Nixonian Palace Guard Now Protects Hillary
5th June 2016
Jonathan Turley points out the parallels.
It has taken almost 50 years, but the Democrats have finally found their inner Nixon. Make no mistake about it: Hillary Clinton is the most Nixonian figure in the post-Watergate period. Indeed, Democrats appear to have reached the type of moral compromise that Nixon waited, unsuccessfully, for Republicans to accept: Some 71% of Democrats want Clinton to run even if indicted.
Bill Clinton was a more successful Nixon than Nixon ever tried to be, because Nixon was a product of an earlier time and had some shame, whereas Bill Clinton never did.
While Obama could be criticized for embracing Nixon’s imperial presidency model, his personality could not be more different from his predecessor. Clinton however is the whole Nixonian package. On a policy level, her predilection for using executive and military power is even coupled with praise for (and from) Nixon’s secretary of State, Henry Kissinger. However, it is on a personality level that the comparison is so striking and so unnerving. Clinton, like Nixon, is known to be both secretive and evasive. She seems to have a compulsive resistance to simply acknowledging conflicting facts or changes in position. She only makes admissions against interest when there is no alternative to acknowledging the truth in a controversy.
Hillary is trying to be a cheap copy of Bill and will end up being merely a cheap copy of Nixon, taking the present Democrat party down with her.
It is certainly true that Washington’s powerful have always attracted a circle of sycophants. Indeed, the most powerful figures often seem to need continual stroking from underlings and there can be a race to the bottom as aides outdo each other in their adoring rhetoric.
Whenever I see a ‘James Bond Supervillain’ in a movie, I always wonder where they find the untold millions of loyal minions by which they are invariably supported. The answer is: They are all around you.