious aspect of RN’s involvement in Watergate was that he canvassed options of covering up potentially illegal actions undertaken by people connected with his re-election campaign. RN’s determination to prevent the release of the ‘smoking gun’ tape subsequently provided credence to allegations that RN had detailed knowledge of other activities, such as the ‘Plumbers’ unit.

 

Had RN released all the tapes, including the ‘smoking gun tape’ shortly after Butterfield revealed their existence in July 1973, the political ramifications would have been very adverse but the momentum for impeachment might have been stifled. As important as impeachment is as a check and balance within the American constitutional system, this process is still inherently political because it involves a legislative house acting as a jury and court.

 

Calculated Passion: The Politics of Impeachment

 

The stirring speech that Texas Congresswoman Barbara C Jordan made before the House Judiciary Committee in July 1974 obscured the political dimension of the impeachment proces. The respected Time magazine correspondent Hugh Sidey’s conclusion that the Watergate trauma constituted a triumph of the American system by checking a presidential abuse of power similarly undermined the value of retrospectively analysing the partisan dynamics which had initiated and driven the Watergate affair.

 

President Bill Clinton was found by a court in 1998 to have committted perjury with regard to the case of Paula Jones concerning his denial of having had sexual relations with Monica Lewinsky. President Clinton was impeached in December 1998 but the political dynamics were such that the Senate trial was brief and the attempt to remove the president failed on party lines.

 

This outcome was positive in that the United States could not afford to have a sitting president consumed by a politically motivated trial, let alone be removed. President Clinton’s lawyers tried to have the matters raised by Paula Jones adjourned until Clinton became a private citizen. There was however no ensuing uproar that President Clinton was obstructing justice. Indeed, the Democrats position in the Congress slightly improved in the November 1998 congressional elections.

 

By contrast the political momentum which had forced RN from office was bolstered following President Ford’s presidential pardon of his predecessor. The ensuing uproar provided the Democrats with a landslide win in the 1974 mid term congressional elections.

 

 

The Decline of American Power: Watergate’s Negative Ramifications

 

Secretary of State Henry Kissinger later catergorized the new Congress as ‘Mc Governite’ and this was confirmed by its denial of aid to South Vietnam and the ‘Khmer Republic’ which ensured that both nations fell to communism in April 1975. Congressional denial of aid to anti-communist guerillas in the former Portuguese colony of Angola also allowed Cuban backed communists to prevail in 1976.

 

The disastrous ramification of Watergate was the undermining in American faith to engage in world affair to counter Soviet power. This change in approach was manifested by Jimmy Carter’s election in 1976. The Carter administration’s emphasis on human rights turned out to be tragically counter productive. By distancing the United States from the Shah of Iran and the Somoza family dictatorship in Nicaragua, the Carter administration in 1979 helped ensure that both nations went from being authoritarian dictatorships to entrenched autocracies determined to do harm to the United States.

 

The American Ambassador to the United Nations from 1981 to 1985, Dr Jeane Kirkpatrick (who had been a staunch supporter of Hubert Humphrey), observed that authoritarian regimes, which were often American backed, could be reformed and eased out of power. By contrast, Soviet backed communist regimes were almost impossible to remove. The sound distinction that the Reagan admininistration made between different catagories of regimes helped ensure a transition from authoritarian governments to democratic governments during this period, particuarly in South America in the 1980s.

 

While Kirkpatrick’s analysis now seems dated, it should not be forgotton that, at this time, it did not seem possible that the Soviet empire would collapse. Indeed, Soviet power would not have collapsed without the exercise of American power in opposing the Soviet Union. Under President Carter, there seemed little prospect that the Soviets would be effectively resisted.

 

The 1976 election of Jimmy Carter was a very negative consequence of Watergate. Carter came across as a political outsider, a ‘Mr. Smith’ goes to Washington type of figure who would consistently be politically transparent. By contrast, President Ford was considered a good caretaker president but just that, a caretaker. Post election analysis indicated that, had President Ford taken RN’s unsolicited advice, given through intermediaries, of what states to focus on and which Republican Party operatives to utilize, then he would have won election to the 1976 presidential election.

