PC:Nixon impeachment, US Army vs US Marines stand off!

WILDGEESE

WILDGEESE

It's been a fair while since I saw the film "Nixon" by Oliver Stone so apologies if my memory has deserted me so here goes.

In the last stages of the film, Nixon played by Anthony Hopkins faces impeachment and his staff including Henry Kissinger state that if he fails to walk, the US Army could intervene and force him out, but at the same time the US Marines have stated that they're here to protect the POTUS and thus intervene on behalf of the POTUS themselves.

How plausible is this scenario?

Could there actually be a stand off between both forces like a West/East Berlin stand off in the '60's

Could it trigger a civil war?

Regards filers
 

Edward IX

Banned
There is a TL where Nixon calls out the 101st Airborne out to prevent him from taken out in a "coup". They occupy Washington DC for a week and then, peacefully leave.
 

Japhy

Banned
The idea of Nixon leaning on military force to stay in power is a pretty common one with long lists of sources. Though an assessment of those sources seems to boil down mostly into Hippie Paranoia that he'd always been prepping for a dictatorship. Kissinger apparently said a few things at the time but the simple fact of the matter is that Kissinger always said stuff.
 
Wallet

Wallet

Banned
The moment Nixon is impeached, all military/federal/state/local forces would no longer listen to him. He would be removed from office by US Marshalls or by secret service agents if Ford says so.
 
Dornish Red

Dornish Red

Japhy said:
The idea of Nixon leaning on military force to stay in power is a pretty common one with long lists of sources. Though an assessment of those sources seems to boil down mostly into Hippie Paranoia that he'd always been prepping for a dictatorship. Kissinger apparently said a few things at the time but the simple fact of the matter is that Kissinger always said stuff.
Click to expand...

It sort of reminds of the Business Plot. For anyone on the thread who is not aware what that is: basically, the Business Plot was an alleged scheme by influential businessmen and elites in the 1930's USA to lead a military coup to depose Franklin Delano Roosevelt and install a dictatorship led by a Marine Corps officer named Smedley Butler, and yes that was really his name. Roosevelt would have kept office as a puppet president while power would really be held by a shadow dictatorship presided over by Smedley Butler who in turn would answer to the corporate interests that put him in power.

But the problem with the Business Plot was that there's not that much evidence that it ever actually existed. Most of the allegations about the Business Plot originated from Smedley Butler himself in his testimony to the US Congress. And considering that Butler was known to have fairly progressive, left-leaning political views, he seems an extremely unlikely candidate for the role as the leader of a right-wing military coup that would then install him as effectively a shadow-President of the United States.

So, with the example of the Business Plot in mind, I think we should always take this sort of thing with a grain of salt. Sure, Nixon, being Nixon, probably did imagine the idea of using the military to remain in office. But a paranoid mind is a deluded mind, and frankly, Nixon's mindset in the last year of his presidency was so disconnected from reality that he can't really be thought of as a rational leader. The simple fact is, Nixon could command that the military keep him in power all the way until the Secret Service shows up and arrests him before forcibly removing him from the White House.
 
Driftless

Driftless

Donor
James Schlesinger - Nixon's one time Secretary of Defense worried that Nixon might try something

The short form: Schlesinger worried that Nixon might act out of desperation and attempt to remain in office by intimidation, so he polled the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Apparently, they thought Schlesinger was being paranoid. Schlesinger was no one's fool; so it may just been a contingency notion...
 
creighton

creighton

Driftless said:
James Schlesinger - Nixon's one time Secretary of Defense worried that Nixon might try something

The short form: Schlesinger worried that Nixon might act out of desperation and attempt to remain in office by intimidation, so he polled the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Apparently, they thought Schlesinger was being paranoid. Schlesinger was no one's fool; so it may just been a contingency notion...
Click to expand...

Well, the early 1970s were kind of a high point for Contingency Theory as a public admin philosophy, so that would make sense. If your external inputs are that the President is surely getting impeached and he's getting drunk each night and going into a massively depressive state, the best practice at the time would have been to adjust your organization to make a plan to deal with it, even if it could cause some awkwardness.
 
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