Exactly 15 years after Richard Nixon achieved one of the high points of his career with the “Kitchen Debate” with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, the President could see the end of his public life, as the U.S. Supreme Court ruled unanimously on July 24 that he needed to yield tapes and documents related to the Watergate investigation.
The resulting revelations, coming amid House impeachment proceedings, led to the President’s resignation two weeks later, as one sentence on those tapes—“I want you to stonewall it”—made clear even to Nixon’s most obstinate defenders that he was guilty of covering up the break-in at the Watergate Hotel by campaign operatives.
The resulting revelations, coming amid House impeachment proceedings, led to the President’s resignation two weeks later, as one sentence on those tapes—“I want you to stonewall it”—made clear even to Nixon’s most obstinate defenders that he was guilty of covering up the break-in at the Watergate Hotel by campaign operatives.
In a post last year, I noted that Nixon’s announcement of his resignation occurred exactly six years to the day after he had accepted the GOP nomination in Miami. William Safire’s op-ed piece the other day in The New York Times, “The Cold War’s Hot Kitchen,” reminded me of the “kitchen debate.”
For someone like Nixon, who replayed scenes from his past for the edification of aides, like an endless loop, the juxtaposition of past triumph and current agony must have seemed particularly galling.
I never agreed with an awful lot of Safire’s op-ed pieces for the Times, but his latest retrospective reminded me of why I enjoyed reading him anyway.
I never agreed with an awful lot of Safire’s op-ed pieces for the Times, but his latest retrospective reminded me of why I enjoyed reading him anyway.
More than any of the paper’s other op-ed columnists, before or since, his work was informed by government service and the personality of office holders. You could discount the natural prejudices this gave him, but you were left with a view of current affairs enriched by direct contact with history.
(I’ll never forget his account of how Nixon, after surviving a harrowing experience plane trip, berated aide H.R. Haldeman that they were never going to fly again. What an object lesson on the cocoon in which Presidents can find themselves—as well as a chief executive’s need for aides who don’t cater to his worst instincts.)
In the “Kitchen” piece, Safire got great comic mileage out of the Soviet apparatchik who elbowed his way toward the front of the Nixon-Khrushchev photo-op.
(I’ll never forget his account of how Nixon, after surviving a harrowing experience plane trip, berated aide H.R. Haldeman that they were never going to fly again. What an object lesson on the cocoon in which Presidents can find themselves—as well as a chief executive’s need for aides who don’t cater to his worst instincts.)
In the “Kitchen” piece, Safire got great comic mileage out of the Soviet apparatchik who elbowed his way toward the front of the Nixon-Khrushchev photo-op.
Fifteen years later, that same scene-stealer, Leonid Brezhnev, had become Soviet party chief—and Nixon, desperate to prove that he was still a major international player despite Watergate, disregarded medical warnings about a blood clot in his left leg, journeying to Moscow for his third summit with Brezhnev.
The Soviet chief, knowing how weakened the President was at home, drove such a hard bargain that Nixon was unable to secure the agreement he wanted on arms-control cuts.
The Safire piece underscored that the Kitchen Debate turned on the superiority of American commerce and technology in serving the simple human needs of its people; the Supreme Court’s Watergate ruling, on the other hand, showed the superiority of American law and politics.
Do we really have to imagine what would have happened if this case came up in the Soviet Union—or even in Putin’s current Russia?
The Safire piece underscored that the Kitchen Debate turned on the superiority of American commerce and technology in serving the simple human needs of its people; the Supreme Court’s Watergate ruling, on the other hand, showed the superiority of American law and politics.
Do we really have to imagine what would have happened if this case came up in the Soviet Union—or even in Putin’s current Russia?
The following might seem like belaboring the obvious—except that, for many people in the U.S. and beyond who see only a moral equivalence between this nation and the past and present incarnation of Russian authoritarianism, belaboring the obvious has become a necessity:
* Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would never have hoped to expose this in the first place; they’d be jailed as soon as someone got wind of their nosy questions.
* Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein would never have hoped to expose this in the first place; they’d be jailed as soon as someone got wind of their nosy questions.
* There’d be no Judge John Sirica to extract the truth from original Watergate defendant James McCord about the involvement of higher-ups in the operation.
* No opposing party would scream when Nixon fired special prosecutor Archibald Cox in the Saturday Night Massacre.
