SHADOW OF A SCANDAL

How Watergate loomed large in US politics and culture for decades

Watergate ended the presidency of Richard Nixon, but not his influence. He acted as an unofficial advisor on foreign policy for his successors until his death in 1994, a two-decade period during which he was able to at least partially salvage his reputation. The scandal brought disgrace to Nixon’s advisors, but also yielded some degree of fame: G Gordon Liddy, for instance, was able to carve out a career as a “shock jock” political commentator. Many others wrote personal memoirs chronicling the affair, offering competing accounts about their respective degrees of blame and responsibility.

Among the US population at large, the scandal cemented a sense of disengagement with politics. For liberals, Watergate amplified a feeling of unease, sparked by the Vietnam War, about the role and practices of government, and fed into the idea of a secret state conspiring to protect the powerful. Conservatives, meanwhile, pointed to the detachment of the east-coast political establishment, making increasingly fervent calls to “drain the swamp” from Reagan’s 1980s presidency onwards.

Although Nixon resigned before he could be removed from office, articles of impeachment have since become a blunt instrument and a regular feature of the US political process. Bill Clinton was impeached in 1998 for lying under oath and obstructing justice but was acquitted on both counts the following year. Donald Trump was impeached, and acquitted, twice.

Finally, Watergate left us with a suffix for the ages – one that has been applied to a whole host of political and cultural scandals around the world since Nixon’s resignation.