Growing up in the seventies, I had a distorted view of where core American values lay. Nixon had been disgraced, his shock troops were thrown in jail, our President was a straight talking man, best known for pursuing peace in the Middle East.
The government had been exposed for illegal searches, illegal bugging, assassinations of foreign leaders, using American citizens as guinea pigs, and worse. The country had rejected those actions, and Deep Throat was the man who had made it all possible. Or so it seemed.
But as Jeff Greenfield pointed out in a 2003 Time Magazine article, the mid to late seventies were nothing more than an aberration:
In the long term, however, Watergate proved to be more of a boon for Republicans as it helped convince Americans of a bedrock conservative tenet: government is not to be trusted, the people in power in Washington are up to no good. When President Reagan told us in his 1981 Inaugural Address that “government is not the solution to our problem; government is the problem,” it was the memory of Watergate that had many in his audience saying “Amen.”
:::flip:::
President Carter came to power at a difficult time for the country. The economy was stagnant, interest rates were extraordinarily high, our military was in shambles, trusted institutions lay in disgrace. Carter was unable to rally the country or to provide the leadership and confidence that the nation craved.
With the election of Reagan an era of progressive government that had lasted nearly fifty years came to an end. The transition was all the more jarring because the country had just lurched to hard to the left in 1974 and 1976.
But the most important change brought on by Reagan’s ascension was the rolling back of clean government bills and sentiment among the American public. Reagan didn’t sing the praises of open and accountable government, he disputed the possibility of clean and accountable government. Government was the problem, not because it was run by crooks, but because it would always be run by crooks. The sheer quantity of Reagan officials that would be indicted, imprisoned, forced to resign, or pardoned, seemed to prove the point.
Yet, it was only in 2000 that the Nixon jackboots made their full recovery. Retreads like Cheney and Rumsfeld (and, of course, the Bush family itself) would set out to systematically roll-back every reform enacted in the post-Watergate era. Black-bag jobs are back, the Freedom of Information Act is being weakened, the executive is less accountable, the intelligence agencies are back to using propaganda. It’s like someone rewound the tape to 1973.
Deep Throat did a service to the nation. But the nation did not learn the lessons of Watergate. We need a new Deep Throat and a new commitment from the electorate for the principles of open government, seperation of powers, and the sanctity of civil rights.
