Beginnings
I was introduced to politics at a “tender” age. One of Mom’s roommates in boarding school in England was Kathleen Kennedy, daughter of US Ambassador Joseph Kennedy. Kathleen, like many of her siblings, met an untimely death in 1948, but Mom’s relationship with her before World War II led to a lifelong dedication to the Kennedy family. So it shouldn’t be a surprise that when Kathleen’s older brother, Jack, ran for President of the United States in 1960, Mom was a big fan.
My Mom was a British citizen, so she couldn’t vote in American elections. But she could support candidates in other ways, and she made sure her four year old son (me) was wearing a “Kennedy for President” button. At that age I didn’t quite understand why our very good friends, Howard and Leah Shriver, didn’t want to let me in their Cincinnati apartment in the Vernon Manor with a Kennedy button on. Howard was one of the doctors who founded Blue Cross insurance, and they were stalwart Republicans.
So I sat in the hall outside the apartment for a while, wondering why that Nixon guy was so important. “Aunt” Leah finally came out and bribed me with a toy – an iron elephant. I didn’t get the significance at the time, but that toy gave me admittance to their residence, in spite of my Kennedy apparel.
Three years later President Kennedy was assassinated. I recorded the funeral on reel-to-reel tapes, watching the speeches and the processions. There was the plain caisson carrying the casket, followed by the horse with the empty saddle and reversed riding boots. The eternal flame burned by the grave site, the hats of the various military divisions placed around the cross.
Real Politics
But my real insights into politics began in the summer of 1968. Dad repaired a flat tire on my bicycle, and one of us failed to tighten the front tire nuts. I hit a bump, the wheel came loose, and the bike flipped over. When I looked at my right wrist bent at an odd angle, I knew there was a problem.
I was disappointed. It was the week of the swim championships, and at the top of my age group I looked forward to several “big wins”. Instead, I was told to stay on the couch, my casted arm elevated on a green painted “beer box”. So it was a week of “staying quiet”: all I could do was watch TV.
It was the week of the Democratic Convention in Chicago, the party torn apart by President Lyndon Johnson’s commitment to the Vietnam War and the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the President’s younger brother and an anti-war candidate. There were riots in the streets, speeches in the convention hall, and the brutal control of Chicago’s Mayor Richard Daley over the entire scene. The police beat the demonstrators and the media, chasing them into the hotels and up into their rooms. It was a disaster for the Democratic Party, and Republican Richard Nixon, now eight years later, finally became the President. I learned a lot.
Watergate
I turned sixteen, Nixon was re-elected again, and a new word entered the American political vocabulary: Watergate.
The next two years were consumed with the intersection of political power, money and corruption. We learned that Nixon used the power of the Presidency to attack his opponents. There were campaign operatives installing wiretaps on opposition communications, and break-ins to gain access to information. The White House “Plumbers” unit moved far beyond the limits of the law to get Nixon’s enemies. Nixon used the CIA to cover their efforts.
Nixon’s Administration was plagued with “leaks”: information they wanted to hold secret that slipped out to the public. In fact, Nixon’s illegal investigation group was called the “Plumbers” because they were supposed to “stop the leaks”.
It was a classic case of near-absolute power corrupting near-absolutely. Watergate brought Nixon’s Presidency down, but it took decades to find how deep the corruption ran. It was even greater than we knew at the time, when Nixon waved goodbye and went into exile in California.
Barrier to Corruption
Nixon used the intelligence agencies and the Treasury Department to attack his opponents. He even used the Justice Department, and his first Attorney General, John Mitchell, actually served jail time for his actions. After Nixon’s resignation, the Federal Government went to great lengths to “fence-off” law enforcement activities from politics. It’s not so easy: the Justice Department is a part of the Executive Branch, ultimately commanded by the President. If he can command them, he can control them. So for forty years there was a tension between the White House and Department of Justice headquarters in the Robert F. Kennedy building.
It is up to the Attorney General to “hold the wall” against political interventions. One of Nixon’s Attorneys General, Elliot Richardson, resigned rather than breach that barrier. But the men who led Donald Trump’s Justice Department seemed to hardly put up a fight. In fact, we are now learning that they were aiding and abetting the politicization of Justice.
No Administration in history was a “leaky” as the Trump Administration. It seemed that whatever was told in confidence in the White House became public, with the leakers often the most senior advisors using the media to pursue their own influence over the President. And when the 45th President came under investigation for Russia’s involvement in his 2016 campaign, leaks constantly disrupted White House plans. The standing joke of the Trump years was “infra-structure week”: time after time they tried to pivot to infra-structure only to have another Russia scandal take over the news cycle.
Legal Corruption
Donald Trump didn’t have to create a secret “Plumbers Unit” to investigate his leaks. He had the full assistance of the Justice Department. They went so far as to subpoena the communications of reporters who received the “leaks”. They got the list of their phone calls, texts and emails. And while they didn’t get the content (that we know of), they did get lists of who they contacted.
But what we discovered yesterday was that reporters weren’t the only ones that Justice was investigating. We know now that the Justice Department was also investigating the Congressmen on the House Intelligence Committee who were investigating the President himself. At least two of the Democrats leading the Committee, Adam Schiff and Eric Swalwell, as well as several committee aides and their families, had their records secretly seized.
Both of Trump’s confirmed Attorneys General, Jeff Sessions and Bill Barr, encouraged this investigation. Barr, in fact, revived the data collection after nothing was found in the first years and the Justice Department stopped. They used the full power of Justice to spy on members of Congress as well as the media. What did they want?
They wanted the investigations to stop. They wanted the leaks to stop, and if they couldn’t find the leakers, they could attack the recipients of the leaks. The full power of American Law Enforcement was being used to try to protect the “political life” of the President.
That’s farther than even Nixon went. And like Nixon, it may take years to know what else happened in the Trump Administration.
No wonder Trump wants to run again. He’s got a lot of covering up to do.
