Nixon's Revenge
As the Watergate myth fades, Nixon's FDR-esque model of presidential power comes back into style
In my début essay for Unherd, I look at the broader paradigm shift underwriting the struggle over Trump’s assertion of presidential power:
Few of President Trump’s actions early in his second term have provoked as much furor as the executive order freezing certain federal spending programmes. A federal trial judge in Rhode Island issued a nationwide injunction against the freeze, insisting that he intends to stop the administration from “any federal funding pause”. Five former Treasury secretaries published a protest op-ed in The New York Times, warning that “not since the Nixon administration has this type of executive action been contemplated”.
They’re right, but not in the way they think.
The key to understanding what’s happening lies the mythical role played by the person to whom the five former Treasury secretaries compared Trump: Richard Nixon, whose downfall took away the vast presidential powers amassed by FDR.
Nixon was the last president to try and govern like FDR. The Watergate scandal brought an end to that. It warped American politics for two generations by weakening executive power and limiting the president’s constitutional right of impoundment. But as the Watergate myth fades, Americans have rediscovered their appetite for a strong, transformational president.
Read the rest at Unherd. If paid subscribers run into a paywall, email me at nathan.pinkoski@gmail and I’ll pass along a copy.