Until I saw an unctuous individual babbling on about how our
terrified city feared a
coup d'etat by Richard Nixon in 1974, I had decided not to write on
the 25th
anniversary of Watergate. But that did it. Watergate was indeed a
coup. It was the
overthrow of an elected president by a media and political elite he
had routed in a
49-state landslide the like of which America had never seen. In
taking Nixon down,
that elite was not motivated by any love of law or the Constitution.
It was driven by
hatred. The media and political establishment hated Nixon for his
lead role in nailing
Alger Hiss as a Soviet spy and in blistering its New Deal heroes as
witless dupes of
Joseph Stalin. It hated Nixon because he rallied the nation against
them, when he
called on the "Great Silent Majority" to stand with him for peace
with honor in
Vietnam, and turned Vice President Agnew loose on them to the
delight of a nation
that had come to detest media arrogance and bias. And it hated
Nixon because
he seemed, with the mining of Haiphong and bombing of Hanoi, to have
won a war
they said could not -- and should not -- be won.
With every provincial capital under Saigon control, and America's
POWs coming
home, the left seethed with resentment. And when it was revealed in
March of 1973
that there had been a cover-up of the Watergate break-in, the
establishment united as
one to destroy Nixon.
Nixon shredded the Constitution! they howled.
But this is
arrant nonsense. The Constitution was in tatters when Nixon arrived
in the capital in
1969.
It had been scissored to bits by Earl Warren, William O. Douglas,
William Brennan
and the rest of the merry men of the Warren Court. And every
unconstitutional power
grab by that renegade court was celebrated by this city.
Nixon had
an "Enemies List,"
they cried. How awful! But if anything terrible ever happened to
anyone on that list --
other than a lost invitation to a White House Christmas party -- it
has yet to be
discovered.
Nixon abused the FBI to cover up Watergate, they said.
Yep, he did try
to keep the FBI from expanding the Watergate investigation into
campaign finance.
But earlier, many of the same journalists who professed themselves
sickened by this
"abuse of power" had been recipients of the fruits of the FBI
surveillance of the hotel
rooms of Martin Luther King Jr., with recordings and photos of
King's liaisons
provided, courtesy of Lyndon Johnson's White House. The press has
never called to
account the White House and Justice Department aides responsible.
What did Nixon
ever do to anyone, compared to what the liberals did to Dr. King?
Nixon tried to
block The New York Times and The Washington Post from printing the
Pentagon Papers!
He sure did. To this day, I find nothing wrong with the elected
head of the executive
branch going to the Supreme Court to seek an injunction against
publication of
top-secret documents stolen from the U.S. Department of Defense by
a disloyal
employee.
The Pentagon Papers had nothing to do with Nixon. They
detailed the
decision-making of the Kennedy and Johnson administrations, which
had marched us
into the Asian war from which Nixon was bravely trying to extricate
the nation with
honor. Yet, Nixon was bedeviled at every step by the same
hypocrites who had
cheered on JFK and LBJ.
Did Nixon misuse and abuse his power? Yes,
he did.
Instead of creating a "Plumbers" unit in the White House to run down
national security
leaks, he should have left the black-bag jobs, as his predecessors
did, to J. Edgar
Hoover.
But Nixon was not hated so much for what he did wrong as for
what he did
right -- exposing the near-treasonous conduct of much of the
American left during
Vietnam. And when his presidency was broken, that left saw to it
that aid to Vietnam
was cut off, guaranteeing the defeat and death of the South in the
all-out invasion by
the Communist North in 1975. The mind-set of Nixon enemies was
never more
manifest than in their uncontrolled rage and hysteria when
President Ford pardoned
him, denying them the sensual delight of seeing Nixon in the dock.
History, however,
has a way of settling accounts.
Having destroyed Nixon, the liberals got Jimmy Carter, who announced
that Vietnam
was a "racist" war and Americans had gotten over our "inordinate
fear of
Communism." During Carter's one term, the Soviet empire drove
deeper into Asia,
Africa and even Central America, producing a conservative backlash
that elected
Ronald Reagan, who declared Vietnam "a noble cause" and led America
to triumph in
the Cold War.
So let the left celebrate how it saved us all from
Richard Nixon, as the
republic recalls who it was that rescued America from the left and
saved the world
from the Soviet empire.
