One of Richard Nixon’s lasting gifts to the language was to popularize the American use of “stonewall” as a verb.

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Discussing whether to allow White House aides to testify before the Senate Watergate committee, Nixon said on tape in 1973: “I want you all to stonewall it, let them plead the fifth amendment, cover-up or anything else, if it’ll save it – save the plan.”

But compared with Donald Trump, Nixon was a piker. In fact, a strong case can be made that the secret mission of the Trump presidency has been to restore Nixon’s reputation.

When the US supreme court in a unanimous 1974 decision directed the president to hand over the White House tapes, Nixon complied even though it sealed his fate. In a similar situation, Trump would be burning the tapes on the White House lawn while shouting: “Come and get me, copper.”

Taking time from selling out the Kurds, Trump followed that strategy to the hilt as he turned Tuesday into Stonewall the Constitution Day.

His defiance began with a last-minute decision to block the testimony of ambassador Gordon Sondland, a key figure in pressuring Ukraine to investigate Joe Biden’s son. Then Rudy Giuliani – the president’s malaprop mouthpiece – gave a Bronx cheer (“Let them hold me in contempt”) to a congressional demand for documents. Finally, the White House counsel, Pat Cipollone, sent House Democrats a foam-at-the-mouth eight-page letter stonewalling cooperation with the impeachment inquiry because … well … Trump wants to.

The phrase “constitutional crisis” has been used loosely throughout the Trump presidency whenever a law professor appears on MSNBC. But this time, Trump’s scorched-earth defiance of Congress as a coequal branch of government qualifies as a true time of testing for American democracy.

The practical problem facing the House Democrats is that turning to the federal courts to uphold subpoenas is a time-consuming process that makes Freudian analysis seem fleet-footed in comparison. The justice department offers no salvation since the attorney general, William Barr, has transformed it into another branch of Trump Worldwide Kleptocracy.

House Democrats are tempted by the notion of simply powering through – and turning Trump’s rejection of subpoenas into another article of impeachment. That was the essence of Article Three of the 1974 impeachment case against Nixon contending that the president “has failed … to produce papers and things as directed by duly authorized subpoenas”.

Such an approach has legal merit. And, it would mesh with Nancy Pelosi’s reported desire to hold an impeachment vote in the House by Thanksgiving. But the danger in such a rush to judgment is that it would deprive the House impeachment hearings of much of their inherent drama.

It is easy to forget that Nixon’s downfall was a play with two distinct acts.

The first act was the 1973 Senate Watergate hearings that riveted the nation with witnesses such as John Dean talking about “a cancer growing on the presidency”. That was when Nixon’s approval ratings collapsed from 68% in the Gallup poll in January 1973 to less than half by that August.

The curtain rose on the second act a year later as the House judiciary committee approved impeachment with seven Republicans supporting at least one of the articles. Nixon’s determination to never give in crumpled with the release of the “smoking gun” tape in early August 1974 that prompted Republican leaders such as Barry Goldwater to ask him to resign.

Awash in advice from constitutional scholars, House Democrats desperately need to hear from top theatrical directors

In contrast, House Democrats are rushing forward with impeachment without the equivalent of the Senate Watergate hearings. Neither the showboating House intelligence committee chairman, Adam Schiff, nor the uninspiring judiciary chairman, Jerry Nadler, has displayed the skill to orchestrate a compelling public hearing.

Awash in advice from constitutional scholars, House Democrats desperately need to hear from top theatrical directors. Because the only way that Trump’s impeachment will be more than a Democrats-only quest is if the dramatic arc becomes as compelling as Watergate. And that means that the target audience now should be wavering Republican voters appalled by Trump’s conduct and Republican legislators who are privately ashamed of their timidity.

The Democrats should not rush impeachment with artificial deadlines. Instead, the hope is that a few troubled Trump insiders will resign in protest in order to testify honestly before the House. The moral decision that John Dean made in 1973 is just as applicable in 2019.

In the end, it should be remembered that Stonewall Jackson was a general on the losing side of the civil war. And Nixon’s stonewall saved neither the plan nor his presidency. For to update Robert Frost, “Something there is that doesn’t love a stonewall.”