Why is the right trying to rehabilitate Richard Nixon?

The spirit of the late, disgraced President Richard Nixon is tanned, rested and ready for a four-fingered comeback. Nixonmaxxing conservatives are working to rehabilitate the 37th president’s fallen reputation — an effort that also attempts to shape narratives about President Donald Trump.

‘Nixon is back’

Republicans see Nixon as a “historical analog” for Trump, said The Wall Street Journal. If Democrats see both men as uniquely villainous, conservatives have another view. “The same groups of people, the same institutions” tried to take down both presidents, said Vice President JD Vance this summer at the Nixon Presidential Library, per the outlet. The Justice Department is now “reviewing” whether the Watergate special prosecutor “committed misconduct” in the case, said the Journal.

“Nixon is back,” said Nathan Pinkoski at the Washington Examiner. Boomers see the former president as the “embodiment of perfidy and villainy.” Current in-power Republicans instead view him as a symbol of a “conservative counterculture” who has been embraced by a “younger, rebellious American Right.” The new surge in Nixonphilia is “perfectly timed to tap into a broader collapse of trust” in institutions like the media and legal system.

The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Join more than 350,000 subscribers and keep yourself informed with a selection of The Week’s most interesting, enlightening and entertaining stories - plus daily puzzles.

Sign up

The Justice Department’s attempt to rewrite history is “extremely dangerous,” said Nick Akerman, a former Watergate prosecutor, at MS NOW. The truth is that Nixon “tried to use the deep state to cover up his crimes.” Obscuring that story is just “another flagrant effort by the Trump administration to undermine our established rule of law.”

No big deal?

The right’s new embrace of Nixon “serves some obvious purposes,” Jonah Goldberg said at The Dispatch. Watergate ended his presidency, signaling “there’s a limit to what Trump can get away with.” But it is an “open question” if any of Trump’s scandals can be a problem if Watergate is retroactively declared to be “no big deal.”

“Nixonmaxxing” was “inevitable,” Heather Digby Parton said at Salon. One way the increasingly unpopular Trump and his GOP allies can fend off scandal is to argue “the deep state has been out to get Republicans ever since Nixon.” It might be the only way to contain a “massive revolt” against Trumpism.