In 1972 President Nixon won re-election with 60.7% of the vote. George McGovern got 37.5%. The electoral college was 520-17. Less than two years later 66% of the electorate wanted him impeached and 56% wanted him removed from office. So he quit.
The collapse in Nixon’s numbers occurred only after the House Judiciary Committee’s hearing went live on television. Prior to that the Nixon administration had succeeded in demonizing the committee as partisan and a Harris Poll indicated it had a 48-36 disapproval rating.
The psychic impact was devastating to Mr. Nixon’s cause-a contagion of impeachment fever that coursed over the Hill and threatened the disintegration of his support. NEWSWEEK’s 50-state House survey counted 276 votes committed to or tilting toward impeachment, with 59 more “persuadable” either way; even a 50-50 split of the neutrals would send the case to the Senate with more than 300 votes—and a momentum that could well prove irresistible. Other head counts, including the Nixonians’ own, were at least equally discouraging for the President. Some Republicans congressmen sent back word that he would be lucky to command 100 votes on the floor. Majority Leader Thomas (Tip) O’Neill took Jerry Ford golfing in Sutton, Mass., and presumably passed on his own latest tally: 116 or 117 for Mr. Nixon—and a near 3-to-1 avalanche against him.
It might seem amazing today that there was not more support for removing Nixon from power.
Nixon resigned on August 8th, 1974. The August 12th issue of Newsweek was written before the resignation. Even that late in the game it was uncertain that Nixon would actually be convicted in the Senate.
A heavy House vote to impeach could in turn ravage the President’s tenuous claim to the magic one-third-plus-one he needs to survive in the Senate. He needs 34 votes there; his liaison men count only 36 or 37, six of them “soft,” and a close reading suggest that even that census is dangerously optimistic.
So, even in the last days of Nixon’s administration only 56% of Americans wanted him impeached and convicted. And Nixon still had the tenuous support of about a third of the Senate.
A recent Zogby poll showed that 52% to 43%, Americans want Congress to consider impeaching President Bush if he wiretapped American citizens without a judge’s approval.
Those poll numbers are startling considering the solidarity of the Republican party, their media dominance, and their message discipline. There has been one televised hearing which revealed nothing because it was a sham.
If John Conyers were the Chairman of the Judiciary Committee rather than the Ranking Member it would not be long before high profile kleig light hearings took place on the Hill, and the 52% of Americans that already support impeaching Bush over the NSA leaks would balloon to significantly higher numbers. More importantly, many new facts, lies, and crimes would be exposed, just as they were in 1974. And the Republicans would start to run for cover.
Helping make this dream a reality is what, for me, the 2006 midterm elections are all about.
Mark Schmitt, in the American Prospect, talks about 1974:
That year brought 75 new Democrats to Washington. More than just a partisan shift, it brought a change in the style and approach of Democratic candidates and representatives. It is still easy to spot the politician who got his start in 1974 or shortly after — some were liberal, some less so, but most were very serious about policy. They had a national perspective but were diligent to a fault about constituent service, parades, local mayors, local problems. They understood that with a large and complicated federal government, a member’s role is not just to deliver pork but also to maneuver the system for people’s good. They were ready for C-SPAN, which arrived in the House four years after they did. They put out a press release a day. And they were generally reformist, although that impulse has waned over time. Above all, they got it — got that Congress was becoming a transparent institution, that reform was a core theme, that the executive branch was out of control.
You should read the whole article as a supplement to what I am saying. Schmitt argues against making the 2006 elections national and about Bush. But he does so by arguing that the 1974 class was won on local issues. I disagree. Watergate, Vietnam, and reform were big, national issues in 1974 in exactly the same way that Illegal domestic surveillance, Iraq, and reform are giant national issues today.
The big mistake the Democrats are making is in not encouraging primaries. Both the Democratic landslide of 1974 and the Republican landslide of 1994 involved surprises. As Schmitt puts it:
…good candidates may not come from obvious places. Like Paul Hackett in Ohio’s special election last August, they may not be the names that appear first when the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee looks for popular state legislators or local millionaires who can finance their own campaigns. Like Richard Morrison running against DeLay last year or like Clinton in 1974, they may appear in districts that would never be targeted by standard electoral math but where a great candidate can at the very least soften up the incumbent for the next fight.
The Democrats have done a mixed job of candidate recruitment. They’ve certainly outperformed the Republicans, but they have also taken a top down approach that discourages renegade politicians that could burst in out of the blue with a true zeal for reform. Yet, there are many small time candidates out there that could win surprising victories if the cards fall right. And they’ll be right along side old John Conyers when the kleig lights come on.
I want your reading of recent political history to be correct here. More, I would like for the outcome to be historically similar.
But as a betting man, I’d lay pretty tough odds against anything like that happening. 3-1. 4-1. There will be no meaningful hearing before the election. In fact, the message, and therefore the reality, will be controlled by the MSM. And the Republicans will continue to control both houses in 2006. And we will all be here feeling really bad, talking about the same shit. We’re going to change things in 2008. We just need to beat the Republicans on security issues. Hillary has talked tough. She’s our best chance. Get on board and support her even though she voted for the war and still has not clearly opposed it.
