TRUMP FINALLY CANCELLED THE WATERGATE SHOW: The return of the American Caesar.

Nixon is having his revenge. The Supreme Court’s ruling last year asserting broad presidential immunity is a kind of posthumous vindication of Nixon’s presidential defense; had the ruling been issued in 1973, it would have shipwrecked the Watergate special prosecution. The high court read the law — and the national mood — correctly. Voters don’t want lawfare to harass former presidents, nor to paralyse presidents in office. They do want an effective and decisive executive. The model of personal power that presidents from FDR to Nixon embodied is back in style.

This changes the terms of American politics. Back in the Seventies, Nixon realised that the fundamental political conflict facing America was not that between liberals and conservatives, but between those who wanted the bureaucracies to exercise institutional autonomy and those who wanted them subordinated to the elected officials. That remains true today. Trump’s most controversial Cabinet picks (RFK, Tulsi Gabbard, Kash Patel, and Pete Hegseth) had liberal critics, but particularly vehement conservative ones. This was because they swore to take back control of entrenched scientific, intelligence, or military bureaucracies. Just like liberals, conservatives have their favourite bureaucracies.

This was why movement conservatism was never at peace with Nixon, and why it will likely never be at peace with Trump. The electoral appetite is for restoring competence and efficiency in government, as well as purging the state apparatus of ideological absurdities. It doesn’t exist to realise movement conservatism’s visions of a small, shrunken government.

Finally, if the resurgence of American Caesarism is “red” and Nixonian at the moment, another “blue” Caesar is certainly possible in a country that remains so narrowly divided. Caesarism isn’t the product of a stable constitutional system; it is always a volatile phenomenon, its trajectory is difficult to predict or control. The Roman emperors were great not because of their steady hand, but because they went further than anyone else in good or evil.

So far, Trump’s impact lies with demolition, not creation. Whatever the future holds, he has brought an end to a lingering national myth. The elite obsession with Nixon, as it appears in op-eds and lawfare, has never been less effective. For decades, the Watergate script was endlessly rerun and rebooted. But Trump has pulled the plug.

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