Trump, Nixon, Clinton

Many posts have discussed impeachment, including the impeachment of former officials.

At The Bulwark, Jill Lawrence compares Trump to presidents who faced articles of impeachment:

Richard Nixon’s central role in covering up the 1972 Watergate scandal, in which Nixon-campaign spies broke into and bugged the Democratic National Committee office in the Watergate complex in Washington, led two years later to the first and so far only presidential resignation. The House Judiciary Committee approved three articles of impeachment charging Nixon with obstructing its Watergate inquiry, abusing his power by using law enforcement and intelligence agencies to investigate his enemies, and refusing to comply with congressional subpoenas. Nixon resigned before a full House vote, after Republican senators told him the Senate would likely convict him of the charges.

Does Trump check any of these boxes? For sure, and right out in the open, starting with his executive order this month that “directs” Attorney General Pam Bondi to investigate ActBlue for possible foreign or dummy contributions (but did not include WinRed, the GOP counterpart, as the AP noted). Trump has also gone after law firms he sees as enemies—threatening to cancel federal contracts, suspend security clearances, and bar lawyers from all federal buildings because he doesn’t like their clients or their diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs. He’s unleashed similar attacks—and punishment—on universities as well.

Has Trump obstructed justice since taking office this year? It’s more like flouting justice and ignoring the courts. He and his team, including Elon Musk, have shut down investigations, slow-walked or withheld information, and ignored court orders, not least regarding deportations that have sent three children who are U.S. citizens to Honduras and roughly 175 Venezuelans with no criminal record to a nightmare Salvadoran prison, all without due process.

As for compliance with subpoenas, Trump “directed Executive Branch agencies, offices, and officials not to comply” with House subpoenas in the chamber’s 2019 impeachment inquiry, and early signs this time around are not encouraging.


Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath to a grand jury and for obstructing justice. The charges stemmed from an independent counsel investigation into an Arkansas real estate deal involving the Clintons and morphed into Kenneth Starr’s graphic report on Clinton’s affair with a young White House intern, Monica Lewinsky. The full House approved two of four impeachment articles, but Clinton was acquitted in a Senate trial.

Has Trump lied about sex or covering it up? E. Jean Carroll has accused him of sexually assaulting her in the 1990s in a department store dressing room, and filed two civil defamation suits against him. Trump denied in a deposition and in brief testimony last year that he had ever met her, but two juries have found him liable and courts have awarded Carroll tens of millions in damages. Trump has repeatedly denied he had sex with porn actress Stormy Daniels, but he did not take the stand in last year’s hush-money trial. Daniels testified in detail about the alleged encounter, and Trump lawyer Michael Cohen testified that Trump signed off on all aspects of schemes to bury stories about extramarital affairs. The jury convicted Trump of 34 felonies in connection with falsifying business records to disguise the payoffs.

Tariff Power

Many posts have dealt with tariffs and trade.

Philip Wallach at AEI:

The Congress of a new generation doubled down on presidential leadership with the Trade Expansion Act of 1962, which also contained Section 232, allowing for tariffs implemented for national security reasons. At the urging of President Richard Nixon, Congress gave the president yet greater powers with the Trade Act of 1974, which created a “fast track” procedure for Congress to consider trade agreements negotiated by the president. Section 301 of that act gave the president the ability to impose new tariffs when a foreign nation’s trade practices were deemed “unreasonable or discriminatory.”

With these two provisions in place, U.S. presidents had tools capable of quickly imposing a broad protectionist program. But while Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush both engaged in some targeted protectionism, it wasn’t until the first presidency of Donald Trump that these powers were employed to their fullest, with Section 232 used to launch steel and aluminum tariffs and Section 301 used to impose a panoply of tariffs on China. The Biden administration largely left those actions intact.

While the second Trump administration’s actions of the last few weeks thus build on a long record of presidential leadership, they nevertheless represent a new chapter—in part because they have an entirely novel legal basis. Trump has claimed the authority to rewrite tariff schedules because America’s trade deficit represents an “emergency” for the nation. This unlocks presidential powers under the International Economic Emergency Powers Act (IEEPA), a law heretofore used as the basis for economic sanctions but not for making trade policy, or so the theory goes. Trump has made it clear that the nature of this emergency requires the president to act as dealmaker-in-chief, which means he must be able to threaten, adjust, and readjust at the drop of a hat if he is to get the best deal for the American people and end our decades-long trade peonage.

Trump v. Freedom of Expression

Ted Johnson at Deadline:

In an early morning rant, Donald Trump went off on Seth Meyers‘ late-night NBC show, declaring that “Comcast should pay a BIG price” for shows that he calls “political hits.”

