The Wars of Watergate (25 page)

As he prepared for the campaign of 1972, President Nixon told his aides to instruct friendly congressmen to make daily speeches noting the number of days that had passed without congressional action on his programs. Nixon thought doing so would be an “effective needle in the Democratic leadership” and that it would provide the “groundwork for our major attack” on Congress. Cynicism alternated with contempt. “I don’t think Congress is supposed to work with the White House—it is a different organization, and under the Constitution I don’t think we should expect agreement,” H. R. Haldeman told a reporter.
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Such was the monumental ignorance of the governmental and political processes that pervaded the Nixon Administration’s five-year relationship with Congress.

We cannot calibrate precisely the relative strength of the presidency when Lyndon Johnson stepped down in January 1969. He had squandered a fortune in goodwill and trust in the years since his landslide victory in 1964.
Presidents had left office before in disgrace or in low esteem, but the prestige of the office itself had quickly revived. Special combinations of man and times—a Franklin D. Roosevelt or a Dwight D. Eisenhower—followed the unpopular tenures of Herbert Hoover and Harry Truman. The nation waited in 1969 to see what it had chosen.

It soon became clear that the election had not stilled any of the nation’s civil strife; most significantly, Nixon’s installation as President only widened the chasm and conflict between the executive branch and Congress. Moreover, that conflict had taken on a new character in recent years.

The constitutional separation of powers has always had a special appeal for those wary of unbridled power. Some have also found virtue in the partisan (and sometimes ideological) division between the presidency and the legislature which, when Nixon took office, had been commonplace since the end of the Roosevelt era. This tension served as an informal extension of constitutional checks and balances. The philosophical split between President and Congress had its modern origins in the formation of an ideological alliance between conservative Democrats and Republicans as a counterweight to what they regarded as the excesses of Roosevelt and the New Dealers. That coalition blossomed with almost concurrent-veto power in the Truman Administration. Yet the alliance was mostly negative, simply serving to block or hamper presidential initiatives. Curiously, the reverse situation prevailed in the 1950s. Liberals from both parties united and used their influence in the bureaucracy and Congress to prevent rollbacks from the gains of the New Deal era. And despite the Eisenhower landslide in 1956, Democrats retained control of Congress.

Liberal presidents seemed most victimized by the opposition of Congress—which by the 1960s had a fashionable tag: “The Deadlock of Democracy.” The longstanding conservative congressional coalition maintained control of such traditional levers of congressional power as committee chairmanships, and from such bases often dictated the course of events. Liberal activists and scholars deplored the situation, particularly as John F. Kennedy’s tax-reform and civil rights proposals stalled in Congress. For liberals, the conservative ideological alliance had little virtue, and the resulting stalemate menaced both the general welfare and national security.

A distinguished political scientist, James MacGregor Burns, summarized the deadlock-of-democracy notion in a book by that title in 1963. Burns had impeccable liberal credentials.
The Lion and the Fox
, his scholarly account of Franklin D. Roosevelt’s presidency, presented Roosevelt as a classic model of the forceful activist leader, confirming and amplifying the view of him held by generations of admirers. In a 1959 campaign biography, Burns anointed Kennedy as the designated heir to the Roosevelt tradition, offering him in sharp contrast to Eisenhower’s supposedly passive rule. But the promising young candidate had not responded to the challenge as Burns had
hoped. In
The Deadlock of Democracy
, Burns chided Kennedy for his failures in leadership, but he concluded that the President’s shortcomings derived as much from structural, constitutional traditions as from personal qualities and style.
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Burns’s essential theme was that the furious pace of modern social change and the imperative demands of foreign and military situations required timely, effective governmental action. He believed that we had allowed the Madisonian system of checks and balances to thwart and fragment “leadership instead of allowing it free play within the boundaries of the democratic process.” The result was a political system divided along both partisan and institutional lines—and, all too often, a paralysis of governmental will and power.

