From a World Can’t Wait organizer:
“The long national nightmare is over.” Gerald Ford
said when he was sworn in as president after Richard Nixon resigned as
president.
What is the content of “nightmare” and nightmare
for whom? It was a nightmare for those
on top because things were not going well for them in a big way. The Vietnamese were militarily defeating the
supposedly almighty U.S.
military. The soldiers in the U.S. military
were righteously rebelling and increasingly refusing to fight as some
consciously began making common cause with the Vietnamese people. College students were fighting the war with
increasing intensity. In May 1970 when,
in a major escalation of the Vietnam war, Nixon ordered the invasion of Cambodia,
virtually every college campus in the country went out on strike. This is when Ohio National Guardsmen killed
four students at Kent State University
and Mississippi State Police killed two students at Jackson State
University. Black people were increasingly going over
from a civil rights struggle to a Black liberation struggle with the Black
Panther Party lending a revolutionary edge to it. Chicanos marched against the war in the
famous Chicano Moratorium in 1970. Women
were rising up with a victory of abortion becoming legal in 1973. All these different strands of rebellion were
interpenetrating politically and joining forces organizationally in some ways.
The rulers at the top were debating among themselves and
arguing openly in media over how to handle all this. Society was becoming more and more polarized
in a favorable way for the people and in an unfavorable way for the
rulers. Millions had lost faith in the
normal political processes, including in the office of the presidency. They were expressing their sentiments and
demands in the streets in many different ways and on many different levels. This is what was setting terms in
society. The atmosphere among the people
was “Of course it is the people who should set the terms.” All this was producing a very polarized
situation-one that was favorable for the people. Right wing forces in society and among the
rulers were pushed back.
A popular slogan of the time was “Be Realistic. Demand
the Impossible.” And people acted
to make the seemingly impossible come to pass.
All the different factors, including the arguments among the rulers, had
created a situation in which the people acting could do the seeming impossible
and determine which way history turned.
Many had a conscious understanding of that. Millions more were motivated by a sense of
all this is immoral, it has gone too far and we have to make justice
happen. This applied to everything from
the war to the oppression of Black people, women and more.
The Democratic Party did not escape this. Though most of the rank and file members of
the Democratic Party were against the war, it was also becoming increasingly
clear that the war would not be brought to an end by relying on them. One of the most famous and intense incidents
of the time was a couple days demonstration in Chicago in 1968 at the Democratic Party’s
national convention. The Chicago police attacked as
the chant “The whole world is watching” went out over the airwaves.
Nixon had become the most widely hated president in U.S. history up to that time, by both the people
in the U.S.
and around the world. Many saw him as a
war criminal because of the Vietnam war (torturing prisoners, massacres of
civilians such as at the village of My Lai, B-52 carpet bombing that aimed at
civilians, bombing dikes to drown civilians and make food growing impossible,
use of chemical defoliants (Agent Orange) on a massive scale that poisoned water
supplies and led to deformed babies) and a criminal who had ordered the
Watergate break-in and orchestrated the cover-up. (Watergate was the name of an apartment
complex where the Democratic Party headquarters was located. The White House sent what became known as a
“plumbers” crew” to place bugs for sound for the use of Nixon and the
Republican Party. These burglars were
caught. Nixon and his White House staff began
a cover-up that unraveled due to tapes that Nixon had set up in the White House
to record his discussions with aides.).
The Chicago Tribune described this entire situation, with
the looming impeachment of Nixon, as “a major constitutional crisis [that]
had nearly torn it [the nation] apart.”
Listen to how Ford himself recalled what it had been like to take office
as Nixon’s heir:
“It was an hour in our history that troubled our minds and
tore at our hearts,” he said. “Anger and
hatred had risen to dangerous levels, dividing friends and families. The polarization of our political order had
aroused unworthy passions of reprisal and revenge. Our governmental system was closer to
stalemate than at any time since Abraham Lincoln took that same oath of office.” (New York Times, A31, Dec 28, 2006)
This is the political situation that led Henry Kissinger
(Nixon’s National Security Advisor and Secretary of State) to remark that they
felt in the White House like they were “under siege” from all the
mass protests and that a radical minority had seized the initiative and was
exerting an influence on society disproportionate to their numbers.
This is what was going on in Vietnam,
in the streets of the U.S.
and the world and in the halls of power in the U.S. that gave the impetus to the
House of Representatives to draw up articles of impeachment against Richard
Nixon. This is what led Elizabeth
Holtzman to say recently about impeachment of Bush today that the impetus for
impeachment will never come from within Congress.
This was the overall political situation in which the debate
among the powerful began to come to a conclusion that they must get rid of
Nixon to prevent things from spiraling further out of their control from Vietnam to the streets of the cities of the U.S. They knew that Vice President Spiro Agnew
would not be an acceptable replacement for Nixon because he was seen as the
same as Nixon and had been publicly defending him.
Magically Agnew stepped down after pleading no contest to a
charge of income tax evasion after receiving illegal payments. Gerald Ford became vice-president in Oct
1973.
This is the political situation which led Barry Goldwater
and other Republican Party leaders to go to the White House and urge Richard Nixon
to resign before the impeachment trial began.
He resigned
1974
The newspapers are describing this as a “tragic
moment”. For the people of the world it
was a joyous moment. People from Vietnam to the U.S. had a sense they contributed
to forcing a hated war criminal to resign.
For those concerned with the “line of succession”, look at
that history. If those at the top don’t
want the next in line to be the next in line, magical things can be made to
happen. Cheney would be seen as more
unacceptable as the next president than Spiro Agnew was.
Do you think if the Republican Party leadership and other
powers-that-be wanted to ease out Dick Cheney, it would be hard to find an
excuse? Can anyone say Halliburton and
contracts for Iraq
reconstruction?
For those afraid of social upheaval, consider what is being
done in our name from the continuation of torture and legalizing it and
throwing out habeas corpus to 655,000 Iraqi civilians killed to moves to deny
women abortion and birth control to continuing policies that accelerate global
warming. The list goes on and on.
Why should we fear upheaval?
History has shown time and time again that major changes come only from
massive societal upheaval. And if we
fail to act decisively to stop the Bush regime program because of fear of upheaval,
then we fast become complicit in the crimes.
If war crimes, torture and crimes against humanity are not
reason to impeach, what is? Drive out
the Bush Regime!