THE EvoLVING AMERICAN PRESIDENCY SERIES

Series Foreword:

The American presidency touches virtually every aspect of American and world politics. And the presidency has become, for better or worse, the vital center of the American and global political systems. The framers of the American government would be dismayed at such a result. As invented at the Philadelphia Constitutional Convention in 1787, the presidency was to have been a part of the government with shared and overlapping powers, embedded within a separation-of-powers system. If there was a vital center, it was the Congress; the presidency was to be a part, but by no means, the centerpiece of that system.

Over time, the presidency has evolved and grown in power, expectations, responsibilities, and authority. Wars, crises, depressions, industrialization, all served to add to the power of the presidency. And as the United States grew into a world power, presidential power also grew. As the United States became the world's leading superpower, the presidency rose in prominence and power, not only in the United States, but on the world stage as well.

It is the clash between the presidency as created and the presidency as it has developed that inspired this series. And it is the importance and power of the modern American presidency that makes understanding the office so vital. Like it or not, the American presidency stands at the vortex of power both within the United States and across the globe.

This Palgrave series recognizes that the presidency is and has been an evolving institution, going from the original constitutional design as a chief clerk, to today where the president is the center of the American political constellation. This has caused several key dilemmas in our political system, not the least of which is that presidents face high expectations with limited constitutional resources. This causes presidents to find extraconstitutional means of governing. Thus, presidents must find ways to bridge the expectations/power gap while operating within the confines of a separation-of-powers system designed to limit presidential authority. How presidents resolve these challenges and paradoxes is the central issue in mod­ern governance. It is also the central theme of this book series.

Michael A. Genovese Loyola Chair of Leadership

Loyola Mary mount University Palgrave's The Evolving American Presidency, Series Editor

The Second Term of George W. Bush edited by Robert Maranto, Douglas M. Brattebo, and Tom Lansford

The Presidency and the Challenge of Democracy edited by Michael A. Genovese and Lori Cox Han

Religion and the American Presidency edited by Mark]. Rozell and Gleaves Whitney

Religion and the Bush Presidency edited by Mark J. Rozell and Gleaves Whitney

Test by Fire: The War Presidency of George W. Bush by Robert Swansbrough

American Royalty: The Bush and Clinton Families and the Danger to the American Presidency

by Matthew T. Corrigan

Accidental Presidents: Death, Assassination, Resignation, and Democratic Succession by Philip Abbott

Presidential Power in Action: Implementing Supreme Court Detainee Decisions by Darren A. Wheeler

President George W. Bush's Influence over Bureaucracy and Policy: Extraordinary Times, Extraordinary Powers

edited by Colin Provost and Paul Teske

Assessing George W. Bush's Legacy: The Right Man? edited by Iwan W. Morgan and Philip John Davies

Acting Presidents: 100 Years of Plays about the Presidency by Bruce E. Altschuler

America Responds to Terrorism: Conflict Resolution Strategies of Clinton, Bush, and Obama

by Karen A. Feste

Presidents in the Movies: American History and Politics on Screen edited by I wan W. Morgan

Watergate Remembered: The Legacy for American Politics edited by Michael A. Genovese and I wan W. Morgan

Watergate Remembered

The Legacy for American Politics

Edited by Michael A. Genovese and Iwan W. Morgan

pal grave macmillan

* WATERGATE REMEMBERED

Copyright© Michael A. Genovese and lwan W. Morgan, 2012. Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition 2012 978-0-230-11649-8

All rights reserved.

First published in 2012 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States-a division of St. Martin's Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010.

Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS.

Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world.

Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries.

ISBN 978-0-230-11650-4 ISBN 978-1-137-01198-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9781137011985

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Watergate remembered :the legacy for American politics I edited by Michael A. Genovese and lwan W. Morgan.

p. cm.-(The evolving American presidency series) 1. Watergate Affair, 1972-197 4. 2. United States-Politics and

government-1969-1974.1. Genovese, Michael A. II. Morgan, lwan W.

E860.W38 2012 973.924-dc23

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British library.