 

 

RN: Behind the Scenes But Still in the Fray

 

Except for undertaking a private trip to China in February 1976, RN maintained a low profile up until after the 1976 presidential election. RN did this to help President Ford’s election bid. Nonetheless RN still ‘worked the phones’ in 1976 to secure the selection of the former Democrat governor of Texas John B Connally as President Ford’s running mate. Connally had served as RN’s Treasury Secretary and had headed the ‘Democrats for Nixon’ organisation in the 1972 election.

 

RN would have selected Connally as his running mate in 1972 if it had been politically feasible. Following Agnew’s resignation RN in October 1973 wanted to nominate Connally to fill the vice-presidencial vacancy but this was not an option due to opposition from the Democrats. (The position went to Gerald R Ford of Michigan who had been the Republican House Minority Leader).

 

Having joined the Republicans in May 1973, Connally almost won the election for Ford by coming close to delivering Texas to him. (Carter as a southner was the first Democrat to win all of the South since 1944. Without this he could not have won the 1976 presidential election). RN’s determination to secure Connally’s political future was not only based on his political admiration for him but on his belief that Connally could bring over millions of Democrat voters to the Republican side. In actual fact, this outcome was to be achieved by another former Democrat and life long admirer of FDR, Ronald Reagan.

 

 

Reagan to the Rescue

 

Having almost beaten Ford for the 1976 Republican presidential nomination, Reagan entered the race for the Republican nomination in 1980 as the front runner and he subsequently won the presidential election that year. This chain of events could not have occurred had it been for RN’s previous political defeats.

 

The Reagan presidency (1981 to 1989) was historically significant in precipitating the collapse of the Soviet empire. This was ultimately achieved by consistently challenging Soviet power. Under the Reagan administration Soviet resources were strained by funding anti-communist insurgencies in the Third World, (which was known as the Reagan Doctrine) and pursuing the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) which became known as ‘Star Wars’. The deployment of Cruise missiles in Europe also challenged the resource capability of the Soviets to keep up.

 

The military aid that the Reagan administration provided to the Mujadeen in Afghanistan in the 1980s was very important in undermining Soviet strength. Similarly, covert American support for the free Polish union movement Solidarnosc (Solidarity) was crucial to undermining Soviet power. By assisting Solidarity the Reagan administration was actually challenging the post –war assumption that Soviet hegemony in Eastern Europe could not be realistically challenged.

 

American support for Solidarity was facilitated through the AFL-CIO. The AFL-CIO president at this time was Lane Kirkland. He still worked with the Reagan administration by supporting Solidarity despite this administraton being unfortunately stridently anti-union. The major right –wing domestic policy undertaking of the Reagan administration were tax cuts as part of a move toward supply side economics and budget cuts to welfare programs. Despite these constant battles between the Reagan administration and Congress over welfare spending programs, the ‘Reagan Revolution’ did not undo the domestic legacies and programs of the New Deal and Roosevelt’s electoral coalition remained intact.

 

The need for the Soviets to respond to the Reagan challenge gave rise to the elevation of Mikhail Gorbachev as General Secretary of the Soviet Communist Party in March 1985. Gorbachev’s intention on coming to power was not to end communism but to reform it so that the Soviets could match and ultimately overcome the West. Gorbachev’s rise to power allowed the western media to pursue an ‘anti-anti-communist’ line which ranged from a perspective that the Soviet Union should be accommodated to a position that Soviet communism was a positive force in the world. The media’s anti –anti –communism was often manifested by ridiculing Reagan as an out of his depth former actor as opposed to a brillant Gorbachev.

