*Note from author: this blog was written on the 6th May 2020.*
This pandemic has brought about changes to all aspects of our lives – not least how we use our time. My weekends are no longer a time to meet friends or go to events but have become, courtesy of my uncle who is a Doctor of History, a series of history lessons.
One of my biggest hobbies is learning about American political history and why certain events in the US continue to shape the modern world.
This weekend's 'history lesson' was about the Presidency of Richard Nixon. He has the distinction of being the first president to resign and the first to attempt to ignore the first amendment’s ‘freedom of speech’ by trying to 'take down' publications which were publishing the Pentagon Papers in the 70's and investigating the Watergate scandal.
Nixon's failures were the stuff of dark tragedy: uneven judgement and a deeply suspicious character verging on delusional, combined with great political gifts and considerable vision for the Republican party. He not only opened up U.S. relations with China but also reached an important arms-limitation agreement with the Soviet Union. He supported a number of progressive domestic policies, including the creation of the Environmental Protection Agency and the Consumer Product Safety Commission. He also ordered the important desegregation of schools. But the drama of Nixon concludes with his resignation under a cloud of wrongdoing. For obstructing the investigation of a petty crime committed by some of his own campaign operatives—an attempt to break into the Democratic National Headquarters. Nixon's name and reputation will forever be linked with one word: Watergate. Yet even before this scandal, he tried to abuse his power and operate above the law. He attempted to discredit the leakers of the Pentagon Papers, taking The Washington Post, The New York Times and other newspapers to the supreme court, completely undermining the First Amendment. The courts sided with the publishers and held that the government had no right to invoke the newspapers for publishing excerpts of the papers.
It seems Nixon was always fighting an ‘invisible enemy’, something Donald Trump said of this pandemic. What they both exhibit is a leadership that falls short during a crisis and a reluctance to hold their hands up when they have made mistakes. In Nixon's case, he blamed the press for uncovering his own administration's political secrets about the Vietnam war. Trump on the other hand has blamed The World Health Organisation among many others instead of openly admitting he didn't prepare America for a Pandemic.
One of these presidents was undone by mishandling a situation, the other most likely will be. As historian Tariq Ali said, “History rarely repeats itself, but its echoes never go away.”
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