Concern with the executive/legislative deadlock evoked different concepts of representative government. For the proponents of an activist presidency—or the “plebiscitary” presidency—Congress was antediluvian, or at best obsolete. No one dared to advocate its abolition, but the activist argument worked hard to square the circle, calling for congressional recognition of the national will as embodied and expressed in the presidential program. Traditional beliefs in a conglomeration of individual constituencies, representing a myriad of interests chosen throughout the nation, now were eclipsed by a unitary vision of a President who could divine and then represent the true national will.

Johnson’s mobilization of power and his activist leadership of diverse congressional groups followed the liberal prescription. The results provided liberals with some measure of satisfaction: provisions for tax reform, civil rights, Medicare, and other items in the litany of the liberal platform. Despite those victories, however, Johnson’s regime did not work out as promised. The Vietnam war dampened the spirits of many liberals, and the Great Society seemed much less great by 1966. Liberals needed the healing balm of older articles of liberal faith, such as Lord Acton’s dictum: “Power tends to corrupt, and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely.” Some even began to think small and retreated to the Jeffersonian maxim that the government governs best that governs least. Liberals seemed confused and at sea. Some believed that Lyndon Johnson had corrupted the faith only momentarily; others began to question the established wisdom of the need for a strong presidency.

Richard Nixon never seemed cut out for conformity to the traditional Republican concept of a limited, passive president, despite his reflexive assaults on Roosevelt and on Truman’s exercise of power. As he campaigned for the White House in 1968, his antidote for the battered presidency and the paralysis of national will was a more activist presidency. In a radio address on September 19, Nixon promised to revitalize the presidency—in short, to lead. He went so far as to criticize Johnson, of all people, as too passive.
“Let me be very clear about this: The next President must take an activist view of his office,” Nixon declared. “He must articulate the nation’s values, define its goals and marshal its will.” He promised to be what Americans had been accustomed to: a personal president, one who would have a “special relationship, a special trust” with the people, who would not “paper over disunity,” and who would have “an open, candid dialogue with people” so as to “maintain his trust and leadership.” Nixon went on to add another dimension, promising to “bring dissenters into policy discussions,” to “invite constructive criticism not only because the critics have a right to be heard, but also because they often have something worth hearing.” Keeping that promise would have been unprecedented for the kind of activist president Nixon described—but it was, of course, good rhetoric in the divided political scene of 1968.

The Nixon speech sounded as if it had been crafted by speechwriter Theodore Sorensen in the Kennedy style. Nixon spoke of presidential involvement in the “intellectual ferment” of the time. He recognized that “the lamps of enlightenment are lit by the spark of controversy.” The President, Nixon noted, was both “a user of thought” and a “catalyst of thought.” He talked of attracting “the ablest men” to his Cabinet, and he promised “a reorganized” executive and “a stronger White House than any yet put together.” Finally, there was a Kennedyesque call for elevation of the crusade: “Our cause today is not a nation, but a planet—for never have the fates of all the people of the earth been so bound up together.”

Nixon’s crusade was to be one for the “President and people together”—or, he concluded, “it won’t be done at all.” That conclusion underlined the fact that the candidate never mentioned Congress in his scheme of governance; he offered no recognition of shared power whatsoever. The omission hardly represented a new approach, but it was a departure for a Republican; old-guard stalwarts who still blanched at the name of Roosevelt must have shuddered at Nixon’s words, unless they believed that he did not mean them.

Nixon’s omission flew in the face of political realities that unfolded after his election. The Democrats retained decisive margins in both houses of Congress. Resentful over the imperial ways of Johnson, one of their own, as president, they hardly seemed inclined to abandon their share in governance.

Not for the last time, Richard Nixon effectively united his enemies. His legislative program, such as it was, soon was hopelessly mired in the congressional labyrinth. The situation raised images of the Kennedy years, but now liberal activists and scholars could not rail against a “deadlock of democracy” that thwarted Richard Nixon. In a deft maneuver, however, the President simply made their message his own.

