During the 2016 election campaign, Donald Trump charged that Hillary Clinton’s alleged email scandal was worse than Watergate.
But, as we’ve seen many times, Trump tends to project his own guilt onto others, and this may be no exception. What may really be as bad as, if not potentially worse, than Watergate is the alleged collusion of the Trump campaign with the Russian government in efforts to affect the outcome of the 2016 U.S. presidential election.
I was re-reading Keith Olson’s incisive book, Watergate, The Presidential Scandal the Shook America, and couldn’t help noticing a number of parallels between the then Nixon White House involvement in dirty tricks leading up to the 1972 election and the presidential election scandal of 2016.
Both cases, of course, involved admitted or alleged efforts to change the outcome of a U.S. presidential election.
Both cases involved either a break-in or hacking of the Democratic National Committee. In both cases, there were admitted (in the case of Watergate) or alleged attempts to block FBI investigations of the underhanded tactics.
To me, Chapter 9 of Olson’s book provides an insight into why the Trump campaign’s collusion with the Russians, if true, is potentially worse than Watergate. The difference between the two scandals lies in the apparent intent of the wrongdoers or alleged wrongdoers in each case.
In the case of Watergate, Nixon and his top aides appear to have sincerely, but of course mistakenly, believed that the Democrats were supporting the Communist government of North Vietnam in its effort to take over South Vietnam. Nixon believed his re-election was necessary to prevent an effective Communist takeover of the U.S.
As Nixon’s special counsel, Charles Colson, later noted, White House officials believed illegal actions were needed to ensure Nixon’s re-election, and they “covered their own misdeeds while rationalizing it all as being in the interests of the country.”
The sincerity of Colson’s rationalization, which was also used by Nixon himself, can be debated; and, in fact, most Americans at the time didn’t accept it, believing instead that Watergate was part of an attempt, as Olson put it, “to promote and protect Nixon’s career.”
But at least there was no alleged collusion with a foreign power in Watergate, and no one ever alleged that Nixon secretly wanted to serve the interest of a foreign power.
In the case of the 2016 election, however, the scandal involves the alleged collusion with a foreign power, and it includes allegations that Trump is seeking to serve the interests of a foreign government.
Thus far, the only argument that has been put forward by Trump’s defenders in support of Russian interference in the U.S. election is that it uncovered information about Clinton’s emails.
It’s a pretty pathetic argument to make that a foreign government’s break-in of U.S. political institutions was warranted because it proved that an American political candidate was misusing an email server. But that’s the position that Trump and his Republican supporters are in as they struggle to minimize the impact of a real, emerging scandal.