Wrestling with Watergate’s legacy 50 years later
Today marks 50 years since five men were arrested in Washington, D.C.’s Watergate complex on June 17, 1972. The political scandal that followed led to President Richard Nixon’s resignation in August 1974.
One lasting consequence of Watergate: public trust in the government began declining in the 1970s and has fallen to “near historic lows,” according to a Pew Research Center report released this month.
From The San Diego Union, Thursday, June 17, 1982:
EDITORIAL: WATERGATE’S LEGACY
Ten years ago today, five men carrying electronic surveillance gear were arrested inside the Democratic National Committee offices in Washington’s chic Watergate complex. The political scandals that ensued destroyed the Nixon presidency and altered the way Americans regard government in general and those who occupy the White House in particular.
Future presidents may enjoy periodic surges in popularity and respect, but few are likely to attain the aura of uncritical personal trust once accorded by most Americans. Short of an extraordinary national crisis, it is difficult to imagine any future president leading the nation with the sweep or personal authority of a Franklin D. Roosevelt, Dwight Eisenhower, or John F. Kennedy.
In one sense this erosion in the mystique of the presidency is probably a healthy development. The Watergate revelations ultimately triggered some retrospective looks at other administrations, including the Lyndon B. Johnson years and those of the three men mentioned above. All were found to have encompassed various political indiscretions — the secret taping of conversations, for example — that, judged by post-Watergate standards, appear anything but excusable.
The Founding Fathers could have told us as much about the temptations of power. In fact, they did. More to the point, they built into the Constitution a system of checks and balances specifically intended to guard against the abuses of power that Watergate came to represent.
The enduring worth of that Constitution was demonstrated by the manner in which the nation’s political system survived and finally transcended the Watergate crisis. A president and vice president resigned for the first time in the history of the republic. Congress and the judiciary played out their respective roles and the executive branch continued to function despite unprecedented political pressures.
One measure of how remarkable an achievement this was is that few foreigners, including those living in democratic countries, have ever understood what Watergate was all about. In Western Europe, the standard reaction was to wonder how and why a president could be forced to resign for doing nothing more than what most European assume their leaders do routinely.
The darker side of Watergate and its political consequences, aside from the cynicism it bred, was the way in which it hobbled the conduct of American foreign policy. History since 1973 has been nothing if not one demonstration after another of what happens when the prestige and moral authority of the presidency are diminished.
Vietnam obviously had much to do with this unwillingness to trust the conduct of foreign policy largely to the president. But absent Watergate, the powers of the presidency would never have come under such relentless assault nor would the White House have proved so vulnerable to congressional demands for a much bigger role in determining American policy abroad.
Millions in Asia, Africa, and Latin America may know nothing of Watergate but they are living with the grim consequences of the limitations it helped impose on American foreign policy.
A decade after Watergate, it is apparent that a proper balance has yet to be struck between preventing a rebirth of the “imperial” presidency and vesting the White House with the authority it must have to wield American power effectively in the world.