Article 1974 revisited: “Impeach the Cox Sacker”
Seems we didn’t learn squat from the Nixon era.
Election interference, laws were broken with impunity, a President
thumbing his nose at Congress, lies, deception, cover-ups, abuse
of power. It all sounds familiar so we want to impeach but don’t
be too hard on Congress. Here’s why. There is a big difference in
the intensity of the citizens now as to 1968–1974.
For those who weren’t there let me try to capture the mood of the
the electorate for you.
In 1967, as president of the student government at the University
of Alabama, I went into Mississippi with Al Lowenstein (later
Congressman) to recruit delegates to the Democratic National
Convention in 1968 who committed to a “peace candidate” to end
the Viet Nam War. To “Dump Johnson” we first had Eugene
McCarthy, then Robert Kennedy.
As a student leader, I brought Robert Kennedy to campus two
weeks after he announced and four months before he was
assassinated. Riots, buildings burning, assassinations of Kennedy
and King, police riots in Chicago and the 1968 Democratic
Convention stacked by “Party Bosses” led to more frustration.
After his election in 1968, Nixon started a secret fund to finance
his 1972 reelection using longtime friends John Mitchell and
Bebe Robozo. Rebozo funneled hundreds of thousands of dollars
into Alabama to defeat George Wallace’s 1970 reelection as
Governor. Nixon wanted to have a lock on the conservative
southern white segregationists and George Wallace’s Dixiecrats.
The Republican Southern Strategy was emerging which Donald
Trump has now claimed as his own.
Nixon’s goal in manipulating or attempting to manipulate the
elections with cash, tapping DNC phones, and then with dirty
tricks, spying on Democratic opponents and the Russians
influence in the 2016 are not so different.
I was involved as a minor player in early anti-war activities
including the Viet Nam Moratorium, when 500,000 people
gathered in DC to demand President Nixon end the war. I was in
front of the U.S. Capitol watching John Kerry when medals were
tossed over a chain link fence, trapped in George Washington
University with Alan Ginsberg to avoid being tear gassed. In 1971,
I incorporated the National Youth Caucus. I worked in
Mississippi, Florida and Washington State to recruit young people
to run as delegates to the 1972 national conventions
I attended the 1972 Democratic Convention and returned to
Alabama, worked for the DNC to run the McGovern campaign.
Many had reached the end of tolerance as protests tittered from
civil disobedience to resistance after the killing of students at Kent
State by Ohio National Guardsmen. Hundreds of thousands of
people participated in anti-war protests throughout the United
States and throughout the world. Anti-war sentiment was
frustrated by Nixon’s lies about his “secret plan” to end the War,
McNamara’s air of indifference, Kissinger’s arrogance, and Don
Segretti’s and Karl Rove’s dirty tricks, and President Nixon’s
corrupt team determined to lie, steal or do whatever necessary to
win and maintain power at any cost to our democracy. Those men
who would go down in infamy: Roger Ailes, G. Gordon Liddy, Bob
Halderman, John Ehrlichman, James McCord, Bebe Rebozo, and
U. S. Attorney General John Mitchell. One honest man, Attorney
General Elliot Richardson appointed Archibald Cox as special
counsel to investigate White House corruption. Cox was promptly
fired by Nixon.
I remember my bumper sticker: “Impeach the Cox Sacker”
There are important differences between 1974 and now. One
most important moral difference is, so far at least, Americans
aren’t being sacrificed in the war for political gain and another is no
underlying crime has been proven… As of yet. President Trump.
So don’t be too hard on Congress except when it comes to
protecting the integrity of our elections.
Books have been written about how elections have been stolen or
influenced in the U.S. for centuries. Constitutional bans were
established against Native Americans, African Americans, and
women, later voter suppression, gerrymandering, photo ID’s,
voting in the names of those who died or moved out of state has
been replaced with electronic ballot stuffing. (My election wasn’t
hacked by Russians but out and out stolen by Republicans tied to
my opponent and Karl Rove. (Loser Take All, by Mark Crispin
Miller)
No one wants to hear that elections in America can be rigged.
Well, now in the face of evidence that Russians interfered in our
elections in 2016, it’s simply time for Congress to do something
about it.
