Not even Nixon would stoop so low
After Donald Trump’s cringe-worthy interaction with school-aged children in the Oval Office on Tuesday to promote his administration’s revival of the Presidential Fitness Test, I got a phone call from an aging former Republican officeholder who said seeing Trump interact with kids was like watching Richard Nixon’s “Checkers Speech.”
He was referring to a televised address that Nixon, then a California senator and Dwight Eisenhower’s running mate, gave in the heat of the 1952 presidential campaign in which he exploited his eldest daughter to rebut serious charges of using a secret campaign fund for personal use. Part of the accusation was aimed at a cocker spaniel that the Nixons were given by a supporter that his six-year-old daughter Tricia had named Checkers. The speech was exploitative, but not demeaning, and the public forgave Nixon.
What Trump did was much worse. As a grandfather and a father, let me say it bluntly: How the president of the United States spoke to children that day was wrong. He didn’t talk about puppies — he discussed mass shootings, people being shot in the head, Iran dropping a nuclear bomb on the U.S., and transgender “mutilation,” as well as his campaign to win a Nobel Peace Prize. Richard Nixon at his full-throated worst — croaking “I’m not a crook!” — cannot compare to what Trump said this week to a group of pre-adolescents. Our children and grandchildren deserve better. The future deserves hope. Our children deserve hope. Trump offers none.
For those of a certain age who find themselves comparing Trump’s second administration to Nixon’s, I will only quote my aging Republican friend who said, “Let’s hope it ends the same way.”
Luckily, the children looked bored, and the adults in the room who knew better ducked their heads because, you know, the president was speaking — or trying to. Trump’s team should have played “Hail to the Chief” and handed out White House coloring books instead. As tepid a reception as that would have been, at least he would have been seen and not heard. For those of a certain age who find themselves comparing Trump’s second administration to Nixon’s, I will only quote my aging Republican friend who said, “Let’s hope it ends the same way.”
Hunter S. Thompson said Nixon represented “that dark, venal and incurably violent side of the American character.” Many say worse about Trump, and still, there is no congressional push to force him out. Few believe that will happen to Trump. For a long time, it never looked like it would happen to Nixon either. Republicans in the Democratic-controlled Congress gave him great leeway, as did a number of Democrats. Many a sitcom, drama and news program of that era lamented the lack of congressional courage. But one day, that changed. Then, the next evening, Arizona GOP Sen. Barry Goldwater, accompanied by the Senate and House minority leaders, informed Nixon that his support in Congress had evaporated; the implication was that Nixon should resign or he would be impeached by the House and convicted in the Senate.
Trump is no Nixon, and his administration is not as talented as the 37th president’s, which leads many to remain hopeful that, at some point, Congress will wake up, and one day Trump will get the same type of visit Goldwater bestowed on Nixon.