Okay, I can kind of see the irony, since the guy was one of the main factors bringing down Nixon.
Now, on a related subject, as far as the American public turning against Pres. Nixon, was RN tone deaf in certain important ways?
Sorry I never responded to this...
Nixon
severely underestimated the scandal during the time period that it would have been easy to deal with-the seriousness of the scandal and the details, what the media would do about it(remember, the press treated the Presidents with kid gloves before the Nixon era compared to after), how Vietnam had eroded the trust of the people, what his subordinates were doing in regards to the problem, and how much trouble he was in-until Watergate was clearly about to blow in April of 1973, and probably figured it would just go the way of most Beltway scandals prior to that time. By the time his "survival instincts" surfaced, it was too late for them to come in handy for dealing with the problem the old fashioned way-it was too big by then. He wasn't alone in this. Lyndon Johnson-the
king of domestic political instinct, and someone who knew a little something about coverups, wiretapping, and "dirty tricks" himself thought so as well. In talking to Billy Graham during the summer of 1972, when asked about Watergate he just grinned and said "Hell, that's not going to hurt him one bit".
A diversion. Most of the "old school" politicians probably would have thought of prosecuting wiretapping and Nixon's resignation over his offenses COMPLETELY ASB in June 1972. Even the most partisan of his enemies in the media and in Congress could not have imagined the opportunities they would get, and would have never dreamed they could get to impeachment... like I've said, after a certain point, Watergate was beyond the control of anybody (and this is part of why I think the Ford pardon was one of the best decisions in history). Wiretaps and IRS audits, the tools of the old timers, were of declining use against the new forces in play, and Nixon didn't want to accept, or was socially incompetent enough not to get that this was changing. J. Edgar Hoover had gotten it a few years before most of Washington "discovered" it when Watergate came along. Hoover had accepted it, and that's why Nixon made the Plumbers-they did what Hoover used to do, once Nixon had lost faith in the FBI. This is why Nixon was (at first, looking back on it during/after Watergate, he might have regretted that Hoover wasn't around to help him) so psyched about Hoover dying, as any of his predecessors would have been-it meant that the FBI could now be under his control. Felt, a Hoover/FBI loyalist, did NOT LIKE that.
Anyway, Hoover still did a spot of wiretapping at Nixon's behest-the "victims" were different from popular imagination. Guys like Henry Kissinger, the Joint Chiefs of Staff at the Pentagon, Larry O'Brien, and Teddy Kennedy (all of whom were doing their own tapping) were more frequent targets than Abbie Hoffman and "the kids". It was an inter-establishment mud fight, no matter how much certain figures like to flatter themselves about being oppressed by Tricky Dick-and did other "standard" things like COINTELPRO, but he wouldn't do the black body "jobs" anymore (this was the man who sent a phone call urging MLK to commit suicide, remember?). Times had changed. Hoover thought that Nixon, in his insecurity, wasn't
getting it, and he wasn't. As we saw later on OTL, there were plenty of new tools to use in politics after the 70s-it wasn't less "corrupt", it was just different. Nixon wouldn't adapt.
Watergate changed things. Big time. It was the culmination, the focal point, of the radical social change that had taken place in the US over the past ten years. Impeachment became a goal for the opposing party. No Watergate-like event means Iran-Contra would have never blown up. Monica would be a punchline of backroom jokes in DC, but not the subject of an impeachment trial. And without the media starting to think of themselves as crusaders and the polarization that results from that, I think Bush II and Obama would not be basically compared to Nazis constantly by the opposing side. I mean, I disagree with both men A LOT, but never once did I think that Bush II liked killing people for the sake of it, or that Obama secretly wants the US to fail, as you would pick up if you read/watch certain places all the time. (Mind you, if we want to be moralistic about it, impeachment doesn't happen nearly enough. Most modern Presidents have committed impeachable offenses or stuff that, while not necessarily impeachable, would look awful and is "shady". Including some I rather like and admire.)
Ending diversion.
Anyway, he probably thought that if it hadn't gone away, his second term plans would make it so. As he said in his memoirs-which need to be taken with a grain of salt, of course- "For the first time, I began to realize the dimensions of the problem we faced with Congress and the media. Vietnam had found its successor with the media".
And even around April, while he knew he was in serious trouble, he was expecting "a rough couple of months" when talking to Kissinger, not impeachment. The tapes from May 1973, when he is talking to Reagan and Rockefeller about this, are interesting. Rockefeller compared the mess to Attica. So, I think it was fair to say that he thought that the American people were just going to get outraged over this, then forget about it. He probably underestimated how disgusted the people were.
In his own account, Nixon said it was in October during the Yom Kippur crisis when the press accused him of calling a DEFCON III nuclear alert as a way to deal with Watergate (nuclear war is a very interesting way of distracting people from a coverup of a petty burglary), in conjunction with the reaction from the Saturday Night Massacre, that he realized how deeply Watergate was effecting the people. He only resigned the Presidency when it was clear he had no chance in hell of keeping it, and there was nowhere to run. He also definitely seems to be VERY cynical and occasionally patronizing about "the average voter" and humanity in general in later clips after the Presidency. I think tone deaf is an excellent way to describe it.