Design by Newgen Imaging Systems (P) ltd., Chennai, India.

First edition: january 2012

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2011024984

To Gabriela, an angel and a saint Michael

To Theresa-for putting up with me since the Watergate summer of 1974

I wan

Contents

List of Figures and Tables IX

Preface XI

One Introduction: Remembering Watergate 1 Michael A. Genovese and Iwan W. Morgan

Two Revisiting Arthur Schlesinger's The Imperial Presidency: Richard Nixon, George W. Bush, and Executive Power 29 jon Herbert

Three Watergate and the Decline of the Separation of Powers 53 Nancy Kassop

Four Watergate and Scandal Politics: The Rise and Fall of the Special Prosecutor 69 Clodagh Harrington

Five Vietnam, Watergate, and the War Power: Presidential Aggrandizement and Congressional Abdication 87 David Gray Adler and Michael A. Genovese

Six Richard Nixon, Reputation, and Watergate 107 Iwan W. Morgan

Seven The Ripple Effect of Scandal and Reform: The Historical Impact of Watergate-Era Campaign Finance Regulation and Its Progeny 127 Victoria A. Farrar-Myers

Eight Nixon, Watergate, and the Attempt to Sway Public Opinion 147 Todd Belt

Nine The Cinematic Watergate: From All the President's Men to Frost/Nixon 169 Kingsley Marshall

V111

Ten

Contents

The Long Legacy of Watergate Michael A. Genovese

Note on Contributors

Index

183

197

201

Figures and Tables

Figures

7.1 Mean House and Senate candidate expenditures in actual and inflation-adjusted dollars, 1974-2010 136

7.2 PAC Contributions and outside group spending in Congressional Elections, 1990-2010 137

7.3 Top presidential candidates' percentage of primary campaign funds from public financing, 1996-2008 138

8.1 Richard Nixon job approval over time 151

8.2 Public opinion: Nixon complicity, impeachment and resignation 157

Tables 8.1 Richard Nixon's Speeches and News Conferences 148

8.2 Presidential News Conferences 161

10.1 Total Spending in Presidential Elections by Democratic and Republican Candidates 187

10.2 Tracing the Impact of Nixon on Subsequent Presidential Politics 188

Preface

This is a book about one of the defining episodes of modern American history and its continuing relevance for the early twenty-first century. Watergate was the political scandal cum constitutional crisis that led to the resignation of a president, vice-president, several cabinet members, numer­ous top White House staffers, and jail time for more than a dozen top gov­ernment officials. It rocked the United States in the first half of the 1970s and still affects the nation to this day. Watergate has not been consigned to the history pages. In fact, it continues to infect America's body politic some 40 years on from the misdemeanors of the Nixon administration.

What was Watergate and why (and how) did it have such a profound impact on contemporary politics? These are the two questions we have attempted to answer in this book. To do that, we asked noted scholars in the United States and the United Kingdom to lend their considerable expertise to this project. Why, one might ask, involve scholars in both the United States and the United Kingdom? It is our belief that while "insid­ers" have a story to tell, "outsiders" can often see others more clearly than we see ourselves. In bringing different lenses to the study of the long-term impact of the Watergate crisis, we can gain fresh perspectives, different intellectual angles, and new understandings of the impact of Watergate on the American polity.

In their introduction Michael Genovese and Iwan Morgan examine what Watergate represented then and now with regard to the danger of presidential power exceeding its constitutional limits. They seek to explain why Watergate was only in part a White House cover-up of a botched bur­glary, but more significantly resulted from the expansion and ultimately abuse of presidential power. To this end, they link it to the growth of execu­tive power that resulted from America's involvement in the Cold War and culminated in the Vietnam conflict. In the specific case of the Nixon presi­dency, they review its illegal actions, ranging from political surveillance and harassment of critics to the subversion of a presidential election, in the name of what it considered the national interest and its consequent obstruc­tion of justice as its wrongdoing came under investigation.

