The (real) lessons of Watergate

In his column in today's Times, David Brooks attempts to draw life lessons from the Watergate saga. Given the various right-wing assaults on Mark Felt in recent days, mostly from former Nixon cronies like Pat Buchanan and G. Gordon Liddy (but also, predictably, from the likes of Bob Novak), I was eager to read a sensible conservative's take on that sordid story from America's past, expecting some thoughtful insights into the nature of power, politics, and corruption. After all, the shadow of Watergate lingers still over America's political and cultural landscapes. With Vietnam, it put an end to innocence forever, and much of the cynicism and mistrust that plagues the country today can be traced back to those watershed events.

But... no. As it turns out, the major life lesson involves Bob Woodward's role in that story, specifically the egotistical career ambitions that drove him as a reporter, ambitions common to young people finding their way in New York and Washington. Brooks calls it "the starting-gate frenzy". On this point, he may be right (though I'll spare you his facile psychoanalysis). I've seen it, to lesser degree, in the world of academia that I've inhabited for much of my adult life, but it's obviously quite common in a place like Toronto. And it may very well be that Woodward was possessed by a certain "frenzy" early on in his career. We sense this in Woodward's own account the other day in the Post about his relationship with Felt (which, like so much else that he's written, is more about Bob Woodward, the greatest journalist in the history of journalism, than anything else). So, fine. I'll acknowledge that Woodward's role in Watergate does offer a valuable life lesson. But here's Brooks's conclusion:

For that is the purpose of Watergate in today's culture. It isn't about Nixon and the cover-up anymore. It's about Woodward and Bernstein. Watergate has become a modern Horatio Alger story, a real-life fairy tale, an inspiring ode for mediacentric college types - about the two young men who found exciting and challenging jobs, who slew the dragon, who became rich and famous by doing good and who were played by Redford and Hoffman in the movie version.

Woodward was nervous once, like you.

Fair enough. Woodward and his gigantic ego have indeed become parts of the story, as is often the case in today's media. But Brooks is wrong on one crucial point: Watergate is still "about Nixon and the cover-up," much more than it's about Woodward and his youthful "frenzy" to climb the ladder of journalistic success. And it's not "a real-life fairy tale" or "an inspiring ode," and it's not about the Redford-Hoffman movie -- it's about what happens when power corrupts, when a democracy even as strong as America is taken over by renegade elements that threaten its very foundations -- it's about how a presidency was brought down by its own shameful behaviour, by its own circumvention of the rule of law -- and, in the end, it's about the triumph of justice over corrupted power and about the preservation of American democracy altogether.

Years from now, as Woodward's name recedes into the mists of history, the teller of the story rather than the story itself, that's what people will remember about Watergate. Young people in New York and Washington will no doubt continue to succumb to that "frenzy," but the real lessons of Watergate, the lessons that should be uppermost in the minds of a vibrantly democratic people ever vigilant, ever watchful for the signs of encroaching tyranny, will retain their timeless significance.

To overlook those lessons is to draw down a veil of ignorance over the democratic spirit.