We Can’t Have Another Nixon
Last Friday, James Comey, the director of the FBI stunned the political world by re-opening the case of Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail server.
It happened because, in an unrelated case, the FBI was looking into illegal sexting by a grown man with a fifteen year old girl. In that investigation, some 650,000 e-mails were surprisingly discovered that could relate to Mrs. Clinton.
The man accused of indecent acts is former Congressman Anthony Weiner. He just happens to be the estranged husband of Huma Abiden–Hillary Clinton’s closest aide and confidante.
This could be a game-changer in next Tuesday’s election. I hope it is–at least for one reason:
We can’t have another Nixon.
I voted for Richard Nixon in 1972. I deeply regret that vote. For the next two years, Nixon’s lack of integrity paralyzed and divided the American nation until he was forced from office to avoid impeachment in the summer of 1974.
Those were dark times in America where daily congressional hearings, constant bickering, and finally the first resignation of a sitting American president cast a dark shadow over the United States. It took years to emerge from that awful cloud of deception.
Richard Nixon possessed many laudable political skills. But at heart he was a foul-mouthed, hate-your-enemies kind of guy who became infamous for ordering a burglary at a non-descript apartment complex in downtown Washington D.C. then covered up his crime by lying.
And lying some more.
The Watergate burglary eventually exploded into a Constitutional crisis while the nation drifted for years. Daily briefings, hearings, accusations, and political gridlock paralyzed our national government.
After the John Dean smoking gun came forward, and it was revealed that President Nixon kept a secret tape recording of all of his conversations in the Oval Office. Congress moved to impeach the president and Nixon abruptly resigned.
That was a sad time in American history–all attributed to lies. An individual, a family, and a nation cannot function in this world without trust–a basic integrity that when you speak, you are telling the truth.
Richard Nixon was a pathological liar. Years ago, well-known pundit William Safire said the same about Hillary Clinton. Her recent behavior while running for president only confirms his insight.
She constantly lies.
In 2016, we face the same numbing political paralysis if Hillary Clinton is elected president.
Pulitzer Prize winning journalist Michael Goodwin wrote in The New York Post this weekend:
We must forgive Mark Twain for his error when he declared that “history never repeats itself but it often rhymes.” After all, he’d never met the Clintons.
If Twain were alive now, he would be astonished at how the headlines over the e-mail scandal roiling the presidential race are virtual repeats of the family’s 1990s saga in power.
The headlines are also an omen. A restoration of the Clinton presidency would be a restoration of the national and moral chaos they invariably create. They can’t help themselves. They are corrupt and corrupters, the Typhoid Mary of politics.
Whether by nature or nurture, they are programmed to ruin. Friends, allies, institutions — all are stained by their touch.
And always, the Clintons blame somebody else. Now it’s FBI Director James Comey’s turn to embody their all-purpose bogeyman, the vast right-wing conspiracy. Somebody, sometimes everybody, is out to get them, unfairly of course.
The victim card is a Clinton family heirloom, but there are major problems playing it over Comey’s sudden reopening of the e-mail probe.
Clinton created the mess with her incredibly stupid decision to use a private server as secretary of state. Virtually every major issue dogging her, including her reputation for chronic dishonesty, was started or exacerbated by that decision, including the current one.
Even as her top aides remain mystified about why she did it, the result fits the family pattern now that Huma Abedin, her most loyal “body” person, is on the hook. It was, by all accounts, the FBI’s criminal investigation into Abedin’s pervy husband, Anthony Weiner, that led to the new cache of suspect e-mails found on a computer the couple shared.
Still, Clinton is understandably panicked because the timing of Comey’s announcement could cost her the election. Her demand that he release everything immediately is also understandable, even as she knows it is impossible for him to release potential evidence before it is examined.
“The atmosphere at the FBI has been toxic ever since Jim announced last July that he wouldn’t recommend an indictment against Hillary,” said the source, a close friend who has known Comey for nearly two decades… [Comey] told his wife that he was depressed by the stack of resignation letters piling up on his desk from disaffected agents. The letters reminded him every day that morale in the FBI had hit rock bottom.””And while the decision to reopen the case may appease FBI agents and Republicans, in the short-term, we suspect it does very little to restore overall faith in his competence. As such, we continue to question just how long Comey can hold out before being forced to resign his post, At a bare minimum, in light of his continued questionable judgement and serious doubts raised about the integrity of the first investigation, we fail to understand how an independent investigation into Hillary’s email server isn’t warranted.”
Right, mate.
Maybe the “Brexit” Brits are rooting for a new American Revolution that they can believe in.
Clinton’s opponent, Donald Trump, has his own lewd and egotistical problems. But he is known to be a man of his word–a refreshing difference between himself and the Clintons. He also has better policies. Here’s how he responded to the FBI shot-over-the-bow:
“This is the biggest scandal since Watergate. Hillary wants to blame everyone else for her mounting legal troubles. But she has brought all of this on herself.”
“Hillary is the one who set up an illegal private e-mail server in a closet to shield herself from her illegal activities. Hillary is the one who engaged in a pay-for-play scheme at the State Department. Now there are five FBI probes into the Clinton Foundation and their pay-for-play activities. Very, very deep investigations.”
“Hillary is the one who sent and received classified information on an unsecure server, putting the safety of the American people under threat. That’s what she did…650,000 emails. You know what I call that? That’s the motherlode.”
“Hillary is the one who lied to Congress under oath. Hillary is the one who lied on so many different occasions to the FBI. And they know, they know. They know Hillary is the one who made 13 phones disappear. Some with a hammer.”
“Hillary is the one who destroyed 33,000 e-mails, after she got the subpoena. Hillary is the one that broke the law over and over and over again. We can be sure that what is in those e-mails is absolutely devastating. And I think we are going to find out, by the way, for the first time.”
Author and scholar Leon Klass shared these sobering thoughts about Hillary’s Watergate:
“Hillary is not the victim. The American people are victims. As secretary of state she kept classified documents on the home-brew server in her basement, which is against the law. She lied about it to the American people. She couldn’t remember details dozens of times when questioned by the FBI. ”
“Her aides destroyed evidence by BleachBit and hammers. Her husband, Bill, met secretly on an airport tarmac with Attorney General Loretta Lynch for about a half-hour, and all they said they talked about was golf and the grandkids. And there was no prosecution of Hillary.”
“That isn’t merely wrong and unethical. It is poisonous. And during this presidential campaign, Americans were confronted with a two-tiered system of federal justice: one standard for the Clintons and one for the peasants.”
Kass concludes:
“What if Hillary Clinton is elected? Think of a nation suffering a bad economy and continuing chaos in the Middle East, and now also facing a criminal investigation of a president. Add to that congressional investigations and a public vision of Clinton as a Nixonian figure wandering the halls, ringing her hands.”
A week from today we choose the leader of the free world. Both candidates are flawed people. But one is a change-agent with a great VP. The other is a pathological liar with a weak running mate.
Choose wisely, America.
We can’t afford another Nixon.
I agree with your assessment of Hillary. But I still can't come around to your position on Trump. From my point of view, he is no more honest than Hillary, except that when he says crazy stuff that is obviously impossible or untrue, he actually seems to believe it, so maybe technically that isn't lying.
I think either of the two in office will be a national disaster similar to what you described, and I can't in good conscience vote for either of them.