Richard Nixon: His Era and Ours

Aug. 9 was the 40th anniversary of the resignation of President Richard Nixon. This kind of dramatic gesture has only occurred once in American history. Nixon stepped down when he was threatened with impeachment after the revelations that his entourage — and maybe even Nixon himself — authorized the burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters housed in the Watergate complex.

Other than Conrad Black, few authors have written about this much-hated politician’s career, but anyone interested in history and politics should know that the Nixon years contain many useful lessons that are still applicable today.

The challenges that politicians now face are similar to those Nixon dealt with: Congress in the hands of his political opponents, a dragged-out, unwinnable war in Vietnam, a serious economic downturn — marked by double-digit inflation, oil price spikes and stagnation — and American hegemonic status threatened by political rivals, like the USSR and China, or economic powers like Japan. Antoine Coppolani discusses this in his excellent, well-documented political biography about the 37th president of the United States — “Richard Nixon,” Fayard, 2013.

From Nixon to Obama

In his book, Coppolani writes that Nixon wanted to overcome the partisanship that he considered inefficient. As soon as he became president, he tried to create a coalition with opposition Democrats. That is how a Democrat like Daniel Moynihan, disappointed by the excesses of liberalism, was included in his team. During the 1972 elections a few years later, Nixon wanted to create a centrist Republican Party with the help of John Connally, a neoconservative Democrat. Considering Congress’ chronic paralysis, it is unfortunate that this interpartisan collaborative approach did not make waves in the American political class.

While he was a representative, senator and vice president, Nixon was a staunch supporter of the battle against communism, but as president, he tried to re-establish links with the USSR and China. It was not because he began to view communism more favorably, but because as a practitioner of realpolitik, he wanted to take advantage of the rivalry between these two communist giants. Today, China and Russia are still threats to American supremacy but for reasons other than the spread of communism. In this ménage à trois, China now seems to be reaping the most benefits. The direction of America’s relationship with Canada and Europe on the one hand and with Russia on the other means that the latter may soon have no choice but to turn to China to sell its natural gas and oil.

The Watergate burglary was preceded by the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatry clinic to find compromising information about the man who leaked the “Pentagon Papers” to The New York Times. This leak embarrassed the Nixon administration by revealing information about the positions of the U.S. government concerning the Vietnam War. It is easy to draw analogies between this and the relentlessness of the Obama administration toward Julian Assange or Edward Snowden. Much like 40 years ago, it is hard to defend freedom of information when it reveals that the emperor has no clothes.

Nixon believed that the president was above the law when national interests were at stake or important strategic decisions had to be made. In these kinds of situations, he believed it was legitimate to bypass the Constitution and congressional approval. After the Watergate debacle, presidential powers were further restrained, which can partially explain President Obama’s current inability to put his political plans into action. We must now look to Canada to see something that resembles the Nixon presidency. Stephen Harper’s distrust of the press, parliament and the Supreme Court is reminiscent of Nixon’s behavior toward anything that could get in his way. Similarly, the burglary at the DNC headquarters in the Watergate complex — despite Nixon’s certain re-election — is reminiscent of the Canadian Conservative Party’s robocalls during the 2011 elections.

Toward Redemption?

At the time, baby boomers thought that Nixon was a two-faced, cynical warmonger. Without overlooking Nixon’s dark side, Coppolani largely redeems the former president by portraying him as a statesman whose skills and stature have been unmatched by his successors. Today’s political leaders seem to especially share the former president’s paranoia, secrecy and obsession with control.

If Coppolani were an economist instead of a historian, he may have accorded more importance to one particular act by the Nixon administration, which has had consequences that have grown increasingly worse over time: the 1971 abandonment of the U.S. dollar’s convertibility into gold at a fixed rate of $35 per ounce. This de facto depreciation of the dollar was meant to reverse America’s serious trade deficit. It was a successful move that was detrimental to the economy of Japan, whose rise seemed as inevitable as China’s does today, but most of all, it increased the influence — which some call excessive and dangerous — that finance has had on the global economy. That may ultimately be Nixon’s most toxic legacy.