What Made Watergate Matter

Thoughts on the contingency of justice.

Watergate almost didn’t matter. Sometimes people—I mean the vice president and political operative Roger Stone—will make news saying that scandal wouldn’t matter today. I think that’s true, and not to our credit. But also, it almost didn’t matter in the 1970s.

The unraveling of the Watergate scandal and the consequences of the scandal were not inevitable.

The fact that America was scandalized, and scandalized enough to force Richard Nixon, unlike any other president in a history of awful human beings holding the highest office, to resign was not the foreordained dominos falling, one after the other.

It’s easy to get the idea that it had to happen. The quick version, the vibes versions of American history, goes like this: A little reporting, a few headlines in the Washington Post, and boom. But it wasn’t like that. History can teach us to be smarter. History can teach us to understand the depths of contingency.

This was what happened to make Watergate matter:

First, the break-in wasn’t successful. The White House “plumbers” could have broken into the Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate hotel/office complex and planted listening devices and gotten away with it. They actually did once before. And “black bag jobs,” as they were called, were not that uncommon. Not that hard. The Watergate team was sloppy and messed up.

The story of the Watergate break-in appeared on page 14 of the Miami Herald that was delivered to Richard Nixon’s vacation home in Key Biscayne, Florida.

Second, the arrest got reported. This was also not inevitable. The weirdness of the burglary—Cuban men in suits wearing latex gloves, some with crisp $100 bills, one with a notebook that included the phone number for White House chief of staff—didn’t guarantee coverage. The newspaper had to pay someone to hang out with police at night, in case there was something interesting to report. They had to pay someone to spend time at the court house, to hear if anything interesting was happening. In the history of journalism, the history of America, all the cities across the country, the nation’s capital, you don’t always get that.

Third, two reporters wouldn’t let the story go. The dug in. Kept going. Kept digging. The story of how that happened has been well told and Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein are folk heroes to some of us. It’s easy to forget, though, how long that process took. How piecemeal. One major break was reported in August. The next was reported in mid September. Most of the media moved on, which really was reasonable. Two reporters keep going even when it was not clear what the story was, or how big it was, or whether Watergate really mattered. They got their editors to let them—and pay them that whole time.

Note: At this point, after Woodward and Bernstein reported the Watergate bugging suspect got campaign funds and was, in fact, part of a larger strategy of election interference / dirty tricks / sabotage, Watergate did not matter.

Nixon was reelected. He won by a massive landslide, with majorities everywhere except Massachusetts and the District of Columbia. The stories of his sweep didn’t even mention Watergate.

One political reporter at the time said Watergate was a “sleeper” issue. For voters, he said, the whole thing seemed like watching a fight under a rug. They could tell something was happening. But not what to make of it. They couldn’t tell what it meant, if anything. Maybe that’s true. Maybe not. Most voters voted for Nixon. There’s no polling to tell us if the scandal impacted the decision of a some small percentage, but it doesn’t seem like it did.

Then, fourth, the U.S. Senate decided to investigate. Without that decision, Watergate would not have been a major scandal. The criminal courts had wrapped things up. The burglars went to jail. Question of White House involvement—did the burglars act on their own? where did they get the money?—got pushed to the side. The fall guys fell. But the Senate decided it would be a good idea to ask some questions and that started a new investigation, pushing Watergate towards mattering.

Fifth, one of the burglars, former CIA operative James W. McCord, decided to implicate a few higher-ups. It’s not clear why. Best guess, he wanted to make them take some of the responsibility. That was the crack in the conspiracy, that until then held well enough. He told investigators that a White House lawyer and a deputy campaign director knew what he and the others were doing. He said that he didn’t know for sure, but the campaign director (and former attorney general) might be part of it too.

Sixth, deputy campaign manager (and future Presbyterian minister) Jeb Stuart Magruder, did not want to take responsibility. He was one level above the people who were supposed to be fall guys and he didn’t want to be a fall guy. He pointed investigators to the lawyer, John W. Dean, and head of the Nixon campaign, former Attorney General John Mitchell.

