Nixon Impeachment Quotes

So many of the professional foreign policy establishment, and so many of their hangers-on among the lumpen academics and journalists, had become worried by the frenzy and paranoia of the Nixonian Vietnam policy that consensus itself was threatened. Ordinary intra-mural and extra-mural leaking, to such duly constituted bodies as Congress, was getting out of hand. It was Kissinger who inaugurated the second front or home front of the war; illegally wiretapping the telephones even of his own staff and of his journalistic clientele. (I still love to picture the face of Henry Brandon when he found out what his hero had done to his telephone.) This war against the enemy within was the genesis of Watergate; a nexus of high crime and misdemeanour for which Kissinger himself, as Isaacson wittily points out, largely evaded blame by taking to his ‘shuttle’ and staying airborne. Incredibly, he contrived to argue in public with some success that if it were not for democratic distempers like the impeachment process his own selfless, necessary statesmanship would have been easier to carry out. This is true, but not in the way that he got newspapers like Rees-Mogg’s Times to accept.

The story of how this postwar consensus broke down—starting with LBJ’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his prediction that it would lead to the South’s wholesale abandonment of the Democratic Party—has been told many times before. The realignment Johnson foresaw ended up taking longer than he had expected. But steadily, year by year—through Vietnam, riots, feminism, and Nixon’s southern strategy; through busing, Roe v. Wade, urban crime, and white flight; through affirmative action, the Moral Majority, union busting, and Robert Bork; through assault weapons bans and the rise of Newt Gingrich, gay rights and the Clinton impeachment—America’s voters and their representatives became more and more polarized.

By the 1950s, most Republicans had accommodated themselves to New Deal–era health and safety regulations, and the Northeast and the Midwest produced scores of Republicans who were on the liberal end of the spectrum when it came to issues like conservation and civil rights. Southerners, meanwhile, constituted one of the Democratic Party’s most powerful blocs, combining a deep-rooted cultural conservatism with an adamant refusal to recognize the rights of African Americans, who made up a big share of their constituency. With America’s global economic dominance unchallenged, its foreign policy defined by the unifying threat of communism, and its social policy marked by a bipartisan confidence that women and people of color knew their place, both Democrats and Republicans felt free to cross party lines when required to get a bill passed. They observed customary courtesies when it came time to offer amendments or bring nominations to a vote and kept partisan attacks and hardball tactics within tolerable bounds. The story of how this postwar consensus broke down—starting with LBJ’s signing of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and his prediction that it would lead to the South’s wholesale abandonment of the Democratic Party—has been told many times before. The realignment Johnson foresaw ended up taking longer than he had expected. But steadily, year by year—through Vietnam, riots, feminism, and Nixon’s southern strategy; through busing, Roe v. Wade, urban crime, and white flight; through affirmative action, the Moral Majority, union busting, and Robert Bork; through assault weapons bans and the rise of Newt Gingrich, gay rights and the Clinton impeachment—America’s voters and their representatives became more and more polarized.

People talk about Eisenhower's golden age.... It all happened without me. What is the vice presidency? The Constitution dictates only two duties: casting the deciding vote if the Senate is deadlocked and replacing the president if he dies or is impeached. apart from waiting for those two things to happen, you made the rest up and were duly forgotten by history. The exception being Aaron Burr, who shot someone, decisively lowering the bar for the rest of us. What I remember is small pieces of the world: the West Wing, the insides of planes and hotel lobbies and conference rooms. My life was dinners with Pat and the children; airplane flights; placeholder meetings with foreign dignitaries during which I nodded and reminded them I had no power to make and agreement but would speak to the president. Stomach-turning formal breakfasts, speeches to party elders and tradesmen. I opened factories in Detroit and Akron, breathing the various stinks of canneries, slaughterhouses, or rubber plans and bestowing that vice presidential combination of glamour, flattery, and the tacit reminder that they didn't quite rate a visit from the top guy.

George Washington University’s Jonathan Turley describes Obama’s imperialism as the “uber-presidency,” conceding in congressional testimony that the president has enveloped the nation in “the most serious constitutional crisis . . . of my lifetime.” (Yes, Professor Turley did live through Nixon.)

