Today in Supreme Court History: August 5, 1974

8/5/1974: Shortly after the Supreme Court decided United States v. Nixon, President Nixon released the "smoking gun" tape recorded in the Oval office.

President Richard Nixon

Comments

[Dan Schiavetta]

Not nearly as bad as what Trump admitted to and even boasted about to Lester Holt on national TV. Yet ir was two years before he was impeached and that was over a different matter.

[Krychek_2]

I've said it before: If Nixon had had Trump's Congress, he'd have finished his second term. And if Trump had had Nixon's Congress, he'd have been gone before the 2018 midterms.

[Moderation4ever]

Of course this doesn't speak well of our Congress that loyalty to the principles of this country have been replaced to loyalty to an individual.

[Dan Schiavetta]

True.

Though I'm old enough to remember how so many Republicans in Congress really did have a loyalty to Nixon as a person. In private conversations he assured them that he was innocent. What finally brought them around was the smoking gun tape, which showed that Nixon had lied to them. As someone put it at the time (I think it was David Brinkley), "Nixon's 'high crime and misdemeanor' was not obstruction of justice, but rather, making fools of his Republican allies".

Unfortunately today's Republicans don't even have that degree of dignity. If Trump lies to them or even publicly insults them, they find a way to excuse it, explain it away, or at best ignore it.

[Brett Bellmore]

Similar to Democrats and the news media, then? No matter how many times they lie to you, you suck it up and believe the next lie?

[Krychek_2]

BUT WHAT ABOUT ??????

[bernard11]

The news media aren't lying when they report something you'd rather they didn't.

[Á àß äẞç ãþÇđ âÞ¢Đæ ǎB€Ðëf ảhf]

I suppose your partisanship is purely defensive, no?

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

Not mine. I'm from the element of the liberal-libertarian majority that takes the offense against right-wingers. Declines to appease them. Takes them to court. Refuses to enable them to hide their bigotry and ignorance behind euphemisms. Shapes progress against their preferences. Works hard to beat them in elections.

My side has been on offense in the culture war for 50 or 60 years. And we have been winning. Why change?

[Bob from Ohio]

"If Nixon had had Trump’s Congress, he’d have finished his second term. And if Trump had had Nixon’s Congress, he’d have been gone before the 2018 midterms."

Are 2017 and 1973 ideology sorting and partisan feelings also being exchanged? Parties are very much different now in how they approach

If 1973 GOP senators shared 2017 attitudes, no conviction of Trump.

[Krychek_2]

I would agree there was less partisanship in 1973, including a greater willingness to not defend your own guy's bad behavior. Which is why so many Republicans ultimately bailed on Nixon. In 2017, they would have doubled down and claimed the burglary was fake news.

[bernard11]

Then we had Howard Baker. Now it's Marsha Blackburn.

Quite a comedown.

[Bob from Ohio]

Nixon did nothing wrong.

[Krychek_2]

Bob, you're yanking our chains, right? That's too silly for even you to believe.

[Bob from Ohio]

Not at all. I felt that way in 1973, was bitterly disappointed when he was forced out.

He didn't authorize Watergate. Trying to extract your wounded afterwards is no crime, its the least a leader can do.

[Krychek_2]

That depends on why they are wounded. They were wounded in the course of committing criminal activity, and that makes him an accomplice. And there was also the bit about the cover up later.

[Bob from Ohio]

"an accomplice. And there was also the bit about the cover up later."

Those things don't matter.

[Rev. Arthur L. Kirkland]

This is why you are a cultural refugee and culture war casualty, Bob from Ohio, stranded on an inconsequential oasis of backwardness, intolerance, and ignorance in America's can't-keep-up backwaters.

[Krychek_2]

Being an accomplice to criminal behavior, and covering up criminal conduct, don't matter? Seriously?

[Brett Bellmore]

Then, much to the frustration of historians everywhere, Presidents stopped recording what they did in office.

But it was a Democratic administration, Clinton, that stopped creating the records, so that frustration was mostly silent.

[NoVaNick]

I was 3 in 1974, so don’t remember really anything about Nixon at all. But it’s fair to say that if his own party had not cut him loose, there probably wouldn’t have been a Reagan presidency 6 years later. The damage to the GOP would have lasted decades perhaps. Today’s GOP seems happy to follow Trump over a cliff.

[Bob from Ohio]

"The damage to the GOP would have lasted decades perhaps."

Nah, political memories are short.

Ford came within 11,000 votes in Ohio and 7,000 in Hawaii from winning just 3 years later.

[Dan Schiavetta]

In which case Carter would still have won the popular vote, by 1.7 million votes.