Watergate: S & D

I'm surprised Kissinger didn't show up at Baba Wawa's farewell so she could fellate him AGAIN

Pat and Bob died within six months of each other. After that, Nixon wasn't long for this world.

Did a bit of reading on Magruder yesterday, found out he got his start in '62 working for Rumsfeld, and then he worked for Goldwater in '63. Would love to have seen Pete Frame take on the two American political parties.

http://blog.familyofrock.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/clip2.jpg

anniversary party album

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxfZt4vbg4I

Beat me to it. Not just a regular anniversary; 40th.

love that album

lasting legacy from Watergate is in Dick:

"no president will ever lie to us again"

Probably a little blurry:

http://i1059.photobucket.com/albums/t427/sayhey1/august91974_zpsdca30fbf.jpg

Oops, wrong chart--that's for the week ending August 3, 1974. The correct chart would be towards the end of this issue.

None of (his war crimes) brought down Nixon. However weary the country was with Vietnam, it was regarded as standard policy, however misguided. Only when Nixon attacked a powerful target did his political career collapse.

Unlike antiwar dissidents, the Democratic Party had serious mainstream pull. It was one thing to spy on the Black Panthers and the Yippies; it was quite another to wiretap people connected to corporate and private wealth....

Still, imagine how Nixon would enjoy Obama's NSA and drone wars.

He'd be right at home, along with the rest of us.

http://dennisperrin.blogspot.com/2014/08/downfall-ii-oval-delirium.html

what brought him down were the tapes

...about ratfucking the Dems

(and covering up)

Perlstein on the 40th anniversary of The Pardon:

First Woodward, then Bernstein, came to conclude there had been no deal, and that this was instead an extraordinarily noble act: Ford “realized intuitively that the country had to get beyond Nixon.” After Ford died in 2006, Peggy Noonan went even further. She said Ford “threw himself on a grenade to protect the country from shame.”

They’re wrong. For political elites took away a dangerous lesson from the Ford pardon — our true shame: All it takes is the incantation of magic words like “stability” and “confidence” and “consensus” in order to inure yourself from accountability for just about any malfeasance.

http://www.salon.com/2014/09/08/watergates_most_lasting_sin_gerald_ford_richard_nixon_and_the_pardon_that_made_us_all_cynics/

I can't remember if it was Mad Magazine or Nixon enemy Paul Conrad who had the best cartoon about the pardoning: President Huntz Hall Ford cheerfully staring into the "things to do your first day as president" list: 1. Pardon Nixon. 2. Don't bomb the Russians

Swear to god, about half the time I vent to someone at work about something, my principal will make casual reference to what I was venting about within a day or two. I need to get a team of plumbers up and running.

That pardon was probably one of the five or ten most important events of the last 1/2 century (in America). Incalculable, nation-altering effect when a criminal President is let off the hook like that.

Since moving back to OC I've bee re-reading Nixonland irregularly. The creation of the silent majority is some evil genius masterminding.

Anybody remember the way Bill Clinton would reference, in a croaky voice, people "who work hard and play by the rules"? Pretty sure I got to hear that more than once, and Hillary brought the phrase back for an encore last year in a speech in Iowa I believe.

His way of trying to re-define the Silent Majority to include those messed over by corporate ruthlessness, without necessarily letting in the P O O R (except for the "deserving" poor, who have to be saints to qualify). So, a slightly progressive redefinition, but probably too compromised to matter.

Is there a recommended bio on Roger Ailes that's heavy on his Nixon years? He's like the villain out of Tomorrow Never Dies.

It's not a biography at all, but I think Joe McGinniss's The Selling of the President 1968 is primarily about Ailes.

Damnit, I actually have this book but haven't read it yet. OK then...

This Salon piece should interest you:

http://www.salon.com/2011/01/21/roger_ailes_fehrman/

2-hour Watergate doc on ABC tonight. Timing!

ooh thx

Woodward & Bernstein revisit their pre-hack years

Huh, guess my brother-in-law was born the day before the break-in

Bill O’Reilly, who was fired from Fox News in April after several harassment allegations came to light, will appear in the special, according to ABC.

oh... never mind.

http://ew.com/tv/2017/05/31/abc-watergate-documentary/

"balance"!

