Worse Than Watergate?
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The Trump administration’s predicament is “worse than Watergate,” according to the ex-Washington Post reporter, Carl Bernstein, whose shoe-leather newspaper reporting helped bring down President Nixon. He offers this assessment to Wolf Blitzer of CNN. “In Watergate the system worked,” Mr. Bernstein reckons, whereas today scant Republicans, in Mr. Bernstein’s view, are pressing to hold the president to account.
Far be it from us to gainsay the likes of Mr. Bernstein, but our impression is that he’s inaccurate. President Trump, in our estimation, would have long since fired the special prosecutor save for precisely the Republicans in the Senate (and the House, and the press) warning him off. Mr. Bernstein is also concerned about the rallies at which Mr. Trump whips up sentiments against the press. That might be worse than Watergate.
By our lights, though, there are similarities. In both dramas the press has sought to topple a freely-elected president. In Watergate, the press sought to overturn the election of a president who had won 49 of the 50 states. The effect — leave intent aside — was to undercut a military victory we were winning on the ground in Vietnam. The result was to embolden an anti-war movement that was determined to deliver free Vietnam to clients of the Russians.
That happened quickly. Nixon was driven from office in August of 1974. That fall, Democrats expanded their majority in the House by 49 seats. They ended up with a two-third majority. President Gerald Ford, who had succeeded Nixon, and Secretary of State Kissinger begged Congress to stay with our ally. In December, Congress voted to drastically reduce aid to the free Vietnamese desperately seeking to avoid a communist conquest.
Free Vietnam fell in April, and Indochina, with its population to rival eastern Europe, fell into the long night of communism. That is what a lot of us think of when we hear talk of Watergate. We understand that’s a minority opinion, but it’s ours. Something worse than Watergate may yet be confected by the Democrats as they seek to bring down President Trump. They haven’t, however, yet produced a tragedy to rival the tragedy that resulted from Watergate.
