Washington's Long, Hot Summer, 1974 and 2024
Neither Richard Nixon nor Joe Biden made it to Labor Day
This Friday marks the 50th anniversary of the resignation of Richard Nixon as president. The evening before, August 8, 1974, Nixon went on national television to announce his decision to step down. I was on a camping trip in Canada with my parents, and I remember listening on the staticky radio to Nixon’s speech. I don’t remember their reaction, other than that everyone was very quiet.
For a year, Washington, D.C., had become the center of the greatest political drama in modern American history. While Americans across the country avidly followed the unprecedented events, Washingtonians were obsessed, given the extraordinary scenes playing out in their city. Not a small part of that had to do with the role of the hometown newspaper, The Washington Post. The Post had already tangled with Nixon, over the publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971, a case that had gone to the Supreme Court and inaugurated a war in the Nixon White House against the paper. Now, the paper became a national player with its relentless coverage of Watergate, moving from Metro section news to front page headlines, and eventually including high-level leaks from mysterious sources like “Deep Throat,” later revealed to be FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt.
(Image from The Washington Post.)
During much of the year prior to Nixon’s resignation, from May through November of 1973, the Watergate hearings held the nation and world spellbound, but they particularly transfixed Washington, where the war played out. Most foreigners could not understand the Americans attempting to remove a president for political dirty tricks that were run-of-the-mill, in their eyes. But Americans watched avidly as Sen. Sam Ervin dispensed his folksy wisdom, Sen. Howard Baker acted as conscience of the Republican Party, John Dean talked about a “cancer” on the presidency, aide Alexander Butterfield shockingly revealed the existence of the White House taping system, and a parade of other “Plumbers,” presidential loyalists, enemies of Nixon, and the like all made their way to the long green felt covered tables.
(Senate Watergate hearings, July 27, 1973; Sen. Sam Ervin (D-NC) in middle, Sen. Howard Baker (R-TN) at left; image from Time magazine.)
Then, during the hot summer of 1974, came the final acts, with Nixon battling not only his own Justice Department and Congress, but also the Supreme Court. All branches of the U.S. Government were swept up in Watergate. That last week of July, summertime Washington was steamy with both humidity and almost unbearable political tension. On July 24, a unanimous Court ruled that Nixon must turn over his White House tapes, rejecting his claim of executive privilege. At almost the same time the House Judiciary Committee held its first impeachment hearings.
The Judiciary Committee voted out three articles of impeachment against Nixon on July 30. Just a week later, on August 5, accepting the Supreme Court’s decision, Nixon released what became known as the “smoking gun” tape, a conversation he had held with then-Chief of Staff H.R. Haldeman in June 1972, seeming to approve a cover-up just days after the Watergate burglary and arrest of the five operatives hired by the Committee to Re-Elect the President. Three days after release of the smoking gun tape, Nixon told the nation he was resigning.
(Image from The New Yorker)
Washington was never the same after Watergate. Coming on the heels of years of deception over Vietnam, trust in the federal government declined permanently. Partisanship and politicization suffused Washington and the deference once paid to presidents, even up through LBJ’s administration, was stripped away. The media fully embraced its role as adversary of all politicians some of the time and some politicians all of the time, and the image of superstar reporters taking down a president became embedded in American culture with the publication of All the President’s Men and subsequent movie.
Most damaging was the pervasive cynicism about government that infected all Americans, but especially those in Washington. An entire generation came of age believing only the worst about its own leaders and that national politics was nothing more than a blood sport, and they shaped popular culture, media, and education accordingly. Every future political scandal would have a “-gate” attached to it, while congressional hearings on everything from executive malfeasance to Supreme Court nominations would become modern day equivalents of gladiatorial combat in the Colosseum.
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Exactly half a century later, summertime Washington was similarly transfixed by the political machinations to bring down a president. Unlike in Watergate, where questions of illegal actions and obstruction of justice drove events, in 2024, it was simply bare-knuckled politics playing out. Also unlike Watergate, everything important was happening behind closed doors, the actual course of events unknown to a public suddenly swept up in a political firestorm that was only imperfectly reflected on social media and cable TV, and in the newspapers.
Through the few weeks between Joe Biden’s disastrous June 27 debate with Donald Trump and his July 21 announcement that he was dropping out of the presidential race, a fever pitch of rumor swirled around the Capital. Longstanding claims that Biden remained mentally and physically able to serve four more years as president evaporated, and both the press and his party quickly turned against him. The unprecedented campaign to force out a sitting president from his re-election campaign, even after he had decisively won the primaries, was a drama that in its own way rivaled Watergate.
As I wrote in Real Clear Politics, it was political theater of the highest kind, a domestic thriller that even Henry Adams, in his novel Democracy, or Allen Drury, author of Advise and Consent, could not have imagined. And just what pressure was put on the president by members of his own party, including former president Obama, remains unknown, but easily imagined by those who have spent time parsing the political tea leaves of Washington, D.C., like Cold War-era Kremlinologists. The humiliation of Joe Biden was possibly as great as that of Richard Nixon, maybe even more so, for he had committed no crime, other than to hang on too long, abetted by a party that cut him adrift as soon as he threatened to lose it the White House and even the Congress.
In my Real Clear Politics article, I delve a bit more into the history of the summers of 1974 and 2024, comparing the tragedies of Joe Biden and Richard Nixon. Please do read it, if you’re interested.