Democracy was nice while we had it
PERSIST, THE POET SAYS: “Do not go gentle into that good night. Rage, rage against the dying of the light.” (Shari Golob photo)
This year’s elections could be the end of democracy in America. …
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COMMENTARY
Posts Tagged with: Watergate
WILL THERE BE PUNISHMENT FOR A LYING EX-PRESIDENT?
NEAR THE END. Trump at Gastonia, NC, Oct. 21, 2020. (Gaston Gazette photo)
Herblock, the late Washington Post political cartoonist and nemesis of Richard Nixon, wrote in a 1974 book, …
Read More →THE PRESS SINCE WATERGATE: GETTING BETTER AND WORSE AT THE SAME TIME
One long-lasting Watergate myth is that the coverage of the Watergate scandal was a great success for the news media in America, in that, as many have said facetiously, the press dethroned a president. There …
Read More →GEORGE W. BUSH: A WISE GUY AS PRESIDENT
George W. Bush was not elected president in the year 2000; he was appointed in a Supreme Court coup and things went downhill from there. Aside from Donald Trump, no president in modern times seemed …
Read More →Iran-Contra, the presidential cover-up that succeeded
The first report of Iran-Contra appeared in a Lebanese magazine on November 3rd, 1986, a story saying the U.S. had sold arms to Iran. The sale was unlawful and news of it was a serious …
Read More →‘If the government becomes a lawbreaker, it breeds contempt for the law’
Republican presidents and other leaders after Nixon quit on democracy, sometimes criminally, straight on through to the Donald Trump era. This segment of Watergate at 50 is the first of several describing how we got …
Read More →A Watergate message: public opinion did in Nixon, and it is gnawing at Trump
More and more Washington is reliving the Watergate era. People wake up wondering what did he say or do now. They read the newspaper or watch TV in disbelief. But this time is worse because …
Read More →A few Watergate messages
Watergate has plenty of political messages. Here are a few that stand out.
The power of public opinion. As the Watergate scandal developed, few national leaders spoke out against Nixon despite his obvious crimes, and Nixon might …
Read More →How Woodward and Bernstein came to call on grand jurors
A 2012 biography of Ben Bradlee included harsh, personal criticism of Bob Woodward and documentation that in 1972 Woodward and Carl Bernstein got information from a Watergate grand juror. This is how the grand juror …
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