* No Soviet Supreme Court would have dared accept United States v. Nixon, let alone rule against the President.
It was a cliché of the time, but amid all the squalling about government gridlock in the years since, the statement that “the system worked” during Watergate happened to be true.
It was a triumph of our system of government not because of extraordinary men and women (though they certainly existed, as evidenced by Barbara Jordan’s eloquent explanation of why she was voting for the President’s removal from office: “I am not going to sit here and be an idle spectator to the diminution, the subversion, the destruction of the Constitution.”)
No, the system worked because ordinary—make that even mediocre—public servants rose to the occasion. One who has been much remarked upon was Congressman Peter Rodino of New Jersey, an unassuming representative who chaired the House Judiciary Committee with exemplary fairness and wisdom.
The other—admittedly far more wobbly—figure was Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.
Most of the time, Burger might have looked like a Chief Justice, with that big mop of white hair that made him look like something out of Hollywood’s central casting department, but he didn’t act like one. He was all too often a pompous ass.
No, the system worked because ordinary—make that even mediocre—public servants rose to the occasion. One who has been much remarked upon was Congressman Peter Rodino of New Jersey, an unassuming representative who chaired the House Judiciary Committee with exemplary fairness and wisdom.
The other—admittedly far more wobbly—figure was Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger.
Most of the time, Burger might have looked like a Chief Justice, with that big mop of white hair that made him look like something out of Hollywood’s central casting department, but he didn’t act like one. He was all too often a pompous ass.
Even in administering the court’s docket, he annoyed just about every one of his colleagues—even someone who should have been something of an ideological soulmate, the conservative William Rehnquist (who, incidentally, recused himself from voting on the Watergate tapes case).
But in this one instance, Burger came to the fore. True, he discovered an “executive privilege” principle that, I believe, did not exist in the Constitution. According to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong’s The Brethren, there was something of a flap on the court over the quality of Burger’s decision.
But at least the Chief grasped the essential point: even an acknowledged principle of executive privilege had to give way before the rule of law. In a criminal case, in which defendants were entitled to have as much evidence as possible, no one man—not even the President—stood beyond the law.
Moreover, underscoring the importance of the decision, Burger succeeded in having a united front, a unanimous court, behind his decision. As Earl Warren had a generation before with Brown v. The Board of Topeka, Kansas, he succeeded in putting full weight behind the decision by “massing the court.”
Nixon, recognizing the inevitable, bowed before the court’s decision. (Had he ignored it, as Andrew Jackson did John Marshall’s adverse ruling on Cherokee removal, the nation would have been plunged into perhaps the worst constitutional crisis in its history.)
On August 5, the White House released transcripts of three conversations the President had with Haldeman in the immediate wake of the break-in.
But in this one instance, Burger came to the fore. True, he discovered an “executive privilege” principle that, I believe, did not exist in the Constitution. According to Bob Woodward and Scott Armstrong’s The Brethren, there was something of a flap on the court over the quality of Burger’s decision.
But at least the Chief grasped the essential point: even an acknowledged principle of executive privilege had to give way before the rule of law. In a criminal case, in which defendants were entitled to have as much evidence as possible, no one man—not even the President—stood beyond the law.
Moreover, underscoring the importance of the decision, Burger succeeded in having a united front, a unanimous court, behind his decision. As Earl Warren had a generation before with Brown v. The Board of Topeka, Kansas, he succeeded in putting full weight behind the decision by “massing the court.”
Nixon, recognizing the inevitable, bowed before the court’s decision. (Had he ignored it, as Andrew Jackson did John Marshall’s adverse ruling on Cherokee removal, the nation would have been plunged into perhaps the worst constitutional crisis in its history.)
On August 5, the White House released transcripts of three conversations the President had with Haldeman in the immediate wake of the break-in.
In particular, the June 23, 1972 tape provided the “Smoking Gun” that his GOP defenders on the House Judiciary Committee claimed was still lacking in the case. There was no longer the slightest doubt that Nixon had ordered the FBI to abandon its investigation of the break-in.
Within a matter of hours, every Republican holdout on the committee announced their intention to reverse their vote. It was obvious, as Nixon later put it, that his “political base” had eroded, and he announced his decision to go on August 8.
Within a matter of hours, every Republican holdout on the committee announced their intention to reverse their vote. It was obvious, as Nixon later put it, that his “political base” had eroded, and he announced his decision to go on August 8.
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