Iran-Contra Paved the Way for Trump to Defy Democratic Norms

[Zorro]

A new book argues that Ronald Reagan’s signature scandal foreshadowed today’s sidelining of Congress by the executive branch.

Iran-Contra has never quite lived up to its potential as a political scandal. Watergate fires on all cylinders: a villainous president, a Constitutional Crisis™, a smoking gun, a resignation. You can make a pretty good movie about Watergate. But Iran-Contra?

All of those hearings and court cases, all those thousands of pages of testimony and diaries and internal documents have never coalesced into a memorable political fable. Sure, some rogue spies and security state officials were so committed to fighting baddies that they sold a few weapons and supported a few freedom fighters in ways that may technically have violated some statutes. But what was the harm? It certainly did no lasting damage to Ronald Reagan’s reputation. The only people who still care about Iran-Contra are history buffs and the civics-obsessed.

A new book on the scandal shows that this is entirely the wrong way to think about it. In The Breach: Iran-Contra and the Assault on American Democracy (The University of North Carolina Press, March 4), Alan McPherson argues convincingly that Iran-Contra should be plotted not as a minor sideshow in the Cold War’s final act, nor as a case study in flawed national-security policymaking, but as a key moment in the collapse of democratic norms.

McPherson was inspired to return to the improvised, personalized diplomacy of the affair while watching the first impeachment of Donald Trump in 2019. But his argument has become even more compelling in the first weeks of Trump 2.0. In McPherson’s telling, Iran-Contra was an assault on democratic governance by an extremist executive branch. The results — corruption, deception, willful illegality, lack of accountability — are starting to look familiar.

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2025-03-07/trump-and-musk-s-assault-on-governance-started-with-iran-contra?accessToken=eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJzb3VyY2UiOiJTdWJzY3JpYmVyR2lmdGVkQXJ0aWNsZSIsImlhdCI6MTc0MTM4ODYwNiwiZXhwIjoxNzQxOTkzNDA2LCJhcnRpY2xlSWQiOiJTU1IySzREV0xVNjgwMCIsImJjb25uZWN0SWQiOiJDNjgyQTUwQzJCRDM0MTFCQTgwQjEwQjZEQjczQzM1MSJ9.2qhCpdMovHGP6nIEoEKEilfvXiuXU3U4E77zovNNW7A

I remember the smiles on the faces of Weinberger and his fellow criminals the day Bush I pardoned them for their lawbreaking. Republican criminality goes back a long ways.

[ck4829]

1. K&R

[walkingman]

2. Reagan, the GOP god (I think because he used religion for political gain) was not only a B grade actor but

a corrupt POTUS. I think we can point to his administration as the beginning of the downturn in our Democacy - at least in my lifetime. He and Nancy were both senile fruitcakes.

[genxlib]

3. I agree 1000% that the severity of Iran Contra was never realized in the political sphere

I was never surprised that the true believers would look the other way to support the supposed communist fighters in south america

However, it was always shocking to me that the aspect of the scandal that had us shipping weapons to Iran was never an enormous scandal by itself. this was just a few years after they held hostages in the wake of an anti-american revolution. That was the part that just defied reality to me.

Not to mention than HWBush skated by saying he had no knowledge. The dude was the former director of the CIA. Don't tell me he wasn't wired to know everything.