Link: http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2017/05/08/how-trump-could-get-fired
By far the most valuable lessons about impeachment come from Richard Nixon. In 1974, Nixon resigned shortly before he could be impeached, but his misjudgments—political, psychological, and legal—have illuminated the risks to Presidents ever since. In 1972, Nixon’s White House oversaw the bugging of the Democratic National Committee offices at the Watergate complex and the ensuing coverup. That was illegal and unethical, but it did not guarantee Nixon’s downfall, which came about because of two critical mistakes.
First, when the scandal emerged, the President underestimated the threat. “There were any number of steps that could have made it go away,” Evan Thomas, the author of “Being Nixon,” told me. “They could have cleaned house and fired people.” But Nixon assumed that his supporters would never believe the accusations. “He was ahead by thirty-four points in the polls in August, 1972,” Thomas went on. “He could have taken his clothes off and run around the White House front yard and he was going to win reëlection.”
As the scandal ground on, Nixon made his second mistake: he flouted the authority of a coequal branch of government. In October, 1973, Nixon refused to obey a federal appellate-court ruling that ordered him to turn over tapes of conversations in the Oval Office, and he forced out the investigation’s special prosecutor, Archibald Cox. For nine months, Nixon continued to resist—in effect threatening the basic constitutional system—until, in July, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled that he had to comply. By then, the damage was done, and the House Judiciary Committee launched impeachment hearings. By thwarting other branches, Nixon weakened his support in Congress and convinced the country that he had something to hide. Until that point, much of the public had not focussed on the slow, complex investigation, but interviews at the time show that Nixon’s stonewalling made people pay attention, and he never recovered. “Well, everything has added up to his incompetence over the last few months, and I don’t think the American people should stand for it any longer,” a woman interviewed in New York by the Associated Press said. “In fact, I just signed an impeach petition.”
By August, many of his top aides had been indicted, and polls showed that fifty-seven per cent of the public believed that Nixon should be removed from office. On August 6th, after a tape recording surfaced which captured him orchestrating the coverup, he was abandoned by Republicans who had previously derided the Watergate scandal as a witch hunt. Senator Barry Goldwater, of Arizona, told colleagues, “Nixon should get his ass out of the White House—today!” On August 9th, Nixon sent a letter to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger: “Dear Mr. Secretary, I hereby resign the Office of President of the United States. Sincerely, Richard Nixon.”
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