Legacy Yawning

I was looking through some old Doonesbury anthologies recently. The particular one which inspired this was the first where the characters show up at college and decide to live communally. That would have been back in the late 60s. The latter portion of the book covered the Watergate scandal and Trudeau was very clever in his portrayal of the progression which led to the downfall of Nixon. He had a good touch with his writing and art back then, which grew rather heavy-handed around the presidencies of Reagan and Bush and beyond.

But I got to thinking about Watergate and all that happened back then. I was a young teenager when Nixon resigned, and so all of my Watergate knowledge came well after that. Fourteen year olds don't notice political events all that much. Or at least they didn't when I was growing up.

Maybe it was just me.

I remember helping a friend with his paper route one day, and when we went to pick up the papers there was a huge headline across the top that simply said, "NIXON RESIGNS!" I held up the paper so passing cars could see it. Can't recall if anyone responded - they all probably knew by then anyway. Then we delivered the papers and went back to doing whatever kids do.

Like all of history, we have passed beyond this event to where we can look around and see no real effects from it any more. It all becomes rather academic to the point where one would almost want to say, "So what?"

It's not that it wasn't a turbulent time, or that the things that took place during Nixon's presidency weren't despicable, but as of 2013 it all seems like just a blip now. I observe our culture and don't get any sense of anyone having "survived" Watergate. Certainly not like seeing veterans who have survived past or current wars. Of course, war is much more traumatic. To hear people speak of Watergate back then and several years after, though, you'd think that the world, or at least the United States, was coming to an end.

Most of the major players in the scandal are gone. Here's a short list which includes the Watergate Seven.

Richard Nixon - died 1994
H. R. Haldeman - died 1993
John Mitchell - died 1988
Chuck Colson - died 2012
John Ehrlichman - died 1999
Robert Mardian - died 2006
Kenneth Parkinson - died 2006
E. Howard Hunt - died 2007
John Dean - still alive
Gordon Strachan - still alive
G. Gordon Liddy - still alive

Watergate is gone, too, assigned to the dusty annals of history books and stale memories of those old enough to remember it.

And it turned out to be what I described earlier. Just a blip.