In Trump’s 1:24 a.m. ET post on Truth Social, he said that he had watched Meyers’ show recently. Meyers’ humor for years has been biting when it comes to Trump, with his segments also serving as a form of commentary.

Trump wrote, “How bad is Seth Meyers on NBC, a ‘network’ run by a truly bad group of people — Remember, they also run MSDNC. I got stuck watching Marble Mouth Meyers the other night, the first time in months, and every time I watch this moron I feel an obligation to say how dumb and untalented he is, merely a slot filler for the Scum that runs Comcast. These guys should be paying a lot of money for the right to give these ‘in kind’ contributions to the Radical Left Democrat Party. These are not shows or entertainment, they are simply political hits, 100% of the time, to me and the Republican Party. Comcast should pay a BIG price for this!”

Trump has long bashed Comcast, NBC and MSNBC. During his first term, he suggested pulling the network’s FCC license after he got angered by an NBC News report. Ajit Pai, who he appointed FCC chair, later noted that the agency licenses stations, not networks, and that news programming was protected by the First Amendment.

But Trump’s appointee as chair of the FCC during his next term, Brendan Carr, has suggested that the agency can examine complaints over news programming, including one that challenged the way that 60 Minutes edited an interview with Kamala Harris. He also bashed NBC for featuring Harris on Saturday Night Live in the final show before the election, warning that it was a violation of equal time rules. The network gave Trump’s campaign time the next day, but Carr warned that other third-party candidates may have been denied airtime.

David Enrich and Katie Robertson at NYT:

Reporters and editors at national newspapers are increasing their reliance on encrypted communications to help shield themselves and their sources from potential federal leak investigations and subpoenas.

Multiple media organizations are evaluating whether they have enough insurance coverage to absorb a potential wave of libel and other litigation from officials who have already shown an inclination to file such suits.

And a nonprofit investigative journalism outlet is preparing for the possibility that the government will investigate issues like whether its use of freelancers complies with labor regulations.

With President-elect Donald J. Trump returning to the White House, media outlets large and small are taking steps to prepare for what they fear could be a legal and political onslaught against them from the new administration and Mr. Trump’s allies inside and outside the government.

For nearly a decade, Mr. Trump has demonized and tried to delegitimize the media. He has attacked reporters as “the enemy of the people.” He has repeatedly sued news organizations. In his first administration, the White House at times barred out-of-favor journalists from attending events.

But the early indications are that his new administration could be more hostile to the press. For example, Mr. Trump’s choice to run the F.B.I., Kash Patel, said before the election that a new Trump administration would “come after the people in the media.” Brendan Carr, the expected chairman of the Federal Communications Commission, recently raised the prospect of revoking federal broadcast licenses for television stations that he perceived as biased against conservatives.

 But even if FCC does not license networks themselves, it can cause trouble for media companies.  On September 15, 1972, Nixon discussed using it to punish The Washington Post.

PRESIDENT: The Post has asked -- it's going to have its problems.

HALDEMAN: (Unintelligible)

DEAN: The networks, the networks are good with Maury [Maurice Stans]coming back three days in a row and --

PRESIDENT: That's right. Right. The main thing is the Post is going to have damnable, damnable problems out of this one. They have a television station.

DEAN: That's right, they do.

PRESIDENT: And they're going to have to get it renewed.

HALDEMAN: They've got a radio station, too.

PRESIDENT: Does that come up too? The point is, when does it come up?

DEAN: I don't know. But the practice of nonlicensees filing on top of licensees has certainly gotten more,...

PRESIDENT: That's right.

DEAN: more active in the, in the area.

PRESIDENT: And it's going to be God damn active here.

DEAN: (Laughs)

PRESIDENT: Well, the game has to be played awfully rough.

The Checkers Speech

 Richard Nixon made an early, innovative use of television in 1952. He had a political fund -- what we would today call a PAC -- and opponents accused him of doing something shady. Nixon did lots of questionable stuff later on, but in this case, he was innocent of wrongdoing.  He explained that he did not use the fund to line his pockets, and that the only personal gift he accepted was a dog named Checkers.

A new video from the Nixon Foundation:

The Term of the FBI DIrector

Andrew Kent, Susan Hennessey, Matthew Kahn

Why Did Congress Set a Ten-Year Term for the FBI Director?
Lawfare, Wednesday, May 17, 2017

Section 203 of the Crime Control Act of 1976 restricts the FBI director to a single ten-year term and prohibits the reappointment of an incumbent. Below is an examination of what the legislative history and political context reveal about Congress’ motives in passing that law. It is clear that Congress viewed the operation of the statute as both a ceiling and a floor: a limit on the president and a limit on the director. It’s also clear that Congress viewed political influence on specific FBI investigations as violative of important norms developed to prevent the recurrence of dangerous abuses.

