Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, April 24, 1994 TAG: 9404240117
SECTION: HORIZON PAGE: B8 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: AARON EPSTEIN KNIGHT-RIDDER/TRIBUNE
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
Yet its impact remains with us - in our laws, our government, our news media, our language.
"It seems to me that Watergate affected about everything in public life; it was a seminal event," said Stephen Hess, a government analyst for the Brookings Institution and a former adviser to presidents.
"Along with Vietnam, it has certainly affected journalism. You can see it in the degree to which everything a public official says or does is questioned.
"The legacy of [investigative reporters Bob] Woodward and [Carl] Bernstein after Watergate is of journalists working for a Pulitzer, a best-seller and a movie in which they are played by Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman."
Many scholars trace the decline of public confidence in government to the secret escalation of the Vietnam War and to Watergate, a burglary that was covered up by a blanket of official lies.
"The bad side of Watergate is that there's much more negativism in the reporting of government and cynicism toward political candidates and officeholders," said John H. Aldrich, chairman of the political science department at Duke University in Durham, N.C.
"There's a higher degree of alienation, the voters are turned off, and there is more willingness to turn to third-party candidates like Ross Perot. It's also more difficult for officials to win public support for their programs.
"The good side is that the media is not simply a conduit anymore, and so the public gets more information about elections and policies," Aldrich said.
Watergate spawned a series of reforms at all levels of government. New ethics laws opened government meetings and records to public scrutiny, required candidates and officials to file financial reports, curbed abuses in campaign financing, and authorized the appointment of independent prosecutors to investigate suspicions of wrongdoing at the highest levels.
"For me, the most important legacy of Watergate is the standard . . . that presidents as well as everyone else have to live by the law and if a president blatantly abuses the powers of his office, he will be held to account," said John F. Seiberling, 75, a Democrat from Ohio who was a member of the House Judiciary Committee that weighed whether to impeach Nixon.
"Nixon said he could disobey the law if it was in the national interest. I think we will not tolerate that from any president . . . because of the revelations of Nixon lying to the American people and Congress," said Seiberling, who is director for the Center for Peace Studies at the University of Akron.
The very words of Watergate - plumbers, stonewalling, dirty tricks, Deep Throat and the rest - remain with us. Some of them are even bandied about whenever "gate" becomes the suffix for the latest breath of seeming scandal.
There was Billygate (for President Jimmy Carter's late brother, Billy), Koreagate, Irangate and Iraqgate. Trouble in the Big Apple (New York City) spelled Applegate. The misdeeds of former Rep. Daniel Flood, D-Pa., became Floodgate.
Still, for most younger Americans, Watergate is as remote as Teapot Dome, the oil reserves scandal of the Harding administration more than 70 years ago.
"It's all pure history now to our students," said Aldrich of Duke University. "They're not interested in it the way they are about the civil rights movement or Vietnam. It's hard for them to see Watergate as relevant to their lives."
by CNB