Professor Nicole Hemmer
speaker
296 appearances
5 recordings
1 series
first heard Apr 2025
last heard Jun 2025
Professor Nicole Hemmer’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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They're very critical of the social welfare state that many moderate Republicans had bought into and had participated in building and expanding under Eisenhower and Johnson and Kennedy and even under Nixon in some capacities. And so there's this growing conservative wing that doesn't necessarily trust Richard Nixon. but they become much more trustworthy.
They fall into line more so, not completely. There are some that like push for John Ashbrook to run in 72 to challenge Nixon, but they fall in line because they actually adore Spiro Agnew. Spiro Agnew is a vocal critic, especially of this liberal media bias and really was Nixon's attack dog against, you know, the liberalism and, you know,
started to kind of turn this anti-liberalism into more of a coherent conservative message. And so that's where Spiro Agnew really played a key role. And so when he ultimately had to resign because he was involved in these bribery scandals, this is a really key moment where conservatives are hoping that a conservative would be put in place.
And of course, that's not going to happen, given the realities of the Watergate scandal as it's playing out at the time.
Absolutely. He knows, again, this is the fall of 73 after the summer, the televised hearings. I mean, it's really Watergate is starting to intensify again. It's showing it's starting to show some very, very concrete links between the higher ups of the Nixon White House and not just the burglary, but of course, the cover up.
And so, you know, there's an intense political pressure and Nixon needs someone who is not controversial. And again, has this trust that a lot of people liked him and they trusted him. And so that's really why he decides on Gerald Ford.
Absolutely. And, you know, Democrats had dominated Congress for quite some time at this moment. And this is something that in 72, if you look at the presidential map, all of the country except for Massachusetts and Washington, D.C., go for Richard Nixon. And that looks like a landslide. But the reality is that the Democratic Party was deeply divided on the presidential level.
They had over a dozen people that ran in an open primary system. It was a very new nominating system that year. And so the presidential process was very contested, fragmented and divided. However, at the state and at the national level in Congress, they still have a stronghold.
Yeah, and that's what's really interesting is because in the wake of the Kennedy assassination, there's a lot of attention to this question of succession and who has authority. But again, it hadn't actually been implemented until this. So it's the first time. So it's making constitutional history because it's the first time that they're following this new procedure.
which ultimately says that when there's a vacancy in the office of the vice president, the president shall nominate a vice president that will have to then be confirmed by the majority of both houses of Congress.
Well, again, I think it's important to remember that there was a sign that this was coming. There was a feeling that things were moving and that impeachment was very, very real. And that is the only reason that Nixon was willing to resign, because he understood that after in May, the House Judiciary Committee began debating articles of impeachment.
And then, of course, there is this legal debate over the tapes. And does Nixon have privilege over them? Are they his property? The Supreme Court weighs in on the tapes in July, and then it becomes very clear that this is going to be the hard evidence.
And then people in Senate, notably Barry Goldwater, one of, again, the leader of this conservative wing, the Republican Party, who had gotten behind Nixon, who, as he was embattled, felt that they found common ground. They argued that it's this liberal media that's out to get Nixon. And so they found this common ground.
And then Barry Goldwater, when the evidence of the tapes comes out, he feels that Nixon had lied to them. He felt very betrayed, as did many people across the ideological spectrum in the Republican Party. And so he walks very famously down Pennsylvania Avenue to the Oval Office and tells Nixon that he has lost the support of his most ardent supporters.
And so then it becomes very clear that there's going to be this transition and that he's either going to be impeached or he needs to resign. What's really interesting is, you know, of course, Gerald Ford gets this phone call. But one of the really interesting people that I studied in my recent book on cable television is this person called Clay Whitehead.
And he was actually part of this team that was assembled of... of former Nixon advisors and people that were really trusted, not because they were outside of the inner circles of this Watergate. And they started preparing for this transition. So they're starting to think, what will a transition look like? And, you know, this is happening throughout the summer of 74. So there's an entire team.
So it's not just Gerald Ford that's thinking through it. There's an entire team of people that, you know, were not embroiled in the Watergate scandal, that were known for bringing, you know, this public service, this commitment to public service, not this partisan politics, this corrupt politics from the Nixon administration that then were helping Gerald Ford prepare.
Ford was not involved in these final decisions that Richard Nixon is making. Indeed, many people who suspected that some deal was struck about a pardon that would come later would would fabricate this idea that there is this internal conspiracy. But in fact, the historical records don't show that at all.
And in fact, you know, Gerald Ford understood that this was likely going to play and that he was going to step in into this unprecedented role. And he focused his time not on influencing Nixon, but on preparing for this very heavy weight of responsibility that he was going to have to bear by taking up the presidency after something that was truly unprecedented, after a two year process.
constitutional crisis and that he was going to be the one, the unlikely leader to push people to help them grapple with the tragedy, the trauma that they had endured. And so that was his focus, more on the responsibilities that he knew he was going to assume at this unprecedented time.
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