Congress first considered a law to require Senate confirmation and term limits for an FBI director in the closing years of J. Edgar Hoover’s directorship. Hoover was the FBI’s first director and was appointed by the Attorney General and not the president. He served 48 years until his death in 1972. Congress approached the issue in the context of Hoover’s extraordinarily long tenure, during which he consolidated control of the FBI and carried out substantial abuses of power.

In one sense, limiting an FBI director’s tenure to a single ten-year term should be understood as a check on the director’s power. Congress’ was concerned with the rise of another unscrupulous and excessively powerful director, and term limits were one way to prevent that. There is simply less one can do in ten years than in forty-eight, be it amassing influence or violating civil liberties.

In another sense, the term limit acts as a check on presidential power. Congress passed the ten-year term limit in the shadow of the abuses of President Richard Nixon and White House aides. The Senate Judiciary Committee held hearing on FBI oversight and a bill to establish a ten-year term in March 1974, the same month a federal grand jury indicted the “Watergate Seven” and named Nixon an unindicted co-conspirator. Nixon’s acting FBI Director and nominee for the permanent post, L. Patrick Gray, had resigned in 1973 after it was revealed that he was giving the White House daily briefings on the FBI’s Watergate investigation and that he destroyed documents relevant to the inquiry.

Congress wanted to address the Scylla and Charybdis of Nixon and Hoover: the risk of political interference in FBI investigations, and use of the Bureau for political purposes, on the one hand, and on the other, the danger of an imperial FBI director whose long tenure–and the secrets and political chits accumulated during that tenure–allows him to act without accountability.

When recommending enactment of the ten-year term, the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote a comprehensive report of its rationale, including:

The purpose of this bill is to achieve two complementary objectives. The first is to insulate the Director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation from undue pressure being exerted upon him from superiors in the Executive Branch. The second is to protect against an FBI Director becoming too independent and unresponsive.

Also from the report:

It is the great value of the FBI as a criminal investigative agency, as well as its dangerous potential for infringing individual rights and serving partisan or personal ambitions, that makes the office of FBI Director unique....The position is not an ordinary Cabinet appointmentvwhich is usually considered a politically oriented member of the President's "team."

 

Ford's Oath

Many posts have discussed oaths of office.

Fifty years ago today, Gerald Ford became president after the resignation of Richard Nixon.  His remarks after taking the oath:

Mr. Chief Justice, my dear friends, my fellow Americans:

The oath that I have taken is the same oath that was taken by George Washington and by every President under the Constitution. But I assume the Presidency under extraordinary circumstances never before experienced by Americans. This is an hour of history that troubles our minds and hurts our hearts.

Therefore, I feel it is my first duty to make an unprecedented compact with my countrymen. Not an inaugural address, not a fireside chat, not a campaign speech--just a little straight talk among friends. And I intend it to be the first of many.

I am acutely aware that you have not elected me as your President by your ballots, and so I ask you to confirm me as your President with your prayers. And I hope that such prayers will also be the first of many.

If you have not chosen me by secret ballot, neither have I gained office by any secret promises. I have not campaigned either for the Presidency or the Vice Presidency. I have not subscribed to any partisan platform. I am indebted to no man, and only to one woman--my dear wife--as I begin this very difficult job.

I have not sought this enormous responsibility, but I will not shirk it. Those who nominated and confirmed me as Vice President were my friends and are my friends. They were of both parties, elected by all the people and acting under the Constitution in their name. It is only fitting then that I should pledge to them and to you that I will be the President of all the people.

Thomas Jefferson said the people are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty. And down the years, Abraham Lincoln renewed this American article of faith asking, "Is there any better way or equal hope in the world?"

I intend, on Monday next, to request of the Speaker of the House of Representatives and the President pro tempore of the Senate the privilege of appearing before the Congress to share with my former colleagues and with you, the American people, my views on the priority business of the Nation and to solicit your views and their views. And may I say to the Speaker and the others, if I could meet with you right after these remarks, I would appreciate it.

Even though this is late in an election year, there is no way we can go forward except together and no way anybody can win except by serving the people's urgent needs. We cannot stand still or slip backwards. We must go forward now together.

To the peoples and the governments of all friendly nations, and I hope that could encompass the whole world, I pledge an uninterrupted and sincere search for peace. America will remain strong and united, but its strength will remain dedicated to the safety and sanity of the entire family of man, as well as to our own precious freedom.

