A partisan system under strain
WASHINGTON – Exactly 50 years ago, a beleaguered President Richard M. Nixon entered the Oval Office, stared into a television camera and performed an act that still echoes in today’s very different political world.
He resigned the presidency.
“By taking this action, I hope that I will have hastened the start of that process of healing which is so desperately needed in America,” Nixon said in a prime time address on Aug. 8, 1974.
The level of political healing in America over the past half century is debatable.
Some historians and political scientists said Watergate proved that “our Constitution works,” in the words of Nixon’s successor, Gerald Ford.
They also said that, half a century on, the institutions that held Nixon to account have frayed, and too many leaders have drawn negative lessons from Watergate, seeking to exercise Nixon-style power while avoiding the landmines that ended his presidency.
The Supreme Court ruled on July 1 that presidents are immune from prosecution for “official” acts while in office. Critics of the decision said Nixon could have beaten the Watergate rap with that kind of legal precedent.
“We’re still very vulnerable to an unscrupulous president,” said Michael Genovese, a political scientist at Loyola Marymount University and author of “The Watergate Crisis.”
“To me, the story of Watergate is the story of the system working as intended,” Garrett Graff, author of “Watergate: A New History,” told USA TODAY. But Graff noted he’s not sure it works as well today.
“Unfortunately,” Graff said, “the politics of today make it much harder to hold any president to the standard that was widely agreed upon in 1974.”
Back in 1974, more than a few Republicans supported Nixon’s removal from office.
In recent decades, the political parties have been more uniform in rallying around presidents in trouble, whether it was Bill Clinton over his relationship with a White House intern, or Donald Trump amid allegations surrounding the insurrection of Jan. 6, 2021.
U.S. Houses controlled by the opposition party impeached both Clinton and Trump – the latter twice – but partisan base loyalty helped them win acquittals in the Senate and resist calls for their resignations.
Nancy Kassop, a professor of political science at the State University of New York at New Paltz, said things have “changed so much” since Watergate and Nixon’s resignation. “We’re not playing traditional politics anymore.”
In the years right after Nixon’s resignation, the scandal inspired a reassertion of congressional authority and passage of new ethics laws, strengthened the role of the courts in restraining presidential power, and gave new prominence to the media as a public watchdog.
Over the past half-century, however, those institutions have taken many hits to their reputations, thanks in part to relentless attacks from Trump and his MAGA supporters. Trump’s 2016 victory came as he vowed to “drain the swamp” in Washington.
But it’s not just the former president’s base. A Gallup survey last year found that 8% of Americans say they have a “great deal” or “quite a lot of confidence” in Congress as an institution. Seventeen percent said the same about the nation’s criminal justice system.
“Faith in the system is essential,” Kassop said, “and it is really under strain right now.”