Anyway. I am just talking here. But I believe what I’m saying enough to lay my $100 against your $30 that ’06 ends with Republican majorities in both houses.
that is just negative thinking, man.
Yeah. I was in a very negative frame of mind when I wrote it (this a.m.). I’m cycling back and forth between nihilistic defeatism to irrational exuberance at a rate that is not healthy. It’s all going to level out here in another few days. I’m sure of it.
I honestly think there is a groundswell going on that could well lead to a Democratic takeover of both houses. There are telltale signs everywhere, including here in Lancaster, Pa where five Democrats swept five incumbant Republicans out of the mayoralty and city counsel and took over control of our city government. In nearby Dover eight Democrats swept eight Republicans who had brought intelligent design into the school curriculum off the school board. And check out what is happening in Texas which an in the know friend of mine says is turning blue.
Of course my big concern is the voting machines. Can we win more votes than the other side can steal?
Though I’m not sure it really affects your principal point, I keep wondering about how much we can really conclude from the (now) surprisingly soft support for impeachment in 1974 concerning today.
I don’t know if there are any studies to back me up, but it seems to me (and I was there) that impeachment was thought, by Republicans and Democrats, voters and elected officials, to be a VERY big deal back then. Almost a “nuclear option,” if you will, to be taken only with the greatest caution and in the presence of overwhelming evidence of extreme abuse of power.
Times and attitudes have changed. Impeachment as a form of payback, or a way of booting somebody out of office when there’s no election conveniently nearby (or none would be relevant), is increasingly accepted. “Impeach the bastard!” has become an accepted first reaction to a president’s doing something one opposes, or simply to his being someone one didn’t want to be president in the first place. (When did B-1 Bob issue his first call for Clinton’s impeachment?) The apparent ascendancy of calls/movements for the recall of this or that in-term official reflects the same trend.
In that context, perhaps we should be surprised at how strong the support for impeachment was in ’74, or how weak it is by comparison today (although you’re right that other differentiating factors, such as the right’s increasingly effective use of the media as a propaganda machine, also have to be factored in). I don’t know, I’m just hesitant to draw inferences from comparisons of the two numbers, given that they reflect what seem to me such drastically different political climates.
Things have changed because today’s Republicans embrace the philosophy that any tactic is justified in the grab for power and control.
People forget just how bad the Watergate scandal was. It morphed way beyond a break-in into the DNC by the Plumbers.
There were black-bag jobs; political dirty tricks; assassination plots; bags full of cash for hush money; dark hints about the involvement of some of the Plumbers in the JFK assassination; an illegal Howard Hughes loan to Nixon; Nixon involvement with international financier, swindler, and gangster Robert Vesco; the Huston Plan (a blueprint for declaring martial law); Nixon’s Enemies List; illegal use of the IRS to target Nixon’s foes; the Nixon Tapes, … the list just went on and on. The amazing thing is that there were not more members of Congress who thought Nixon should be impeached.
All that said, John Dean is correct that the crimes of the Bush administration are “worse than Watergate.” Don’t hold your breath though for the gang of Republican thugs who control the House and Senate to ever entertain impeaching Bush. They don’t call it the “Bush Crime Family” for nothing.
The air crashes and accidents around that time are hard to ignore, too.
Well, I, for one, haven’t forgotten what all Watergate involved. I would still guess that an entrenched reluctance to impeach, together with its accompanying regard/esteem for “the office” — both of which, for better or worse, are long gone — played a role in people’s simply not believing what much of the evidence showed was going on and regarding the rest as, at worst, dirty politicking — unsavory, but not impeachable. (Lots of denial here. clearly. But the denial was largely, I think, grounded on unwillingness/inability to accept that “the president” would do such things — to associate such dealings with the office. Whereas nowadays, people are not nearly so idealistic about “the office” and what it “stands for”; today’s denial is not “But a president wouldn’t do that,” it’s “Bush — our dear leader — wouldn’t do that.”)
Your diagnosis of the change no doubt captures a large part of it. I would, again, guess, that they were able to implement this tactic and make it respectable only on the background of a more generalized skepticism toward the integrity of American political institutions (and officeholders), toward the faith in their embodying a kind of impartial, principled rule of law, etc., that the entire Watergate spectacle (pardon included) did much to promote. (In saying this, I am not, of course, endorsing the aforementioned faith or expressing any longing for a return to it — though it seems almost benign in comparison to the personalized faith in Our Leader that has, for many, taken its place.)
A good percentage of Bush’s supporters in the religious base feel that his higher goals warrant the avoidance of laws that apply to common man. This is something much larger he’s working on, in their eyes. That’s tougher than denial to overcome.
Agreed. Did you take us to be in disagreement?
No, not disagreement. I think the religious support for policies that violate the law to achieve Biblical goals are a different factor that wasn’t mentioned.