I believe that truth is the glue that holds government together, not only our Government but civilization itself. That bond, though strained, is unbroken at home and abroad.

In all my public and private acts as your President, I expect to follow my instincts of openness and candor with full confidence that honesty is always the best policy in the end.

My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over.

Our Constitution works; our great Republic is a government of laws and not of men. Here the people rule. But there is a higher Power, by whatever name we honor Him, who ordains not only righteousness but love, not only justice but mercy.

As we bind up the internal wounds of Watergate, more painful and more poisonous than those of foreign wars, let us restore the golden rule to our political process, and let brotherly love purge our hearts of suspicion and of hate.

In the beginning, I asked you to pray for me. Before closing, I ask again your prayers, for Richard Nixon and for his family. May our former President, who brought peace to millions, find it for himself. May God bless and comfort his wonderful wife and daughters, whose love and loyalty will forever be a shining legacy to all who bear the lonely burdens of the White House.

I can only guess at those burdens, although I have witnessed at close hand the tragedies that befell three Presidents and the lesser trials of others.

With all the strength and all the good sense I have gained from life, with all the confidence my family, my friends, and my dedicated staff impart to me, and with the good will of countless Americans I have encountered in recent visits to 40 States, I now solemnly reaffirm my promise I made to you last December 6: to uphold the Constitution, to do what is right as God gives me to see the right, and to do the very best I can for America.

God helping me, I will not let you down.

War in Israel

Hamas has attacked Israel on the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War.  In 1973, Nixon saved Israel.

 In 2009 Jason Maoz wrote in Commentary:

What is clear, from the preponderance of information provided by those directly involved in the unfolding events, is that President Richard Nixon — overriding inter-administration objections and bureaucratic inertia — implemented a breathtaking transfer of arms, code-named Operation Nickel Grass, that over a four-week period involved hundreds of jumbo U.S. military aircraft delivering more than 22,000 tons of armaments.

...

“Both Kissinger and Nixon wanted to do [the airlift],” said former CIA deputy director Vernon Walters, "but Nixon gave it the greater sense of urgency. He said, ‘You get the stuff to Israel. Now. Now.’”

... 

“It was Nixon who did it,” recalled Nixon’s acting special counsel, Leonard Garment. “I was there. As [bureaucratic bickering between the State and Defense departments] was going back and forth, Nixon said, this is insane. . . . He just ordered Kissinger, “Get your ass out of here and tell those people to move.”

When Schlesinger initially wanted to send just three transports to Israel because he feared anything more would alarm the Arabs and the Soviets, Nixon snapped: “We are going to get blamed just as much for three as for 300. . . . Get them in the air, now.”

Haig, in his memoir Inner Circles, wrote that Nixon, frustrated with the initial delays in implementing the airlift and aware that the Soviets had begun airlifting supplies to Egypt and Syria, summoned Kissinger and Schlesinger to the Oval Office on October 12 and “banished all excuses.”


The president asked Kissinger for a precise accounting of Israel’s military needs, and Kissinger proceeded to read aloud from an itemized list.

“Double it,” Nixon ordered. “Now get the hell out of here and get the job done.”

National Archives and Presidential Records

 

Jacqueline Alemany, Isaac Arnsdorf and Josh Dawsey at WP:

For most of American history, presidents kept their own papers and their personal ownership had never been challenged, according to a 2006 article co-written by Stern, NARA’s general counsel since 1998.

When Nixon resigned, he made plans to destroy White House records, including the Oval Office tapes that had become central to the Watergate scandal. Congress stepped in and passed the Presidential Records Act, which requires the White House to preserve all written communication related to a president’s official duties — memos, letters, notes, emails, faxes and other material — and turn it over to the Archives.

Disputes over the Nixon tapes continued into the 1990s, with lawsuits by former aides and Cabinet members seeking to block disclosure and from public-interest groups demanding access, according to the article. At the end of the Reagan administration, Stern, then with the American Civil Liberties Union, led a groundbreaking lawsuit seeking to preserve White House records related to the Iran-contra scandal.

People wait for a moving van after boxes were moved out of the Eisenhower Executive Office building inside the White House complex on Jan. 14, 2021. (Gerald Herbert/AP)

Research by presidential representatives have in the past raised security risks. In 2005, former Clinton administration national security adviser Sandy Berger pleaded guilty to removing and destroying classified documents from the Archives related to the 9/11 Commission’s investigation. That case was overseen by Christopher A. Wray, then head of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division and now the Trump-appointed director of the FBI.

