I'm confused. The President, Haldeman, Ehrlichman and Dean have now talked through the situation repeatedly, but never seem to have come up with a viable plan that gets everyone who's 'on the same team' off the hook. If there's no such possibility, then what are they doing? These are clever and highly experienced politicians- they must have SOME plan, no?!It's a really good question.
Surely, at some point someone needs to get the Committee to Re-Elect guys into a quiet, indefinably yet indisputably sinister room, and explain to them that either way they're going down, but if they take the rap they'll be taken care of, and a Republican president won't be impeached?
I think there are a few ways to think about it.
One is that perhaps they really didn't take seriously the possibility that the president could really lose his job over it. A more serious scandal, sure, but actual impeachment and/or indictment and conviction? Maybe they never really thought it would come to it. And they weren't nuts if that's what they were thinking, I don't think. Yes, Nixon had (almost?) certainly committed felonies before the break-in and without a doubt had committed felonies after, but Nixon was hardly the first president to commit felonies.
The second is that while it would certainly be nice for the White House staff if the campaign took the fall, it's not entirely clear it would be good for Nixon. Both in and out of the White House during this part of it, people are saying that if Mitchell knew, everyone would assume that Nixon must have knows as well. Now, if Mitchell and CRP had claimed to be on their own, at least the White House might have been spared from the Plumbers stuff, but still, it would have been bad.
A third is that, well, John Mitchell seems to have just scared them. Why? I don't know. But we have numerous times when someone was supposed to lay down the law to Mitchell only to freeze and fail to do it. It reminds me a bit of how Newt choked every time he walked into a meeting with Clinton...you look for a rational explanation, but maybe it's not rational.
A fourth is that, even as late as March, they're still often thinking about Watergate in terms of public relations (and never forget that Bob Haldeman's training is an ad agency account executive). Yes, Nixon and Ehrlichman and Dean are lawyers and really should have realized the legal jeopardy they're all in, but politicians and their staff are also trained to think in terms of spin, and that's part of what's happening here. Mitchell would be a huge spin disaster for the administration, not something to hope for.
And a fifth is a combination of John Dean's lament that they aren't criminals and therefore don't know how to do those things along with the fact that they were, you know, running the presidency during all of this: we shouldn't discount the possibility of a clean mistake.
Last one? They really don't have any good options. They can't force Mitchell and Magruder (and everyone else with knowledge) over at the committee to lie for them, and even trying to get them to leaves them open to the blackmail they're already getting from Hunt and the rest of the gang. One way to read the whole thing is that the jig was really up as soon as the men were caught at the Watergate.
So that's some speculation around it, but it really is a very good question.
Meanwhile, you should be able to get the complete series by clicking on the "Watergate" label beneath any item, but if you want to catch up and don't want to scan through in reverse order, I figured I'd put all the links together. So here's the Watergate series from when the cover-up begins to unravel in 1973.
January 2 February 2 March 1 April 2
January 3 February 3 March 2
January 6 February 7 March 6
January 8 February 9 March 7
January 13 February 10 March 8
January 30 February 13 March 11
February 16 March 12
February 20 March 13
February 21 March 14
February 22 March 15
February 28 March 16
March 19
March 20
March 21
March 22
March 23
March 24
March 26
March 27
March 28
March 29
March 30
March 31
Posts
Yes, I'd also say that pointing out this inconvenient truth to Nixon could entail some risks in and of itself. The "court politics" of the moment could have led a person like Dean to realize this but not want to point it out as it might risk his position inside the White House as Nixon could see them as defeatist or plotting betrayal.
ReplyDeleteOf course, if Nixon ordered the original break-in, then the cover-up wasn't worse than the crime, it was a necessary part of the crime. That's one of the great unanswered questions; just because he's *recorded* being surprised when he first hears of the break-in doesn't mean he actually was, as we've already seen.
ReplyDeleteThanks for this, btw; it's been really interesting getting this in "real" time.
Maybe not yet, but at some point it seemed to me they were afraid of Martha Mitchell as well as John, and of what she might do if they crossed her husband.
ReplyDeleteAlso the Nixon White House had been pretty good at controlling the press, so at any point they might have successfully stonewalled and the story might have died. Recall that the breakin and stories about it had begun before the 1972 election. George McGovern called it the most corrupt administration in American history, and it wasn't hyperbole. But Nixon still won an overwhelming victory, which seemed to really spook the press, partly because there was such a contrast in how the campaigns treated the press: the McGovern campaign was pretty open, and the Nixon campaign was the least accessible and most controlling to date. Nixon believed the press hated him, but he was counting on the pretty accurate impression that they were afraid of him.
The big institutional media managments were afraid of Nixon. Some reporters--notably Cassie Mackin of NBC--lost prominence or their jobs for covering Nixon and the Nixon campaign too aggressively.
Only when the press reports became so prominent did Congress get up the gumption to hold hearings. So hoping the story would dry up before the press did any real damage may have been their hope.
Unfair to Congress! I don't think you can blame the 92nd Congress for not doing much. Watergate happens in June; a Congressional investigation during the middle of the campaign would have been considered just a partisan attack. They adjourn in October...I suppose they could have planned a lame duck session devoted to Watergate, but even if they had wanted to it would have been logistically difficult. And then they set up the Ervin Committee soon after the 93rd Congress opens.
DeleteJonathan one thing that strikes me from reading these summaries is how rapidly the situation deteriorates.
ReplyDeleteNot going to go into the specifics of the timeline, but it wasn't all that long ago that everything seemed perfectly manageable. Irritating at worst. Now everybody's lawyered up and/or talking to somebody on the record.
Thanks for putting the links together in one place.
Jonathan one thing that strikes me from reading these summaries is how rapidly the situation deteriorates.
ReplyDeleteNot going to go into the specifics of the timeline, but it wasn't all that long ago that everything seemed perfectly manageable. Irritating at worst. Now everybody's lawyered up and/or talking to somebody on the record.
Thanks for putting the links together in one place.
Jonathan, what, in your opinion, is the best single book on watergate?
ReplyDeleteI'm a big fan of Fred Emery's "Watergate." Not aware of anything better. Although I don't necessarily keep up with what's out there, so if anyone else has suggestions, I'd love to hear them too.
Delete