Thinking back on more innocent days (I was 18 at the time), I remember being overwhelmed by a weird sense of emptiness and ennui once that awful man clambered into the helicopter for that farewell ride out of Washington. The whole Watergate crisis had played out over a good 18 months up to then, and its amplification rose with an increasing intensity across the media with each passing month until it reached a virtual fever pitch. It was a maddening, exasperating, but also electrifying time in our history, when millions of Americans got to see for themselves on TV exactly how their elected leaders behaved when the cameras were turned off. Talk about a teachable moment!
And then . . . just like that, the little ratfucker was gone, not with a bang but with a whimper. It was odd and discomfiting, as if justice had not been truly served, even though the desired outcome was achieved.
Yes, we were reminded, our long national nightmare was over. But not for long!
Was there ever a more stupid man to occupy the Oval Office than this clown? (Even Dubya Bush possessed a kind of low cunning that mostly served him well, for a few years at least.) He not only cost himself the chance of being elected President in his own right, but he helped to clear the way for the serial lawbreaking and pardons-by-mutual-assent that have largely defined the American Presidency since then. If there's a legacy of Watergate that still reverberates in our political theater today, it's not the crimes or the cover-ups, it's the "Get Out of Jail Free" card that nearly every President since Dick Nixon has felt entitled to play.
---Baron V
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