President Lyndon Johnson was forced to select a commission to investigate the assassination of President Kennedy and the murder of Lee Harvey Oswald by Jack Ruby. Texas authorities were called upon to conduct the original investigation. There were too many suspicious people around the world who believed a conspiracy existed. Those rumors had to be squelched. J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI never budged from its position that Lee Harvey acted alone. Any evidence that didn’t conform to this conclusion was ignored. Twenty-six volumes of witness testimony and exhibits were published, and only 8,000 copies were sold. No more reprints. The contradiction between the conclusions of the Warren Report, and the abundance of discrepancies in the other volumes, makes fascinating reading. Chief Justice Earl Warren, John J. McCloy and Allen Dulles were LBJ’s logical choices. President Kennedy didn’t trust CIA Director Dulles. Now JFK was dead and Dulles would be in charge of all possible “conspiracy” investigations. Richard Nixon, temporarily retired from politics for the first time since 1946, selected Rep. Gerald Ford to sit on this commission. Nixon selected Ford a second time when he ran home to escape impeachment during the Watergate hearings.

I have worked with him [Nixon] in every national campaign in which he has taken part ... And I am deeply grateful for the many kindnesses and courtesies he has shown me over the years. I am not unmindful of the loyalty I owe him." He continued for a few minutes without revealing his position. Then he said, "There are frightening implications for the future of our country if we do not impeach the President of the United States ... If we fail to impeach, we have donned and left unpunished a course of conduct totally inconsistent with reasonable expectations of the American people." "The people of the United States are entitled to assume that their President is telling the truth. The pattern of misrepresentation and half-truths that emerges from our investigation reveals a presidential policy cynically based on the premise that the truth itself is negotiable." Rep. Caldwell (Republican from Virginia) then stated that he would vote to impeach Nixon, July 24, 1974

With the release of the transcripts Nixon had allowed America into the ugliness of his mind - as of he wanted the world to participate in the despoliation of the myth of presidential behavior. The transcripts, Garment thought, were an invasion of the public's privacy, of its right not to know. That was the truly impeachable offense: letting everyone see.

No president in American history has ever been removed from office by way of a Senate impeachment trial. A two-thirds vote requirement for conviction requires a bipartisan buy-in, which will be very difficult to achieve unless there is significant popular support in the nation. Those conditions likely existed during the latter months of the Watergate scandal of President Richard Nixon, but he resigned in August 1974, thereby ending the impeachment process.

Bumper stickers in this world may demand, “Impeach Nixon,” but only a fool asks for the impeachment of God.

When I interviewed Trump at Mar-a-Lago, Florida, on December 30, 2019, about his impeachment, Trump said: “There’s nobody that’s tougher than me. Nobody’s tougher than me. You asked me about impeachment. I’m under impeachment, and you said you just act like you just won the fucking race. Nixon was in a corner with his thumb in his mouth. Bill Clinton took it very, very hard. I just do things, okay? I do what I want.

As Roger Stone revealed in his book Nixon’s Secrets, Hillary was fired from the 1974 House Impeachment Committee shortly after she took, and failed, the DC bar examination. Hillary authored memos demanding Nixon yield his tapes (a little irony there?) and that the president was not entitled to a lawyer in the impeachment proceeding. Asked why she was fired, Majority Staff Director Jerry Zeifman said, “Because she was a liar. She was an unethical, dishonest lawyer. She conspired to violate the Constitution, the rules of the House, the rules of the committee and the rules of confidentiality.

Yet when is the last time a major political party nominated someone who has been investigated for corruption so many times, and with an ongoing FBI inquiry? Nixon of course was impeached and resigned in disgrace, but there was no investigation and no impeachment prior to his 1972 reelection. Nixon up to that point had a spotless record, while Hillary’s record could only be described as very, very spotty. Yet she has a whole team rooting for her.

In the 1970s, for example, Washington Post reporters uncovered President Richard Nixon’s direct involvement in the criminal Watergate scheme. After the Post’s extensive coverage of the scandal, the bipartisan consensus arose in Congress that Nixon had committed an impeachable offense. Shortly thereafter, he became the first US president to resign from office.

Lucas said to author Jody Duncan: The political issues have to deal with democracies that give their countries over to a dictator because of a crisis of some kind…this was a very big issue when I was writing the first Star Wars because it was soon after Nixon’s presidency, and there was a point, right before he was thrown out of office, where he suggested that they change a constitutional amendment so that he could run for a third term. Even when he started getting into trouble, he was saying “If the military will back me, I’ll stay in office.” His idea was: “To hell with Congress and potential impeachment. I’ll go directly to the army, and between the army and myself, I’ll continue to be president.” That is what happens here. An emergency in the Republic leads the Senate to make Palpatine, essentially, “dictator for life.” (218)

Mueller’s report, if read carefully, establishes that Trump committed several acts of criminal obstruction of justice. The impeachment proceedings against both Nixon and Clinton were rooted in charges of obstruction of justice, and Trump’s offenses were even more extensive and enduring.