I suspect Nixon was ultimately punished more for approval ratings that were cratering than for the high corruption. If the public had decided Watergate wasn't that big a deal, I'm sure Goldwater and the rest of them would have stood their ground and the impending impeachment would never have reached the stage it did (which I think was a recommendation to proceed with impeachment hearings...I'd have to double-check). I'm not defending Nixon, believe me; I'm just saying I'm not ready to ascribe noble principals to the Republicans who bailed on him (or, to be truthful, to the Democrats who were swarming either). It's politics; most everyone was acting out of self-interest.
― clemenza, Saturday, April 2, 2011 11:35 AM (six years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

curious if anyone has any favorite watergate documentaries. dunno if i'll bother w/ the abc one but would be interested in a good one with lots of original footage.

the clemenza post seems right to me -- but what's astonishing, from this late date, is how sincerely outraged the public got over something as complicated and unsexy as watergate. feels like a high-water mark for democracy that we'll never get close to again.

there haven't been a huge number, and i don't remember watching more than one or two. BBC did one a lot of ppl seemed to like, but the YT quality is poor. xp

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fRCih5rUiVQ

It was all very new, esp w/ the tapes, to hear the president curse, say "Get the money," etc. And now...

quoted it because it's basically the theme of the trump thread, how much will people care and how complacent is the GOP willing to be

There was Foster Wiley's 'Watergate Plus 30: Shadow of History', which I saw when it came out in 2003 but can't remember much of xp

https://i705.photobucket.com/albums/ww56/harrylime49/vlcsnap-2010-12-22-17h01m51s189.png

The PBS American Experience installment on Nixon that aired in late 1990 had a fair amount of contemporary Watergate footage, iirc.

I watched that BBC one the summer it came out, it's great.

I recently (ahem) rescreened All The Presidents Men for the first time since I saw it as a teen who then knew nothing about Watergate. The movie was baffling to me the first time round, and this time round, I a) appreciated it as one of the all-time great detective stories and b) admired how unforgiving it is re: expecting the audience to know what Watergate was, what Nixon did, etc. That final scene before the credits roll - the meaning and irony of it were completely lost on me the first time I saw it.

well, remember, it was released less than4 years after the break-in.

“That axiomatic Hollywood principle, action is character, takes a strange turn in [Alan J. Pakula’s] All the President’s Men [1976],” writes Mark Feeney in an excerpt from Nixon at the Movies: A Book About Belief now up at Slate. “The Woodward and Bernstein we get to see—so dutiful, so serious—are Butch and Sundance gelded. It wasn’t as if Woodward and Bernstein and the Post were out to get the president and his men (the party line of Nixon apologists). They don’t bring down the government out of any animus. They don’t even do it because it’s fun. (The only person in All the President’s Men who ever seems to be enjoying himself is Jason Robards’s Ben Bradlee.) They bring down the government because it’s a great story, and getting great stories is their job. . . . What’s so charismatic about journalism here isn’t its practitioners (Bradlee once again excepted); it’s the idea of journalism.”

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/conspiracy_thrillers/2017/06/all_the_president_s_men_made_woodward_and_bernstein_the_stuff_of_journalistic.html

That Feeney boom is terrific, by the way

Book

Jaworski report released

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/us-archivists-release-watergate-report-that-could-be-possible-road-map-for-mueller/2018/10/31/841cc938-dbb5-11e8-85df-7a6b4d25cfbb_story.html

RIP Ruck

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2019-11-27/william-ruckelshaus-nixon-nemesis-who-headed-epa-dies-at-87

egil 'bud' krogh dead

https://www.seattlepi.com/local/politics/article/Egil-Krogh-Seattle-lawyer-leader-of-Nixon-14990183.php

nobody left but liddy and dean

does Diane Sawyer count?

it was a guess really but it had a certain poetry so i went with it

alive!

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donald_Segretti

https://api.time.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/roger-stone-richard-nixon-tattoo.jpg