 

 

The historical importance of the Reagan presidency in winning the Cold War was vividly demonstrated by the superpower leadership summit in the Icelandic capital Reykjavik in October 1986. During this summit, Gorbachev offered President Reagan major cuts in nuclear weapon stockpiles in Europe. At the point at which President Reagan was about to agree, the Soviet leader then made an arms deal conditional on the Americans scrapping SDI. Had President Reagan agreed, the Soviet Union would have gained the crucial breathing space it needed for its empire to survive.

 

Gorbachev’s failure to thwart SDI led to his decision to attempt to change the political leadership in Eastern Europe in 1989, or in the case of Hungary and Poland, support the reformist leaderships in those countries. Confidence to initiate reform leadership changes in Eastern Europe was bolstered by the security the Soviets derived from the intermediate-range nuclear forces agreement signed at the Reagan/Gorbachev Summit in Washington in December 1987. The Soviet attempts to manipulate leadership changes in Czechoslovakia and East Germany in November 1989 went awry and the Soviet position in all Eastern Europe consequently collapsed.

 

 

Iran-Contra:Watergate II Averted

 

It should not be forgotten however that had President Reagan not successfully ridden out the Iran-Contra affair which broke out in November 1986 just after the Reykjavik Summit, the Soviet position in Eastern Europe may not have collapsed. The mistakes that the RN made with regard to Watergate were thankfully not repeated and may have served as a guide with respect to the handling of the Iran-Contra affair.

 

The Iran-Contra affair broke when the Iranian leadership leaked that the United States was secretly selling arms to Iran to fight with in its war with Iraq (the Iran-Iraq War, 1980-1988). The Reagan administration’s policy of secretly selling weapons to a regime as dangerous as Iran’s was strategically stupid and morally wrong. However, the situation threatened to reach Watergate proportions when it was revealed that the profits of the arms sales had been secretly and illegally diverted to the Nicaraguan Contra rebels.

 

The diversion of the arms sales profits was the equivalent ‘smoking gun’ in this affair. Had the Reagan administration delayed and stonewalled the momentum could have developed for the affair to have degenerated into another Watergate. A crucial circuit breaker was the revelation by Attorney General Edwin Meese at a press conference in late 1986 that the profits from the armed sales had gone to the Contras. It is too frightening to contemplate the adverse ramifications and mythology which would have ensued had the diversion of profits to the Contras been revealed as a result of a politically motivated enquiry.

 

The forced resignation in early December 1986 of then White House Chief of Staff Donald Regan was another circuit breaker which helped avoid a potential disaster. The acerbic Regan was the equivalent of Erlichmand and Haldeman and had he stayed on, a disruptive and fatal dynamic may have developed. Tennessee Senator Howard H Baker’s appointment as Regan’s successor as Chief of Staff may have been an indication that Watergate was used as a guide to avoid the Iran-Contra affair blowing out.

 

It had been Baker’s famous question of ‘What did the President know and when did he know it?’ in 1973 in reference to RN which had been the signal to Republicans that they could defect with regard to Watergate. Baker’s appointment as the new Chief of Staff was shrewd because he was deeply respected by Senate Democrats.

 

The deciding factor with regard to the Iran-Contra affair which not only helped avoid disaster but delivered a degree of success was the July 1987 Senate testimony of Lt. Colonel Oliver L North. Colonel North refused to play the role of John Dean. In his testimony Colonel North defended his actions in the name of national security and in doing so demolished the attempt of committee investigative chairman, Senator Daniel K Inouye of Hawaii to emulate Senator Sam Ervin.

 

For all Colonel North’s eloquence the tribute for exceptional bravery should have gone to Vice-Admiral John Poindexter’s unambiguous 1987 Senate testimony that he deliberately withheld information from President Reagan about the diversion of arms profits. Vice-Admiral Poindexter explained that he did this to provide the president with plausible deniability. It was amazing that the vice-admiral’s testimony was essentially ignored by the media so that they could persist with the news tone that there was an Iran-Contra ‘crisis’.

