Richard Nixon is not the subject of any single episode in the excerpts, but he is invoked across five of them, in each case as a precedent or an actor in an argument about something else: monetary policy, presidential spending power, the constitutional standard for impeachment, and the federal classification of Hispanic identity.
Monetary policy and the Federal Reserve
In the episode on The Terrible 10: A Century of Economic Folly, Burton Abrams describes research he did listening to the Nixon tapes. Abrams says he found that Richard Nixon very skillfully manipulated Arthur Burns and the Federal Reserve into pursuing a monetary policy that Arthur Burns frequently said would be disastrous. Abrams states that Arthur Burns nonetheless caved in to President Nixon’s manipulations and started the printing press going. According to Abrams, that touched off a decade of inflation, the worst inflation in about a hundred years, and required three recessions to correct. Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014)
Abrams places this episode in the context of his book’s method, which he describes as benefit-cost analysis: looking at what benefits a policy or program produced and what its costs to society were, and trying to make some quantitative assessment of the losses to the economy. He names the Great Depression and the Federal Reserve’s bungling of it, and the Hawley-Smoot Act, which he calls the worst tariff act that we have ever imposed, as other entries. He distinguishes the Nixon monetary episode as one of the less obvious follies in the book. Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014)
Bob Zadek’s framing in that episode is that these mistakes are repeated, and that government adopts such policies while ignoring whether they make economic sense, because there is another motive and economic failure does not matter to the politicians adopting them. That framing is Bob’s; Abrams’s contribution is the account of Nixon, Burns and the printing press. Worst Ten Economic Mistakes of the 20th Century (2014)
Impoundment and the spending power
In the episode on big-spending Republicans, Ivan Eland raises Nixon in the context of whether the president must spend money Congress appropriates. Eland says that after Richard Nixon, you really have to enforce the law, and that you are supposed to enforce the law according to the Constitution. He states that Nixon tried impounding, and that Congress then passed in 1974 the Budget Control and Impoundment Act, which prevented him from doing some of that because it is really unconstitutional. Eland’s position is that the president is supposed to spend the money that Congress appropriates, even if he does not want to. The Return of Big Spending Republicans? (2017)
The exchange begins with Bob Zadek asking whether blame for spending lies more with Congress than with the president, since the president is not allowed to spend money unless Congress permits it. Eland agrees that it takes two to tango, noting that both houses of Congress must pass any spending bill, but that the president can veto it and two-thirds are needed to override. Bob interjects that the president can also simply not spend it, which prompts Eland’s reference to Nixon and impoundment. The Return of Big Spending Republicans? (2017)
Eland goes on to argue that the presidency has become more powerful than the founders intended, that Congress was supposed to be the dominant branch, and that the president’s informal power now includes the bully pulpit and pressure on Congress through radio, television and the internet. He also says that Democratic presidents have restrained the growth of government as a portion of GDP more than Republicans have, and that debt accumulation has been much lower for Democrats than for Republicans, which he attributes in part to the idea since Reagan that you cut taxes but you do not cut spending. The Return of Big Spending Republicans? (2017)
Impeachment: obstruction of justice and the cover-up
Nixon appears in two impeachment episodes. In the 2019 episode with Gene Healy, Healy distinguishes the legal part of impeachment from the political part. The legal part, he says, is that the Constitution sets out in Article II, Section 4 the standard of treason, bribery, or other high crimes and misdemeanors, so you need a theory of what that phrase means. Healy states that even if the Supreme Court is never going to rule on whether something was a high crime and misdemeanor, it is still important to try to figure out what that means. Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019)
Healy then gives Nixon as an example on the legal side of the question. Asked whether obstruction of justice is an impeachable offense, he answers that he thinks the answer would be yes, and notes that Richard Nixon had articles of impeachment about obstruction of justice and was driven from office, while Bill Clinton was impeached for obstruction of justice. Healy adds that this does not answer whether it is necessary, prudent, or a good idea to remove the president, and that in the Clinton case the Senate decided it was not. Healy also says impeachment is not a criminal process: crimes are neither necessary nor sufficient to make an impeachable offense. Which Impeachment Movie Are You Watching? (2019)
