Just happened to click onto a TV airing of All the President’s Men last night, and was reminded that the Watergate break-in was not about that one crime, or about how Nixon ordered it. Nope, it was about the fact that the break-in was done to protect the many covert operations that had been going on for years, the slush funds and pay-offs and dirty tricks and "Plumbers" operations, all conducted to manipulate the playing field of our election process. Perhaps the best known example of those tricks was the infamous Canuck letter sent to the Manchester Union Leader claiming Edmond Muskie disliked Americans of French Canadian descent. Muskie’s campaign faltered thereafter (yeah, a lot has changed), and McGovern ultimately won the nomination, the arrangement Nixon preferred; he did not want to run against Muskie, the stronger candidate.
This Republican cheating and sabotage crap has been going on since then. Lee Atwater, Rove’s mentor, cut his teeth on Nixon’s first campaign in ’68. John Dean even mentioned that he was asked about Rove after his decision to cooperate with the Watergate investigation. Dean said he had heard Rove’s name and knew he was around, but figured at that time Rove was considered too small a fish because nothing ever came of the query.
Rove was thus allowed to remain on the loose, as it were, to the great and possibly terminal destruction of our election process. And he has clearly applied what he learned at the feet of Lee Atwater, another Nixon consultant, too well. Just look what the Republican campaign machinery has become. A bunch of hooligans, a gang of hoodlums, who instead of playing a real professional game of ball, do everything but. They pour pepper in jock straps and lie about the quarterback to his girlfriend and spike the water with vodka and let the air out of the tires of the opponent's team bus.
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Nothing but a bunch of cheap cheats. Responding to assertions that their robocalling scheme is at least unseemly and at worst illegal, they insist they’re within the laws, inasmuch admitting that they’re placing these calls, which are clearly designed to irritate voters and associate that irritation with the Democratic opponents.
It’s that loophole mentality; whatever they can get away with is ok, forget about fair play or even the appearance of ethical standards. They’ll happily pay the fines associated with these schemes as long as it shaves off Democratic votes. Forget about the spirit of the contest, the integrity of winning fair and square, the meaning of our democracy. They’re ruthless and criminal, there’s just no other way to put it.
You’d have thought they would have learned the hard lessons from Watergate – crime truly does not pay, and certainly does not further the democratic program – but instead it seemed to redouble their resolve. It was in this aftermath that Lee Atwater emerged as the evil, the original Darth Vader of the Republican Party, running Reagan's campaigns with an unparalleled ruthlessness. Consciously implementing the horrifyingly cynical Southern Strategy that had worked for Nixon in ’68, Atwater was notorious for his last minute, below-the-belt smears (think Dukakis and Willie Horton in ’88), and was completely unapologetic about their Southern Strategy. Atwater’s barrel had no bottom.
At least, that's how it seemed, until fate finally caught up with Atwater. Not long after his big Bush I victory in 1988, he was made chair of the RNC. But less than two years later, he was diagnosed with an inoperable brain tumor, prompting his conversion to Catholicism. He then sent out numbers of letters apologizing to his victims over the years, including one to Dukakis and his wife. He also penned this touching essay, published by Life magazine just before his death in 1991 at age 40.
My illness helped me to see that what was missing in society is what was missing in me: a little heart, a lot of brotherhood. The '80s were about acquiring -- acquiring wealth, power, prestige. I know. I acquired more wealth, power, and prestige than most. But you can acquire all you want and still feel empty. What power wouldn't I trade for a little more time with my family? What price wouldn't I pay for an evening with friends? It took a deadly illness to put me eye to eye with that truth, but it is a truth that the country, caught up in its ruthless ambitions and moral decay, can learn on my dime. I don't know who will lead us through the '90s, but they must be made to speak to this spiritual vacuum at the heart of American society, this tumor of the soul.Why is this side of Atwater never mentioned in the same breath with comparisons to Rove? What a shame neither Rove nor his current Republican contemporaries actually followed this truest lead of their mentor.
5 comments:
sofla said...
I do not agree the break-in was done to protect the other burglaries, black bag jobs, or dirty tricks.
The COVERUP of the break-in was required because of the prior tasks these same plumbers had been doing along these lines, yes. Nixon couldn't simply admit this one thing against the plumbers, since the whole can of worms would have been re-opened thereby.
