1957: Richard Nixon Almost Became President. 1974: Fox News Could Have Protected Him
An entirely different place in history. Debating Nixon
Instead of the bitter, cynical, corrupt, ultimately defeated crook that Richard Nixon went down in history as when he became the only president to resign the presidency in 1974, he might have played an entirely different role on the national stage and in American history. In short, except for fate, Richard Nixon’s role, reputation, and legacy could have been entirely different.
In 1957, when President Dwight Eisenhower suffered a stroke, Nixon almost assumed the presidency, according to the book, "Ike and Dick: Portrait of a Strange Political Marriage," by Jeffrey Frank.
Thomas Mallon, writing in The New Yorker on Nixon's 100th birthday in 2013, speculated:
"Nixon would have reached the Presidency a dozen years sooner, at the age of forty-four. He would have arrived in the Oval Office misshapen by politics, to be sure, as a bruising campaigner who’d been forced to balance his checkbook on live TV and then spend five years trying to figure out the ways of a maddening boss whom everybody else seemed to love. But he would not have undergone the psychological damage of two crushing defeats that still lay ahead, and he would not have been presiding over a country at war in Southeast Asia and with itself. If that had happened, who knows what this gifted, knotted-up man, this “one of us,” might have spared himself, and his wife, and every other one of us?" —"Wag the Dog: The Making of Richard Nixon."
If Nixon became president in 1957, he would have had three years to establish himself as a formidable leader. Given the cultural respect and authority given to the presidency in those years, he likely would have won re-election in 1960 and there would have been no John F. Kennedy presidency on our timeline.
Discussion on the Alternate History Online Facebook Group:
Gully Foyled: …We tend to assume that individuals in ATLs will end much like they did in our timeline. So we tend to forget that before his morphine addiction, Goering was a dashing war hero and that before his crazy attempt to defect, Rudolph Hess was the second most popular Nazi leader after Hitler.
Nixon felt he'd been cheated out of the Presidency in 1960, and this led to much of his subsequent paranoia and bitterness. If he succeeded Eisenhower in 1957, he probably won reelection in 1960…
It's entirely possible that he cut a deal to end the Vietnam War and recognized China - about a decade earlier than IOTL.
Benjamin L Jessup Nixon might escalate US involvement in Vietnam.
Jim Buie: Just like the historical debate over whether John F. Kennedy would have ended American involvement in Vietnam or fallen into the same trap of quagmire that Lyndon Johnson did.
It’s important to remember:
Coming from California, Nixon probably would have seen that it wasn’t in his political interests to adopt a Southern strategy in 1960 and align with segregationists the way he later did after the 1968 election to win over George Wallace's voters who were expressing anger and backlash against the end of segregation.
Instead, in the early 1960s, he would have moderately supported the civil rights movement and the end of Jim Crow in the same way that the Eisenhower and Kennedy-Johnson administrations did, because it was the popular thing to do in much of the country, except the South.
He probably would not have provided the moral leadership on civil rights that JFK did. It’s hard to imagine him giving the eloquent June 1963 speech that Kennedy gave that galvanized the nation. Historians and Leaders Reflect on President John F. Kennedy’s Address on Civil Rights, June 1963.
Nixon might well have escalated the Vietnam War in 1964 the same way that Lyndon Johnson did, but since he had to leave the presidency in early 1965, it would not have become the albatross and the quagmire it did for Lyndon Johnson and Nixon himself later.
If Fox News Existed in the 1970s…
On the 50th anniversary of the 1972 Watergate break-in, several journalists and historians, as well as former Nixon counsel John Dean speculated that if Fox News existed in 1974, Nixon might not have been forced to resign. “There was no Fox News to tell (people) to look away,” wrote Margaret Sullivan in The Washington Post. “Richard M. Nixon’s presidency would have survived.“
Indeed, one of Nixon aide Roger Ailes’ reasons for establishing Fox News as a conservative network after Nixon’s fall was that “people are basically lazy” and “TV tells them what to think.”
Jonathan Bernstein, a former professor of political science at the University of Texas at San Antonio, was not so sure that Nixon would have survived even if Fox existed. “Watergate wasn’t really a media story,” he wrote.
