John Dean, one of the key figures in Watergate, has had literal nightmares about Trump's presidency.
“The American presidency has never been at the whims of an authoritarian personality like Donald Trump,” Dean, who is now 78, told me. “He is going to test our democracy as it has never been tested.”
With Trump preparing to take the oath of office this week, some of his more imaginative critics foresee a Nixonian demise on the horizon—the corrupt commander-in-chief felled by his own hubris, forced out of office. But if prophesies of impeachment seem a tad dramatic, Dean’s own forecast for the next four years is arguably much grimmer. He is not only convinced that Trump will be worse than Nixon in virtually every way—he thinks he’ll probably get away with it.
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“I used to have one-on-one conversations with [Nixon] where I’d see him checking his more authoritarian tendencies,” Dean recalled. “He’d say, ‘This is something I can’t say out loud...’ or, ‘That is something the president can’t do.’” To Dean, these moments suggested a functioning sense of shame in Nixon, something he was forced to wrestle with in his quest for power. Trump, by contrast, appears to Dean unmolested by any such struggle.
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......Dean says Trump will almost certainly weather whatever storms he faces during his presidency. “Unless Trump is a such a disaster that the public rises up and changes control of Congress in the mid-term elections, he is very safe.”
Dean is less sure, however, of how the republic will look at the end of a Trump presidency. “By nature, I am an optimist,” he told me. “But Trump as president is going to be about surviving disaster.”
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https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2017/01/john-dean-interview/513215/
= new reply since forum marked as read
Unfortunately.
Really wish I'd read it when it was published in 2006. It was a bestseller then. It needs to be again.
I admire him immensely for his courage in speaking out over the years despite the vicious smear campaign against him that started in 1991.
From the book:
* They travel in tight circles of like-minded people.
* Their thinking is more likely based on what authorities have told them rather than on their own critical judgment, which results in their beliefs being filled with inconsistencies.
* They harbor numerous double standards and hypocrisies.
* They are hostile toward so many minorities they seem to be equal-opportunity bigots, yet they are generally unaware of their prejudices.
* They see the world as a dangerous place, with society teetering on the brink of self-destruction from evil and violence, and when their fear conflates with their self-righteousness, they appoint themselves guardians of public morality, or God's Designated Hitters.
* They think of themselves as far more moral and upstanding than others-a self-deception aided by their religiosity (many are "born again"
and their ability to "evaporate guilt" (such as by going to confession).
