Editor’s Note: Joe Lockhart was White House press secretary from 1998-2000 in President Bill Clinton’s administration. He co-hosts the podcast “Words Matter.” The opinions expressed in this commentary are his own. View more opinion at CNN.
There is a debate raging in Washington about the politics of investigations. Some argue the Democrats should aggressively pursue all avenues to hold President Donald Trump accountable for his actions – including, for example, holding Attorney General William Barr in contempt of Congress for refusing to testify before the House Judiciary Committee. Many even advocate opening up impeachment hearings to further investigate Trump’s actions. Others warn that the Democrats can go too far in investigating Trump and could experience a backlash from voters. All sides cite evidence from the impeachment process against President Bill Clinton two decades ago to support their arguments.
While this is a worthy and important debate, comparing it to the Clinton saga undermines both sides. It’s getting clearer with each passing day that the two really have little to do with each other.
Let’s review the highlights of the Clinton investigation. For all practical purposes, Clinton and his team cooperated with the independent counsel and the congressional investigating bodies. The President testified before the grand jury and even gave blood, literally, to the prosecutors determined to prove his relationship with Monica Lewinsky.
Unlike Trump, President Clinton never fired the head of the FBI, never threatened to fire the attorney general – and then did it – never instructed the White House counsel to fire the independent counsel. And Clinton never used the bully pulpit to undermine our judicial system. Where he did fight vigorously, and lose, was in the civil case brought by Paula Jones.
The legal result was that President Clinton was impeached by the House of Representatives and acquitted in the United States Senate. Public opinion swung sharply in his favor as voters saw the Republicans overreaching in their political zeal to have him removed from office. Clinton’s job approval soared to 73% after he was impeached. But, as argued above, there is little comparison in the fact pattern of the two cases, so little to be learned politically by juxtaposing them.
The real comparison here is with the investigation of President Richard Nixon and the Watergate scandal. In these cases, the fact pattern is eerily similar. Both Nixon and Trump took aggressive steps to obstruct justice by hampering the investigations into wrongdoing. President Nixon, in the infamous Saturday Night Massacre, cleaned out the top echelon of the Justice Department for defying him on the continuation of the Watergate probe. He installed his own hand-picked loyalists at the Justice Department and the FBI.
President Nixon also obstructed the congressional investigations, using executive privilege to limit access to witnesses and documents. And he famously went to the Supreme Court to withhold the so-called smoking gun audio tapes that eventually led to his resignation. All along he sought to undermine both the justice system and the media that was reporting on it.
Trump is drawing directly from the Nixon playbook. In William Barr, he’s got his Roy Cohn now at Justice and has rid himself of investigators like former FBI director James Comey. And he is using Barr to manipulate and undermine the work of special counsel Robert Mueller. Trump admitted to his own Saturday night massacre – his firing of Comey – in an interview with NBC News anchor Lester Holt, on national TV and has used Twitter to undermine the FBI, the Department of Justice, the intelligence community, Congress and the so-called “enemy of the people,” the media.
So for those arguing that Democrats should cool it on investigations, I’d argue that it was Congress’ determination to get to the bottom of Watergate that exposed the pervasive corruption of the Nixon administration. Using both congressional contempt powers and the courts did nothing to hurt the Democrats in 1973-74, and I believe it will not hurt them now. That’s because the Trump administration is using every power it has to keep information from the public. As a rule, Americans feel they have the right to see all the information before they make a judgment. That was clear in 1974 and I believe it is still true today.
The intensity and determination, and rulings in court, eventually left President Nixon with only one political option: resign so as not to be removed. His support among Republicans remained strong until ultimately even the most stalwart Republican leaders could no longer brook his corruption. The Democrats not only didn’t suffer a backlash, they saw unprecedented success during the next general election.
I still believe the Democrats should not move to impeachment. There is no chance Republicans in the Senate, in the current environment, will do anything but find him not guilty. However, I also believe the risks of vigorously investigating Trump have very little political downside.
Both sides are now following the identical strategies pursued in 1973-74 – Republicans obstructing and Democrats investigating aggressively. We all know how that turned out.