WOODWARD-BERNSTEIN: WATERGATE WAS ABOUT VIETNAM AND THE ANTI-WAR MOVEMENT
FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2012 AT 3:28PM
President Richard M. Nixon tells a White House news conference in 1973 that he will not allow White House Counsel John Dean to testify on Capitol Hill in the Watergate investigation. (Photo: Charles Tasnadi/AP)In the permanent struggle over memory, the mainstream narration about Watergate is that it was about an ego-driven lust for power, and contained by the checks-and-balances of our democracy. Nothing could be farther from the truth, according to a new reflection by Washington Post reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward on the fortieth anniversary of the event that led to Richard Nixon’s demise.Their article, excerpted here, is a sobering reminder of how elites on the highest levels of power will continue lying and pursuing their unpopular agendas in the fact of public opposition. Of particular note is the Republican strategy of destroying “institutional power” bases of the Democratic Party liberals, not simply destroying the reputations and lives of whistle-blowers and war resisters. Pat Buchanan, a Nixon confidante who went on to a comfortable career as a Beltway television commentator, wanted to make sure that such institutions – the Brookings