“This is not a sleepy agency — NARA staff are used to records-related controversies,” said Jason R. Baron, a professor at the University of Maryland and former director of litigation at NARA. “This matter, however, is unique. No piece of paper that’s a presidential record should be at Mar-a-Lago. It is clear that NARA staff made extraordinary efforts to recover presidential records and was rebuffed on numerous occasions.”

Trump’s disdain and disregard for the presidential record-keeping system he was legally bound to adhere to is well-documented. And while advisers repeatedly warned him about needing to follow the Presidential Records Act early in his presidency, his chaotic handling of the documents prevailed.

NARA’s motto, Littera Scripta Manet, translates from Latin to “the written word remains.” But in Trump’s White House, the written word was often torn, destroyed, misplaced or hoarded.

The People Rate the Presidents

 Matthew Smith at YouGov:

The respective excellence of US presidents is always being debated. Many academics have put together rankings over the years to demonstrate who they think is best, and in one famous case the features of one person’s top four have been carved into a mountain.

But how do the leaders of the nation rank in terms of public opinion? A new YouGov poll has asked Americans their view on the 45 men who have served as president to date.

Topping the list is Abraham Lincoln. Eight in ten Americans (80%) have a favorable view of the president who freed the slaves and won the Civil War, including 56% who have a “very favorable” view of him.

In a perhaps surprise second place – if going by combined very+somewhat favorable ratings – is John F. Kennedy, whom 73% of Americans have a favorable view opinion of. This puts him three points ahead of the more traditional runner-up George Washington (70%), who places third on this measure (although the scores are within the margin of error). It is worth noting that fewer people have a “very” favorable view of Kennedy: 35% to Washington’s 44%.

Theodore Roosevelt and Thomas Jefferson complete the top five, both being seen favorably by 62% of Americans.

...

 There are only two presidents who are currently seen unfavorably by a majority of Americans: Richard Nixon (56%) and Donald Trump (54%). More Americans take a “very” negative view of Trump (47% to Nixon’s 34%), although he is also popular among a wider group: 39% like Donald Trump compared to 27% for Nixon.

Nixon Announces that JFK Has Won

On January 6, 1961, after the official counting of the electoral votes in a joint session of Congress, Vice President Richard Nixon announced the election of his 1960 opponent, John F. Kennedy.

Mr. Speaker,  since this is an unprecedented situation,  I would like to ask permission to impose upon the time of the Members of this Congress to make a statement which in itself is somewhat unprecedented.

I promise to be brief. I shall be guided by the 1-minute rule of the House rather than the unlimited time rule that prevails in the Senate.

This is the first time in 100 years that a candidate for the Presidency announced the result of an election in which he was defeated and announced the victory of his opponent. I do not think we could have a more striking and eloquent example of the stability of our constitutional system and of the proud tradition. of the American people of developing, respecting, and honoring institutions of self-government. 

In our campaigns, no matter how hard fought they may be, no matter how close the election may turn out to be, those who lose accept the verdict, and support those who win. And I would like to add that, having served now in Government for 14 years, a period which began in the House just 14 years ago, almost to the day, which continued with 2 years in the Senate and 8 years as Vice President, as I complete that 14-year period it is indeed a very great honor to me to extend to my colleagues in the House and Senate on both sides of the aisle who have been elected; to extend to John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson, who have been elected President and Vice President of the United States, my heartfelt best wishes, as all of you work in a cause that is bigger than any man's ambition, greater than any party. It is the cause of freedom, of justice, and peace for all mankind.

It is in that spirit that I now declare that John F. Kennedy has been elected President of the United States, and Lyndon B. Johnson Vice President of the United States.

Members of the Congress, the purpose for which the joint session of the two Houses of Congress has been called pursuant to Senate Concurrent Resolution 1, having been accomplished, the Chair declares the joint session dissolved.

Virtual Debate, 1960

"I'm Bill Shadel ABC News...The 2 candidates will not be sharing same platform. In NY John F Kennedy. Separated by 3,000 miles in L.A. studio, Richard Nixon. Joined for discussion by network of electronic facilities which permits each candidate to see & hear the other"
10/13/1960 pic.twitter.com/9GottJMbPP

— Howard Mortman (@HowardMortman) October 8, 2020

Bad Conversation Between Nixon and Reagan

Tim Naftali at The Atlantic:

The day after the United Nations voted to recognize the People’s Republic of China, then–California Governor Ronald Reagan phoned President Richard Nixon at the White House and vented his frustration at the delegates who had sided against the United States. “Last night, I tell you, to watch that thing on television as I did,” Reagan said. “Yeah,” Nixon interjected. Reagan forged ahead with his complaint: “To see those, those monkeys from those African countries—damn them, they’re still uncomfortable wearing shoes!” Nixon gave a huge laugh.

