A switch in time: How Nixon might have survived Watergate
On Jan. 27, 1969, less than a week into the Nixon presidency, Nixon鈥檚 chief of staff H. R. Haldeman relayed the following request from President Nixon to White House aide and former Time magazine executive editor James Keogh: 鈥淭he President is most anxious to bring in an official White House historian to make sure that we maintain on a current basis an accurate record of the work of this administration.鈥� Nixon even had a person in mind for the position: Professor Ernest May, a historian at Harvard University who had served on the Lindsay transition task force. More generally, Nixon sought someone 鈥渨ho has outstanding intellectual ability to analyze everything as it is happening in historical perspective and keep an accurate record鈥�.鈥�
On Feb. 10, evidently after canvassing various White House aides regarding Nixon鈥檚 proposal, Keogh responded with a four-page memo to the president that began, 鈥淭here are some serious questions involved in the recruitment of a White House historian. The first is the ultimate: Should there be a staff historian, as such, in the White House?鈥� Would the President want an outsider sitting in during key meetings? Keogh鈥檚 answer was: 鈥淚 would say he should not, for his presence surely would tend to inhibit what the President and others might say and do. And so the historian鈥檚 presence could have a negative effect not only on the Presidency but also on history.鈥�
In addition to inhibiting conversation, Keogh warned that 鈥渁ny established historian that we might bring on would have very definite ideas about his own freedom of point of view.鈥� That might mean a desire to prove 鈥渉is credentials to his colleagues in the profession by being critical even if that meant doing so only for the sake of being critical.鈥� Keogh also warned that 鈥淟oyalty is another problem鈥� 鈥� someone who initially expressed support for the President might, over time and in reaction to events, change his views.
In seeking a 鈥渃ourt historian鈥� Nixon may have had in mind some counterpart to Arthur Schlesinger, Jr., the Harvard historian who served on JFK鈥檚 White House staff, and who used his position to write , a not uncritical but generally quite positive account of JFK鈥檚 presidency. But Keogh had other examples in mind, telling Nixon: 鈥淭he recent track record on all this is not encouraging. Eric Goldman, professor of history at Princeton, was brought into the White House by Lyndon Johnson. He has just produced the , which can only be described as an anti-Johnson book.鈥�
Keogh noted that he had discussed Nixon鈥檚 request with his immediate team of White House aides: 鈥淭he consensus in this group is that this Administration should not bring in a historian as such. This position is based on the feeling that the risks are too high and the potential for positive results too low.鈥� Rather than a court historian, Keogh suggested instead that aides be assigned to keep detailed notes of meetings, 鈥渞ecording the color, the tone, the asides for the general Administration record.鈥� For more intimate conferences with the President 鈥淚 see only one process. The people involved should as often as possible record their own impressions鈥�.This also suggests that the President himself should, as often as possible, dictate his own thoughts and impressions 鈥� on tape or on paper 鈥� and on some kind of more or less regular schedule.鈥�
We now know, of course, that Nixon did Keogh one better. In 1971, so as to provide a more accurate history of his administration鈥檚 proceedings, he installed in the Oval Office, the Old Executive Office Building, the Cabinet Room, and at Camp David. Conversations were recorded via this voice-activated system for more than two years, starting on Feb. 16, 1971, through July 18, 1973. It was these tapes, particularly the so-called 鈥渟moking gun鈥� tape dating from June 23, 1972, that provided clear proof that Nixon obstructed justice by trying to impede the investigation into the Watergate break in.
When a unanimous Supreme Court ruled 8-0 that Nixon must hand over the tapes to an independent prosecutor, and the transcripts of the tapes were made public, Nixon lost any hope of surviving the Watergate scandal. Forty years ago today, he officially resigned the presidency. It is tempting, of course, to surmise that if only Nixon had appointed a court historian, he might not have also seen the need to install a taping system. But that is probably not the case. From the moment they take office, all presidents, and their immediate advisers, are aware that they are making history and they understandably want to insure an accurate record of the events in which they participate. But meeting notes can only go so far toward providing that record. For this reason Franklin Roosevelt, Kennedy and Johnson all secretly recorded some White House conversations. Kennedy did so despite the presence of Schlesinger, Jr., as his White House 鈥渃ourt historian."
But these previous recording systems differed from Nixon鈥檚 in one key respect: They had to be manually activated by the president. This meant that they were forced to exercise a bit more discretion than Nixon did when deciding what to record for posterity. Had Nixon been forced to activate his recording devices, he might never have decided to essentially tape himself admitting to crimes. But in his memoirs, Nixon defends the decision to install a voice activated machine: 鈥淚 thought that recording only selected conversations would completely undercut the purpose of having the taping system; if our tapes were going to be an objective record of my presidency, they could not have such an obviously self-serving bias. I did not want to have to calculate whom or what or when I would tape.鈥� Alas for the future of his presidency, Nixon was initially 鈥渃onscious of the taping, but before long I accepted it as part of the surroundings.鈥�
鈥淔rom the very beginning,鈥� Nixon writes in his memoirs, 鈥淚 had decided that my administration would be the best chronicled in history.鈥� Little did he know how prescient that statement was. No subsequent president has, to my knowledge, kept any recording system in their White House, and for good reason. And, with the advent of e-mail, even the paper documentary trail is a less reliable history of a president鈥檚 time in office (although there are safeguards in place that are intended to preserve electronic messages as part of an administration鈥檚 presidential records). Had Nixon been less conscious of the need to accurately record the events of presidency, he might have emulated his predecessors and utilized a manually activated recording device.聽 But he did not.
For want of a switch, he lost the presidency.
Matthew Dickinson publishes his Presidential Power blog at .
