On the front of the New York Times Sunday Week in Review, Managing Editor Jill Abramson tried to link anonymous pro-Republican donors of the 2010 election cycle to illegal campaign donations made to Richard Nixon’s 1972 re-election campaign: “Return of the Secret Donors -- In 2010, corporate cash, anonymous contributions and other echoes of Watergate.” Enforcing the link, the top half of the section was dominated by a collage of photos of Nixon and his secretary Rose Mary Woods, circa 1972.
It's clear that the Times hates the idea that corporations may have a say, however indirectly, in democracy. But one would at least think that a journalist comparing the perfectly legal corporation donation tactics of today to illegal fundraising by past political campaigns would look for the most recent examples. Perhaps the Clinton administration’s corrupt 1996 fundraising from China, or the indelible image of Al Gore raising money in a Buddhist temple.
Instead, Abramson traveled all the way back to 1972 to link the anonymous corporate donations of 2010 to that quintessential example of Republican corruption, Richard Nixon.
Even as Abramson briefly admits today’s allegedly Nixon-style fundraising is legal, she strained to set up a parallel between this pro-Republican election cycle and the illegal donations of 1972, specifically the Committee for the Re-Election of the President (CREEP), and handily exploited a single loose link from the past to the present, one Fred Malek. Abramson began with Nixon:
To old political hands, wise to the ways of candidates and money, 1972 was a watershed year. Richard M. Nixon’s re-election campaign was awash in cash, secretly donated by corporations and individuals.
