340
slowly and reluctantly?
It
is not at all certain that without the evidence of the
tapes Congress would have gone through with impeachment and conviction.
Furthermore, if those who said we were on the verge of a dictatorship really
believed it, why didn't they try LO alert the country and mobilize the natural
forces of resistance. (The recent rumor that Haig, Schlesinger and Kissinger
were afraid Nixon might use the army if he were impeached, only emphasizes
the fact that he did not seem to have this in mind.)
• Another view has to do with Nixon's psyche. Though it can hardly
claim LO be a theory, this "explanation" is popular among some analysts and
other people who think it is sophisticated LO account for political forces and
movements by reducing them LO the neuroses or psychoses of their leaders.
Thus Stalin's regime could be explained by his paranoia and Hitler's by his
schizophrenia, while Nixon had a touch of both. Training their telescopic
sights on Nixon's'eyes, his hands, his smile, his twitch, on anything that could
be inflated into a "behavior pattern," these long-distance analysts were able to
see just what kind of disorder lay behind the lust for power and the lies that
masked it. Of course, what is still unexplained by such instant analyses, which
can be applied to any ruthless figure, is what kind of madness led this "power–
crazed monster" LO give up without a fight when the leaders of the Republican
Party decided that Nixon was a luxury it could no longer afford LO carry–
though there is always the drive LOward self-destruction LO fall back on .
• It
seems LO me less apocalyptic, hence more plausible, to take the view
that Watergate was the culmination of Nixonian politics.
In
this light, it can
be seen that Nixon was neither a political idiot nor a frustrated dictator, but
that politics for him meant perpetually consolidating his position by bugging
his friends as well as his enemies, intimidating the opposition, getting away
with all he could, covering up what he couldn't, and generally trying LO in–
crease his personal power rather than to seize state power. There is no doubt
that the corruption, the arrogance, the attempts to muzzle dissent went far
beyond any other American administration, and those who deny this are, as
we said in an earlier comment, part of the intellectual cover-up. Still, the dif–
ference was mostly of degree, not of kind, which is why so many conservative
congressmen were able LO identify with and LO protect Nixon until the revela–
tion of the tapes put them out on a political limb.
In
short, Nixon was out for
the short-term and meager benefits of old-style American politics-pushed
beyond the norms of political corruption but contained within the system. He
was LOO much the practical politician LO have any grandiose political dreams.
He was no Hitler, no Stalin, not even a banana republic leader.
Those who take this position are further bolstered by the rumors that
Watergate was not only the tip of an iceberg, but was one of many icebergs.
Apparently there were other plumbers, other buggings, particularly of foreign
embassies and radical groups, all kinds of other schemes to subvert the CIA,
FBI, IRS, etc.
If
this is true it would explain Watergate by normalizing it, by
suggesting, that is, that Nixon had no aims or motives that transcended his
snooping and scheming and silencing the critics who might be in a position to
expose him.
Someone like Chomsky also argues with some persuasiveness that spying
on left organizations and leaders and planting provocateurs in them had been
going on for years in earlier administrations, but that Nixon violated the un–
written code, as did McCarthy, by using these tactics on the establishment
itself-not just on dissidents. But it does seem to me that there is an important
difference, for it is not the raid on Democratic headquarters that made one
uneasy about the future of the country but the almost LOtal disregard of con–
stitutional rights and the general moral chaos over which Nixon presided.
I also think that Chomsky underestimates the political force of the revul–
sion against Nixon that has swept the country. Perhaps he's right in seeing a
