...I'm okay with being REALITY-based.




Friday, August 01, 2003
      ( 9:31 AM )
 
30 Years Ago - All Over Again

"What did the President know, and when did he know it?" The crux of the question was uttered by Sen. Baker to John Dean as the latter testified to the Select Committee investigating the Watergate coverup in 1973. The question came kind of late, but you can excuse a Repbulican senator for keeping his hopes up till the truth could no longer be denied.

Last night we watched our tape of PBS' "Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History" (it originally aired Wednesday). If you didn't get a chance to see it, I strongly urge you to get a copy and watch. It was very well done and one show I would like to keep for Martin to see later on when he gets interested in political history.

But watching the story of Nixon's administration's cover-up unfold was eerily haunting - as the program laid out how truly precarious this constitutional crisis was, the players interviewed told how while it was happening, they just had no concept of how bad things were until the end. It struck me how arrogant that administration was, to have continued to order and commit illegal acts as if they were above the law and wouldn't be held accountable.

But the thing is, no lesson was truly learned. Former Sen. Lowell Weicker, who played a major role on the Committee and was on the PBS show said as much, "the lesson of Watergate is that we didn't learn a lesson." It was sobering to watch Bob Krogh, one of the convicted conspirators say to the camera that he is very concerned as he sees the same things happening with the current administration, just as he did during Iran-Contra. John Dean was point-blank: "the lesson was don't get caught."

The entire episode of Watergate did nothing to quell the concentration of power by presidents into the executive branch. While it is interesting to note the post script of the television show was Jeb Magruder saying for the first time that he actually heard President Nixon order the actual Watergate break-in, what was more stunning was to feel caught in a time-warp as one realizes the mirror behavior of the current president to Nixon. The Erlichman/Haldeman role being currently played by Karl Rove has the same hallmarks of manipulation of the law, treatment of loyalists as patriots and dissenters as "enemies," and the dire political and personal consequences for anyone who crosses over to the other side or utters a non-friendly comment about the administration.

A Presidency that has as its foundation a complete manipulation of state law in order to "win" a national election, that punishes senators to the extent that they are forced to change parties, that manipulates and threatens to obtain intelligence that will bolster its position (but is not necessarily be true), that will manipulate the terror-stricken citizens of its country into believing and supporting its call for war on countries that had nothing to do with the crime committed against us, and the dirty tricks of leaking mean and sometimes damaging stories about reporters and revealing the identity of CIA agents all add up to the same sort of constitutional crisis that culminated in the almost impeachment and ultimate resignation of Richard Nixon. The President and his minions are not above the law. Can we please learn this lesson soon...before it's again too late?

| -- permanent link