Political observers such as David Gergen and Jeffrey Toobin have said that what we need now is another Howard Baker. For those who may not remember, or were too young to know, Howard Baker was the Republican Senator from Tennessee during the Watergate era. He was the ranking minority member of the Select Senate Committee on Watergate.

What made him special was that he was a Republican member of Congress who was just as interested in getting to the bottom of President Richard Nixon’s transgressions as the Democrats on the committee. We often hear about placing country above party, but it rarely happens. With Baker, it did.

His work stood as an example of a good deed which did indeed go unpunished, even by his party. His work on the Watergate Committee in 1970s was in part responsible for him become first the Minority Leader and then the Majority Leader of the U.S. Senate in the 1980s.

It may be easy for us to call for a new Howard Baker now, but it is not as easy as it was at the time of Watergate.

First, the Republican Party has become more extreme. Those on the far right of the party have done an excellent job of “primarying out” moderate incumbents. It’s hard to believe, but even grumpy nasty Mitch McConnell warranted a strong primary opponent in Kentucky when he ran for reelection in 2014. The Republican party is become more evangelical and less contemplative. That combination does not produce Howard Bakers.

Second, legend has it that in years past there was more bi-partisanship. That is probably true, particularly in the Eisenhower and Reagan years. It even happened for LBJ with civil right legislation. Now it’s virtually impossible to get Congress to act in a bi-partisan manner, even when the issue is naming a post office.

Third, and perhaps most important, is that the Republicans are now in charge of both houses of Congress. They were in charge of neither at the time of Watergate. This means that they are not the opposition party. They have an agenda which is not negative in the sense that they want to oppose everything Democrats propose. Now it’s more of an insidious negativity. They want to tear down virtually everything positive that the federal government has done since the New Deal. Whether we are talking about health care, infrastructure, job training, school lunches, housing, education, support for the arts, Republicans want to take away from those in need so that the wealthy can become richer.

McConnell and House Speaker Paul Ryan have long since come to accept Donald Trump as a “legitimate president” because he provides them cover and ensures a considerable base so they can try to advance their agenda. This means that any Republican, whether in the House or the Senate, wanting to assertively want to investigate Trump will run the risk of tearing down the cover that the extreme right has been seeking for years to undo the government safety net.

Who Donald Trump is and what he has done has been an “inconvenient truth” to the Party. He helped put them in power, but he is an endless source of embarrassment, unpredictability and fragility.

This is not to imply that there are no congressional districts or no states from which a sitting Republican could become a new “profile in courage.” It is just more difficult to do now than it was forty-five years ago. Of course, if any Republican is so bold as to step forward, he or she may ultimately be seen as a greater figure than even Howard Baker.

The post It’s harder to be a Howard Baker now than then appeared first on Occasional Planet.

Donald Trump has had trouble understanding the nuclear triad. He may now want to get a little more familiar with the triad that can bring down a president, because as of yesterday, we now have two of the three legs in place.

To put this in perspective, let’s look at the dynamics of what forced President Richard Nixon to resign in 1974. There were three separate but cooperative entities that were “out to get him,” a phrase that Nixon might have used. First, there was the ever-vigilant press. The morning of the Watergate break-in, Bob Woodward of the Washington Post was in court as the five alleged burglars were arraigned. Along with Carl Bernstein, Woodward knew that there was something fishy from the get-go because one of the suspected burglars had the name and phone number of a White House staffer in his possession. Woodward and Bernstein, with tremendous support of Executive Editor Ben Bradlee, followed lead after lead as the loose ends came together to point directly to President Nixon. We should not forget that there was also outstanding reporting from CBS News including Dan Rather, Lesley Stahl and Daniel Schorr.

But the media could not have done it alone. Much of the leads that they received came from direct information and leaks from the office of the special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, and later Leon Jaworski. Additionally, leaked testimony from grand jury investigating all matters related to Watergate was essential. The office of the special prosecutor had the power to subpoena witnesses, to file charges and to plea-bargain. All of that was essential to getting to the truth.

Finally, there was the Select Senate Committee on Watergate, co-chaired by Sam Ervin (D-NC) and Howard Baker (R-TN). Information that was revealed by key witnesses such as John Dean and Alexander Butterfield led to the answer to Baker’s famous question, “What did the president know and when did he know it?”

The media, the office of the special prosecutor and the Select Committee each used its own sources and resources and when legal, they shared information with one another. Nixon was caught in the middle of a pincer movement coming at him from three sides. When the combined efforts lead to the release of White House tapes, most particularly the cover-up conversation on June 23, 1972, six days after the break-in, Nixon’s fate was doomed. The House of Representatives was moving ahead with impeachment proceedings, Nixon was the focus of grand jury proceedings, and the media was publishing the indisputable evidence. Nixon wisely chose to resign before being impeached and convicted.

With assistant Attorney-General Rod Rosenstein appointing independent counsel Robert Mueller to investigate any connection between the Trump presidential campaign / White House and Russia, we now have two legs of the triad filled. The media has done a remarkable job with special kudos to the Washington Post, New York Times and CNN.

