Watergate Then and Now: How Quickly They Forget

When Richard M. Nixon waved his last farewell from a White House helicopter 15 years ago last week, Deborah Gore Dean was still a teen-ager, taking a summer-school course at Georgetown University while working part time as a hostess in a restaurant. Joseph Strauss was preparing for his first year in high school.

Probably they weren’t watching that August night in 1974, as Nixon told a stunned and saddened nation he was resigning from the presidency, and didn’t see him the next morning when he bade a tearful au revoir to his staff. If they did watch, they surely didn’t listen because Dean and Strauss are both fingered today as major figures in the scandal breaking over the Department of Housing and Urban Development. They were part of the “brat pack” that recklessly scattered millions of government dollars among influential Republican friends.

As the nation marks the anniversary of Nixon’s departure, there is an eerie sense in Washington that the wheel has come full circle. Somehow the lessons of Watergate, as searing as they seemed at the time, did not sink deeply enough into the public psyche. Some people like Deborah Dean were so young they never learned--even though Dean’s mother became John N. Mitchell’s regular companion more than a decade ago. Other people just forgot or decided they were above the law.

How else can you explain why Washington is again steaming with scandal? So far this year, the city has seen the first resignation of a Speaker of the House of Representatives, who left under darkening clouds; the first rejection of a new President’s Cabinet nominee, also under fire for his behavior; the criminal conviction of a White House national security aide, who almost brought down his own President; continuing investigations of bribery in Pentagon programs; revelations of gross mismanagement and profiteering at HUD, and passage of a massive bill to clean up the scandal-ridden savings-and-loan industry. There may be more to come this fall with new fireworks in the HUD affair.

The cost of these misdeeds goes far beyond the $1,200 likely to be charged every taxpayer to clean up the S&Ls.; As during Watergate, confidence in the integrity of the system is eroding. That’s one reason why hefty majorities have been telling pollsters that even though they like George Bush, the nation is on the “wrong track” and they don’t trust Washington. The public will never OK a much-needed pay raise for Congress until convinced that Washington has cleaned up its act. Why reward thieves?

To be sure, the legacy of Watergate is not wholly bleak. Some reforms of the last 15 years have proved effective. Both the executive and congressional branches operate far more openly today, heeding Justice Louis D. Brandeis’ dictum, “sunlight is the best disinfectant.” Some argue that openness has been carried to excess, discouraging negotiations on such sensitive subjects as the budget--but by and large, the new approach has served well. So has the Freedom of Information Act, with requests for government documents and records now routinely granted. Conflict-of-interest rules still need to be tightened and clarified for members of Congress, but they are more stringent for presidential appointees than in the early 1970s. The large majority of states have also strengthened rules for open meetings and conflicts of interest.

From a White House perspective, one of the most important changes is how difficult it now is for a President or his staff to manipulate three of the most powerful government agencies for domestic purposes. No longer is the FBI in the business of wiretapping or snooping on a President’s enemies, as during the Nixon years and in previous Democratic and Republican administrations. Tax returns are no longer scanned for personal dirt at the Internal Revenue Service. And the Central Intelligence Agency is out of national politics. There are still occasional misdeeds--charges of bribery now swirl around some IRS agents--but abuses by the White House have generally been curbed.

It is arguable that other reforms undertaken in the name of Watergate, as well as the Vietnam War, have gone too far. Convinced an “imperial presidency” was endangering the nation, Congress began asserting its power during the early 1970s. It insisted on overseeing and regulating minute details of executive-branch policy.

To carry out this new mission, Congress in the past 15 years has expanded its staff from 16,000 to 24,000. But hardly anyone is pleased with the results: Cabinet officers are so tied down by their micromasters on Capitol Hill that they can’t act and Congress is so enmeshed in the chaos of its own making that it can’t lead. In the case of one reform, the War Powers Act of 1973, even some leading congressmen now acknowledge that too much authority is invested in the legislature. Sens. Sam Nunn (D-Ga.) and John Warner (R-Va.) introduced legislation last year allowing the President greater flexibility in committing troops to combat.

Still, the most remarkable feature of U.S. political life 15 years after Watergate is how scandal-ridden Washington is once again. Some reforms of the post-Watergate era have failed--especially the attempt to remove the influence of money from politics. Driven by the higher costs of campaigning in a television age, politicians have connived with special interests to make a hash of campaign finance laws. Individual fat cats may no longer bankroll politicians, but political-action committees can be even more pernicious in their influence. PACs not only exercise influence through direct contributions but also work their will indirectly through each party’s national campaign committees.

The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, for example, built itself a war chest by raising money from PACs representing the S&L; industry. The S&L; scandal might never have metastasized to the degree it did had Washington politicians not become so beholden to contributors from the thrift industry. Both the Reagan Administration and Democratic leaders in Congress delayed action on S&L; legislation for an unconscionable period because of close ties to their S&L; friends.

When Nixon was reelected by a landslide in 1972, private contributions to the congressional campaigns totaled less than $100 million. By 1988, private contributions for those campaigns ballooned to $476 million. No wonder corruption is breaking out again: So much money sloshes through the system that people are easily bought. With good reason, pressure is building for public financing of congressional campaigns.

It would be reassuring if the current round of scandals could be cleaned up with another round of reforms. But it isn’t that simple. Human memory also plays a role. Just as Teapot Dome began fading from the nation’s consciousness within a few years, so too has Watergate.

Listening to Oliver L. North testify about his hours at the shredding machine was like listening to a child who had never heard of John W. Dean. He seemed oblivious to the fact that obstruction of justice brought down one President and could easily do in another. And how numb to history was Fawn Hall, his secretary, as she stuffed confidential documents in her boots so they would never be found. Did she not remember the troubles of poor Rose Mary Woods?

Or consider Deborah Gore Dean. Did it never occur to her that she was leaving a paper trail as incriminating as Jeb Stuart Magruder’s when she jotted down all the HUD projects she wanted to steer toward political cronies?

Nixon, who lost the most, has remembered Watergate better than anyone. Its pain will never leave him. But he hasn’t hidden from the world, trying to erase people’s memory.

Nixon has worked steadily to rehabilitate himself through his public writings and he has come a long way. Others of that day--H.R. Haldeman, John D. Ehrlichman, Charles Colson--have also worked to repay their debts to society and cleanse themselves. Yet even they would argue that each new generation needs to relearn the mistakes of Watergate so that they aren’t repeated. It seems perfectly clear.