If you’re a Boomer then you remember Watergate, or as a funny school friend used to say, the last summer before disco. Nixon left and Travolta came in! Maybe we needed disco after 2 years of hearing about tapes, abuse of power and everything else.
It happened 50 years ago and get ready for everyone in the media to tell you how Woodward and Bernstein saved our democracy. I guess that it’s only a matter of time before some university decides to replace the Jefferson statue with one of Woodward.
Watergate plus 50 means that we will hear a lot about it. Most of it is just reruns from back then and nothing new. The latest “Watergate” article is from Glenn Garvin who wrote this:
White House abuses of power didn’t start with Watergate either, as Martin Luther King Jr. (targeted for blackmail by President Lyndon B. Johnson’s FBI) or the Japanese citizens locked up by President Franklin Delano Roosevelt could tell you.
“It didn’t start with Watergate” as Victor Lasky wrote in 1977. I wonder if I still have that paperback somewhere in my garage. My recollection of Watergate is that President Nixon did not react quickly enough. The break-in was stupid. The President should have come out and fired everybody immediately. Of course he didn’t, and now the liberals have another anniversary to celebrate..
Nevertheless, Watergate sure looks like a G-rated movie compared to the Clinton campaign pushing a story, with a huge assist from friendly reporters, about the Trump campaign and collusion with the Russians. Or the Obama IRS selectively going after tax returns. Or the Biden DoJ throwing the book at parents showing up at school board meetings or investigating Border Patrol agents “whipping” people.
I’m not defending President Nixon. but it’s time to move on and stop using “Nixonian” for everything that you don’t like.
One more thing. Watergate gave us Carter in ’76 and Reagan in ’80. So maybe it was not so bad after all looking at the big picture.