Q Week 2 of American Crises! 1) Great job on (most of your) essays! Your good work enables me to cover more, and deeper, topics! 2) This week, we’ll pick up with the end of the Vietnam War and the years immediately after, but now the focus is on presidents and how much we trust them. Richard Nixon will be the focus, but this work and these questions apply to all presidents since WWII. 3) Trends we should look for, both back then and today: • The power, and transparency, of the presidency • The relationship between the White House and the press • The degree to which there can be honest vs. dishonest presidents • The degree to which the office itself, the exercise of its power, is inherently honest or dishonest • When does any behavior of a president become illegal? • Or perhaps not illegal, but bad enough to be investigated and impeached? 4) The history: a) Robert McNamara, who really was the creator and manager of the Vietnam War, was also an historian, a scientist, a “whiz kid” who had a powerful sense of duty and context. As it became apparent that we were not gonna win the war, he commissioned a gigantic study of America’s involvement in Vietnam since the Truman administration after WWII. The researchers he hired had full access to everything, even and especially secret documents and tapes and notes of the army, the CIA, even the presidents themselves. It was McNamara’s goal that, long after the war ended, years later, historians could study this report in order to learn what America did wrong and avoid repeating those mistakes. b) Boy did they write a report! 47 volumes! And it definitely identified who was to blame, pulled no punches… c) … but only 15 copies were printed, and they were labeled Top Secret and locked away in vaults. That was Mc’s plan – they were to be read after the war was over, they were for history. d) But a soldier / researcher / historian named Daniel Ellsberg began to believe that the country should be able to read the study, now, while the war was still being fought. Indeed, escalated. So he illegally copied the documents and gave them to the New York Times, which began to slowly publish them, story by story, revelation by revelation. e) Nixon, the president, had a choice: He could ignore the publication of classified material or he could try to stop it. At first, he ignored it. The report was written before he was elected president, and therefore it didn’t blame him for the war, only the presidents, mostly democrats, who came before him. f) However, very quickly Nixon came to feel it was his responsibility as president to stop this publication of highly sensitive secret material. Nixon felt that leaders of the rest of countries of the world wouldn’t trust us if we couldn’t keep secret presidents’ phone calls, hand-written notes, and whispered policy decisions. g) So Nixon used the full power of the White House to try to stop the New York Times, prosecute Ellsburg, and generally shit on anybody even associated with this affair. FBI agents going through your trash cans, the IRS auditing your taxes, and even hired thugs breaking into your psychiatrist’s office to read his notes about your therapy sessions… h) The effect on the American people was devastating: • Every president we elected for the last 25 years was lying to us, democrats and republicans alike! • They all secretly supported this stupid war, even though a majority of the American people didn’t! • They kept each other’s lies, even presidents from opposite parties! • And 50k American soldiers died because of it! • And even today Nixon is trying to protect them and their lies! i) Eventually the NYTs and several other newspapers published the juicy parts of the whole 47 volume document, and by the time the war ended the American people had a full accounting of what had happened. Small consolation… j) Only a couple of years later, an even bigger scandal rocked America and the people’s trust in gov’t: Watergate k) Nixon never admitted it, but he almost certainly gave the order for several illegal acts, including breaking into the democrats’ offices late at night to steal their files, using taxpayer money to pay “hush money” to criminals, interfering with investigations, and intimidating witnesses. l) At first, the investigation into Nixon went really slowly. His guys were clumsy and stupid, but very powerful. m) Eventually, however, investigators from the WaPo got several tips from somebody inside the FBI. These tips allowed them to expose much of what Nixon had done. n) Congress investigated, held public hearings, and prepared to impeach Nixon. o) He resigned before they could. First time any president had done so. p) Today, when I teach US History, I put a big pretty bow on all of this and say “The system worked!” I actually love the idea that the president broke laws, got caught, and got run out of town. ‘Merica! q) At the time, however, it broke America’s heart. Nixon had been elected to be the “law and order” president, to beat up hippies, reverse civil rights, and end the damn war. Instead, he was the biggest crook president anybody knew about (there had been worse dudes from earlier times, but ordinary people didn’t know about them). r) And Nixon lowered the bar. Future presidents could get away with more, so long as they didn’t stoop to Nixonian levels. Ah heck, I never really trusted him anyway… 5) Your assignment: Please read our four articles in this order: 1 - http://www.americanyawp.com/text/28-the-unraveling/ (just V. The Rise and Fall of Richard Nixon) 2 - https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/13/archives/public-founddisillusioned-by-the-watergate-scandal-survey-shows.html (note that this was written in 1973, right in the moment) 3 - https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2017/10/how-americans-lost-faith-in-the-presidency/537897/ (this one has audio tapes of the presidents, pretty cool!) 4 - https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2019/09/25/how-the-watergate-crisis-eroded-public-support-for-richard-nixon/ Your assignment is straight up compare and contrast: You’ve lived through 3.5 years of Trump, and for many of you, you are old enough to well remember 8 years of Obama before that, and for some of us, 8 years of Bush before him. They all lied to us, all the live long day… Or if they didn’t lie, they certainly didn’t keep their promises. Obama, for example, never pulled out of Afghanistan, never closed Guantanamo Bay, and certainly didn’t usher in a new era of criminal justice reform! Ah heck, I never really trusted him anyway… What parts of the early 70s remind you of today? Which parts are worse or better? Can you hang a pretty bow on this, the way I try to do about Watergate? 6-10 paragraphs, well written, well organized, cited when appropriate. If you want to Zoom about an outline or thesis, happy to. Knock this out of the park and I’ll have even more fun next week!