“Sure, the reporting was important. Yet the big breakthroughs in the investigation came from career prosecutors in the Department of Justice, the special prosecutors who took over the investigation in 1973, and Senate and House committees,” he argued. “True, there was no significant Republican-aligned media to either ignore the whole thing or to blame Democrats for it. It’s not clear, however, how much of a difference that really makes.”
Debate: History Vs. Richard Nixon
Ted-Ed: “The president of the United States of America is often said to be one of the most powerful positions in the world. But of all the US presidents accused of abusing that power, only one has left office as a result. Does Richard Nixon deserve to be remembered for more than the scandal that ended his presidency? Alex Gendler puts this disgraced president’s legacy on trial.”
Lesson by Alex Gendler, animation by Brett Underhill….View full lesson: http://ed.ted.com/lessons/history-vs-…“
One of the Most Compassionate Books on Nixon…
was written by a contemporary, Tom Wicker, a New York Times columnist and an avowed liberal who was a sharp thorn in Nixon’s side when he was president. The book is One of us: Richard Nixon and the American Dream (1991).
If Nixon Survived Watergate, 10 Dangerous Precedents Would Have Been Established
Every generation needs to relearn the lessons of history. On August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon resigned the presidency. If the Watergate burglary was not discovered and if Richard Nixon was not forced to resign, what would have been the consequences?
Presidents would be free to ask allies or followers to break into the offices, homes and doctors’ offices of political opponents, tap private communication, steal private medical records, hire private detectives to tail and look for dirt or compromising information on those they classified as “enemies.”
Presidents could obstruct justice, destroy the independence and professionalism of law enforcement, order the FBI or other legal authorities not to investigate aides or cronies, and get away with it.
Presidents could use the machinery of government — FBI, CIA, Justice Department, IRS — for political purposes, against their opponents and adversaries — with impunity.
Presidents would be free to wage secret wars in foreign countries (as Nixon did in Cambodia) without informing the American people.
Presidents would essentially be above the law, like monarchs before the Age of Enlightenment. “If the president does it, it’s not illegal,” President Nixon declared.
Presidents could brazenly lie to the American people and face no consequences. Subsequent presidents who brazenly lied — most prominently, Bill Clinton — did face legal consequences, disbarment, and fines. He apologized, and his chosen successors — Al Gore and Hillary Clinton — did not win the presidency, in part because of their association with him. Gore chose a running mate, Senator Joe Lieberman in part because he had been harshly critical of Bill Clinton’s behavior and publicly rebuked him.
If Nixon survived, it would have set an unhealthy partisan precedent that presidents could demand and expect members of their own political party to march in lockstep and place the short-term tribal desires of their political party ahead of the rule of law and needs of the country. During the Nixon era, Republicans in Congress, particularly the United States Senate, demonstrated integrity and independence from the president and took a lawyerly approach. “What did the president know and when did he know it?” asked GOP Senator Howard Baker of TN, the ranking minority member of the Senate Watergate Committee. Other distinguished Republican but independent-minded lawmakers included Senator Lowell Weicker of CT and Rep. William Cohen of ME. In the last weeks of the scandal, Senator Barry Goldwater (R-AZ) and Republican leader Hugh Scott (R-PA) went to Nixon at the White House and told him he did not have the political support within the Republican Party in Congress to continue as president.
Nixon might have survived if he had the unwavering loyalty and support of a major television news network willing to abandon journalistic independence, cater to Republican partisans, put a positive spin on his presidency, and constantly excoriate his adversaries, But Nixon did not sponsor or control a major television network. The three major network news programs covered him and the scandal aggressively for two years. His popularity sank below 30 percent in the final summer of his presidency. Indeed, Roger Ailes, a Nixon advisor, was inspired by the Watergate debacle to work with Australian media mogul Rupert Murdoch to found the Fox News cable network in 1996.
In short, the presidency would be far more powerful, with far fewer checks and balances, if Congress did not assert its independent oversight authority as a co-equal branch of government, with the Constitutional responsibility to hold the executive branch accountable.
Nixon’s forced resignation ended the reign, at least for that era, of what historian Arthur Schlesinger called “the imperial presidency,” a concern that the presidency could not be controlled by Congress and that it exceeded its constitutional limits. Those who believe in limited government should without qualification look back on Nixon’s departure as a great victory for the rule of law and constitutional checks and balances.
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