"The people of the United States are entitled to assume that their President is telling the truth.   The pattern of misrepresentation and half-truths that emerges from our investigation reveals a presidential policy cynically based on the premise that the truth itself is negotiable."

To whom can we attribute this quote?  Rep. Adam Schiff?   House Judiciary Committee Chair Jerry Nadler?  Nancy Pelosi?  

No, the actual speaker was one Caldwell Butler, U.S. Representative from Virginia before the House Judiciary Committee hearing on the impeachment of Richard Nixon on July 25, 1974.*

And yet the quote could have been given in December 2019, some forty-five years later.  It could just as easily have been said about our current military leader.  

Nixon could be secretive, at best, and a criminal conspirator, at worst.  The impeachment committee said he had abused power, and attempted to obstruct justice (though not technically criminal).   But Nixon with all his faults still seemed like a President.  Even in his co-called crazy moments talking to the paintings of dead Presidents in the White House, Nixon still seemed presidential.

Such cannot be said in the America of today.  This individual does not always act presidential.  And now, says the House of Representatives, he is not fit to be President.  

Perhaps it is true that, as has been said, history does not repeat itself but it does rhyme.  It rhymes.   And it also echoes.   

May God yet save the United States of America. 

 





*The Final Days.   Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.  New York:  Simon and Schuster, 1976, p. 283.