Presidential Agonistes, Half a Century Apart

A broiling hot summer in the national capital, a president in crisis, and the final blows being delivered by the leaders of his own party. What drove Joe Biden from the presidential race is an eerie parallel to what Richard Nixon faced exactly 50 years ago. Both men believed they could survive fatal wounds, yet instead of having the voters decide their fates, both were ultimately done in by their own parties.

Nixon resigned fifty years ago in two days

With Biden’s sudden withdrawal from the presidential race still fresh, the country soon will mark the half-century anniversary of Nixon’s resignation from office on August 8, 1974. Since Nixon’s fall from grace there has hardly been a moment in Washington like this one. Bill Clinton’s impeachment and trial in 1998 never threatened to see him removed from office and the entire spectacle was more lurid drama than constitutional crisis. No Democratic senators visited Clinton to tell him his time was up, nor did the media turn on him en masse.

This summer replayed 1974, not 1998. Defying public opinion, both Nixon and Biden sought to hang on to the highest office in the land, but both were battling hurricanes that steadily loosened their grip on power. Both had White Houses covering up the failings of the president – one legal, the other physical and mental. Both men repeatedly stated they would not quit. While Biden didn’t face a constitutional process to remove him from office, the pressure on him to abandon his reelection bid was identical to that put on Nixon. Media leaks, members of Congress publicly and privately telling the president his time is up, and a sudden focus on whether the vice president is ready to step up, repeated themselves a half-century later.

Biden lost elite support

After aggressively stating that he would be in the race to the end, Biden lost the support of the elites in the Democratic Party and almost all of the media, his reputation shifting hourly from savior of the Republic to a delusional and bitter old man unable to fulfill his duties but who wouldn’t face reality. Never has a sitting president been forced to abandon a reelection campaign that has already seen the primaries crown him for a second run. Lyndon Baines Johnson’s shock decision not to seek reelection in 1968 did not cause as much disruption as did Biden’s, less than a month out from the Democratic National Convention, ironically to be held in Chicago, the same venue as in 1968, and which became infamous for the chaos and street battles between activists and the Chicago Police Department.

Can Biden even finish out his term?

Doubts about Biden’s fitness not merely to run again but to serve the remainder of his term also paralleled the questions asked of Nixon in his final days, with reports eventually emerging that Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger made clear that any presidential orders to use nuclear weapons had to be approved by him first. Other reports of Nixon’s drinking, praying, and nearing a mental breakdown are reflective of the concerns that Biden today is unable to coherently discharge the duties of his office. Indeed, Republicans from House Speaker Mike Johnson on down have called for Biden to resign his office or face removal by the 25th Amendment, which would have to be instigated by his chosen successor, Vice President Kamala Harris.

Party pressure on Nixon…

So what was the final straw that drove the presidents from office? For Nixon, it wasn’t even the House Judiciary Committee passing three articles of impeachment on July 30; even after that, he believed he could survive. Though Nixon appears to have decided to resign by early August, his point of no return came when Sen. Barry Goldwater and two other high-ranking congressional Republicans told him he had to go, after the August 5 release of the so-called “smoking gun” tape. That was the recording of an Oval Office discussion Nixon had with chief of staff H.R. Haldeman, in June 1972, less than a week after the Watergate break-in and arrest of the burglars connected with Nixon’s reelection campaign. On the tape, Nixon can be heard seeming to approve a cover-up and use of the CIA to block an FBI investigation.

But by the point that Goldwater came to the White House, Nixon had been bleeding for over a year. The Senate had held televised hearings from May through November of 1973, which became “must-watch” TV in Washington and much of the nation; these were followed by House impeachment hearings in the last week of July 1974.

… and on Biden

Joe Biden’s fall was swifter and, in some ways, more brutal. It has been pure politics, not legislative process. Held up as a competent commander in chief until his disastrous debate with Donald Trump on June 27, Biden’s abysmal performance all but instantly obliterated his public, congressional, and media support (Nixon never had much media support). His repeated, angry declarations that he would continue on through the general election were increasingly seen as futile and out of touch with political reality.

Just like Nixon, Biden watched the political class scoff at his claims, steadily undermining any pretensions he had of staying in the race. And just like Nixon, he had to try and fight back the leaks coming from his own party about his untenable future. In both cases, the interested parties were motivated by fears about their political fortunes first, and the fortunes of the nation second. 

Ultimately, in Biden’s case, as in Nixon’s, it was party pressure that forced him out. With Barack Obama, Nancy Pelosi, and Chuck Schumer, among nearly two dozen others, openly or indirectly saying that Biden had to leave, it was being cast off by his own party that was the coup de grace.

A party ultimatum

Reports of an ultimatum delivered to Biden, perhaps by Obama, paralleled Goldwater’s pressure on Nixon. Only then, when Biden had surrendered in the face of threats of being removed by his vice president and cabinet, only when he was humiliated and left alone, did his party suddenly start calling him a national hero.

And just like in 1974, attention is now focused on the vice president. Back then, few in Washington doubted that Gerald Ford would be a safe pair of hands to leave the country in. Though he would be the only man never elected as either president or vice president to serve as chief executive, Ford was a veteran of the House of Representatives and a widely respected legislator. The dynamic is different with Kamala Harris. Though the Democratic Party has rapidly coalesced around her, few have forgotten that her political fortunes have wavered from dropping out of the 2020 Democratic primaries before a single vote had been cast, to being criticized by insiders for driving away staff, being unprepared and uninterested in policy, and being widely mocked for her ineptness at public speaking.

Bare-knuckle politics

The summers of 1974 and 2024 are political theater of the highest kind, though the former had at least the semblance of a civics lesson, while the latter is pure bare-knuckle politics. They are also a reminder, in our digital and cable news age, that the power of the political party remains unchallenged and the most potent component of our political system. If Donald Trump’s resurgence, even after being written off in 2020, is due to his dominating his party, both Richard Nixon’s and Joe Biden’s demise was due to having been abandoned by theirs.

This article was originally published by RealClearPolitics and made available via RealClearWire.