So I'm figuring that if the current Trump scandals unfold the way Nixon's did — and they may not — what happens next is a flurry of polls which G.O.P. leaders read to say, "If we don't get on top of this and we look like we're protecting and enabling this guy, we're going to lose the House and/or Senate." One of the things that did Nixon in was that Republican lawmakers saw their base splitting. If you were a Congressperson or Senator of that party, you saw that you could lose half of the Republican vote if you protected Nixon and half if you didn't. It's almost impossible to win another term if anywhere near 50% of your own party deserts you. It also makes you extremely vulnerable to a challenger from your own party.
I always thought one of the key "Nixon is doomed" moments of Watergate came when an obscure, well-meaning little rabbi named Baruch Korff started turning up everywhere in the news, identified as "Nixon's Chief Defender." You would have thought that Nixon's Chief Defender would have been a prominent Republican Senator, Governor or Congressman — but no. All those guys were hiding under their desks, afraid to link their future with their president's. I thought of that last night when several news stories said that Fox News was having trouble getting anyone important to come on and speak on behalf of Trump.
Rabbi Korff suddenly got a lot of air time because there was this void. No one else wanted to be Nixon's Chief Defender and the media — especially the three major TV networks and especially CBS — were desperate to have someone speak on his behalf. If they hadn't, they would have given credence to the argument that the press was biased against Nixon and ginning up the whole Watergate mess. So Korff was suddenly everywhere and though he meant well, I thought he did Nixon more damage than good.
Korff was a bad surrogate. He didn't know how to speak in sound bites and give short, quotable answers. He knew very little about Washington and nothing about the "spin" Nixon and his people wanted to put on his actions, so often the Rabbi's "defense" admitted things Nixon was trying to deny and vice-versa. (There's another parallel there to Trump. A lot of the official spokespersons who've been out there saying things on behalf of Trump have immediately been contradicted by other spokespersons or by Trump himself. Nothing makes you look guiltier than not being able to get your story straight.)
Korff also had been a genuine hero during World War II helping Jews escape the Nazi onslaught. There were so many such heroes that his deeds had gone largely unheralded and he sometimes seemed less interested in championing Nixon than he was in talking about his own accomplishments. When Dan Rather asked Korff for a thirty-second statement about the latest Watergate revelation, he often got a ten-minute story about liberating concentration camps.
The rabbi looked silly with his self-promotion and sillier still when some of Nixon's anti-semitic remarks on the tapes came out…and of course it was not lost on some people that Korff was out defending Nixon because no one else would do it.
It may not play out quite that way with Trump because due to gerrymandering and polarization, more Republicans are probably in "safe seats" and less afraid of losing them. Then again, even those G.O.P. officials are afraid of Democratic victories and with Trump's growing unpopularity getting in the way of tax cuts, Medicaid cuts and other items on the Republican wish list. Already, some Republicans are at least looking like they support full investigations and maybe a Special Prosecutor. Depending on what James Comey says in the coming days, there may be a stampede.
My long-held view though is that Nixon wasn't forced out of office by Democratic attacks so much as he was ousted by Republican defections. When Barry Goldwater said even he'd be voting yea on at least one of the impeachment counts, Richard M. Nixon knew it was all over. One wonders if Donald J. Trump will be as wise.
Let's go to the links…
- Jonathan Chait reports on the latest Republican spin: Trump didn't mean it when he asked Comey to shut down investigations. He was just joking. You're in lot of trouble when that's the best your supporters can come up with to support you. ("Ladies and gentlemen of the jury…when my client took that gun and the note demanding cash up to the bank teller's window, it was just a prank…")
- Dylan Matthews explains what happens when a sitting president is accused of a crime. It doesn't work the way it would if authorities found out that you and I are operating that series of illegal cockfights.
- Paul Ryan is still supporting Trump, says Steve Benen. I suspect Ryan will defend Trump to the death…or until he gets big tax cuts for the rich, whichever comes first. This seems to have been a dream Ryan has had since he was about seven. At that age, I was dreaming of working for Hanna-Barbera writing Yogi Bear and Paul Ryan was saying, "When I grow up, I want to take away the health insurance of poor people so that rich people get even richer!"
- And Daniel Larison thinks that Trump is about to make things a lot worse for America in its relationship with followers of Islam. Trump making something worse always sounds like a safe bet to me.
Jimmy Fallon sorta/kinda regrets that when he had Trump on The Tonight Show, it was all fun and games with nothing of a serious tone. Before we pillory Fallon for not being harder on the guy, we oughta ask if Jimmy Fallon is even capable of being harder on anyone. I suspect that once the booking was made, it couldn't have gone any other way. At least Fallon didn't try to get Trump to play a round of some old TV game show…although To Tell the Truth might have been an interesting choice.