Strange days have found us again. In the White House, the start of Donald Trump’s administration eerily echoes the finish of Richard Nixon’s.
Some scary parallels: Nixon bloodied his Justice Department in a Saturday night massacre during the Watergate investigation, which began with five burglars meddling in the 1972 presidential campaign. Trump already has his Monday night massacre. He dumped the acting attorney general who, it turns out, warned of his national security officer chatting improperly with an ambassador of the foreign government that meddled in the 2016 presidential campaign.
Nixon ignited an interest in daily news even as he demonized the media. Ditto for The Donald. Invoking executive privilege, Nixon defied court orders to turn over White House tapes to Watergate investigators until the Supreme Court decision forced his hand. Trump invoked national security to claim judges have no authority to question his immigration ban.
It goes on. Nixon secretly bugged a list of enemies. Trump publicly bashes a growing list of enemies that runs from Sen. John McCain to Meryl Streep. Nixon evaded a new law and avoided income taxes by backdating a $500,000 charitable donation of his vice presidential papers. One can only imagine the deductions secreted in the tax documents of a billionaire president who refuses to release them.
Nixon tried to use the FBI and CIA to squelch the Watergate investigation. The Trump administration has been accused of – and denies – using the same tactics to squelch reports of his campaign’s ties to Russia. One month into Trump’s first term, newcasters revived the question that Republican Sen. Howard Baker repeatedly asked during the Watergate investigation: “What did the president know, and when did he know it?”
Again, millions of protesters are marching in the streets.
The new protests feel awfully familiar to me. They bring back misty memories of anti-war marches and tear gas, solidarity and sometimes hopelessness. The war raged on and on. Our peace symbol became the footprint of the American chicken. Vice President Spiro Agnew dubbed us nattering nabobs of negativism.
There are some notable differences this time around.
The Vietnam War protests during the Johnson and Nixon administrations often escalated into violent confrontations with police. The Trump protests have stayed remarkably peaceful so far.
The war protests focused on a single issue and were led by draft-age young men. The Chicago Seven? All white guys charged with conspiracy and inciting riots at the 1968 Democratic Convention. The eighth defendant, Black Panther Bobby Seale, was bound and gagged in court for insulting the judge, then tried separately for contempt.
The Trump protests have spread globally, with women in the forefront.
And they’re clever.
The Vietnam War chants, understandably, rang grim. Hell no, we won’t go! LBJ, LBJ, how many kids did you kill today? Four o’clock, all is well, five o’clock, Mitchell gets hell!
The latter, directed at Nixon’s attorney general, John Mitchell, was answered by tear gas detonations that stung me blocks away. I remember escaping to a bus where hapless commuters just trying to get home dabbed their eyes with handkerchiefs.
The Trump protest signs display a sharp – okay, nasty – sense of humor. We shall overcomb. Twitler. We are all Bowling Green. We can see Russia.
Why do such comparisons matter?
First, history reminds us that protest movements have changed the United States on the issues of slavery, women’s suffrage, alcohol use (briefly), workers’ rights, civil rights and gay rights, to name a few. Second, genuine change may come slowly and at considerable human cost. Hasty edicts won’t make America great again.
These new protesters have been characterized as leaderless, unfocused and dominated by Hillary Clinton backers from liberal cities. Trump himself accused critics of his immigration ban of imperiling the nation’s safety.
Time will tell whether our daily crises of government die down and a working democracy re-emerges. Don’t be surprised if it’s a long time.
My own opposition to the Vietnam War began with a South Dakota high school classroom visit from a young U.S. senator, George McGovern, who patiently explained his case for withdrawing troops.
That was in 1967. As a college student I took part in protest after protest that seemingly accomplished nothing. I watched Nixon succeed Johnson as president in 1968, then trample McGovern in 1972.
A month before that election, Henry Kissinger infamously declared that “peace is at hand” in Vietnam. A month after, I suffered through the Christmas season news that Nixon was carpet bombing Hanoi.
The chant of Nixon supporters rang in my head. Four more years! Four more years!
Within two years the United States had signed a Vietnam peace treaty and Nixon was gone. What began with a bungled attempt to burglarize Democratic Party headquarters ended with an unprecedented presidential resignation to avoid impeachment. Nixon was toppled not by the original crime, but by his cover-up efforts.
The South Vietnamese government collapsed less than a year later.
I cannot fathom what the next four years hold for us and President Trump, but I offer a couple of lessons from the Nixon years. One, protests do matter. So do the news media. Both help shape an enduring democracy. Two, we forget history too easily. Events that define one generation get relegated to textbooks in the next.
Ten years after the Vietnam War ended, I was the city editor of the Concord Monitor. For an anniversary story, I dispatched a young reporter to ask local high school students about it.
“Vietnam?” one puzzled student replied. “We haven’t gotten to that chapter yet.”
Maybe Trump should brush up on that Watergate chapter now.
(David Olinger is an award-winning investigative reporter who worked for 40 years at the Concord Monitor, St. Petersburg Times and Denver Post.)