Full Disclosure: My family was a Nixon family. My godfather, was, for example, was in the administration and as the Watergate Scandal unfolded I was raised, in the early 70s to believe that Nixon was no dirtier than any of the Dems who’d done the same but had never been caught.
It wasn’t until decades later that I’d learned just how Nixon’s “win-at-all-costs” approach was so unethical and so brutally, so brazenly, anti-American.
I’m reminded, now, by what I’m seeing daily as a charade of integrity in this current administration as a comparative reminder of a Nixonian equivalent. While I understand the impulse, I’m not sure the comparison is warranted.
Granted, Nixon was an insecure, paranoid, dishonest, win-at-all-costs bastard who dragged the country he said he loved through a mess that HE MADE. Anyone seeing him as merely the Republican equivalent of Democratic misdeeds is either intellectually blind, unable to see through the fog of messaging, OR, simply ignorant. Same goes for Trump, but there’s more to Trump’s nefariousness.
Nixon met the norms with subtlety while Trump destroys those very norms. Nixon had some achievements. Trump has had so few, and has caused significant damage to the US brand that I am reluctant to even compare the two leaders.
To be sure, I am not absolving Nixon of his crimes. Rather, I’m pointing out how his crimes were not equivalent to those we’re witnessing now. Nixon, at least, had the intellectual ability to see what mattered to the US population. Trump, it appears, is a rapacious, greedy, transactional soul who couldn’t care less about the well-being of ANY greater good, rather reducing his approach to his self-interest as the ultimate marker for his legacy. Oops. At least Tricky Dick had a dick. Trump has a Stump that even Satan struggles to honor.