ELECTION YEAR 1996 IS LOOKING very much like election year 1972, when most voters decided to return an incumbent president to office despite doubts about his honesty and trustworthiness. Will a Nixon-like victory for Bill Clinton be followed by the aftermath of the November 1972 landslide — the two-year slide into Watergate disgrace? Of course, history never precisely repeats itself, but the answer could be yes. One has the sense that voters — certainly Clinton supporters — are putting the possibility of a crisis in the presidency at the back of their minds and hoping for the best.
Which is what most Nixon voters did in 1972. But with one difference: There was a lot less information available at that point in 1972 about Nixon scandals than there is today about the Clinton scandals. A whole generation of journalists made successful careers out of Watergate, but most of those careers were made in 1973 and 1974; Washington Post metro reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein may have been writing about Watergate every week in the summer and fall of 1972, but CBS news rookies Lesley Stahl and Connie Chung waited until 1973 to get up at 5:00 a.m. and stake out the houses of Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman. In 1972 Watergate was followed in depth only by the Post; the CBS Evening News scheduled a three-part series, though after pressure from the Nixon White House, it ran only two segments; the New York Times offered some coverage; otherwise, in the words of Theodore White, “The rest of the American press came in nowhere.”
Nixon, like Clinton, tried to keep the lid on until after the election, but Nixon had more success: Clinton has had to weather congressional investigations, while Nixon was able to get all House Banking Committee Republicans and several Democrats to quash chairman Wright Patman’s move for an investigation in the fall of 1972.
On Election Day 1972, most voters were aware of the burglary of the Democratic headquarters and the arrest of Nixon campaign staffers Gordon Liddy and Howard Hunt there, but the exact connection of the burglary to the Nixon campaign was a matter of conjecture. Nothing was yet known of other major scandals — the FBI burglary of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office, the “dirty tricks” squad. It was possible for a voter to imagine that a second Nixon term would be dominated by investigation of scandal, but it was also possible to imagine that the Watergate story would end with the trials of the burglars. And such might well have been the case had Judge John Sirica not given 35- and 40-year sentences to the burglars in March 1973 and urged them to cooperate with Sen. Sam Ervin’s Watergate committee.
This fall, voters know more things about more Clinton scandals and still seem disposed to vote for the president. But the Clinton team’s frantic efforts to postpone disclosures through November 5 may not avail them afterwards. Many questions remain open. So does the office of independent counsel Kenneth Starr, and if he has been holding back indictments pending the election, he is likely to seek them very soon thereafter. On the skein of land deals and coverups referred to as Whitewater, the statute of limitations has mostly passed, but not on possible perjury in congressional hearings or grand jury sessions. Starr has been looking into the White House travel office affair, in which the Clinton’s could be accused of abusing law enforcement personnel or committing perjury, Clinton advisers could be accused of perjury or, depending on how Rose Law Firm billing records reached the Clinton family quarters, obstruction of justice.
Then there are the FBI files someone caused to be sent over to the White House. That person — Craig Livingstone, or his superior William Kennedy III, or whoever — could be prosecuted and put under great pressure to produce more evidence. Though the press has shown little curiosity about discrepancies between Livingstone’s account and that of his assistant Mari Anderson, they may perk up after the election just as prosecutors or congressional investigators start zeroing in.
And then there is the Paula Jones lawsuit. The Supreme Court has unaccountably agreed to consider Bill Clinton’s argument that as president he is not subject to civil suit. It’s preposterous for the chief executive in a republic to claim the sovereign immunity of a king or queen; if Clinton’s argument is accepted, he won’t even have to pay his MasterCard bill until after he leaves office. In the more likely event the court rejects the president’s argument, Clinton will have to go on trial on charges of sexual harassment. A state trooper has already testified that the trooper took Jones to Clinton’s hotel room; it is hard to think what legitimate business Clinton might have intended to do with her there. And what about these six-figure contributions from Indonesian nationals?
Clinton may hope to be sheltered from scandal by pardons or by the ouster of the independent counsel or the retirement of House Government Operations chairman Bill Clinger. But pardons are likely to produce the same lasting damage Gerald Ford suffered after pardoning Richard Nixon. (Ford, like Clinton, avoided an explicit commitment not to pardon beforehand, but that availed him nothing.)
If the Democrats win control of Congress, that will shut down at least some investigations of Clinton. But the Democrats who have been so unswervingly loyal to him in Term One may not be when the second term is in full swing; they may decide, as Republicans like Howard Baker and Lowell Weicker did in 1973, that it is their duty or in their interest to investigate Clinton independently and aggressively. Sen. Russ Feingold, the Wisconsin Democrat, has already said he might support an independent counsel on the Indonesian contributions. Similarly, an 89 percent pro-Clinton press may develop a heartier appetite for Clinton scandals once the Clintons are safely installed for a second term; there may be a lot of reporters out there who would like to be the next Bob Woodward.
This we do know from the Nixon example: A president who wins reelection despite a generally low opinion of his honesty and trustworthiness can plummet in weeks from 50-plus percent to 25 percent in the polls. He can lose his natural advantage in dealing with Congress. He can be weakened abroad which is to say that the United States will be weakened as will those whose freedom depends on its strength.
During the Watergate years, Joseph Alsop liked to say, “Politicians are like toilet fixtures. It is enough that they serve their intended purpose. They need not be beautiful.” Voters reelected Richard Nixon in 1972 though he wasn’t beautiful. But when scandal struck in 1973 and 1974, they decided he wasn’t serving his intended purpose, and they pitched him on the trash heap. Could the same happen to Bill Clinton? Not exactly the same, surely, and perhaps not anything of the same magnitude. But quite possibly something like it — and that is something Americans may want to ponder before they vote.
Michael Barone is co-editor of the Almanac of American Politics.
