Glass half-Full and Glass Chimera

“John Roberts has now driven over the cliff with the rest of the conservatives.” History repeats itself. . . not exactly, of course, but it does seem, sometimes, that people make mistakes that others before them also made. . . or criminals commit crimes that duplicate previous crimes by others. I am noticing now that two presidents in my lifetime committed illegal acts and then tried to talk their way out of it. In 1973, Richard Nixon and his white house lawyers tried to coverup an illegal break-in that they had instigated. In 2021, donald trump and his cronies tried to cover up an illegal attempt to steal the election. In ’73, some carefully executed investigative journalism produced evidence that ultimately convinced Nixon to resign rather than face the public humiliation of being prosecuted while he was trying to function as a president. In 2001, a large groundswell of American citizens, assisted by media and Congressional investigators, gathered evidence of a vast trump-initiated plot to steal the election. History repeats itself. This similarity between Nixon’s coverup of the Watergate break-in and trump’s denials about the January6 insurrection is turning into an eerie deja vu moment for many of us who remember Watergate. In 1973, Senator Sam Ervin was chairman of the Senate Watergate Committee. He was a classic good ole southern boy with a drawl, but a razor-sharp legal mind. His home district, Morganton NC, is a two-hour drive from where I sit writing this remembrance. Summer of ’73, I was within one fall semester of graduating LSU. A part-time job and an almost-complete political science degree afforded me time enough to watch the Senate Watergate hearings. I was fascinated with Senator Sam. One vivid memory of those hearings was the testimony of White House Counsel John Dean, speaking to the Committee.

Today, a Sunday afternoon in summer of ’24, I watched and heard that same John Dean as he was interviewed by trump’s former counsel, Michael Cohen.

History repeats itself, or it rhymes, like signs of the times. Mr. Dean talked about a few similarities—and the differences—between the Nixon’s cover-up and and trump’s attempts to allude responsibility for the insurrection that he instigated. Here a two parallel circumstances, with differences, that John Dean brought to our attention: ~ a) In ’73, the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that Nixon was responsible for his crime and coverup. He had to turn over the audio tapes that he himself had recorded. Those tapes revealed that he knew about the criminal actions that his committee and his lawyers had enabled and paid for. ~ b) In 2023-24, Supreme Court ruled, 6-3, that the president cannot be forced to do anything. ~ a) During Watergate, the district court judge was enabling the special counsel, even after Archibald Cox was fired and then replaced by Leon Jaworski. ~b)In 2023-24, Special Counsel Jack Smith is being undercut by a district court judge. “John Roberts has now driven over the cliff with the rest of the conservatives.” In 2024, we are slowly coming to realize that "conservative" ain't what it used to be. Glass half-Full