‘Watergate II’ is must-see TV
For all the hours I spent watching the Watergate hearings, the thing I remember most was Sam Ervin’s jowls.
Broadcast over 237 hours (we had longer attention spans back then), you could not escape the hearings even if you wanted to — though I don’t remember anyone saying they wanted to. This was history in the making, though I admit I started watching that summer of ’73 because I was bored, and, as a mouthy 14-year old, I wanted to come armed for the arguments raging between my grandparents (life-long Democrats) and my mother (a Republican who will go to her grave believing Richard Nixon was framed).
I was joined by some 80 million other Americans anxious to see how all of this would play out. Everyone joked about politicians being as crooked as a dog’s hind leg, but here was actual proof that the highest office in the land had been immeasurably tarnished by the likes of Tricky Dick.
Call us naïve. We were riveted. What I saw in those hearings beat any prime-time television shows that normally held my attention. There was good. There was evil. And there was a host of admirable characters such as Ervin, the North Carolina senator, who was chair of the Senate Watergate committee, known officially as the Select Committee on Presidential Campaign Activities. I wasn’t his only fan. Ervin quickly gained a cult following — complete with “Senator Sam” T-shirts and buttons — for his country eloquence and his defense of our democracy. While the rest of us sat with our hands over our mouths in disbelief at the daily bad news, Sen. Ervin appeared to take personally the criminal acts of the U.S. president, as if it was Ervin’s own, personal copy of the Constitution Nixon was trampling. He would shake his finger and his jowls — Sen. Ervin was a portly man — would shake, too.
That’s how you knew he meant business.
It was a scary time. The Vietnam War had riven the country. The Supreme Court handed down Roe v. Wade, which signaled, according to my junior high civics teacher, the end of humanity. Inflation was rampant, and every day, newspapers and television news served up evidence of White House inhabitants who had zero respect for the rule of law.
It was enough to make you lose
Broadcast over 237 hours (we had longer attention spans back then), you could not escape the (Watergate) hearings even if you wanted to — though I don’t remember anyone saying they wanted to.
hope, but we could rest assured that two junior reporters at the Washington Post had uncovered something worth exploring, and you could rest assured that we all loved our Constitution as much as did Sen. Ervin, and that leaders would not shy away from voting to hold one of their own accountable.
This included powerful Republicans, and that cadre of constitution-loving politicians included former Sen. (and former Connecticut Gov.) Lowell P. Weicker, Jr., one of the three Republicans on the Watergate committee. Weicker is now in his 90s and in an interview a few years ago, he railed against modern-day Republicans too craven to participate in either of Trump’s impeachments.
These are scary times, too. Today’s inflation rate is at a 40-year high. We are feeling the effects of Russia’s invasion into the sovereign nation of Ukraine. Americans who seek abortions in the new restrictive world must be prepared to travel, if they can afford it. As always, the effect of bad judicial (and executive and legislative) decisions fall heaviest on the poor and the vulnerable. We are still in a pandemic that was extended by mouth-breathers anxious to put ill-informed politics over science and human life.
Last week, at the Jan. 6 committee hearings (known formally as the Select Committee to Investigate the Jan. 6th Attack on the United States Capitol) viewers watched as the former president couldn’t bring himself to pronounce the word “yesterday, or the phrase, “the election is over.” We’ve seen a line of former Trump administration officials — Republicans right down to the last pocket square and string of pearls — testify under oath that they tried, oh! How they tried, but the former president was incorrigible, like a willful toddler whose parents are at the end of their tether. We’ve seen profiles in gutlessness both in the lead-up to the insurrection, during the event, and afterward, where only the president’s daughter could reel him in, a little.
Nearly 18 million people watched last week’s hearings across a variety of venues that did not include Fox News, which aired, instead, the mews of junior complicity cadets Tucker Carlson and Sean Hannity. We’ve seen precisely two Republicans on the committee — Rep. Adam Kinzinger, of Illinois, and Rep. Liz Cheney, of Wyoming, follow former Sen. Weicker’s lead, and act on their love of country. Kinzinger has said he’s on his way out, so he has little to lose politically. Cheney, whose politics I can’t stand, has already lost a party leadership position, and may lose her ’24 primary, all for showing her willingness to pursue the truth.
The hearings have been paused until September, while the committee gathers more information. If you aren’t watching, please know that right now, an army of 12-, 13-, and 14-year olds is watching and they are spellbound and inspired to get at the truth.