But the break-in itself WAS another such action, done for the same reasons the others were done (partisan political advantage). The break-in itself was not covering up other matters of these kinds, so far as anyone I've ever seen has laid out.
actually, sofia, you're right on that point, and i should have made that more clear. the break-in was not to protect the other operations, the cover-up was covering up more than just the watergate breakin.
apologies; i was more intrigued with thinking about lee atwater's dying wishes, and how starkly they contrast to what his colleagues have done.
thanks for setting it straight.
sofla said....
I figured you meant that, and thanks for the clarification.
BTW, the various known plumbers' operations per se were not the only thing extra being covered up.
As Haldemann wrote in his memoirs (although later denying his own words), when he was sent in by Nixon to ask DCI Richard Helms to back off Acting FBI Director L. Patrick Gray from investigating Watergate on national security grounds, Nixon told him to mention that investigating this might re-open the whole 'Bay of Pigs thing,' to the great detriment of the Agency. Haldemann wrote that he later figured out that when Nixon referred to the Bay of Pigs, he really meant the JFK assassination.
ah, yeah, well there is THAT can of worms. in fact, while checking out the background on this post, i also ran across reference to the cia setting up chappaquidick. which was either successful, or not.
the more you dig, the more it feels like we're living in a shakespearean historical tragedy.
How about this Chappaquiddick comment from John Dean: "If Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into - " (see quoted passages below). You are correct about Nixon’s using the term “Bay of Pigs” when actually referring to JFK’s assassination. Just remember, the fish always rots from the head, and if Lee Atwater and Karl Rove were around back then, no wonder we’re seeing this current cess pool, along with all of the ratting out of late before the top troika twist slowly, slowly in the wind. As for Chappaquiddick, which happened in July 1969, see pp. 121-122 of the paperback version of the New York Times publication, "The White House Transcripts (Submission of Recorded Presidential Conversations to the Committee on the Judiciary of the House of Representatives by President Richard Nixon)," May 1974. Amidst a conversation between Nixon and John Dean, during which a setup for Ted Kennedy at Chappaquiddick, funds, and a man named Jack Caulfield came up, the following was said:
... P — If he would get Kennedy into it, too, I would be a little bit more pleased.
D — Let me tell you something that lurks at the bottom of this whole thing. If, in going after Segretti, they go after Kalmbach’s bank records, you will recall sometime back — perhaps you did not know about this — I apologize. That right after Chappaquiddick somebody was put up there to start observing and within six hours he was there for every second of Chappaquiddick for a year, and for almost two years he worked for Jack Caulfield.
P — Oh, I have heard of Caulfield.
D — He worked for Caulfield when Caulfield worked for John, and then when I came over here I inherited Caulfield and this guy was still on this same thing. If they get to those bank records between the start of July of 1969 through June of 1971, they say what are these about? Who is this fellow up in New York that you paid? There comes Chappaquiddick with a vengeance. This guy is a twenty year detective on the New York City Police Department.
P — In other words we —
D — He is ready to disprove and show that —
P — (unintelligible)
D — If they get to it — that is going to come out and this whole thing can turn around on that. If Kennedy knew the bear trap he was walking into — ”
P — How do we know — why don’t we get it out anyway?
D — Well, we have sort of saved it.
P — Does he have any records? Are they any good?
D — He is probably the most knowledgeable man in the country. I think he ran up against walls and they closed the records down. There are things he can’t get, but he can ask all of the questions and get many of the answers as a 20 year detective, but we don’t want to surface him right now. But if he is ever surfaced, this is what they will get.
P — How will Kalmbach explain that he hired this guy to do the job on Chappaquiddick? Out of what type of funds?
D — He had money left over from the pre-convention —
P — Are they going to investigate those funds too?
D — They are funds that are quite legal. There is nothing illegal about those funds. Regardless of what may happen, what may occur, they may stumble into this in going back to, say 1971, in Kalmbach’s bank records. They have already asked for a lot of his bank records in connection with Segretti, as to how he paid Segretti.
P — Are they going to go back as far as Chappaquiddick?
D — Well this fellow worked in 1971 on this. He was up there. He has talked to everybody in that town. He is the one who has cause a lot of embarrassment for Kennedy already by saying he went up there as a newspaperman, by saying “Why aren’t you checking this? Why aren’t you looking there?” Calling the press people’s attention to things. Gosh, the guy did a masterful job. I have never had the full report.” ...
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