Opinion: What post-Nixon Congress could teach post-Trump Congress
This week, Hutchinson’s claims, made under oath, managed to provide even more disturbing details about an already troubling chapter in US history — much of which we witnessed with our own eyes.
US Attorney General Merrick Garland is now facing pressure to take action. Although the Department of Justice (DOJ) is likely reluctant to pursue charges and set a precedent of prosecuting a former president, it is certainly wrestling with the question of how to approach the evidence laid out by the House select committee.
Regardless of whether the DOJ decides to press charges, Congress should act swiftly to shore up our democracy through legislation. Without accountability, democracies can quickly wither, and Hutchinson’s testimony was yet another wake-up call to leaders who have been asleep at the wheel.
The pardon remains one of the most controversial moments of the 1970s, when the commander in chief chose political healing over accountability, leaving the problem of presidential abuse of power unresolved.
Despite Ford’s decision, however, Congress spent much of the decade after the Watergate scandal looking at the institutions that had allowed Nixon to do what he did and introducing legislation during a rare period of institutional introspection and robust government reform.
Fixing the political process became a staple feature of politics, with organizations such as Common Cause (founded in 1970) insisting that repairing the way politics worked was as essential as taking on “bad apples.”
In 1973, with the public aware of the ways that Presidents Lyndon B. Johnson and Nixon had used executive power to keep sending troops into the disastrous war in Vietnam, Congress passed the War Powers Act to restore more inter-branch balance over the decision to engage in military action overseas.
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