In the 2020 episode with John Rothmann, Rothmann says he worked for Richard Nixon and that in many ways Nixon was an exemplary president in terms of foreign policy and certain aspects of domestic policy. Rothmann’s argument is that what Nixon did was to break trust: he did not tell the truth and got caught in a lie. Rothmann states that Republicans in Congress did not condemn Nixon’s presidency but condemned the action he took. He also makes a point he says most people do not realize: Richard Nixon did not order the Watergate break-in; Nixon’s crime was the cover-up. Had Nixon remained silent and not embarked on a cover-up, Rothmann says, he would not have been removed from office. Bob Zadek responds in agreement. Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020)
Rothmann uses this as precedent for the argument that conduct can be egregious and still not rise to the level for removal, citing Bill Clinton’s obstruction of justice and perjury in the Lewinsky case and the Democratic argument that it did not rise to the level. He notes that the president’s defense in the then-current impeachment never denied his actions, only argued they did not rise to the level for removal. Withholding Judgment on Impeachment with John Rothmann (2020)
The Hispanic classification
In the episode with David Bernstein on legal whiteness, Nixon appears as a president who promoted a pan-national Hispanic identity. Bernstein says the Hispanic identity movement was really got going by Richard Nixon, who had two concerns. The first was Chicano radicalism — Mexican American mixed-race radicalism — and Puerto Rican nationalism, at a time when Puerto Rican nationalists were hijacking airplanes and bombing Congress. Bernstein says Nixon felt that if a Hispanic pan-national identity were created, it might make such people feel more American and less tied to Mexican or Puerto Rican identity. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)
The second concern, in Bernstein’s account, was that schools and government programs were already giving advantages to Puerto Ricans and Mexicans on the grounds that they were dark-skinned and a racial minority because of their African and indigenous heritage, and Nixon wanted to know how to exclude Cubans. Bernstein says Cubans vote Republican and should be included; once Cubans, who are predominantly of European origin and consider themselves white, are included, you basically have to include anybody who is of Spanish origin. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)
Bernstein’s larger point is that the classifications were built between the 1950s and early 1970s, when the United States was primarily a biracial society, and that no one anticipated millions of immigrants from Latin America and Asia. He notes that what we now call Hispanics were considered white by the federal government and were white on the census every decade except 1930, when there was briefly a Mexican American census category. He describes the official definition of Hispanic as anyone with Spanish ancestry or culture, and the split in the courts between those who count anyone with Spanish ancestry going back even 500 years and those who want to limit programs to people they think will face discrimination because of Hispanic origins. Exploring the Borderlands of Legal Whiteness with David Bernstein (2022)
Across episodes
The excerpts do not show a developing argument about Nixon across episodes; they show separate uses of him. Abrams treats Nixon as the manipulator of Arthur Burns and the origin of a decade of inflation; Eland treats him as the president who tried impounding and was answered by the 1974 Budget Control and Impoundment Act; Healy and Rothmann treat him as the precedent for obstruction of justice and for the cover-up that drove him from office; Bernstein treats him as the promoter of a pan-national Hispanic identity. The episodes that touch the topic are the economic-follies episode, the big-spending-Republicans episode, the two impeachment episodes, and the legal-whiteness episode.
What the sources do not cover
The excerpts do not describe Nixon’s resignation, his pardon, his opening to China, or any other element of his foreign or domestic record beyond the passing references above. They do not state the name of the Supreme Court case, if any, that resolved the impoundment question, nor what the 1974 Act is formally titled beyond the name Eland gives it. They do not give dates for the Nixon tapes research, the Watergate break-in, or the passage of Title IX, which Melnick mentions Nixon signed without noticing its importance. Nothing in the excerpts addresses Nixon’s early career, his vice presidency, or his 1968 and 1972 campaigns.