This Is Not How A Presidency Ends

When Frank Rich was at the New York Times he was the best columnist in America. Now that he is at New York magazine, he is the best long form essayist in America. He is a superior writer whose gifts extend to placing contemporary political events into historical context and he writes with precision and insight that is rare among his peers. His cover story for New York entitled “How A Presidency Ends” is certainly eye-catching, but his thesis, which is that Trump’s disregard for basic political norms and the rule of law will create a critical mass so great Republicans in Congress will eventually toss their leader overboard in order to secure their own political survival, is unrealistic.

Rich connects many dots between Nixon and Trump’s behavior. It is entirely possible that like Nixon, Trump will be undone by a cover-up (firing Jim Comey to snuff out the FBI’s investigation into Russia and potential ties to the Trump campaign) and not a crime. And there is a lot of smoke around Trump’s actions toward Comey, no more damning than the fact that two of the meetings Trump held with Comey look suspicious — the first was held the day after Acting Attorney General Sally Yates advised White House Counsel Don McGahn that Michael Flynn had been compromised and the second took place the day after Flynn resigned as National Security Adviser. In the former meeting, Trump supposedly asked for Comey’s loyalty and in the latter, that he drop the investigation into Flynn. 

But that is public record and while a few Republicans harrumphed over the timing of Comey’s dismissal, none suggested this rose to an impeachable offense. And short of evidence being produced showing Trump directing or being involved in Russia’s hacking of the DNC and Clinton Chairman John Podesta’s email accounts (a la Nixon’s recorded direction to cover-up Watergate) there is no chance a majority of Republicans in the House, much less two-thirds of Senators would remove Trump from office. 

But there is a larger divergence between Nixon and Trump that eludes Rich’s usually scrupulous eye. Trump’s crude attacks on the press are an uglier version of Agnew’s “nattering nabobs of negativity,” and the amen corner both he and Nixon preached to has an ingrained suspicion of and disdain for east coast elites at the New York Times and Washington Post. But unlike Nixon’s time, when right wing media was still in its embryonic phase, Trump is buttressed by a legion of genefluctors from Fox News to online Reddit trolls who protect him. 

He and his communications team have effectively neutered the White House press corps by limiting on-air press briefings, seeding the press room with more right wing voices, and keeping their boss away from anyone but sympathetic journalists in the Fox News-iverse for interviews. Trump has only conducted one solo press conference since being inaugurated and shows no signs of caring that he is stiff arming the press. When he needs to get his message out, he can always pick up the phone and call one of his preferred reporters (Bob Costa or Maggie Haberman) who will dutifully act as stenographer and put his words and thoughts on the front page of their respective papers. 

The spread of right wing media outlets also serves to discredit so-called mainstream media outlets who do themselves no favors when they have to retract salacious stories (as CNN did recently) and inoculate Trump among the faithful by throwing out red herrings like pointing out that lawyers working with Special Counsel Robert Mueller have made political donations to Democrats. They also serve to solidify antipathy toward the same elites Nixon railed against and rile up the base so they do not rest on their laurels, as Democrats did in both 2010 and 2014. 

This accrues to the benefit of Republicans on Capitol Hill. Not only is the party more conservative (and largely purged whatever moderates it once had), but state legislatures effectively gerrymandered Congressional districts in 2010 to such an extreme that in 2012, Democratic candidates in the House of Representatives won 1.2 million more overall votes than their Republican opponents yet that only translated into an eight vote swing, well short of what was needed to put Nancy Pelosi back in the Speaker’s chair. In 2016, Hillary Clinton bested Donald Trump by more than 3 million votes but House Democrats only picked up six seats. 

And while it is true that there are twenty or so congressional districts that elected a House Republican while going for Hillary Clinton, voters have yet to reach a tipping point where Republican candidates have to fear being associated with Trump. Further, the 2018 Senate map is challenging for Democrats, who will probably lose a few of their 48 member caucus because unlike the apathy shown by Democrats in recent off-year elections, the few races held this year suggest Republican enthusiasm is close enough to the Democrats to protect their turf. 

And there is one other thing progressives and liberals need to be wary of. Just as right wing media has hustled conservatives with fevered dreams of faked birth certificates and nefarious dealings in backwoods Arkansas, progressives need to be attuned to, and temper, expectations that Trump’s departure from the White House will be forced. Hashtag 25th-the-45th all you want, the similarities between Watergate and whatever is going on with Trump only stretch so far. And this is not to suggest Rich is a charlatan — far from it; however, the reality is that today’s GOP is a far cry from its 1974 iteration. For all the hand wringing about Trump’s tweets, his attacks on the media, and general disdain for political norms and the rule of law, these are precisely the things his most ardent supporters like about him and unless and until Republican voters indicate they will punish their Congressional representatives for it, Trump is not going anywhere.

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