Ken Starr: "Impeachment is Hell."

[Revoltingest]

It's "interesting" that Starr and Dershowitz both decided to contradict what they said a couple of decades ago.

As I pointed out, Clinton's impeachment was a learning process for all.

 

[esmith]

Ever hear of Richard Nixon?

We will never know if he would or would not have been impeached and then found guilty of the articles of impeachment; therefore you can only speculate.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

We will never know if he would or would not have been impeached and then found guilty of the articles of impeachment; therefore you can only speculate.

Regardless he still did the deed.

 

[Stevicus]

After I saw the Clinton impeachment, and the party loyalty exercised over the president committing crimes, I believe Nixon would not have been removed from office.

There were a few differences back in Nixon's time. For one thing, the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, and there weren't as many Republicans as fully behind Nixon as the Watergate scandal wore on. I think when Goldwater went to visit Nixon towards the end, he pretty much told Nixon that he had no chance and his only viable option was to resign rather than face removal from office and possible prison time.

I think Goldwater still would have supported Nixon, but as a friend, he had to tell him the straight story and that it wasn't going to be enough to save him.

 

[shmogie]

There were a few differences back in Nixon's time. For one thing, the Democrats had a majority in the Senate, and there weren't as many Republicans as fully behind Nixon as the Watergate scandal wore on. I think when Goldwater went to visit Nixon towards the end, he pretty much told Nixon that he had no chance and his only viable option was to resign rather than face removal from office and possible prison time.

I think Goldwater still would have supported Nixon, but as a friend, he had to tell him the straight story and that it wasn't going to be enough to save him.

A super majority is an extremely high bar

 

[shmogie]

He stepped down because it was likely to have come to that.

We'll never know, will we?

 

[Stevicus]

Campaign season in America is a never ending, perpetual hell.

Well, the presidential campaign is most certainly expected to be a real dog fight, but there might be some key state and local races to look at. The local races can even get nastier. The worst are the school board elections.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Well, the presidential campaign is most certainly expected to be a real dog fight, but there might be some key state and local races to look at. The local races can even get nastier. The worst are the school board elections.

I expect people to conduct themselves in a civilized manner when conducting such business, and to let the dust settle from one election night before they begin talking about the next election. And it never ends here. One way or another, we always have campaigning going on. It just picks up around election time like sex scandals pick up during Sweeps Week.

 

[Stevicus]

A super majority is an extremely high bar

I found an article which details the chain of events of how Nixon's support among Republicans started to crumble towards the end.

It Took A Long Time For Republicans To Abandon Nixon

After winning a sweeping victory in the 1972 election, the president began his second term with an approval rating around 60 percent, according to FiveThirtyEight’s tracker of presidential approval. Then that spring saw a stunning 30-point drop in Nixon’s support starting around when one of the people charged with breaking into the Democratic National Committee headquarters confessed to a judge that he and the other conspirators had been pressured to stay silent.

Support for Nixon continued to plunge throughout the long summer of 1973, while former White House lawyer John Dean testified in Senate hearings that the president had been involved in a cover-up of the burglary and a White House aide confirmed in closed-door testimony that Nixon had set up a secret White House taping system. And by the time of October’s Saturday Night Massacre — where Nixon ordered the firing of special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who had been demanding those tapes, and the closing of the special prosecutor’s investigation — his approval rating had plunged to 27 percent, which is about where it stayed until Nixon resigned.

As Nixon’s approval ratings fell, support for impeachment was rising more gradually, reaching solid majority support by early August 1974. That was right in the midst of the crucial two-week period when the Supreme Court ordered Nixon to turn over the White House tapes, the House Judiciary Committee voted to approve three articles of impeachment and Nixon released the transcript of what became known as the “smoking gun” tape, which showed that he had helped orchestrate the cover-up. His support among his allies (who had included some conservative southern Democrats as well as Republicans) had already started to erode significantly, but it was the “smoking gun” tape that finally forced his resignation on August 8, before the House could vote on impeachment. At that point, the public was clearly behind impeachment, although a significant minority of Americans — including most Republicans — still didn’t think Nixon should be removed from office.

That does appear to be a significant difference between then and now, since the evidence slowly piled up against Nixon - and I don't think anyone really knew the scope of it all or what the final results would be when they started the investigation.

A major emphasis was placed on the "smoking gun" tape, which nobody knew existed a year earlier. But when it came out, it couldn't really be explained away. Two days after the transcript was released, that's when Goldwater led a delegation to the White House to tell Nixon it was all over.

Some of the Republican defense of Nixon probably boiled down to party loyalty, according to Jeffrey Engel, a presidential historian at Southern Methodist University. “For a long time, they just weren’t going to pull the trigger on a duly elected president from their own party,” he said. Republicans also faced pressure from a small but powerful group of activists who were vehemently opposed to Nixon’s impeachment and were aggressively lobbying their representatives not to abandon him. “Increasingly, [Republican leadership] thought it would be better for the party if Nixon could be persuaded to go,” said Mark Nevin, a history professor at Ohio University Lancaster who has studied Republican support for Nixon at the end of his presidency. “But nobody wanted to be the one who pushed him out.”

It also took a while for all of the evidence to emerge, and ultimately, the scope of Nixon’s wrongdoing helped convince some of the Judiciary Committee Republicans to break ranks, in spite of pressure from leadership to maintain a united front in support of Nixon. “It wasn’t a single act that moved them — it was the pattern of corruption by the president,” Naftali said. Nixon’s support was crumbling by the time the Judiciary Committee voted on impeachment, but he didn’t lose the full support of his party until the “smoking gun” tape clearly implicated him in the Watergate cover-up, at which point he lost even the Republicans on the committee who had voted against impeachment. Two days after the transcript of the tape became public, Goldwater led a delegation to the White House to tell Nixon it was over.

 

[shmogie]

I found an article which details the chain of events of how Nixon's support among Republicans started to crumble towards the end.

It Took A Long Time For Republicans To Abandon Nixon



That does appear to be a significant difference between then and now, since the evidence slowly piled up against Nixon - and I don't think anyone really knew the scope of it all or what the final results would be when they started the investigation.

A major emphasis was placed on the "smoking gun" tape, which nobody knew existed a year earlier. But when it came out, it couldn't really be explained away. Two days after the transcript was released, that's when Goldwater led a delegation to the White House to tell Nixon it was all over.

Perjury and obstruction of justice are high felonies, Clinton was guilty of both. The democrats saw to it that he skated.

I have no reason to believe that the Republicans in Nixon's time would do any differently.

 

[Stevicus]

Perjury and obstruction of justice are high felonies, Clinton was guilty of both. The democrats saw to it that he skated.

I have no reason to believe that the Republicans in Nixon's time would do any differently.

Well, it's all speculation, but I think the fact that Goldwater himself actually went to see Nixon to persuade him to resign is a significant indicator.

Again, there are significant differences between then and now, and also when Clinton was impeached. It's not just about political issues or the deeds of the administrations involved, but the overall atmosphere and mood of the country.

There was still a lot of anger and bitterness in the country, and as strange as it may seem, I think Nixon being compelled to resign may have been what restored a lot of Americans' faith in the system. And as a private citizen, Nixon himself eventually became a respected elder statesman. I can't say if Americans "forgave" him or not; probably some did. Others may believe that all politicians are corrupt and that "Nixon just got caught." That may be true as well.

Things have changed quite a bit since then; I think the mood of the country may have grown more cynical and vindictive.