Editor’s note: David Moats, an author and journalist who lives in Salisbury, is a regular columnist for VTDigger. He is editorial page editor emeritus of the Rutland Herald, where he won the 2001 Pulitzer Prize for a series of editorials on Vermont’s civil union law.
As the Watergate scandal began to unfold in 1973 and 1974, Peter Welch was finishing up law school, traveling abroad, and then moving to Vermont. Could he have imagined back then that 45 years later he would be thrust into the middle of a scandal as far-reaching and consequential as Watergate was?
“It was not part of my life plan,” he said in a recent conversation.
Welch is Vermont’s Democratic congressman and a member of the House Intelligence Committee, which is pursuing an investigation of President Donald Trump’s dealings with Ukraine, including the notorious phone call when Trump pressured the Ukrainian president to dig up dirt on Joe Biden.
In Welch’s view, there are similarities between Watergate and the present scandal, and there are differences.
“At that time,” Welch said, “we had a capacity to be shocked. The country did, and even Republicans did.”
Today our capacity to be shocked has been diminished by Trump’s brazen behavior. “His defense is ‘so what?’” Welch said, and his Republican defenders have adopted their versions of the so-what defense. The allegations about Ukraine are hearsay, they say, or they don’t rise to the level of an impeachable offense. Trump broke the law by soliciting aid from Ukraine? So what?
One of the inspiring lessons of Watergate was what Welch called the “patriotic resistance” of people in government, including Nixon appointees such as Eliot Richardson, the attorney general who refused to fire special prosecutor Archibald Cox. People and institutions in government were willing to stand up to “a president and his henchmen, who thought they could do anything they wanted to do,” Welch said.
It has been different under Trump. “It has felt up until very recently that there’s no institution or people in government resisting the Trump rampage,” Welch said.
According to Welch, that has begun to change, and the nation has been shocked by Trump’s criminality. (It is not a stretch to call his behavior criminal. He has admitted to seeking campaign help from the Ukrainian president, which is a crime.)
Welch had high words of praise for Inspector General Michael Atkinson, who appeared before the House Intelligence Committee to talk about the whistleblower’s revelations concerning Trump’s dealings with Ukraine. “The inspector general was extraordinarily brave,” Welch said, and he understood his duty.
In Welch’s view, the Republican willingness to defend Trump is starting to crack. “They were solid until Ukraine,” he said. “Ukraine is starting to change that.” What’s starting to emerge is a lengthening list of “inside people” who have information about Trump’s behavior.
“We saw this with Nixon,” Welch said. “There’s a solid front, but when it cracks, it collapses.”
Trump’s decision to resist all cooperation with the House inquiry could end the same way as Nixon’s effort to resist the release of White House tapes: Nixon’s defenses crumbled after a federal judge ordered the release of tapes with evidence of Nixon’s crimes. It is hard to believe that Trump’s attempt to keep all government records out of the hands of Congress has any more legitimacy than Nixon’s effort at secrecy.
Much has changed since the days of Watergate. Richard Nixon cared about his reputation, and when he famously declared “I am not a crook,” it was a desperate expression of his need to retain the people’s respect. Donald Trump glories in his crookedness and has no reputation to protect. Most everyone, even his supporters, knows he is more or less a gangster, but the cynicism of his defenders is so extreme, they are able to excuse gangster-like behavior.
Nixon did not have a television network and a constellation of media figures to say “so what” to his offenses. The three major networks occupied the middle of the political spectrum, and Nixon’s criminality departed from the norms that shaped most coverage and the views of most Americans.
But something has happened since the Ukraine revelations to make Watergate comparisons more pertinent. Trump’s collusion with Ukraine is so blatant that he himself admitted it; after months during which he vehemently denied collusion with Russia, collusion is plainly what he is all about. Something is different, the way something was different after the Saturday Night Massacre in 1973.
Many Americans still remember where they were when those momentous events took place. When the news about the Saturday Night Massacre came over the radio, friends and I were driving around in the hills of Marin County in California. Nixon had ordered that the special prosecutor who was onto him in the Watergate case be fired. It was like an admission of guilt, and it unleashed the Furies. Trump’s declaration that he would not cooperate with the impeachment inquiry — following the revelations about Ukraine — ought to have the same effect. The whistleblowers and the leakers may have a field day now that Trump has forbidden them to cooperate, and who knows how far the web of corruption will spread?
Peter Welch was at the Flynn Center in Burlington on Oct. 7 to hear Rep. John Lewis of Georgia speak about his book “March, Book One,” a graphic novel about his childhood and the early days of the civil rights movement.
Lewis is a moral force in the nation unlike any other. He was the first marcher to be clubbed at the Edmund Pettus Bridge in Selma, Alabama, in 1965. His life, as he said, has been all about getting into trouble in order to further the cause of justice — “good trouble,” as he said. His talk at the Flynn was inspiring, humorous, human, deeply moving. The last question he took from the audience asked him what he thought today’s Edmund Pettus Bridge might be. What is the bridge the nation must cross to secure our future as a democracy?
Lewis thought for a moment, then he said today’s bridge was the White House.
The audience erupted in satisfaction and hope. Something is different. Something is happening. On his way out of the theater Welch remarked on Lewis’ observation. As a member of the House Intelligence Committee, Welch is poised to march across that bridge and take the rest of us with him.
