Carl Bernstein: “This is something far worse than occurred in Watergate”. So what has changed so much that the Republican members of Congress won’t now force Trump’s resignation, the same way they did Nixon’s? What brings Congressional Republicans to ignore this far worse criminal action of this sitting President? What has caused Congress to change so much since Watergate? www.msn.com/...
Bernstein explains, “It’s not déjà vu. This is something far worse than occurred in Watergate. We have both a criminal President of the United States in Donald Trump and a subversive President of the United States at the same time in this one person, subverting the very basis of our democracy, and willing to act criminally in that subversion. But more important, what we hear on this tape, this is the ultimate “smoking gun” tape, is the tape with the evidence of what this President is willing to do, to undermine the electoral system and illegally, improperly, and immorally try to instigate a coup in which he remains the President of the United States. And in any other President, any other Presidency, this tape would be evidence enough to result in the impeachment of the President of the United States, his conviction in the Senate of the United States, and really, an immediate call by the members of Congress, including of his own party that he resign immediately. That’s really what we ought to be hearing from Republicans at this moment, ‘Mr. President, resign. Leave the White House. This is unconscionable. It is wrong. And we of your Party will not permit it.’
”We’re not going to hear that. We might from a few Republicans, but that’s what’s really called for here. And the one thing we should recall from Watergate is that the heroes of Watergate were Republicans who would not tolerate Richard Nixon’s conduct.”
Myself, I am less optimistic than Bernstein that were this any other Presidency the members of his own Party would force him out. Yes. we all know how adept Trump is at threatening to unleash his base at any wayward GOP members of Congress, the constant threat of their being “primaried” into oblivion. Is that what it is? Or is there something far more sinister at work here? The answer is clearly, “Yes”. And in a perverse way, it has to do with “Citizens United”.
The basic problem is not new. F. Scott Fitzgerald explained it this way. “Let me tell you about the very rich. They are different from you and me. They possess and enjoy early, and it does something to them, makes them soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful, in a way that, unless you were born rich, it is very difficult to understand. They think, deep in their hearts, that they are better than we are […] They are different.”
Unfortunately, in the less than fifty years since Watergate, and mostly just within the last decade - since the Citizens United decision - our Congress has become almost exclusively a plutocracy, a club whose members are almost exclusively the very rich. Because of Citizens United, It is virtually impossible to mount a successful campaign for Congress without huge amounts of funding. And the rich donors who provide the backbone of funding for both parties are much more willing to support people “like them” than to support an ordinary Joe. Yes, there are exceptions who break through. (“AOC” and “The Squad”, I suppose are examples). But the sad truth is, there are very few in Congress today who are not at least millionaires, if not multi-millionaires.
And this, more than we, with our egalitarian American values care to admit, is the big change in Congress from the time when there were Republican members of Congress strong enough to force Nixon to resign. As Fitzgerald foretold, the typical GOP member of Congress today is “soft where we are hard, and cynical where we are trustful”. This softness (moral weakness really) combines with cynicism to their being almost wholly without honor, and they don’t even care.