Sunday, Nov. 18, 2018, MSNBC ran a program called, “Betrayal: The Plot that Won the White House" a documentary by Rachel Maddow.
Betrayal framed
its story (subtitle, The Plot That Won The
White House) with the idea that Trump’s campaign benefitted from Russian
interference.
On that issue, I think the evidence so far is that, per Don
Jr.’s email, Jared & Don, Jr. were way over their heads but others in or
around the campaign were conversant with the Russian players. Maybe Trump is beholden to the Russians and
other foreign regimes. But I think the
Russian misinformation/Facebook campaign was more effective for Putin (we still
do not know the extent of it nor does Congress or Facebook have the will to
expose and control it).
What Nixon did was illegal.
His acts are blamed for the continuation of the war and the resultant
deaths of more than 20,000 in the US military.
It is a political decision (or absence of decision) that leads to war
and a political decision to end a war. The
War in Vietnam, the decision to go in, and the vacillating in getting out were
shameful. Nixon’s acts influencing a foreign government with his promises were treason.
What Betrayal
didn’t do was to compare Johnson’s restraint in going after Nixon on the eve of
the election with Obama’s similar restraint.
What have we learned from history?
The analysis of Johnson’s not going public rests on (1) that he did not
have a smoking gun tying Nixon to South Vietnam’s withdrawal from the peace
talks and (2) not wanting to reveal that the FBI and NSA were used to spy
on the South Vietnam ambassador and Mrs. Chennault (a US citizen).
As Lawrence O’Donnell, in Playing with Fire: The 1968 Election and the Transformation of American
Politics, p. 404, said:
“Richard Nixon knew he had
committed the worst crime in American political history . . . . And he also knew it was the perfect crime.”
In Obama’s case, post Edward Snowden’s revelations, the fact
that Clinton was expected to win was probably the most important factor in Obama’s
not making more of a public effort to expose the Russian/Facebook
interference. Secondly, what exactly
could Obama do, at the last minute, without appearing to be supporting Clinton? It’s like the attorney at a trial who gets to
tell the jury something that the judge then rules out of order and instructs
the jury to disregard. Finally, the full
extent of Russian/Facebook interference was not known before the election and
is still not known.
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