EDITORIAL
91 03 nixon bows out The American ruling class and its formidable public relations apparatus ore pulling out all the stops in their efforts to spin a web of mystification around the resignation of Richard Nixon. This is not altogether inappropriate. If Nixon had any particular distinction, it was that his lies were more crude and his methods of operation more gross than most of his predecessors and contemporaries. So there is some justice in the end of his reign being marked by a massive wave of lie-telling, mythspreading, and insincerity. A good part of the storm of inanities centers on the personality of Gerald Ford, whose intellectual capacities, remarkably, seem inferior to those of his predecessor. The U.S. capitalist press is doing its best to see to it that every citizen of the land of the free is properly educated about such crucial matters as Ford's achievements on the college football field, what he eats for breakfost, and how much he loves his wife and children. But if one digs through the garbage, one comes upon the rafional hoart of the irrotional shell of the nut being served up by the rulers of America. The masses are being told to draw three great lessons from the demise of Tricky Dick. First, that the fall of Nixon proves that the "system" of "American democracy" works after all, that while it may be true that vast powers are vested in the Americon president, the system itself provides for what have now been shown to be effective measures for removing a president who has overstepped those powers. This allegedly provides evidence of the system's great vitality. The second myth, one that is related to the first and is a generalization of it, is that the removal of Nixon, that is, the "exercise" of the "system, " has resulted in an important step being taken toward arresting the development of the American version of the "strong state"; the all-powerful executive leader who operates outside the control of the Congress. Nixon's downfall, this myth claims, will initiate a period in American politics during which the power of the legislative body will expand at the expense of the executive. This is portrayed as representing an increase in democracy. since the Congress, having more members and being subject to more frequent elections, is held to be more responsive to the popular will than the president is. The third myth, a derivative of the first two, is that Gerald Ford has a historic opportunity to restore the credibility and confidence of the American population in "their" government. According to this myth, Ford is called upon to assemble out of the ashes of the Nixon administration a new "open and honest" government. By the "system working" the bourgeois ideologues mean that the constitutional process provides for the removal of a president who loses the confidence of the people through acts of perfidy and personal aggrandizement. But the fact of the matter is that in getting rid of Nixon the ruling class worked around even its own system. The system calls for the removal of a president through impeachment. Nixon was ousted without any impeachment trial. There is no doubt that this manner of removing Nixon was far more advantageous to the ruling class than a trial in the Senate would have been. An impeachment trial would have Further demystified the ollegedly democratic political process by focusing public attention on those crimes committed by Nixon that have already been exposed. Members of Congress would have sted as prosecutors and would have had to marshall evidence ogainst Nixon. Nixon would have had to explain what elements of "notional security" were involved in his spy plans, burglaries, graft-taking, and so on. Additionally, there is little doubt that a trial in the Senate would have led to further disclosures about the illegal activities of the Nixon gang, for once the House of Representotives had committed itself to bringing Nixon to trial, It would have been under heavy pressure to prove its case. The entire process would have been televised, bringing the cose against Nixon to broader layers of the population in a more dramatic way than previously. The cumulative effect of such a trial would undoubtedly have been to stimulate popular demands for a genuinely full disclosure of Nixon's operations and to vastly intensify feelings among the population that the exercise of the government is in reality carried on wholly behind their boeks. All this would have been inherent in an impeachment trial. It was totally avoided through Nixon's resignation. The result is that the ruling closs obtains on "end" to the Watergate affair without the public ever finding out even a small percentage of the crimes committed by the Nixon administration. With Nixon gone through the "honorable" mechanism of resignation, the ruling class is free to use the argument that everyone should forget the past and that anyone who still insist on exposing Nixon's crimes is an antipatriotic, vindicfive element. The case is now to be closed. The "cover-up" is ended by clamping on a new cover-up. The truth of this observation is perhaps best illustrated by the faet that it is still unknown what was really behind the Watergate affair. It can be taken for granted that the extent of the government's spying, disruption, and sabotage of the Black movement, the antiwar movement, and the political organizations of the American vanguard has not been exposed. The ruling class is united in its desire to keep such matters hidden. But more than that. It is clear that the changes in the consciousness of the American public stimulated by the antiwar