In the following chapter Jon Herbert analyses Arthur Schlesinger's exam­ination of the rise of presidential power in The Imperial Presidency. One of the most important books ever written on the presidency, its title has remained a part of the political lexicon since publication in 1973. Herbert considers how Schlesinger explained the Nixon presidency's misdemeanors in relation to the inexorable rise of presidential power in the Cold War. He

Xll Preface

then examines how applicable Schlesinger's thesis is to the emergence of a new imperial presidency under George W. Bush and finds disturbing paral­lels with the Nixon version.

Nancy Kassop next examines the impact of Nixon's Watergate-related aggrandizement of presidential power on the relations between the presi­dency and Congress from the 1970s to the present. While not attribut­ing all the blame for the deterioration of the checks and balances system on Watergate, she demonstrates just how powerfully it contributed to the decline of civility and comity among the two branches.

Clodagh Harrington's chapter considers the rise and fall of a Watergate hero, the special prosecutor. The holders of this office had critical signifi­cance in the investigation of the Nixon White House's wrongdoings, but the post-Watergate effort to institutionalize it through enactment of ethics legislation had disappointing results. Later special prosecutors lost their heroic allure in part because their investigations were judged through the Watergate metaphor in which evidence of presidential guilt was incontro­vertible and in part because presidents learned from Nixon's errors in their dealings with the office.

David Gray Adler and Michael Genovese then consider the impact of the Nixon presidency on the distribution of War Powers between the execu­tive and legislature. The war in Vietnam, which began long before Nixon took office, put deep strains on presidential-congressional relations, lead­ing eventually to the passage of the War Powers Act in 1974, over a Nixon veto. And yet, this effort to curb independent presidential war-making has failed to limit executives who routinely act as if, and claim that, they do not need congressional authority to engage the United States in war.

lwan Morgan's chapter examines Richard Nixon's campaign to resurrect his reputation in the last 20 years of his life and its continuation by others since his death in 1994. It considers how Nixon became his own historian in his effort to rewrite the past and explains why he could never wholly escape the obloquy of Watergate. It then reviews efforts by Nixon loyalists and others to downplay his role in Watergate, culminating in the dispute over how this was represented in the new Richard Nixon Presidential Library and Birthplace that became part of the National Archives and Records Administration in 2007.

Victoria Farrar-Myers then examines the role of money in American electoral politics. The Nixon White House's massive and often illegal fund­raising to pay for the president's 1972 reelection campaign prompted a host of campaign finance reforms. Farrar-Myers assesses the effectiveness of Watergate-era and later measures to regulate electoral contributions in the interests of ethical practice.

In his chapter, Todd Belt examines President Nixon's effort to manip­ulate public opinion during the Watergate scandal, and his going public strategy during crisis. Belt then examines which lessons Nixon's successors drew from him in their efforts to manage or manipulate public opinion.

Preface X111

Kingsley Marshall reviews the representation of Watergate in movies from All the President's Men (1976) to Frost/Nixon (2008). While acknowl­edging the potential significance of film in the remembrance and under­standing of it, he finds that the cinema has fallen far short on this score. The need to entertain, the emphasis on individuals rather than institutions, and the imperatives of dramatization have all combined to keep Watergate movies one-dimensional in their exploration of this critical episode.

In the final chapter Michael Genovese looks at the big picture and asks just how much can we, should we, blame Richard M. Nixon for the events that followed his presidency. While there is much blame to go around, Genovese sees Watergate as opening a door to divisiveness and rancorous politics that has had largely a negative impact on U.S. politics to this day.

We wish to thank many people on both sides of the Atlantic. Our editors at Palgrave Macmillan, Samantha Hasey and Robin Curtis, were kind and professional throughout the process. Olga Jimenez organized the events at the University of London's Institute for the Study of the Americas, which were the genesis for this project, with her customary efficiency. Finally Brian Whitaker, Administrative assistant at the Loyola Marymount University, Institute for Leadership Studies helped put the manuscript together and typists Matt Candau, and Rebecca Hartley did a great job on the manu­script. Our deepest thanks to all of you.