Remembering Watergate--20 Years After It Jolted Nation : History: New book by a UC San Diego professor examines memories of the landmark political scandal.

After spending more than three years researching what Americans remember--and have forgotten--about Watergate, UC San Diego professor Michael Schudson might reasonably be expected to be deeply troubled over how little many people know about the most tumultuous event in recent political history.

Twenty years to the day after a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex in Washington ignited a scandal of unfathomable depth that culminated in the unprecedented resignation of a president in disgrace, some Americans have little recollection of those traumatic events.

Surveys have shown that more than one-third of all high school students do not realize Watergate occurred after 1950, while more than one in five cannot name the President who resigned. And, though the word Watergate has become a permanent part of the political lexicon, America’s collective memory of the scandal has faded and changed over the past two decades, sometimes in ways that differ from the historical record.

And yet Schudson, the author of “Watergate in American Memory,” a book being released today on the 20th anniversary of the infamous break-in, is relatively unperturbed by the evidence of Americans’ dimming knowledge of the scandal that drove President Richard Nixon from the White House.

“I don’t despair for the future of the republic because 15- or 17-year-olds aren’t aware of Watergate,” Schudson, a professor of communication and sociology, said in an interview in his University City home. “And, yes, memories about Watergate are indeed fading fast. But that seems perfectly natural to me.

“What would appall me is if we did not institutionalize some memory of Watergate, if the institutions that should be the guardians of historical memory failed to do that. But I don’t think they’ve failed. They’ve done all right by Watergate.”

A nationally recognized expert on the news media’s impact on culture and society’s collective memory, the 45-year-old Schudson--the 1990 recipient of a $270,000 MacArthur Foundation fellowship, often referred to as a “genius” grant--selected Watergate as a case study of how people “treat the past as a real, contemporary force” that affects the present and future. Although he began pondering that theoretical question in the late 1970s, it was not until 1988 that he settled on Watergate as his subject.

The focus of Schudson’s 282-page book is how and what people remember about Watergate. It does not attempt to break factual ground or provide fresh, tantalizing details about the botched break-in by burglars working for Nixon’s reelection committee and the attempted cover-up.

Those eager for speculation about the identity of “Deep Throat,” a key source of Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, whose coverage helped trace the cover-up to the Oval Office, new admissions from Nixon and his former aides or answers to other lingering questions will have to search elsewhere.

What Schudson does provide, however, is a comprehensive examination, based on interviews, polling data and press accounts of Watergate and more recent political controversies, of the nation’s still evolving collective memory of Watergate and the manner in which it has become the prism through which future scandals will be filtered.

Americans’ memories of Watergate have been shaped, Schudson writes, not only by personal recollections of the 1972-74 period during which the scandal inexorably advanced from being dismissed by the Nixon White House as a “third-rate burglary” to a constitutional crisis that ended his presidency, but also by the subsequent flood of Watergate books, lecture tours, movies, docudramas, jokes, television parodies and Nixon’s own assiduous campaign for political and historical rehabilitation.

Nixon’s efforts to rebuild his reputation, however, have been inherently contradictory, doing more to “keep Watergate alive than burying it,” Schudson contends. Although Nixon remains highly respected for his foreign policy expertise, polls have consistently shown that Americans rank him as the postwar President who set the lowest moral standards for the nation.

From the outset, Schudson notes, there were “two faces” to Watergate: one that saw it as a constitutional crisis of unparalleled magnitude “signifying something deep and disturbing about our politics,” and another, favored by Nixon loyalists, holding that it was simply a political scandal, not unlike earlier ones involving other presidents, used by Nixon’s enemies in the press and Congress to “ ‘get’ their longtime arch-enemy.”

Schudson concludes that both interpretations have merit. Nixon’s “transgressions of mammoth proportion”--among them, his purported obstruction of justice in attempting to block FBI inquiries and disobeying of congressional subpoenas--clearly jeopardized the nation’s constitutional system, he said. But to dismiss the Watergate-as-scandal theory, he argues, also “misses part of the story.”

“On the one side, Watergate was uplifting public education, on the other, prurient, even contemptible, entertainment,” Schudson wrote. “On the one side, politics at its noblest, and, on the other, a self-serving morality play; on the one side, fateful events, and on the other, merely their staging.”

Complaints about Americans’ political amnesia obscures the fact that memories of Watergate are retained not only in individuals’ minds, but also “in social institutions and cultural symbols,” Schudson explained.

The “institutionalization” of Watergate can be seen, Schudson contends, in the myriad campaign finance reforms, tightened privacy laws, enhanced congressional oversight provisions and restrictions on presidential authority approved in the scandal’s wake.

Watergate also left a legacy in language, introducing terms such as “smoking gun,” “cover-up” and “stonewalling” into general usage, as well as ensuring that the suffix -gate would be attached to future scandals, most recently in the case of the U.S. House of Representatives check-writing controversy, dubbed Rubbergate.

A less tangible but arguably even more critical impact stems from Watergate’s role in deepening Americans’ cynicism about politics and government, building upon the already considerable public skepticism and anger attributable to the Vietnam War.

Although none of those factors can guarantee that there will never be “another Watergate,” they at least provide legal, political and cultural guideposts that perhaps lessen the likelihood of a recurrence--in part because Watergate “raised the stakes” by making presidential impeachment much more thinkable, Schudson said.

When the Iran-Contra controversy unfolded in late 1986, he points out, the possible impeachment of President Reagan was almost immediately under discussion. Ironically, memories of Watergate--evident in Reagan aides’ more effective damage-control operation and congressional leaders’ unwillingness to again submit the nation to such a wrenching experience--also help explain why “Irangate” never escalated to that stage.

“If nothing else, Watergate showed that you can’t get away with conspiracies,” said UCSD political science professor Sam Kernell. “Even a president can’t expect that kind of absolute loyalty among his people.”

“The lesson to politicians is that you shouldn’t do anything you don’t want to see on the front page,” concluded another UCSD political scientist, Gary Jacobson. “Since you can’t pass laws to prevent people from breaking laws, that’s an extremely valuable lesson.”