 

In contrast to Watergate not only was political disaster avoided with regard to the Iran-Contra affair but a degree of political success emerged. The momentum generated by Colonel North’s testimony helped set the scene for the Democratic Speaker of the House of Representative Jim C Wright in November 1987 to threaten to support aid to the Contras unless Nicaragua Sandinista’s government agreed to internationally monitored elections, which they did and lost in February 1990.

 

The fact that the Iran-Contra was an averted disaster was reflected by the 1988 presidential elections in which Iran-Contra failed to register as a major political issue. Vice-President George HW Bush was able to win the 1988 presidential election by winning the support of blue-collar Democrats who were prepared to vote for a Republican presidential candidate based on issues related to foreign policy, national security and law and order.

 

Bush’s election helped ensure that Reagan’s political legacy in immediate terms ended on a positive note and ensured that the United State’s advantages in foreign policy would not be squandered following Saddam Hussein’s 1990 invasion of Kuwait.

 

 

RN and the 1988 Presidential Election

 

It is often overlooked that Ronald Reagan’s greatest political frustration and political defeat had been the reversal of his legacy as governor of California (1967 to 1975) by his Democratic successor Jerry Brown (the son of Pat Brown). Accordingly the new White House Chief of Staff Kenneth M Duberstein, who succeeded Howard Baker in 1988, gave as much support to Bush in the 1988 presidential campaign as was ethically possible. Reagan’s support for Bush stood in contrast to Eisenhower’s lukewarm endorsement of RN in 1960.

 

RN himself strongly supported the Bush-Qualye ticket in the 1988 election in newspaper colunms. His most helpful commentary was to debunk Democrat presidential nominee Michael Dukakis’s attempt to historically connect to the Kennedy –Johnson 1960 ticket. Dukakis invoked an historical parallel with the 1960 election by referring to the fact that he and his running mate Senator Lloyd M Bentsen respectively came from the same states as Kennedy and Johnson, Massachusetts and Texas. RN pointed out that such a comparison was invalid because  Dukakis was not as staunch an anti-communist as Kennedy and Johnson had been.

 

 

 

RN Stays in the Public Policy Areana

 

RN had returned to public life as a commentator, firstly on foreign affairs and then on domestic politics, with a natural partisan orientation toward the Republican Party. However, his partisan allegiance was reinforced by his genuine belief that his party was better equipped to advance the national security interests of the United States and, by extension, of the non-communist world.

 

Pat Nixon pointed out that RN remained passionately concerned about the United States’s well being. For this reason RN drew strength by speaking out on issues relevant to foreign policy and domestic affairs following his resignation as president. This was reflective of RN’s strong desire to overcome the negative consequences generated by Watergate.

 

Many of RN’s critics conceded that he was brillant but flawed. This qualified but still damming assessment maintains that RN’s drive was derived from personal inadequacy, ego and a consequent desire for self-advancement. In fact, RN’s lateral grasp of policy was reflective not only of a brillant mind but of a person who was dedicated to advancing the public good. RN in his retirement wrote about what he considered to be the causes of urban poverty and policies which could be pursued to redress them.

 

RN’s lucity was also demonstrated in his post-presidential vocation as a writer. His nine post-presidential books, including his 1978 memoirs, are very readable. The issues that these books covered encompassed foreign affairs, the United States place in the world, domestic policy and the quality of leadership. The former president had a unique ability to link historical and political analysis to lateral policy positions. RN’s recollections of world leaders were also uniquely illuminating and often moving because his personal insights were often interwoven with strategic analysis and explanation of historical outcomes.

 

RN: Post-Presidential Statesman

 

RN’s role as an international statesman thankfully did not terminate with his resignation. Having been a mentor to President George H W Bush (1989-1993), RN was often an informal but important emissary for the first Bush president. RN’s trip to China following the June 1989 Tinnanmen Square massacre helped steady the position of the nation’s paramount leader Deng Xiao Ping. Having sided with party hardliners by supporting the crackdown against student demonstators and Chinese calling for political reform Deng was left in a potentially perlious political position.

