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The PigBay™ Democracy Series
1974 was a terrible year for the developed world. In February, British Miners went on strike, eventually collapsing the Conservative Government of the time, and forcing Prime Minister Edward Heath to resign. May saw Nobel Peace Prize winning West German Chancellor do the same after he discovered the presence of a “Stasi” agent in the Kanzleramt, and in July, Turkey invaded then wholly Greek Cyprus.
But it got worse; on July 27th, the US Congress announced that it would impeach 37th President Richard Nixon for his part in the burglary and wiretapping of the Democrat Party’s HQ at Watergate on the bank of the Potomac in West Washington, DC. From then until he left office (voluntarily) on August 6th, it seemed likely that he would be the first serving President of the USA to stand trial; but when he did leave the White House for the last time, he took with him the ‘pure’ shroud of US Government that had existed since “Honest” Abe Lincoln.
Nixon was later pardoned by his Vice-President and successor, Gerald Ford; however, three of his closest aides, H. R. Haldeman (White House Chief of Staff), John Ehrlichmann (Special Advisor to the President) and John Mitchell (US Attorney-General) were convicted before a US Grand Jury and imprisoned.
1977’s election of “I will not tell a lie” Democrat Jimmy Carter, replacing Ford, attempted to rebuild this purity; although he was highly successful in forging the Panama Canal Treaty, and the peace treaty between the Israelis and the Egyptians, the damage was already done.
Three Republican terms followed. The first two, from 1981 to 1989 were under highly popular fierce anti-Communist actor Ronald Reagan. Reagan cut tax and public spending, further endearing himself to his public. However, his public spending reform did not include “Defense”, and in 1983 he invaded Grenada, a Commonwealth country plagued with coups (see Part 3).
The last years of his office were overshadowed by one thing. Senior military and security officials had been selling arms to Iran, and then diverting the profits to fund right-wing revolutionary extremists (again, see Part 3), the Contras, in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra affair, as it became known, led to the trial of a number of Reagan’s aides, but Reagan himself escaped without direct implication.
The third successive Republic term, from 1989 to 1993, was under Reagan’s Vice President, George H. W. Bush. Bush had served as a World War II Carrier Pilot in the Pacific (winning the Distinguished Flying Cross), as well as a Congressional Representative of Texas, US Ambassador to the UN and China, Director of the CIA and, of course, Vice President.
But upon entering office, Bush reverted to the Republican warmongering standard. Just 11 months after entering the Oval Office he ordered the invasion of Panama to arrest – their President, Manuel Noriega. In 1991, he pressed for an invasion of Iraq against dictator Saddam Hussein. The Gulf War, although eventually sanctioned by the UN, left America with a weak and unstable economy. This, coupled with his failure to actually capture, or even remove Hussein, contributed to his eventual defeat in 1992.
42nd President Bill Clinton’s Office from 1993 to 2001 was not so much corrupt as scandalous. He was very successful in rebuilding the economy, and negotiating away from military conflict (specifically in Haiti), and cancelled millions of dollars of third world debt. But like so many others, his Presidency was marred by a single affair – this time his affair with White House intern Monica Lewinsky. He denied, then admitted a relationship with her.
The Republican-controlled Congress voted to impeach him on charges of perjury and obstructing the course of justice, and he was brought before the Senate for trial in January and February 1999. He was overwhelmingly acquitted on all counts, and lived out the remainder of his second term without further incident. Many believe that this ruined what was the most successful Presidency for several years.
The 2000 Election was probably the closest ever, but was surrounded in controversy. It was drawn out, with both candidates being nominated long before it was necessary, but neither candidate did much to inspire their prospective voters. It turned out that both contenders had won the states they were expected to by a large margin, and the others went one way or the other by just a few thousand votes. In the end, it all came down to Florida.
Again, it was very close. It came down to less than two thousand votes out of six million cast (<0.033%), a margin that required a recount by state law. However, in a state that was governed by a Republican legislature, under Bush’s younger brother Jeb, no victor could be proclaimed. And so, for the first time since Washington was elected in 1788, the USA had no President. Both sides started a fervent chain of lawsuits to determine an outcome.
Despite recounts and re-recounts in Florida, the US Supreme Court in Washington, D.C., intervening for the first time ever in a Presidential election, upheld George Bush’s motion for a halt to be brought to all recounts. This left the original count standing, and Gore was forced to concede. What part Jeb Bush played in all this will probably never be known.
Since the end of World War Two, political integrity in the Western World has all but vanished – how many Western leaders are totally without some sort of corruption – but America has been hit more than most. Until 2000, most of the recent elections had been landslides, and 2000 was probably decided on by the shared DNA of some of the key figures. Who would every have thought candidates and Presidents from two parties that were founded as one could have caused so much grief and corruption to a great nation.