(Pictured is John Dean III, former White House counsel, being sworn in before the Senate Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities in 1973.)
This post was inspired by this article, which got me to thinking about the differences and similarities between Watergate and Rathergate.
For its time, Watergate was quite dramatic, but the current scandal doesn’t have the same feel. Thirty years later, we’re much more jaded about politics, and we don’t believe journalists are objective.
For instance, we know Dan Rather and most of mainstream media are liberals who hate George Bush. That CBS aired an episode of “60 Minutes” where they attempted to discredit the president and accuse him of lying was neither shocking nor unexpected.
What might be a tad surpising is that the network didn’t do a more thorough investigation of what turned out to be forged documents. I’m still reeling over this and the glaring fact that no one has been canned over it.
Let’s take a trip back to what is ancient history to some, the days of bell-bottoms and disaster movies…
Watergate
Long after this generation passes away, people will still be affixing the word “gate” to the names of big scandals from now until the end of time. Between 1972-1974, America was engrossed by Watergate, the mother of all scandals (so far). It brought down a sitting president and uncovered one idiotic, ill-conceived scheme after another.
I have a very vague memory (I was about 5 years old) of sitting in front of what passed for color television wondering why cartoons weren’t on. In my mind I see men in suits sitting at tables speaking into microphones. Boring. Every now and then I saw an image of the White House (subliminal suggestion?). My mother told me she watched some of the hearings, so the memory may be real.
The day five bozos decided to break into the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate office building changed America. Investigators quickly discovered that one of the burglars, James McCord, worked for the Committee for the Re-election of the President (CRP). Money found on the burglars was traced to the bank account of one of the other burglars, which was traced to Kenneth Dahlberg, who also worked for the CRP.
Searches of the burglars’ homes turned up address books and other items linking the five to E. Howard Hunt, a White House consultant. That was it. The jig was up. Stupid is as stupid does.
More men were drawn into the circle, including Nixon’s Special Counsel Chuck Colson, who set up the “Plumbers” (secret White House team whose job was to seal news leaks and spy on political opponents), John Ehrlichman, Nixon’s top aide, H.R. Haldeman, Nixon aide, John Mitchell, Director of the CRP, and others.
During the hearings, Nixon was ordered to turn over his formerly secret White House tapes of conversations. When the tapes were subpoenaed by the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities, Nixon refused to turn them over, citing Executive Privilege. He finally broke under pressure and released some of the tapes, including one with the famous 18 1/2 minutes gap. On August 8, 1974, Nixon resigned. Read the resignation letter.
To save time and space, I’ve skipped over many important details, but since you know how to read, I’ll direct you to the Washington Post‘s chronology with stories referenced. It’s a great resource.
Watergate changed the way we viewed politics and journalism. As I stated before, we’re much more battle-weary now, so I don’t know whether Rathergate will have a similar impact. However, one change is obvious: the ascendence of citizen-journalists and hobbyists in the blogosphere.
I’ve listed a few similarities and differences I see between the two scandals, but only time will tell if anything on the list changes in the coming weeks.
Similarities between Watergate and Rathergate: 1) Nobody wants to talk and everybody is pointing fingers at the other guy; 2) Anti-Vietnam demonstrations and the leaking of the Pentagon Papers to the New York Times made Nixon’s people nervous. (The Swift Boat Veterans ads made the Kerry camp nervous.); 3) The trail of evidence led to the White House and eventually to President Nixon. (CBS’s trail of deceit leads to an official inside the Kerry campaign. Will it lead to Kerry?); 4) The desire to protect their guy from threats, perceived or otherwise, got the ball rolling on the whole thing. (Kerry’s ratings were plummeting, due to his ineptness and the Swift Boat ads.)
Differences between Watergate and Rathergate: 1) Mostly all of Nixon’s men went down. (As of this writing, no one we know of at CBS or in the Kerry campaign has been fired.); 2) According to Woodward and Bernstein, they refused to contact the McGovern campaign when requested. (Kerry’s man Joe Lockhart willingly spoke to CBS’s source before the story ran.); 3) Nixon was president. (John Kerry is not president nor will he be in November.)
*Your assignment: What did I miss? Any other similarities and differences (besides obvious ones)?
Interesting links: Watergate.info, Watergate Timeline, Houston Chronicle.
Power Line blogs Watergate, too.
