The Legacy of Watergate

Ben Stein's column will provide a great psych test:

If you find yourself nodding your head as you read it, wishing you had written it, you can have a seat on the right side of the aisle. If you have developed a cramp in your neck from nodding so much, and find yourself cheering yourself hoarse that someone has finally told the truth, go lay down in the beds provided at the far right of the aisle, and avail yourself freely of the tranquilizers provided there.

If on the other hand, you find yourself shaking your head, and getting more angry the more you read, have a seat on the left side of the aisle. If you find yourself so angry you can't stop your heart from racing, find your blood pressure rising, and wishing someone would stop these lies, please be at rest in the beds conveniently placed on the far left of the aisle, and avail yourself of the conveniently placed psychotropics. You may quietly mingle with others who suffer with neck problems and no voices. You will find you have much in common...

I'm one of the head nodders. No cramps, but definitely nodding my head. I have no illusions about the lies told by Nixon and his men, anymore than I have illusions about Clinton and his minions. I see the two as similar in some ways, like two sides of the same coin. They represent the currency of corruption. Their motives may have been different, but in the end, their corruption was similar. Yet their legacies are vastly different, as Stein makes clear:

That is his legacy. He was a peacemaker. He was a lying, conniving, covering up peacemaker. He was not a lying, conniving drug addict like JFK, a lying, conniving war starter like LBJ, a lying conniving seducer like Clinton -- a lying conniving peacemaker. That is Nixon's kharma.

When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:

1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.

So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.

No President more fully represented the worst of the Baby Boomers who grew up in the Vietnam era than Clinton. Nixon and Clinton represent bookends on a chapter of American History we would do well not to repeat. And those on the left may not realize it, but their defense of Clinton's lies puts the lie to their cheers at the fall of Richard M. Nixon.