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 Posted: Fri Jun 10, 2005 7:31 pm Post subject: If Watergate Happened Now |
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Still busy. Maybe more later.
Rolling on the floor listening to the rightwing hysterics about Howard
Dean returning fire (DailyKos does a good job of pointing out that
everything they're sobbing about mirrors things they've said. It's like
a chubby 10-year-old who runs wailing to Mommy when a kid he tried to
bully shoves back).
Funny, and too true.....
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8101512/site/newsweek
If Watergate Happened Now
With the GOP controlling Congress, there'd be no Watergate hearings.
By Jonathan Alter
Newsweek
June 13 issue - From a distance, Watergate seems like a partisan
affair. But that's because we tend to look at it nowadays through red-
and blue-tinted glasses. In truth, President Nixon was forced to resign
in 1974 by Republicans in Congress like Barry Goldwater, who realized
from the so-called smoking-gun tape that he was a crook. This was after
the Supreme Court-led by a Nixon appointee-unanimously ruled
against him in the tapes case.
But imagine if Nixon were president in this era. After he completed his
successful second term, I'd have to write a retrospective column like
this:
President Nixon left office in 2005 having proved me and the other
"nattering nabobs of negativism" wrong. We thought that his
administration was sleazy but we were never able to nail him. Those of
us who hoped it would end differently knew we were in trouble when
former Nixon media adviser Roger Ailes banned the word "Watergate" from
Fox News's coverage and went with the logo "Assault on the Presidency"
instead. By that time, the American people figured both sides were just
spinning, and a tie always goes to the incumbent.
The big reason Nixon didn't have to resign: the rise of Conservative
Media, which features Fox, talk radio and a bunch of noisy partisans on
the Internet and best-sellers list who almost never admit their side
does anything wrong. (Liberals, bycontrast, are always eating their
own.) This solidarity came in handy when Bob Woodward and Carl
Bernstein of The Washington Post began snooping around after the
break-in at the headquarters of the Democratic National Committee. Once
they scored a few scoops with the help of anonymous sources, Sean
Hannity et al. went on a rampage. When the young reporters printed an
article about grand jury testimony that turned out to be wrong, Drudge
and the bloggers had a field day, even though none of them had lifted a
finger to try to advance the story. After that, the Silent Majority
wouldn't shut up.
Some argue the Watergate story died right there, but Nixon's attorney
general wasn't taking any chances. Just as in the Valerie Plame case,
the Justice Department subpoenaed Woodward and Bernstein to testify
before the grand jury about their sources. When they declined, they
were jailed for 18 months on contempt charges. Talkingpointsmemo.com
and a few other liberal bloggers complained that it was
hypocritical-top White House aides were suspected of shredding
documents, suborning perjury and paying hush money to burglars-but to
no avail. Public support for the media had hit rock bottom.
Whistle-blowers didn't fare much better. With Woodward and Bernstein
out of business, the No. 2 man at the FBI, W. Mark Felt, held a press
conference to air complaints that the White House and his own boss were
impeding the FBI probe. Of course it was only a one-day story, with Ann
Coulter predictably screaming that Felt was a "traitor." Rush Limbaugh
dubbed Felt "Special Agent Sour Grapes" because he'd been passed over
for the top FBI job. Within hours, the media had moved on to the tale
of a runaway bride. And because both houses of Congress are controlled
by the GOP, there were no "Watergate" hearings to keep the probe going.
John Dean and other disgruntled former aides had no place to go.
For a while, I hoped that the Nixon tapes might bring some justice. But
soon the tapes just became more fodder for those legal shows on cable.
The Supreme Court split 5-4, along largely partisan lines, as it did in
Bush vs. Gore. That allowed Nixon to keep control of the tapes. When he
burned them, the bipartisan outcry you would have heard in the old days
over destruction of evidence was muffled by a ferocious counterattack
from the GOP's legion of spinners. A group calling itself "Watergate
Burglars for Truth" set up a 527 to argue that Bill Clinton and other
Democratic presidents had ordered more black-bag jobs than Nixon. There
was nothing to prove them wrong. Reports of a tape showing that Nixon
directly ordered the cover-up were just rumors, not anything that could
be posted on smokinggun.com.
Nixon gave a TV interview to the British journalist David Frost in
which he said, "When the president does it, that means it's not
illegal." This explained why he felt comfortable approving the break-in
at the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist. Ken Duberstein and a
few other principled Republicans weighed in that Nixon was bad news,
but they were drowned out by former aides like Pat Buchanan and G.
Gordon Liddy, who wanted to firebomb the Brookings Institution. When
"Firebombing Brookings: Good Idea or Not?" became the "Question of the
Day" on MSNBC, Liddy's radio show got a nice ratings boost. After Ralph
Reed disclosed that Nixon and Henry Kissinger had been on their knees
praying in the Oval Office, Nixon went up 15 points in the Gallup,
double among "people of faith." Our long national nightmare was just
beginning.
© 2005 Newsweek, Inc.
© 2005 MSNBC.com
URL: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8101512/site/newsweek/ |
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