As you no doubt have heard, the former no. 2 official of the FBI has confessed to being "Deep Throat" and helping bring down a president. James Taranto has a useful insight into what it all means thirty years later.
President Nixon's fall, after all, was a triumph for liberal Democrats and muckraking journalists--a triumph neither group has managed to equal since. To say the least, a protégé of J. Edgar Hoover makes an unlikely hero in this tale.Yet consider what has happened in the years since Watergate. The Democratic Party suffered a series of electoral defeats and today is arguably in its weakest position since before the New Deal. During the same period, the press has seen a steady erosion in its public esteem.
This is in part because both the Democrats and the press learned the "lessons of Watergate" too well. The press is constantly seeking the next scandal, and the Democrats and the liberal left have taken to portraying policy disagreements as criminal coverups--the impulse behind both the Iran-contra scandal and the Valerie Plame kerfuffle.
Was it all worth it? I wonder.
Posted by Alan at June 1, 2005 05:13 PM