And not the son, George W. Bush, Jr. -- "Dubya" -- despite a presidency that suspended habeus corpus, established Gitmo, condoned torture, and which used the deadliest attack on the United States since Pearl Harbor as a pretext for the lies that have drawn America into a Mid-East "Mother of Perpetual Wars."
Nixon's the one?
But what about "The Crook?" It's perhaps logical to presume that most people would choose Richard Nixon, who's synonymous with Watergate, dirty tricks, enemy lists and a vice-president -- Spiro Agnew -- whose value to Nixon stemmed largely from the president's view of Agnew as "assassination insurance." Is Nixon the one?
Same answer.
Nyet!
Why? For openers, even during the Watergate scandal,Nixon's trump-like "madman" persona held enough traces of level-headed guilt-consciousness to enable "Tricky Dick" to do the right thing and resign when the time came. Of course, that decision didn't come easy. As legend has it, Nixon spent many nights during his final days as president inebriated and roaming the White House halls.
Despite this, Nixon nevertheless retained the cognitive wherewithal to resign when it became necessary to do so. And while that tiny bit of sober pragmatism enabled him avoid impeachment and perhaps even criminal prosecution, it also allowed Nixon to preserve a few bits and pieces of his own personal dignity, as well as that of the American presidency itself.
But putting all that aside, the most palpable distinction between the corrupt enterprises of Nixon and trump is that Nixon ran a domestic operation in which no evidence (or even accusations) of help from any foreign adversaries was reported or alleged. Nixon's thuggish misuse of the presidency involved no potentially treasonous relationship established for mutual benefit between himself and the Soviet Union's strongman at the time, Leonid Brezhnev.
The Danger
As to whether trump and Vladimir Putin's Russia have been involved in any such conspiracy remains an open question until Robert Mueller releases his report. In the meantime, as the plot thickens, the clock's ticking on the fate of the American Presidency particularly in light of recent widespread reports about trump's mental and emotional stability.
During Watergate, America gained some comfort in knowing that Nixon allowed a certain degree of rationality to share space with his evident paranoia. Just enough in fact, to help Nixon make the appropriate decision to resign.
The danger today, however, is that trump's level of paranoia, mental and emotional instability seems far more inflamed. This makes a rational response by trump to any adverse outcome of the Mueller investigation highly unlikely.
Today, America no longer has a boozed-up president who staggers through White House hallways in a drunken stupor. But we do have one who sits alone in his bedroom manic- Tweeting while under the influence of a self-made concoction of paranoia, insecurity, megalomania, mendacity, and narcissism. And for trump, that's been a thoroughly debilitating cocktail. Certainly, powerful enough to raise concern among mental health specialists about his capacity to even comprehend how his unscrupulous behavior has helped to delegitimize not only his presidency, but The American Presidency as well.
The Stand
We've all known since junior high civics class that the rule for respecting the Presidency is to stand and applaud when the he or she enters a room -- regardless of political or philosophical differences. It's an entrenched part of America's "love-of-country" cultural mindset. "You don't stand for the president; you stand for the presidency," was the lesson.
Of late, however, that love-of-country ethos has grown a bit more complicated. These days, showing love for the presidency has become a formidable, if not insurmountable challenge. And for obvious reasons.
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