Almost two years to the day after his campaign address omitting mention of Congress, Nixon himself confronted the deadlock of democracy that had
plagued John F. Kennedy. But while JFK had responded with stroking and appeasement, the new President preferred a frank recognition of the gulf between him and Congress. In a September 11, 1970 message, Nixon berated Congress for its failure to act on his “reform” proposals. He conceded that the system of traditional checks and balances made “stalemate” inevitable and the exercise of power “difficult.” But the nation now faced important and momentous issues that demanded greater cooperation between the branches. Congress, he bluntly charged, had failed to respond at all to his initiatives. In a “mood of nostalgia and partisanship,” Congress had devoted too much energy “to tinkering with programs of the past while ignoring the realities of the present and the opportunities of the future.” For Nixon, “the good repute of American government” itself was at stake.
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Lest any misunderstand the President’s intention to confront Congress and to maintain his alliance with “the people,” Vice President Agnew, on a political speaking tour in the West the day before, told his audience that the nation faced a “deadlock of democracy.” Agnew had other touches, reminiscent of the vintage “Old Nixon” style, circa 1954: “Will America be led by a President elected by a majority of the American people or will we be intimidated and blackmailed into following the path dictated by a disruptive radical and militant minority—the pampered prodigies of the radical liberals in the United States Senate?” Nixon appropriately described Agnew as “the perfect spokesman” to reach the Silent Majority.
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Nixon and Agnew’s provocative remarks uncannily replicated the standard liberal litany of presidential stewardship. No one yet referred to an “imperial presidency.” Instead one spoke of the presidency (as Theodore Roosevelt had) as “a bully pulpit,” or as an educational platform, or of the President as a steward for all the people. The notion of an aggressive, outspoken presidential leader who dealt in intimate, personal terms with “the people” and derided the obstructionism of a Congress dominated by backward-looking vested interests had become a twentieth-century article of faith in the American liberal political catechism. That faith rested on Theodore Roosevelt’s concept of a president free to do anything except what was expressly prohibited in the Constitution. Now Nixon was telling the people the same thing. In Alexander Bickel’s well-chosen metaphor, Richard Nixon caught the liberals bathing, and walked off with their clothes.
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Whether Nixon could take on the mantle of that faith, however, and whether he could exercise it, remained to be seen. His enemies had powerful appeals of their own, demanding an end to the Vietnam war, the restoration of economic well-being, and a pacification of domestic disorder. The appeals and the enemies alike were formidable. At this stage, to see matters as grave was not just paranoia; for President Nixon, there was an all-too-real enemy within in the form of Congress.

Nixon operated, as usual, in ambivalent fashion in meeting the difficulty.
At the outset of his term, he expressed a willingness to reach out to Congress for ideas and to work in a conciliatory spirit. In early March 1969, Nixon told Haldeman that he was impressed with the number of good ideas of congressmen, ideas whose “imagination and emotion” he contrasted favorably with the “routine” ones originating “from our White House and Cabinet teams.” Not responsible to any voting constituency, staff and department officials often were out of touch and became “pretty ingrown and incestuous intellectually.” Yet Nixon had no interest in “massaging” congressmen on “their pet ideas”; instead, he hoped to add “a little more imagination and ingenuity” into “our own executive organization.” He complained that “we are simply too busy fielding the balls that are being knocked our way.” Presidential Assistant Alexander Butterfield reported in July 1969 that Nixon considered it necessary to “continue (at least for the time being) working with the Democratic Congress in as friendly a way as possible,… that pressing our programs on Congress in a more forthright, uncompromising fashion would be a little premature at this time.” But Butterfield also noted that the President recognized “that we should definitely reconsider this strategy around the end of September or early October.”
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“Watch what we do, not what we say”—John Mitchell’s famous remark about the Administration’s civil rights policy—was a favorite slogan of the day. During Nixon’s first term, executive–legislative relations were governed as much as anything else by the President’s avowed promise “to knock heads together.”