Nixon and Father's Day

Danna Bell at LOC: "Father’s Day was not officially celebrated nationally until 1966 when Public Law 89-450 was enacted. This law only covered 1966. It was not until 1972 with the enactment of Public Law 92-278 that the third Sunday in June of every year was designated as Father’s Day."

Nixon's 1972 proclamation:

To have a father—to be a father—is to come very near the heart of life itself.

In fatherhood we know the elemental magic and joy of humanity. In fatherhood we even sense the divine, as the Scriptural writers did who told of all good gifts corning "down from the Father of lights, with whom is no variableness, neither shadow of turning"—symbolism so challenging to each man who would give his own son or daughter a life of light without shadow.

Our identity in name and nature, our roots in home and family, our very standard of manhood—all this and more is the heritage our fathers share with us. It is a rich patrimony, one for which adequate thanks can hardly be offered in a lifetime, let alone a single day. Still it has long been our national custom to observe each year one special Sunday in honor of America's fathers; and from this year forward, by a joint resolution of the Congress approved April 24, 1972, that custom carries the weight of law.

This is fitting and good. Let each American make this Father's Day an occasion for renewal of the love and gratitude we bear to our fathers, increasing and enduring through all the years.

Now, Therefore, I, Richard Nixon, President of the United States of America, do hereby request that June 18, 1972, be observed as Father's Day. I direct Government officials to display the flag of the United States on all Government buildings, and I urge all citizens to display the flag at their homes and other suitable places on that day.

In Witness Whereof, I have hereunto set my hand this first day of May in the year of our Lord, nineteen hundred seventy-two, and of the Independence of the United States of America the one hundred ninety-sixth.

June 18, 1972 is significant for another reason:  it was the day that newspapers carried stories about the Watergate break-in, which had occurred the day before. 

Operation Intercept

Emily Tamkin at WP:

Launched in 1969 and lasting just 20 days, Operation Intercept was ostensibly meant to stem the flow of illegal drugs, including marijuana, into the United States. The idea was to add agents to the border to help better intercept the contraband. “In reality, however, it was designed not to interdict narcotics but to publicize the new administration’s war on crime and force Mexican compliance with Washington’s anti-drug campaign,” political science professor Richard B. Craig wrote in 1980.

At the time, newspapers deemed it the “largest peacetime search and seizure operation in history.” The operation was planned by G. Gordon Liddy, the former FBI agent who later helped orchestrate the Watergate break-in; the State Department was effectively shut out of the planning process for the operation.

Operation Intercept resulted in a “near shutdown of traffic” across the southern border. There were major backups at the border; instead of random searches, everyone was searched; legal laborers and commerce couldn’t cross; and Mexico, in response to this unilateral approach to a bilateral issue, began a boycott of U.S. goods. Also, almost no marijuana was actually seized; traffickers just found other, safer ways in.

About three weeks later, the United States abandoned the plan in favor of Operation Cooperation with Mexico. Some suggest that the plan worked — Mexico, the thinking goes, was more keen to cooperate with the United States after Operation Intercept. Others suggest that Operation Intercept had lasting international consequences and serves as a cautionary tale against unilateral action on multilateral issues.

What Makes an Effective President?

At The Washington Examiner, David Drucker asked former Secretary of State George Shultz: what makes an effective president?

A key is to have a strategy. Nixon was a strategist...Ronald Reagan was a strategist. He was long-headed and I'll give you an example. I was chairman of his economic policy advisory panel during the primaries, during the election campaign, and for the first year and a half of his time in office, before I was secretary of state. And, he came into the office and he knew that we couldn't have a decent economy with the kind of inflation that was going on. And we all knew that, and we all said that.

And there was [Federal Reserve Chairman] Paul Volcker over at the Fed. Paul had been my undersecretary when I was secretary of the treasury so I knew Paul well. And, he was doing what you had to do, namely, discipline the money supply. And people would run into Reagan and say, Mr President, Mr President, we're going to cause a recession, we're gonna lose seats in the midterm election. And, Reagan basically — he didn't say this, but basically he said, if not now, when? If not us, who? And he basically put a political umbrella over Paul. And, I let Paul know that.

But Paul told me, I was talking to him recently, he said, I remember seeing many occasions when reporters dished up a question to Reagan, sort of inviting him to come down on the Fed, and he never did. So what happened? We did have a recession, we did lose seats. But by early '83, inflation was under control and everybody could see that it was going to stay that way. And the incentive that had been put into the economy kicked in, and the economy as you remember took off like a bird in 1983. But that was a president taking a long-headed deal and saying the country has to get rid of the inflation if we're going to be healthy. That means we're going to take a short-term hit for a long-term objective. That's strategic thinking — and acting on it. And, that takes guts, political guts. And, the ability to stand up to things.