 

Chinese Prime Minister Li Peng was an advocate of Soviet style bureacratic controls and he was subsequently in a position to orientate China away from Deng’s economic reformist agenda. RN’s visit four months after the Tinnanmen Massacre accentuated the point that China still had a valuable relationship with the United States which should not be squandered. The first Bush administration’s maintenance of China’s Most Favoured Nation status, coupled with the implosion of the Soviet model during this period, helped Deng maintain his ascendancy following the Tinnanmen Square massacre.

 

The ageing China’s leader’s highly publicised tour of the coastal provinces in February 1992 helped him relaunch his previously stalled economic reform agenda. Today, China is an integral and vital part of the world economy. While China has yet to become a democracy, (which it was moving toward until the sudden fall of the Chinese monarchy in 1912) Deng’s reform agenda at least helped spawn a civil society which may become the basis of a future Chinese democracy. It is arguable that RN’s 1972 visit was the point from which China commenced on its reformist path and that his continued involvement following his departure from office has helped China remain on that path.

 

The other former major communist country on which RN had an impact on was Russia. Even after Eastern Europe broke free from communism in 1989 the orientation of most world leaders was to favour Gorbachev over Boris Yeltsin, the maverick Russian politician and later Russian President (1991 to 2000). It was RN who staunchly supported Yeltsin before the break up of the Soviet Union in 1991 and it was only fitting that RN was the first foreigner to address a new, more or less freely elected Russian Parliament in March 1994 when he appeared before its foreign relations committee. (Which begs the rhetorical question of who was the ultimate victor of the 1959 ‘Kitchen Debate’, RN or Khrushchev?).

 

Before sounding too triumphant a note concerning Russia’s break from communism, it should be pointed out that RN prophetically warned that Russia might not make a transition to democracy. RN’s death in 1994 was prematurely tragic because he had established a rapport with some of Russia’s new politicians and he could have fulfilled a mentoring role. The failure of Russian democracy to consolidate is one of the great missed opportunities of the late twentieth century.

 

State of Flux: Bush makes way for Clinton

 

Another missed opportunity to advance democracy in the Middle East was the American failure to take out Saddam Hussein’s regime in Iraq in 1991. The grave difficulties which have arisen since the United States led intervention in 2003 to remove Saddam’s regime have been cited as a justification of the decision not to assist the Iraqi peole in 1991. However, it should not be forgotten that in 1991 various Iraqi opposition groups were prepared to come together and that it is relatively easier (as Eastern Europe in 1989 demonstrated) to support a transition to democracy when the people within the country substantially bring about change themselves.

 

The first Bush administration’s action in liberating Kuwait in 1991 did however have positive ramifications. Yasser Arafat’s refusal to condemn Saddam’s invasion and occupation of Kuwait between 1990 and 1991 led to important oil rich Gulf states cutting money off to Arafat’s Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO). As a result, the PLO was compelled to attend the Madrid talks in late 1991 to regain its standing in the Arab world in the wake of Iraq’s expulsion from Kuwait. This development was a paradigm shift because the PLO was compelled to enter into meaningful public negotiations with Israel. However, Arafat’s re-location to the West Bank in 1994 did not constitute a concession on his part concerning Israel’s right to exist.

 

The euphoria which followed the United State led coalition’s limited victory in the First Gulf War led to an expectation that President Bush would win an easy re-election in 1992. President Bush failed to win re-election because some conservative blue-collar Democrats, the Reagan Democrats, and enough independent voters opted for the independent third party candidate Ross Perot.

 

The first Bush administration failed to hold onto the allegiance of sufficient ‘Reagan Democrats’ because national security issues had declined in importance due to the end of the Cold War. President George WH Bush’s decision to raise taxes in 1990 as part of budget deal was courageous and beneificial because it began to rein in the massive budget deficit bequeathed by the Reagan administration. However, the raising of taxes despite a seemingly unambiguous 1988 campaign pledge of not to, fatally undermined President Bush’s credibility. Furthermore, the first Bush administration offered no compelling theme as to why it should be re-elected. Clinton therefore won in 1992 due to a combination of holding the Democtratic base and Perot siphoning votes from Bush.

