Idiocy in Punditry #2: Ben Stein, et al.
Since the revelation that Mark Felt is “Deep Throat”, conservatives across the U.S. have been hard at work rewriting history to paint Felt as a traitor, Nixon as a hero, and Clinton’s dalliances as the moral equivalent of Nixon’s betrayal of democracy. These Nixon supporters are obviously incapable of understanding the import of Nixon’s attempts to undermine the very foundation of our society, and they’re proud of it. Ben Stein:
“Can anyone even remember now what Nixon did that was so terrible? He ended the war in Vietnam, brought home the POW’s, ended the war in the Mideast, opened relations with China, started the first nuclear weapons reduction treaty, saved Eretz Israel’s life, started the Environmental Protection Administration. Does anyone remember what he did that was bad?
Oh, now I remember. He lied. He was a politician who lied. How remarkable.”
Yes, Ben, he lied. He lied while trying to cover up his attempt to spy on the Democratic National Convention. Why was he spying? To help secure his reelection. So yes, Ben, he lied, as politicians have done many times before, but that’s not what really matters here. What matters is the fact that Nixon was abusing his power as President in a bid to weaken the opposition so that he might remain in power. That action is a fundamental violation of the principles of democracy. Ben, if you can’t see that fact, you’re an enemy of our nation, an enemy of our way of life. We live in a democratic society; any attack on our democracy is an attack on our entire society. If you support such attacks because they happen to serve your interests, you’re a danger to us all.Of course, Ben Stein isn’t an American first and foremost. His allegiances lie more closely with the State of Israel, which is fine, but a good reason for him to live over there instead. He makes this obvious:
“(Have you noticed how Mark Felt looks like one of those old Nazi war criminals they find in Bolivia or Paraguay? That same, haunted, hunted look combined with a glee at what he has managed to get away with so far?)
And it gets worse: it’s been reported that Mark Felt is at least part Jewish. The reason this is worse is that at the same time that Mark Felt was betraying Richard Nixon, Nixon was saving Eretz Israel. It is a terrifying chapter in betrayal and ingratitude. If he even knows what shame is, I wonder if he felt a moment’s shame as he tortured the man who brought security and salvation to the land of so many of his and my fellow Jews. Somehow, as I look at his demented face, I doubt it.”
The allusion to Mark Felt being in any way similar to a Nazi war criminal seems totally out of the blue, until Stein makes it clear that he actually believes that Mark Felt’s actions, which exposed an attempt to undermine American democracy, were a crime against Nixon the man and Israel the state. By adopting this absurd stance, Stein makes it clear that to him, Israel’s national interests are more important than the foundations of American democracy. If there’s a traitor, it’s Stein.
While Stein’s the only one who seems to view Felt as a Nazi, other conservatives have been drawing absurd parallels, too. Consider Mike Lester’s cartoon [page bottom] on the topic, which contrasts the treatment of Mark Felt to that of Linda Tripp. The comparison makes sense, of course, unless you’re capable of making the distinction between leaking information about illegal, anti-democratic acts and leaking information about merely distasteful acts. The right-wing can use the “but Clinton…” defense night and day, but it doesn’t become any more coherent. Clinton’s sexual escapades, spin them as you might, didn’t threaten to undermine our democracy.
The Daily Show last week featured Robert Novak, G. Gordon Liddy, and Pat Buchanan all denouncing Felt as well, accompanied by the usual brilliant commentary of Jon Stewart.
As a final example, William F. Buckley, Jr. managed to jump on board with both the myth of equivalence between Nixon and Clinton and the idea that Nixon was forced to resign due to the lies themselves, and throws in a new piece of idiocy for good measure:
It was thought for some 30 years that Deep Throat did as he did to preserve the honor of his country. Perhaps that was the precipitating motive of Mark Felt. But to agree on that point requires that you agree that getting Richard Nixon out of the White House was the supreme national concern, in which event it would have been OK to shoot him…
It can certainly be argued that Mr. Nixon dug his own grave by making the mistakes he made. Presidents do that all the time. They make fateful mistakes. But the judicial arbiters of history tend to come up with appropriate punishments. Monica Lewinsky came close to tossing President Bill Clinton out of office. Yet it does not follow that because the president dallied with Ms. Lewinsky he should have been impeached and tossed out. Nixon’s overreaction to the publication of the Pentagon Papers didn’t mean that his mandate to govern was for that reason forfeited.
No, what ejected Nixon was the accumulation of crossed stories.
Again, yes Mr. Buckley, Clinton and Nixon both lied. Every President has, and we know that you’re smart enough to see beyond such simple distinctions. Nixon resigned in the face of a bipartisan agreement that he needed to be impeached. Clinton was impeached and acquitted after a partisan witch hunt. There is no equivalence. Nixon’s mandate wasn’t forfeited just due to “overreaction”, it was forfeited due to his abuse of his executive powers to spy on his political enemies. That’s the critical difference. It wasn’t Nixon’s lies that got him, it was what he was trying to cover up. If an “accumulation of crossed stories” were really why Nixon was ejected, our current President would have been out the door a long time ago.
The real keeper in Buckley’s piece is at the beginning, though. By arguing that in order for Felt to have been serving his country and justice, we must “agree that getting Richard Nixon out of the White House was the supreme national concern, in which event it would have been OK to shoot him”, Buckley opens up two interesting points.
First, we should consider whether getting Nixon out of the White House was the supreme national concern. I argue that it was. I’m happy to grant that Nixon accomplished many good things for our country; I’m actually a fan of most of what he did. However, no matter how good the leader, our democracy itself is more important. I would rather a poor leader who is democratically elected than a great one who subverts the process. Buckley and other conservatives (see Stein, above) appear to be a little more Machiavellian; democracy is to them less important than the outcomes acheived.
Second, we should examine the non sequitur that if we believe that getting Nixon out was the supreme national concern, “it would have been okay to shoot him.” Buckley doesn’t leave the door open for another option, which was the one that actually occurred– the information got out to the public, outrage mounted, and the democratic process led Nixon to the door without bloodshed. Shooting President Nixon would have been criminal in the same way Nixon’s actions were criminal– it would have robbed the American people of the democratic process. The way that Buckley passes over the importance of democracy again in favor of outcomes buttresses the point that he simply doesn’t care about democracy.
The right’s campaign to smear Felt, as they’ve attempted with everyone else who doesn’t slavishly adhere to their views (witness the savage attacks on Michael Schaivo’s character, for example), is despicable. We can never know for sure what Felt’s motives were, but we can know that as a result of his actions, at least one man with a lack of respect for the foundations of our nation was called to account. The great shame is that so many others have flourished since then.