Self-Pardon

Jessica Levinson at Vox:

As is the case with a number of important constitutional issues, the answer to the question here of whether or not the president can pardon himself exists in gray area. Or put more bluntly, the answer is, "Who the heck knows?" This is partly because this is simply not a question we ask ourselves very often.

Let's take a step back and remember the unique reality we all now inhabit. This is not an issue which the courts have been asked to answer. Why? Because a president is rarely in the position of asking whether he will pardon himself.

The Constitution means whatever the courts say it means. If the US Supreme Court decided tomorrow that the word "emolument" actually means "sunglasses," then that is the law of the land. Congress would have to ratify an amendment to the Constitution to change or override that interpretation. Article II, Section II of the Constitution provides that the president "shall have Power to Grant Reprieves and Pardons for Offenses against the United States, except in Cases of Impeachment."

Shortly before President Nixon resigned from office, the Office of Legal Counsel issued an opinion in which they cautioned that no one may be a judge in his own case. (This is also a principle of so-called "natural law.") This meant, the OLC said, that the president cannot pardon himself.

In addition, the language of the clause and Supreme Court case law seems to assume that there is someone giving the pardon (let's call this person Mr. President) and someone receiving the pardon (let's call this person Mr. Not President). Put another way, the language seems to assume there is a grantor and a recipient who are two different people.

But a conclusion based on natural law and an assertion that the language "seems to assume" something is hardly a conclusion you want to take to the proverbial bank.

Nixon Checked Out on 12/6/73

As impeachment talks edges into the mainstream, it is worth remembering how Nixon handled it.

At Research and Politics, Matthew N. Beckmann has a terrific article titled: "Did Nixon Quit Before He Resigned?"  The abstract:

On August 9, 1974, Richard M. Nixon formally resigned the presidency; however, folklore hints Nixon informally quit fulfilling his duties well before then. As Watergate became less “a third rate burglary” than “high crimes and misdemeanors,” rumors of President Nixon’s wallowing, wandering, drinking, and mumbling swirled. Yet evidence for such assertions has been thin, and prevailing scholarship offers compelling reasons to believe Nixon’s institutional protocols overrode his individual proclivities. This study offers a new, systematic look at Nixon’s presidency by coding his public events and private interactions with top government officials during every day of his presidency. Contrary to our expectations, the results corroborate the rumors: Richard Nixon effectively quit being president well before he resigned the presidency. In fact, it turns out there was a defining moment when Nixon disengaged from his administration: on December 6, 1973, the day Gerald Ford was confirmed as Vice President.

The article makes ingenious use of the Presidential Daily Diary.  Here is the quoted description from the Richard Nixon Presidential Library & Museum:

The Daily Diary of files represents a consolidated record of the President’s activities. The Daily Diary chronicles the activities of the President, from the time he left the private residence until he retired for the day, including personal and private meetings, events, social and speaking engagements, trips, telephone calls, meals, routine tasks, and recreational pursuits. For any given meeting, telephone call, or event, the Daily Diary usually lists the time, location, persons involved (or a reference to an appendix listing individuals present), and type of event.1

 Here is how Professor Beckmann used it:

To extract the relevant details from these extraordinary records, we first distributed the Nixon Library’s Daily Diaries collection among a large team of undergraduate students, with each getting a random selection.2 The RA assigned a particular day would then scour the corresponding Diary to tally the President’s 5-plus-minute contacts—face-to-face or by phone—with the following top government officials: Chief of Staff; National Security Advisor; White House Counsel; White House Press Secretary; Treasury Secretary; Defense Secretary; Secretary of State; Speaker of the House; House Minority Leader; Senate Majority Leader; Senate Minority Leader. The result, then, was original data indicating Richard Nixon’s five-plus-minute contacts with 11 key government officials during each day of his presidency.

And a notable finding:

Drilling deeper, and to our surprise, we detected a specific day on which Richard Nixon effectively disengaged from his administration: December 6, 1973, the day Gerald Ford was sworn in as Vice President.5 Figure 3 displays President Nixon’s total weekly contacts with the aforementioned 11 key officials before and after Jerry Ford’s confirmation. In the 12 weeks before that date, Nixon averaged 8 (standard deviation = 5) contacts per day with top officials; in the 12 weeks after that date, he averaged 1 (standard deviation = 1).6 This does not mean it was Ford’s ascension per se that devastated Nixon; rather, we suspect Ford’s confirmation was merely the last straw—the point when Nixon realized his hopes for surviving Watergate were dashed.

