The most significant thing ever said about politics in the last century comes from Ted White’s book “Breach of Faith: The Fall of Richard Nixon”:
In a campaign there is no conflict between ends and means. The end is to win victory, and, as in war, the means do not matter -- deception, lying, intelligence operations are common in all campaigns; a campaign is no place for squeamish men. But what happens, said one of Richard Nixon's advance men of 1960 long afterward in 1974, what happens when the advance men become government? "What happens when they all sit in the same room in Washington and the President trusts them and nobody is squeamish, nobody is there to say, Wait a minute, is it right or wrong?"
I talk about that a bit here.
This quote has come to the fore again as I read John W. Dean’s “The Nixon Defense: What He Knew and When He Knew It,” wherein Dean (I’m just in the opening chapters) is laying the groundwork that to show Nixon’s loyalty to his men was chief among his flaws that led to his doomed presidency.
Whom do we have right now in government saying “Wait a minute, is it right or wrong?”
While individual members of either dominant political party in the United States might be saying it, the parties themselves are not. The parties are interested in promulgating the party, and look at any sense of right or wrong through the lens of party loyalty. Some of the individual platform planks of each party might be in the right, but on the whole, the parties are not saying “Wait a minute, is it right or wrong?”
Nixon’s loyalty to his men met up with his paranoia to lead him to believe his men above the cost of everything else. That loyalty combined with paranoia, I believe, led him to consider other paths to protect his men when he saw their guilt, at the cost of his presidency.
And his men did him few favors. Something from Dean’s book:
“I told him about the Liddy thing,” Haldeman explained,” because he’s going to find it out right away anyway, and it was better to let him know there was a guy.” But Haldeman also had new information to tell Nixon dealing with Liddy’s involvement in Watergate. “What we’re talking about is, we’re going to write a scenario – in fact, we’re going to have Liddy write it – which bring all of the loose ends that might lead anywhere at all to him. He’s going to say that, yeah, he was doing this, he wasn’t authorized.” Haldeman, of course, and not only been told by Gordon Strachan, his aide and liaison to the reelection committee, that Liddys’ intelligence operation budget had been approved, by the had also given Strachan instructions in ear4ly April 1972 to have Liddy change his focus from Muskie to McGovern. It was still not clear form these conversations whether Haldeman knew if Mitchell had authorized an illegal break-in and bugging at the DNC, but he clearly suspected it. Haldeman was certainly aware, however, that Jeb Magruder would not have authorized such an action without Mitchell’s blessing, and that Magruder was directly involved in the Watergate operation.
“Well, what else?” Nixon pressed for more of the scenario.
Haldeman obliged by spinning out the story he had discussed with Mitchell. “He thought it was an honorable thing to do. He thought it was important. Obviously, it was wrong. He didn’t think he should ask for authorization, because he knew it was something he didn’t want to put anybody else in a position of authorizing. How did he get the money? See, we’ve got that one problem, the check from Dahlberg. What happened is, and that works out nicely, because the check came in after the spending limit thing [on April 7]. So it was given to him with the instruction to return it to the Dahlberg. Instead he subverted it to this other purpose, deposited it in the bank. That explains where the money came from. That explains everything. And they’re [Mitchell and his aides] working on writing out a scenario.” I think that’s the answer to this, and admit that, by God, there was campaign involvement.”
But without Michell’s knowledge,’ the president qualified, and Haldeman repeated “But without Mitchell’s knowledge.”
“Or authorization,” Nixon further confirmed. Haldeman echoed, “Or authorization.”
“He’s fired.”
“And he’s fired,” Haldeman assured the president.
“What does he get out of it? What’s his penalty?” the president asked.
“Oh, not too much. They don’t think it will be any big problem,” Haldeman said. Then he added, “Whatever it is, we’ll take care of him.”
Nixon could not imagine this having taking place without Mitchell’s authority, but then, he told Haldeman, he was still not sure. Haldeman speculated, “I can’t imagine that he knew specifically that this is what they were doing. I think he said, for God’s sake, get out and get this [expletive deleted] information, don’t pussyfoot around.”
The president wanted to know about the money. “How’d he [Liddy] get the check?”
“He was processing the checks. It was an illegal check,” Haldeman concluded, incorrectly placing a worst-case potential on it by blending fact with the fiction of the scenario; when all the facts were gathered, it turned out to be a legal contribution. Haldeman guessed, “You know, he was going to run it down to Mexico and put it into cash or something.”
“The what did we do, return the money to the guy? What, what happened?” the president asked, confused about what was the true story and the bogus scenario.
The thing is about telling lies, and mixing lies with truth, is pretty soon you don’t remember what the truth is, and what the lies are, and how you mixed them together.
And those depending on you, well, they often don’t know you’re lying to them. Until it’s too late.
What do we have in Washington now, but politicians on both sides of the fence who value loyalty to individual or party above everything else – where compromise is a dirtier word than partisanship?
Far be it from a naif like me to suggest something: Maybe the people our politicians employ in their campaigns should have the kind of integrity that would make their candidate call on their better self, not their baser self. We’ve seen both parties succumb to wanting to win so badly they throw integrity out the window. And then keep the windows locked.
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