Looking back to Watergate
Fifty years ago, burglars broke into the Watergate complex—and the rest is more than just history. The scandal that ended in President Richard M. Nixon’s resignation from office helped shape our modern politics, reforming the government, revitalizing the press and redefining the parties. Now, the country confronts another generation-defining crisis, and events half a century old feel as relevant as if they happened yesterday.
The Nixon White House’s illegal sabotage of its opponents and the coverup that followed were examples of government going wrong. What happened after these crimes showed government going almost exactly right: Congress investigated, the news media reported, the people read, watched, listened and spoke—and eventually, enough members of the Republican elite put country over party to lead to the departure of a corrupt, dangerous president.
Today, Congress is investigating again: A select committee in the House of Representatives is examining what happened on Jan. 6, 2021, when an armed mob stormed the U.S. Capitol seeking to overturn the results of a lawful election—in part because a president, Donald Trump, exhorted them to. Yet most members of the GOP appear afraid to utter a word against the ex-president, who continues to hold their party in his grip.
So in 2022, as Congress tries to get to the facts when facts have gone out of fashion, is there anything to be learned from 1972? Scandals happened in the decades before, from the Red Scare, to the Bay of Pigs invasion, to the misguided decisions that mired the nation in the Vietnam War; scandals happened in the years after, from the Iran-contra affair, to the claims that there were weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, to the mental and physical torment of prisoners during the war on terrorism.
Yet Watergate shook the nation as little else before and changed it—in some ways for better, by encouraging the press to hold government to account and the public to pay attention, as well as by ushering in legislation that served the same goals in areas such as campaign finance and intelligence, and in some ways for worse, by planting the seed of anti-government sentiment that has since grown like a strangling weed.
Jan. 6 has shaken the nation, too. The environment for needed change looks, admittedly, hostile. But enough people cared 50 years ago to make government work again when it appeared to have broken. The worst mistake anyone can make today is to give up on it because it has broken again.