OPINION: How we lost our way

My granddaughter and I had been discussing the turmoil in our country today and the resulting anxiety young people are feeling. She then asked me how it compared to Watergate. I’m afraid the differences are striking.

The Watergate scandal resulted in the August 1974 resignation of President Richard Nixon. It began in June 1972 when burglars broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee located in the D.C. Watergate complex.

The burglars were members of Nixon’s re-election campaign committee. Their intent was to plant listening devices in Democratic headquarters. They were arrested, tried and convicted. However, a special prosecutor, Archibald Cox, was appointed to investigate further and it eventually led straight into the White House.

When hearings were held by Congress to determine who all was involved in the affair, startling testimony revealed Nixon regularly and secretly taped conversations held in the Oval Office. When Cox issued a subpoena for the release of the tapes, Nixon refused to comply, citing executive privilege.

The Supreme Court upheld the subpoena, but Nixon still refused and ordered his attorney general, Elliott Richardson, to fire Cox. Richardson refused and resigned saying the order violated his promise to Congress that he would act independently.

When Nixon’s order was passed on to the deputy attorney general, William Ruckelshaus, he too resigned in protest. It was called the Saturday Night Massacre.

The firings and resignations set off a firestorm of outrage from the public, angry that Nixon was putting himself above the law. When the tapes were finally heard, they revealed Nixon and his closest aides had indeed participated in a coverup of the Watergate burglary. They planned to block more investigations by having the CIA falsely claim national security was involved.

Nixon’s top aides and attorney general, John Mitchell, went to prison for their crimes. Twenty-one bipartisan members of Congress introduced resolutions for Nixon’s impeachment. Facing certain conviction and removal from office, Nixon resigned Aug. 9, 1974.

The contrast with today’s lack of political accountability is profound.

Watching the hearings was shocking. We learned the president and members of his administration were committing crimes. Up until that time I had accepted that presidents might stretch the truth and manipulate information to give it the best slant, but I never imagined a president would so casually violate his oath of office and plot with his subordinates to cover up criminal activities.

We were fortunate there were strong, independent and honest Americans leading the nation at the time: in Congress, the Supreme Court, the media and even in Nixon’s own administration.

Today, it’s different. The Constitution and laws are flagrantly violated or ignored nearly every day. Occasionally a few principled officials object, and some have resigned in protest when ordered to violate their oath of office, but most simply follow orders or pretend to be unaware of any conflict.

Today, we have a Congress that has submissively relinquished to the executive branch its fiscal and statutory responsibilities, in violation of the Constitution and its own integrity.

We have a Supreme Court that has given the president almost total immunity to conduct his presidency any way he wishes. If today’s Court had been in power during Nixon’s administration, there’s no doubt he would have escaped accountability for his betrayal of the American people.

The media today covers the news with either a liberal or a right-wing perspective. We are offered two completely different takes on almost every issue - so at odds in content, we wonder if they’re reporting on the same thing.

And I wonder as well about us, the people. It seems many of us don’t care as much today about the character of our public servants. Perhaps we just aren’t strong enough, or principled enough to withstand the onslaught of hateful, abusive and dishonest politics we’ve been exposed to during the last decade.

Something has changed in what the United States stands for today. I fear we have lost our way. I can’t believe Americans, who fought for independence, survived a civil war and worked so hard to achieve equal rights for everyone, have given up so easily on democracy.

Benjamin Franklin’s words are ominous. When someone asked him what kind of government had been agreed to at the Constitutional Convention, he answered, “A republic — if you can keep it.”