Talks from the Hoover Institution

March 27, 2023

A Hoover History Working Group Seminar with Luke Nichter, Geoff Shepard, and Dwight Chapin.

New evidence has surfaced in the fifty years since President Nixon’s resignation. This seminar gathers together three prominent authorities on Watergate, the biggest political scandal of the 20th century.

For 50 years, we were taught a carefully curated history of Watergate. It was the nation’s greatest political scandal: a White House-led cover-up, the only resignation of a sitting president, and the conviction of some two dozen members of Richard Nixon’s administration. However, with the opening of new archival material, a fuller history emerges that prompts us to challenge what was previously known.

ABOUT THE SPEAKERS

Luke’s next book project, under contract with Yale University Press, is tentatively titled The Making of the President, 1968: Lyndon Johnson, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon, George Wallace, and the Election that Changed America, for which he was awarded a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship for 2020-2021. The book draws on interviews with approximately 85 family members and former staffers, in addition to extensive archival research involving first-time access to a number of key collections that will recast our understanding of the 1968 election.

Geoff Shepard is an attorney and former official in the Nixon and Ford administrations. He came to Washington in 1969 as a White House Fellow, after graduating from Harvard Law School. He then joined John Ehrlichman’s Domestic Council staff at the Nixon White House, where he served for five years and worked closely with senior officials at the Department of Justice. As a result, he knew and had worked with virtually all of the major Watergate figures. He also worked on President Nixon’s Watergate defense team, where he was principal deputy to the President’s lead lawyer, J. Fred Buzhardt. In that capacity, he helped transcribe the White House tapes, ran the document rooms holding the seized files of H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman and John Dean, and staffed White House counselors Bryce Harlow and Dean Birch on Watergate issues and developments.

Over the past decade, Geoff has uncovered internal documents within the Watergate Special Prosecution Force that call into question everything we’ve been told about Watergate. His first book, The Secret Plot to Make Ted Kennedy President (2008), focuses on the political intrigue behind the successful exploitation of the Watergate scandal by Kennedy administration loyalists. His second book, The Real Watergate Scandal, Collusion, Conspiracy and the Plot that Brought Nixon Down (2015), focuses on judicial and prosecutorial abuses in the Watergate prosecutions. His third book, The Nixon Conspiracy, Watergate and the Plot to Remove the President (2021), describes prosecutors’ work with the House Judiciary Committee to bring about Nixon’s impeachment.

Dwight Chapin worked as the Personal Aide to former Vice President Richard Nixon during his presidential campaign, becoming Special Assistant to the President after Nixon’s election victory. He became Deputy Assistant to the President in 1971, and visited China three times: with Henry Kissinger in October of 1971, with Alexander Haig in January of 1972, and with President Nixon in February of 1972. Chapin served as “Acting Chief of Protocol” for these trips. Chapin remained in his role as Deputy Assistant until he left the White House Staff in March 1973. Chapin was also President and Publisher of Success Magazine for five years, and later served in Asia as Managing Director of Hill and Knowlton Public Relations. In 1988 Chapin established Chapin enterprises, an independent communications consultancy, which he operated for the next thirty years.

Chapin published an in-depth memoirs about his time with Nixon, The President’s Man (2022), which relates his memorable experiences and concludes with new insights about the break-in that brought down Nixon’s presidency.

Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges. 

In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Terry Moe, a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution and the William Bennett Munro Professor of political science at Stanford University, and Philip K. Howard, author of Not Accountable: Rethinking the Constitutionality of Public Employee Unions on Tuesday, March 28, 2023 at 10:00 am PT/ 1:00pm ET.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR 

Philip K. Howard. Philip is a leader of government and legal reform in America. He is Chair of Common Good.  In 2002, Philip formed Common Good, a nonpartisan coalition dedicated to simplifying laws so that Americans can use common sense in daily choices. His 2010 TED Talk has been viewed by more than 750,000 people. His 2015 report, “Two Years, Not Ten Years,” exposed the economic and environmental costs of delayed infrastructure approvals, and its proposals have since been incorporated into federal law.  

