Mark Penn: Boy Republican? | OurFuture.org: Oh, and by the way, what about Penn-as-Republican? It shows up in one of those apparently fair on-the-one-hand-on-the-other-hand strategic assessments that actually heavily stack the deck in favor of one side. The side is Rihard Nixon's, who, he says, shouldn't in all fairness be impeached. First, he defends the firing of the special prosecutor as fair, because Archibald Cox was supposedly blinded by partisanship:
Nixon abandoned the principle of executive privilege but has profited by shedding himself of the "quasi-constitutional" mechanism of the special prosecutor. However balanced investigation by Archibald Cox '34 may have been, the idea of a Kennedy Democrat who filled his top four investigative posts with fellow Kennedy Democrats could not have been pleasing to the administration. Nixon decided over the weekend that a bi-partisan House inquiry and a friendlier judicial arrangement would be preferable to Archibald Cox and his staff of 80 crack lawyers examining all the president's activities and papers. If Congress tries to appoint a new special prosecutor, the president and the Republicans will be in a position to secure guarantees that the new attorneys are not "out to get the President."
Then he says was how JFK would have supposed Dick Nixon on the question:
The late President John F. Kennedy '40, would have condemned a political impeachment of Nixon just as he abhorred in Profiles in Courage, the attempt to oust Andrew Johnson. Whether the issue is over secret bombings of Cambodia or a militarily imposed reconstruction of the South, the public and Congress should oppose an impeachment which places the opposition party in power.
(He wasn't below Kennedy-baiting when it comes to Doris Kearns Goodwin, though not above Kennedy-worship when that served his rhetorical purposes, too.)
The he insisted that if the rabid haters insist on impeachment, which seemed to be unavoidable, the decent thing to do would be to fix the trial in favor of the President. Because, with Spiro Agnew about to resign (this article appears to have been drafted during the brief window between Spiro Agnew's October plea of no confidence for bribery in exchange for an agreement to resign but before the designation of Gerald Ford as his successor: a Democratic Congress would surely use the opportunity to effect a quick coup and install a Democratic President—a fantastic bit of paranoia all that rage at jut that moment with Republicans who knew that Tricky Dick had been nailed dead to rights for shredding the Constitution, but fiendishly laimed saving his skin as the only honorable course to preserve Constitutional "continuity of government":
Conviction should be avoided not only because it is rash and precedent-setting, but also because it raises serious political questions. Carl Albert would be a weak executive, under the control of the Democrats in Congress. Gerald Ford would be incompetent, especially in international affairs. Perhaps what will finally keep Nixon in office will be the reluctance of Congress to replace him with either of these men.
By changing the succession act or negotiating a resignation deal, Congress could select a new president. The Democrats, however, would be faced with the divisive task of choosing one of their own to take control of the government. Whenever possible, courts avoid ruling on constitutional issues to preserve the consistency and the continuity of the law. Congress, in considering impeachment and conviction, must be prepared to do the same to preserve the government...
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