Trump's Predecessors

At Vox, Matt Grossmann notes that Trump unsuccessfully sought the Reform Party nomination in 2000,

What did Trump learn from his first presidential campaign? In an op-ed following his withdrawal, Trump touted his campaign as "the greatest civics lesson that a private citizen can have" but also said he "saw the underside of the Reform Party." He mentioned meeting earnest reformers as well as a host of odd conspiracy theorists.

By the time he announced for president in 2015, Trump had become the most prominent spokesperson for these conspiracy theorists with his long push for Obama's birth certificate. His new campaign retained his anti-trade and anti-elitist message but added Buchanan's warnings of losing the country to ethnic and religious minorities. He lashed out against undocumented Mexican immigrants in his announcement speech and made opposition to Muslim immigration the centerpiece of his winter campaign, earning the support of Buchanan and Duke. He even resurrected Richard Nixon's "silent majority" rhetoric, phrasing suggested to Nixon by Buchanan.

In retrospect, the changed approach does not seem like an accident. Trump draws from a history of presidential aspirants focused on immigration and international trade. In 1992, Buchanan challenged President George H.W. Bush in the Republican race, running on a Trump-style platform that eschewed internationalism and blamed immigrants and trade for economic woes. Later that year, Ross Perot won 19 percent of the popular vote running as an independent on his business record and on a similar mix of populist positions (spreading his message through cable news shows).

Both Buchanan and Perot ran again in 1996, with Buchanan winning the New Hampshire primary and Perot winning 8 percent of the popular vote under the banner of the new Reform Party.

These candidates directly led the way to Trump's first campaign. Perot's electoral performance made the 2000 nominee of the Reform Party eligible for $12.5 million in federal matching funds, prompting Buchanan and Trump to seek the nomination. Ventura, a former professional wrestler who had won the Minnesota gubernatorial election in 1998 as a Reform Party candidate, had sought out Trump to block Buchanan.

Moonshot

President Obama has compared the search for a cancer cure to the moon shot.

PZ Myers writes at ScienceBlogs:

Everyone admires John F. Kennedy’s ambition in setting a specific goal for the space program, way back in the 1960s. It was smart to focus. But here’s the difference: we knew where the moon was. There it is, 380,000km away, in a predictable orbit around the planet, and we had these technologies to fire off rockets that already contained the basic principles we needed to get to the moon. It was a nontrivial effort, but getting from here to there was an already specified problem.

Where is “cancer”? Can you even define the problem? Do you see a solution that you can reach by just throwing a lot of money at it and telling a team of doctors to fix it?

No, you can’t. Scientists who study cancer will even tell you flat out that cancer isn’t one disease, it’s a multitude of diseases. It’s more like a pattern of collapse of a complex structure, and there’s a million different ways it can happen. A “moonshot” is a terrible metaphor for how to approach the treatment of cancer.

Ike Swetlitz writes at STAT:

Nixon, of course, also invoked a “war on cancer.” Decades later, with the war still not won, the Clinton administration turned again to that militaristic metaphor.

“We want to be the first generation that finally wins the war on cancer,” then-Vice President Al Gore told the Toledo Blade in 1998. He said science was on the verge of a breakthrough: “For the first time, the enemy is outmatched.”

It wasn’t.

In the following campaign, Republican presidential nominee George W. Bush returned to the space metaphor. He promised to “fund and lead a medical moonshot to reach far beyond what seems possible today,” to cure not just cancer but many ills associated with aging.

Moon, Cancer, Nixon, Obama

"Last year, Vice President Biden said that with a new moonshot, America can cure cancer. Last month, he worked with this Congress to give scientists at the National Institutes of Health the strongest resources that they’ve had in over a decade. (Applause.) So tonight, I’m announcing a new national effort to get it done. And because he’s gone to the mat for all of us on so many issues over the past 40 years, I’m putting Joe in charge of Mission Control. (Applause.) For the loved ones we’ve all lost, for the families that we can still save, let’s make America the country that cures cancer once and for all."  -- Barack Obama, State of the Union, January 12, 2016.

Nixon said the same thing 45 years ago:

"I will also ask for an appropriation of an extra $100 million to launch an intensive campaign to find a cure for cancer, and I will ask later for whatever additional funds can effectively be used. The time has come in America when the same kind of concentrated effort that split the atom and took man to the moon should be turned toward conquering this dread disease. Let us make a total national commitment to achieve this goal." -- Richard Nixon, State of the Union, January 22, 1971