 

An important factor which also contributed to Bill Clinton winning the 1992 presidential election was his catch cry of ‘it’s the economy, stupid’! This slogan suggested a neo-isolationist agenda on the part of the new president. President Clinton and his wife Hilliary (who had served as a staff member to the United States House Committee on the Judiciary which responsible for impeachment matters against RN) had both been strong supporters of Senator George Mc Govern in 1972. The Clinton 1992 election seemingly brought American politics full-circle with a new presidential couple whose political formation was anti- RN.

 

However, it was RN who took the opportunity to meet with the new president in 1993 and to urge that the United States not forgo the opportunities and responsibilities of being the world’s remaining super power. As a highly intelligent man, President Clinton was shrewd enough not to allow previous possible prejudices to obstruct him from listening to RN’s opinions and advice. The precedent was therefore set for President Clinton working in concert with the Republicans.

 

Reversing Watergate?

 

President Clinton’s strained collaboration with the Republican Party was necessitated by their victory in the midterm congressional elections in 1994. This amazing political turn round was due to the leadership of the Republican Congress House Minority Leader Newton (Newt) L Gingrich of Georgia and the failure of the Clinton administration’s ‘big ticket items’ during its first two years in office. The most notable Clinton failure in this period was was First Lady Hilliary Clinton’s health care reform plan, of which RN was a perceptive critic. Gingrich harnessed disappointment arising from fizzed Clinton initiatives and middle class fear concerning possible future tax increases to win fifty four congressional seats and Republican control of the House.

 

Over the next four years (1995- 1999) a strange pattern of governance emerged in which President Clinton and Speaker Gingrich bitterly opposed each other on a political level while simultaneously balancing each other out to achieve beneficial legislative reform. Clinton had a very detailed understanding of legislation which along with fine tuning helped facilitate its passage.

 

President Clinton was clever enough to aid ultimately successful and worthwhile legislative initiatives which included a balanced budget while opposing unpopular cuts to specific programs such as health care. A paradox emerged in which the 1994 Republican Congressional victory moved the United States to the right politically but over the following four years, there was a bitter fight for the political centre. President Clinton won re-election in 1996 with a strong Democratic base still intact while facing off against a revitalized Republican Party whose base of support was expanding to match the Democrats in terms of national reach.

 

(Perot’s 1996 presidential candidacy and the political weakness of the seventy three year old Republican presidential nominee and RN friend, Robert ‘Bob’ J Dole, helped secure Clinton’s re-election).

 

The Danger Zone: Second Term Presidents in Mid Term

 

With the future ideological direction of the United States at stake , partisan rivalry during the Clinton-Gingrich era was intense and bitter. President Clinton’s 1996 re-election was akin to RN’s 1972 re-election in that the nation’s future potential voting patterns and party strength could be determined for a generation depending upon political developments in the period up to the next mid-term congressional elections.

 

In the above context, the Republicans unfortunately impeached President Clinton in 1998 as they attempted to secure a potential long term political dominance. However, in contrast to the equivalent Democrat political manoeuvre of the 1970s, i.e. Watergate, the Repubublicans failed to generate sufficient political momentum to destroy the Clinton presidency. This was due to media bias toward Clinton, an absence of ideological polarization and because the charges against the president did not have sinister undertones. The unsuccessful attempt to politically destroy President Clinton left the Democratic-Republican equilibrium essentially unchanged and this set the scene for the very close 2000 presidential election.

 

It is ironic that RN died in April 1994 before the Republicans won control of Congress in November that year. RN had been devastated by the 1974 congressional election results and probably never believed that the Democratic majority and political dominance would ever be reversed. It seemed that RN’s worst fears, particurly during the Carter presidency (1977-1981), concerning Watergate induced Democrat dominance came to be realized as the United State’s position as the leader of the more or less free world went into free fall.

