Analysis: Here's what Democrats today can learn from Rep. Jack Brooks — the congressman who wrote the Watergate impeachment articles
Chicago Tribune.Jack Brooks, Democrat of Beaumont, Texas, served in the United States House of Representatives for 42 years. His tenure in Congress spanned the terms of 10 presidents. His early career in Washington was shepherded by Texas legend and longtime Speaker of the House Sam Rayburn. He was in John F.
While it was the release of the tapes that turned the tide of public opinion, especially among Republicans, and prompted Nixon’s resignation, it was Brooks’ articles that would have made impeachment a genuine threat to Nixon had he stayed.
Brooks, on the other hand, felt assured. In early July 1974, he seized the initiative by drafting the articles himself, along with the help of staff. As far as Brooks, the tough-talking former Marine who relished legislative fights, was concerned, Chairman Rodino “wasn’t worth a shit” in the impeachment process, as Brooks later told an interviewer. He was certainly fair and experienced as a legislator, but Brooks thought Rodino “didn’t have the guts a chairman needs to have.
Brooks was an exception. In 1970, at the urging of then-Rep. Gerald Ford from the floor of the House, 25 representatives submitted a resolution to the Rules Committee to impeach the staunchly liberal Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, on the grounds that he had engaged in misbehavior while on the court and had accepted speaking fees from a private organization with income from casinos.
This experience paid off as Brooks drafted the articles and fought off others’ efforts to push him to define impeachable offenses according to their agenda. Nixon’s defense attorney, James St. Clair, and Edward Hutchinson, the most senior Republican on the Judiciary, wanted the committee to define an impeachable offense as a felony, a strictly criminal offense.
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