ABOUT THE BOOK 

“Elected leaders come and go, but public unions just say no.” Hiding in plain sight is a fatal defect of modern democracy. Public employee unions have a death grip on the operating machinery of government. Schools can’t work, bad cops can’t be fired, and politicians sell their souls for union support.

With this searing five-point indictment, Philip K. Howard argues that union controls have disempowered elected executives and should be unconstitutional.

Union power in government happened almost by accident in the 1960s, ostensibly to give public unions the same bargaining rights as trade unions. But government bargaining is not about dividing profits, but making political choices about public priorities. Moreover, the political nature of decision-making allowed unions to provide campaign support to friendly officials. Public bargaining became collusive. The unions brag about it: “We elect our own bosses.”

Sitting on both sides of the bargaining table has allowed public unions to turn the democratic hierarchy upside down. Elected officials answer to public employees. Basic tools of good government have been eliminated. There’s no accountability, detailed union entitlements make government largely unmanageable and unaffordable, and public policies are driven by what is good for public employees, not what is good for the public. Public unions keep it that way by brute political force—harnessing the huge cohort of public employees into a political force dedicated to preventing the reform of government.

The solution, Howard argues, is not political but constitutional. America’s republican form of government requires an executive branch that is empowered to implement public policies, not one shackled to union controls. Public employees have a fiduciary duty to serve the public and should not be allowed to organize politically to harm the public.

This short book could unlock a door to fixing a broken democracy.

Join the Hoover Book Club for engaging discussions with leading authors on the hottest policy issues of the day. Hoover scholars explore the latest books that delve into some of the most vexing policy issues facing the United States and the world. Find out what makes these authors tick and how they think we should approach our most difficult challenges. 

In our latest installment, watch a discussion between Bill Whalen, the Virginia Hobbs Carpenter Distinguished Policy Fellow in Journalism and Morris P. Fiorina, a senior fellow and author of the recently released Hoover Institution Press book Who Governs? Emergency Powers in the Time of COVID on Tuesday, March 7, 2023 at 10:00 am PT/ 1:00pm ET.

Guest Speaker: Matt Ridley

Matt Ridley gave a presentation that challenged the conventional wisdom of carbon emissions, arguing that CO2 may provide more benefits than costs to the environment.

Ridley outlined several benefits, principally the global greening of land and the oceans. When there is more CO2 in the atmosphere, vegetation can rely less on scarce water supplies. More CO2 would also result in higher yields and longer growing seasons, meaning that more land can be used for nature reserves. He maintained that more CO2 also translates into warmer winters and, in turn, fewer people dying from cold temperatures.

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Presenters: Niall Ferguson, Milbank Family Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; and Steven Koonin, Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Chair: Ronald Bailey, science correspondent, Reason Magazine.

Steven Koonin argued that many advocates of sweeping mandates for climate change frequently peddle misinformation, promote extreme scenarios as the consequence of global temperature rises, and smear critics of their arguments as “deniers” and with other detractions. Koonin then presented several examples from his research that provide context for environmental trends that are usually omitted from the prevailing literature on the subject.

Niall Ferguson examined the rhetoric of proponents of drastic action against climate change, many of whom assert that, if the policies they favor aren’t adopted, the world will experience a catastrophe involving extraordinarily high temperatures, precipitation, and sea levels.

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Presenters: Mark P. Mills, senior fellow, Manhattan Institute; and David Victor, professor of innovation and public policy, University of California–San Diego.

Chair: Neil Chatterjee, senior advisor, Hogan Lovells, and former commissioner and chairman of the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission.

Mark Mills argued that ambitious goals to achieve zero carbon emissions in the coming decades are delusional. He said that over the past 20 years, after $5 trillion spent worldwide, there hasn’t been any significant movement toward transitions to renewables. Today, global energy derived from wood exceeds that of solar and wind power combined (which make up just 3 percent of all fuels).  Moreover, a rapid transition to these other renewable sources, including batteries, would require a level of mineral extraction never seen in history.