 

RN’s Long Term Positive Legacy

 

Fortuantely for RN, his short term political failures laid the ground work for the Reagan presidency which in turn not only reversed the decline of American power in the world but utlimately helped bring down the Soviet empire. The fact that China is now a part of the world economy and there is something approximating a Middle East peace process can be traced back to RN’s presidency.

 

In the area of domestic policy, the adverse ramifications of RN’s fall are still being felt. RN had competently administered the programs inherited from the Great Society and in some cases (such as the EPA) consolidated them. RN’s second term domestic agenda might have shifted the United States to the right but his approach to public policy was lateral and considered. (In his retirement, RN publicly called for gun control).

 

The destruction of RN’s presidency precipitated the rise of a more virulent form of American neo-liberalism which survives and thrives by pandering to a partisan base. The role of so-called ‘liberal-democrats’ in destroying RN’s presidency and thereby laying the groundwork for a more right wing approach to policy making is an outcome with which they are still to come to terms with.

 

The overwheliming national unity which was generated during George W Bush’s presidency (2001-2009) following the September 11 attacks was not sustained because underlying ideological fissures within American society came to the fore. These societal divisions can be traced back to the political ‘success’ of destroying RN’s presidency and to the entrenched mythologies concerning Watergate. These disastrous ramifications of RN’s political demise as president, evident during the Carter presidency, were reversed in foreign policy and national security terms by the Reagan presidency.

 

In foreign policy and national policy formation policy the second Bush presidency was essentially a coalition between American oil interests and neo-conservatives (‘neo-cons’), the latter being overtly concerned with advancing democracy around the world. Due to their foreign policy expertise it would be politically astute if President Obama utilized the talents of neo-cons who are prepared to serve in his administration in pursuit of promoting democracy around the world.

 

The drawn out nature of the American commitment to Iraq and Afghanistan weakened ‘neo-con’influence in policy formation with regard to American military strategy in those countries. The lack of neo-con of influence over military strategy was reflected by abuses at Abu Ghraid in Iraq, the Guatanamo Bay detentions and the use of water boarding, i.e. torture. These abuses, which Senator John S Mc Cain of Arizona spoke out against, were not only counterproductive but they were morally wrong.

 

Keeping RN’s Positive Legacy Alive

 

It is a pity therefore that Senator John Mc Cain did not win the Republican presidential nomination in 2000 and the presidency that year because he would not have permitted these human rights abuses under his watch. Although definitely on the political right of centre, Mc Cain demonstrated that he was a maverick by supporting immigrant rights in the United States despite the steep political risks involved. Senator Mc Cain’s support for campaign finance reform also reflected his principled approach to politics. In this regard, Senator Mc Cain’s public life is similar to RN in that his political career has been guided by a determination to put the public good first.

 

As a new era begins under Barck Obama as the first president born in the 1960s, it is to be hoped that the myths associated with RN and Watergate will not detract from the United States willingness and capacity to continue to engage in world affairs. For this to occur there should be a re-assessment of RN’s political career and legacy, including Watergate.

 

RN was a very important political figure who was caught up in an historical transition. Having won an overwheliming re-election in 1972, RN was thwarted from staying on as president until the 1974 congressional elections. This denied him the opportunity to transform American politics. Whether this transformation would have been for the better is irrelevant to the point that RN was premediatively denied his mandate and that the costs of the Watergate ‘scandal’ were too high.

 

The really scandalous dimension of the Watergate affair was that the political machinations of RN’s opponents brought him down and in the process severely undermined America’s standing in the world. If the United States is to face the challenges and responsibilities of the world today, then it should have a clearer sense of its own history. In this regard, the continuing vilification of one of the principal political figures of the twentieth century is unfortunate and a closer analysis of RN’s life and legacy would indicate that such vilification is unfounded.

 

Dr. David Bennett is the Convenor of Historical and Current Affairs Analysis (HCAA), editor of Socail Action Australia Pty Ltd and the International Liaison Officer of the Australian Monarchist League (AML).

 

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