Even Richard Nixon “would be horrified”

John Dean on the 50th anniversary of the Nixon resignation

Ben Raderstorf

Fifty years ago today, Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency.?

There’s a clear contrast in how our democracy responded to that period of crisis — a tumultuous but ultimately transformative moment that brought down a popular president and led to the bipartisan post-Watergate reforms — compared to this current one. Now, a former president was removed from power by the voters, sought to overturn a free and fair election, and now runs unencumbered for a second term.?

That half-century is a lot of history to grapple with. (Who would have thought that Watergate would come to feel like the good-old-days?)?

So we called on one of our advisors — John Dean (yes that John Dean) — to help explain the last half century of constraints on presidential power.?Some of what he had to say took us by surprise.

John, tell us: What would Richard Nixon think about the U.S. in 2024??

Politically, I think he would be horrified.?

Richard Nixon was an establishmentarian. He believed in America’s institutions. He didn't think the institutions of our nation were perfect, but he certainly thought they worked, and that the system was well designed. He was interested in constantly adjusting things. He thought that the presidency wasn’t as strong as it should be.?

One of the things that didn’t happen because of his resignation was a reorganization of the executive branch which would have considerably strengthened presidential powers. But he understood, as someone who started in the House of Representatives and had been in the U.S. Senate, that the peoples’ Congress certainly had a place in the system.?

I think he would be horrified today by the refusal to honor the norms of government. Not every part of our democracy is in a statute or in the Constitution. For example, Trump’s refusal to transfer power peacefully, to attend his successor's inauguration, and his effort to overturn the election even before the inauguration is well beyond anything Nixon would have attempted or tolerated.

Also, Nixon would have been absolutely shocked that a Supreme Court would create an immunity from criminal conduct for the president of the United States, particularly outside the area of national security. Nixon believed had he not been pardoned — and there is no evidence he requested Ford do so, and he didn’t know a pardon was coming — so Nixon joked about going to jail. He said Gandhi did some of his best writing in prison. He thought that would be his fate.?

I remember when I first told him about obstruction of justice — until Watergate almost no one had ever heard of obstruction of justice unless they were a federal prosecutor. When I explained the obstruction statue to him, he had no idea of obstruction of justice. He asked, “What all could be included?” I said, “As broad as the imagination of man.” And it is. That surprised him.?

I suspect Nixon would have reacted to the Supreme Court’s presidential immunity decision with the total disbelief that all of us share — for it is nowhere to be found in history, nowhere to be found in the Constitution, nowhere in any kind of precedent.

Read the full Q & A interview here >>