In his first of four points, David Victor described the fragmented policy action in countering various pollutants. In replacing carbon, some alternative energies are farther along than others. Meanwhile, some industries face bigger challenges from other pollutants, such as aviation through the emission of contrail clouds from jet engines. These and other segments of the economy have different features that will determine if a market-driven or a mandate-based approach is more effective at mitigating environmental damage.

Niall Ferguson examined the rhetoric of proponents of drastic action against climate change, many of whom believe that if the policies they favor aren’t adopted, the world will experience a catastrophe involving extraordinarily high temperatures, precipitation, and sea levels.

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Presenters: Christopher Costello, distinguished professor of resource economics, Bren School of Environmental Science & Management, University of California—Santa Barbara; and Barton “Buzz” Thompson, Robert E. Paradise Professor of Natural Resources Law, Stanford University Law School.

Chair: Dominic Parker, Ilene and Morton Harris Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution.

During his remarks, Christopher Costello articulated the advantages of markets over regulatory approaches to conservation and mitigation of harms inflicted on the environment. As an example, he described that the coastal waters of Santa Barbara are home not only to one of the most biodiverse maritime habitats in America but also to some of the busiest shipping lanes in the world. These circumstances have resulted in large container vessels causing harm to maritime wildlife while traveling to and from the Port of Los Angeles.

Buzz Thompson provided another example of the feasibility of markets for environmental protection. Delivery of water from the Colorado River was weakening the flow of its stream and, in turn, endangering its fish population. He explained that limiting water to farmers would have been a daunting challenge. Understanding this reality, authorities instead paid farmers for access to their water rights so that they could strengthen the flow of the river.

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Presenters: Matthew Kahn, Provost Professor of Economics and Spatial Sciences, University of Southern California; and Maria Waldinger, Deputy Director of the Ifo Center for Labor and Demographic Economics.

Chair: Terry Anderson, John and Jean DeNault Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Maria Waldinger provided a historical analysis of how societies have adapted to climate conditions. The oldest adaptation strategy was migration, she explained, which was more easily achieved when societies were nomadic and there were no political boundaries. More modern societies have adopted various processes to ensure their survival. She explained that crop failures were an omnipresent feature of European societies between the 14th and 19th centuries, a period of regional cooling that has been referred to as the “little ice age.”

Matthew Khan outlined to the audience how markets can provide optimal incentives for adaption to climate change and reduce its economic effects. If enough people are facing a challenge, markets are the mechanisms that can empower entrepreneurs to produce and deliver innovations, Kahn maintained.

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Presenters: Sanjai Bhagat, professor of finance at the University of Colorado–Boulder; and John H. Cochrane, Rose-Marie and Jack Anderson Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Chair: John Taylor, George P. Shultz Senior Fellow in Economics, Hoover Institution.

Sanjai Bhagat explained that ESG investing principles and new standards of corporate social responsibility are not based on the fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value. They are primarily centered, he said, on maintaining the well-being of societal stakeholders, including customers, employers, suppliers, and communities, as well as particular objectives such as environmental justice.

John Cochrane asserted that the Security and Exchange Commission’s plan to enforce ESG investment practices isn’t based on “saving the planet” but on bending corporations to serve a particular political agenda. Echoing Bhagat, Cochrane said the ESG mandates would not maximize shareholder value. It would instead deny capital to companies, lower their asset prices, and curb returns to investors. ESG mandates would also pervert markets, destroy competition, and encourage some companies to rent-seek from the government.

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Presenters: Terry Anderson, John and Jean De Nault Senior Fellow, Hoover Institution; and Dominic Parker, Ilene and Morton Harris Visiting Fellow, Hoover Institution.

Terry Anderson began the conference sessions by providing definitions for mandates and markets in their environmental contexts. Mandates (or rules) means that politics and administrations assign environmental objectives and use fixed command-and-control mechanisms to achieve them. On the other hand, markets are based on processes whereby resource owners respond to changing values. 

Dominic Parker examined the trade-offs of both market-driven and mandate approaches to environmental policies. He explained that there are cases in which mandates have proved effective, but that their policy outcomes should be analyzed with a nuanced perspective.

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