What is missing is a select investigative committee of one or both houses of Congress. Republicans control both chambers and they are reluctant to launch a full-scale investigation of their Republican president. In the Watergate era, both houses of Congress were controlled by Democrats, so it was easier.

The Democrats already have a “star” in Rep. Adam Schiff, ranking minority member of the House Intelligence Committee. But so far, no Howard Baker has arisen among the Republicans. With the weak-kneed and highly partisan leadership of Mitch McConnell and Paul Ryan, it will be difficult to get a powerful committee together to emulate the Senate Watergate Committee of forty-four years ago.

However, there are standing committees in both houses that are already investigating much of what has happened and continues to occur. There is an opportunity for a Republican to become a “star” like Howard Baker, but so far, none seem willing to step forward. But, from the perspective of Donald Trump, he is being “persecuted” from all sides. It’s time for Trump to not only learn about the nuclear triad, but also about the triad that may remove him from the presidency.

See special five-minute report on CNN about comparisons between Watergate and current situation.

The post Trump, it’s the triad again! appeared first on Occasional Planet.

On the evening of March 4, Saturday Night Live ran a parody movie trailer of a film about the next “stand-up Republican.” It seems that the old meme, “Democrats fall in love; Republicans fall in line” has never been more relevant. Despite all the criticism that Donald Trump took from other Republicans during his campaign for the GOP nomination, all seems to be forgotten as Republicans are once again playing “follow the leader.” No matter how much noise and reason that Democrats in Congress and mainstream-to-progressive media make about what is happening, change is doubtful without a little help from Republicans in Congress. And thus the parody called, “The T.B.D. Story:”

It hasn’t always been the case that Republicans would be oblivious to wrong-doing, hypocrisy and national need. No one could have been more sensitive to these concerns than our first Republican president, Abraham Lincoln. Several decades after Lincoln, Teddy Roosevelt stood up for the common good. And barely 40 years ago, Republicans lined up to be part of the solution to the Watergate scandal  and related transgressions by the Richard Nixon Administration.

In 1973, the U.S. Senate recognized the importance of the investigative reporting about Nixon’s alleged transgressions. The Senate established the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. It was made up of only seven members, four Democrats and three Republicans. Yes, the Democrats held the power, but Chairman Sam Ervin (D-NC) was determined to have the committee act in as bi-partisan a fashion as possible. Vice-chair Howard Baker (R-TN) agreed, and he became one of the most effective and important interrogators on the committee. It was he who asked the famous question to White House Counsel John Dean, “What did the President know and when did he know it?”

Baker could not have asked it to a better witness, one who happened to be a Republican. Dean had an encyclopedic memory and he disclosed the litany of transgressions by Nixon and his collaborators. Dean’s testimony was confirmed and validated when the secret White House tapes were later revealed.

Also on the committee was Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut. As described in a 2010 Occasional Planet post, “the select committee would have collapsed from inertia and internal bloodletting had not the least likely junior senator from Connecticut, Lowell P. Weicker Jr., personally taken charge. … Like no other member of the committee, Weicker was prepared. Before the panel was even formally announced, Weicker had formed his own investigative unit that interviewed scores of former and current White House employees and campaign officials.”

Baker and Weicker were what might be called fact-based Republicans. They were investigatory and wanted to solve the puzzle. In fairness to today’s Republicans, it might be said that Baker and Weicker’s commitment to getting to the bottom of the story was something that would win the adulation, both nationally and within their states. Today’s Republicans seem to narrow-cast to their constituencies, currying only the favor of conservative and extreme-right voters who protect them in primary season.

But Watergate was a seminal period in American history in which most of the country came together against corruption, deviousness and perhaps most importantly, concerns about the mental health of the president. In one important sense, it was less threatening than today’s concerns about Trump because with Watergate, there were no alarms of international malfeasance on the part of the president.

Weicker came from a largely Democratic state, Connecticut. Baker was from Tennessee, which was part of the old Confederacy that turned Republican in the 1964 Lyndon Johnson – Barry Goldwater election. But Baker truly was a southern gentleman who could bring out the best in his constituents.

When Republican Gerald Ford became president following Nixon’s resignation on August 9, 1974, Ford addressed the American people and said, “My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.” For our current nightmare with Donald Trump to be over, we are going to need:

1. A Republican star to be born, the person we stay tuned for in “The T.B.D. Story.”
2. Democrats to gain control of one or both houses of Congress in 2018, a task that will be particularly difficult because of the numbers that year.
3. Mike Pence to take a few lessons from Gerald Ford’s playbook about how to bring the country together.

No matter how good the current Democrats in Congress and members of the inquiring press are, together they have no subpoena power. That power is what made the Senate Watergate Committee work in 1973-74, particularly when they were working with a special prosecutor with subpoena power, a prosecutor who had been appointed by the Attorney-General.

We have a long way to go. The outcome is T.B.D.

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