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movement, the Black liberation struggle, and the radicalization of the 1960s played a major role in extending the Watergale scandol and preventing the ruling closs from halting the various revelations of Nixon's crimes. It is also clear that Nixon, in oddition to everything else, is a very stupid man. His crudity and toctical mistakes played a certain role in his own exposure. Nevertheless, it is difficult to believe that the ruling class, which in general has no interest in seeing its president thoroughly discredited, could not have halted the Watergate revelations with a well-timed and unified offensive at various points during the first five or six months of the scandals.!! follows, then, that some section of the ruling class decided very early on to dump Nixon, or at least to let the scandal run its counse. The root of that decision remains a mystery. No evidence has been produced indicating that any substantial part of the American capitalist class opposed Nixon's basic policies. The relatively common theory that the Eastern Establishment section of the ruling class (the "Yankees") opposed Nixon while the section of the capitalist class in the South and Southwest that made it fortune during the postwor boom, especially in the aerospace industry, (the "cowboys") supporfed him, while it may well have some merit in terms of the personal Inclinations of the individual members of the ruling class, is completely unproved and supported only by superficial observatiors about friendship ties. A possible alternative explanation is that Nixon committed some act or acts that so overstepped the bounds of normal capitalist deceit that a decision was made in some quarters to drive him from office without bringing those acts to light. It is quite possible that the crimes committed by the Nixon gang -- and not only against the left - were many times more serious than the ones that have been exposed so far. The removal of Nixon would itself be an important part of the cover-up of those crimes. The notion that the removal of Nixon through resignation will arrest the development of a strong state is refuted by even the most cursory glance at the facts. Not a single one of the powers vested in the American president has been eliminoted by the disappearance of Nixon. According to laws that are now on the books, the president has the power to "seize property, organize and control the means of production, seize commodities, assign military forces abrood, call reserve forces amountina to 2.5 million men to duty, institute martial law, seize and control all means of transportation, regulate all private enterprise, restrict travel, and, in a plethora of particular ways, control the lives of all Americars. " The quotation comes from a Congressional committee that did a study in 1973 on the "emergency" lows now in effect in the United States. The use of such measures -- as well as the more "normal" presidential prerogatives such as decreeing freezes on wages -- are historic necessities dictated by the requirements of administering the imperialist system, whose rulers must make 18
"hail to the chief" quick decisions without bothering to go through slow parliamentary procedures. Indeed, even the impeachment charges that had been drafted against Nixon did not suggest that any of these powers should be limited. He was charged by the Congressional committee assigned to investigating the possibility of impeachment with obstructing justice in the Watergate investigation, misusing governmental bodies to spy on political opponents, and reFusing to yield subpoenaed evidence to the Congress. A motion that the charge of illegally bombing Cambodia and lying about it to the public be added to the list was voted down. No proposal was even made to add any of Nixon's other activities in Indochina (such as the Christmas 1972 corpet-bombing of Hanoi and Haiphong) to the impeachment charges. Thus, even if Nixon had been tried and convicted by the Senate, no precedent would have been set forbidding a president to carry on such actions os waging imperialist war or repressing opposition domestically. The powers of the presidency, then, are not the slightest bit affected by the removal of Nixon, nor would they have been if he had been removed by a Senate trial instead of by resigning. In fact, it is wholly possible that the trend toward strengthening the executive will be intersified by the disposition of the Watergate case. Exactly because the ruling class claims that the Nixon case has established rigid guidelines on presidential conduct without really challenging the powers of the presidency, Gerala Ford and succeeding presidents can be assured that their exercise of power on all the important quesfions has received a stamp of legitimacy. Ford's "new and open" government appears to consist of holding more press conferences. It is also probable that Ford will learn the historic lessons of Watergate and end the practice of tape recording conversations hold in the White House. Apart from that, no changes in policy are in the offing. If anything, Ford as an individual stands to the right of Nixon. During the Indochina war he led o campaign to denounce Lyndon Johnson for not doing enough bombing of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam. He consistently voted against civil rights legislation in the Congress. He openly complains that American military spending is not high enough and that spending on things like education and social security is too high. He is considered an advocate of deliberately recessionary policies to "fight inflation. " Of course, like all capitalist politicians, Ford lacks principles. There is no assurance, then, that he will actually institute such policies. The only sure thing is that he will do what is required of him by the ruling class. If the manner of Nixon's removal was well designed to suit the requirements of the ruling class, the problems underlying his removal have not been resolved. Nixon had become so discredited that he would have been virtually incapable of implementing the unpopular policies that will become neces-
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