Did the scandal and his impeachment really vindicate “the rule of law”?
We are marking this week the 40th anniversary of Richard Nixon’s resignation, with the helicopter lifting him away from the White House and out of Washington. In one of those ever-recurring anniversaries of Watergate, Tom Brokaw delivered himself of the judgment that the scandal and the impeachment of Richard Nixon vindicated “the rule of law.” The truth that apparently dare not speak its name is that the lesson has been quite the reverse. For the telling, formal mark of a rule of law is that those who lay down the laws governing others should be willing to regard those same laws as binding on themselves. When the matter is cast as a “precedent” for legislators or judges, the question is whether people are willing to respect the principle they invoked in their earlier decision, even when it cuts against the side they favor now.
During the argument over the impeachment of President Clinton, William Bennett and I raised the question in the Wall Street Journal of whether the grounds put forth to justify the impeachment of Nixon would be honored now. Among the list of accusations, Mr. Nixon was charged with suborning perjury: “condoning . . . counseling witnesses with respect to the giving of false or misleading statements to lawfully authorized investigative officers” and “misleading testimony in duly instituted judicial and congressional proceedings.” In the sweep of accusation, Nixon was charged also with misleading the public, interfering with the conduct of investigations, and obtaining from the IRS “confidential information contained in income tax returns for purposes not authorized by law.” Those charges, of course, could have been made with even more force against FDR, and against presidents who have come well after Nixon. But the point was that the charges, if proven true, were offered seriously as grounds for removing a president from office.
Bill Bennett and I raised the simple question of whether the people who had persuaded themselves on these points in 1973–74 would respect them now when those charges cut against a president they regarded as their own. The record speaks amply for itself. Whatever else was accomplished 40 years ago in driving Mr. Nixon from office, it did not turn out to be the rebirth of a dedication to the “rule of law.”
But was it a just judgment, nevertheless, at the time? If we look again at the laundry list of charges, what springs out is the recognition that these charges could have been made against many presidents before and since Nixon. And this can be said even by people who do not think — as the late Jude Wanniski put it — that the main fault in the Nixon administration was that the Watergate burglars put the tape inside the door horizontally (where it was spotted by the guard) instead of vertically (where it could have gone unseen).