Seventh, Woodward and Bernstein keep reporting. They don’t let go; they keep uncovering more pieces of the Watergate story. This was a risky decision for the Washington Post and at this point, obviously offensive to the new administration. And there was no evidence readers particularly cared. Still, editors decided they wanted the reporters to keep reporting and the reporters continued, doggedly, despite everything.

Eighth, John W. Dean, started to worry that he’s being set up to be the final fall guy. He didn’t want to be the fall guy either. He didn’t think any of this was his fault and didn’t want responsibility without authority. He told the Senate that Nixon knew and was intimately involved in the cover-up. He said, under oath, he and Nixon talked about obstruction of justice and how to pay the Watergate burglars for their silence.

Of course, lots of people didn’t believe Dean. His story was obviously self-serving. And people found self-serving reasons to think he was self-serving. They explained stuff away. They said, who can know? They were ready to move on to other things.

The contingencies hadn’t all clicked into place.

Ninth, Nixon recorded himself. This has always been the greatest irony of the Watergate story and the greatest contingency. Nixon failed to bug the Democrats. He succeeded at bugging himself, installing a secret recording conversation that recorded everything, including his conversations about covering up the Watergate break-in.

Tenth, the secret recording system was exposed. This did not have to happen. One aide just decided he wasn’t going to lie if he was asked a direct question and he was asked. He could have lied. It would have been easier for him. He could have justified it. Lots of people, in that same situation, would have. Did. Do. But Alexander Butterfield made up his mind for himself there was a limit to his loyalty. And the secret evidence was suddenly public information.

Eleventh, the tapes came out. Do you know how many times, how many investigations, evidence exists and investigators know it exists and, yet, they can’t get it? All the time. All the time. For me, the worst part of an investigation, which happens in every investigation, is when I know what happened but can’t prove it. I know people know, but can’t get them to talk. I know documents exist, but I don’t have them. Knowing that tapes existed with recordings of conversations where the president talked about Watergate and what to do about Watergate did not mean that that tapes would come out. There was, in fact, a huge legal fight about the tapes in 1973 and 1974, which ultimately involved the Supreme Court. If the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the president and his claim he owned the tapes and had the executive privilege not to hand them over, that would have been the end.

But it wasn’t the end.

Twelfth, Nixon complied with the ruling. Can’t take that for granted. I don’t know what would have happened if he’d told the court to go jump in a lake. Or he’d taken the tapes into the White House Rose Garden and set them on fire. But he could have. People around him said he should. Political operative Pat Buchanan still argues, today, that that would have been the right thing to do. Nixon didn’t do it.

Thirteenth, Nixon released transcripts of the tapes. He convinced himself that people would read them favorably, reading them as he read them, or at least enough people. He badly misjudged. People read and were appalled. They read and saw he did try to cover up the crime. They also saw the president was amoral, conniving, petty, paranoid, and crude. That surprised them. He swore a lot—marking each curse in the transcript with “expletive deleted”—and that really upset people. The distance between their vision of the men in the White House, how they operated, how they conducted themselves in the dignity of the Oval Office, and the reality of cursing and conspiring and conniving hit hard.

One woman who worked as a phone operator said, reading, she lost all the pride she had at working in the White House. Lots of people felt that way.

Fourteenth, elected representatives in Nixon’s own party wouldn’t stand with him. They went to him privately—Congressmen and Senators—and said it was over. They couldn’t back him in an impeachment fight and win reelection. That backbone and sense of higher calling, higher than partisanship, is surprising from our current vantage point. But also, importantly, most congressional district and most states, in those days when America’s culture wars were young, were not so ideologically sorted. It turns out, there were conservatives in every majority-liberal district. And liberals in every conservative-majority district. And most representatives, to win, had to win some votes from members of the opposite party. So they had to show they weren’t too partisan and could work across the aisle. Those political incentives, though, were obviously not necessary. They could have been different. But the incentives, in that moment of crisis in 1974, were aligned against doubling down forever, against the suicide pact of partisan extremism, in favor of saying enough is enough.

All of that happened, then Nixon resigned. All of that had to happen, I think, for Watergate to matter.

I’m probably missing some things too. Such is the complexity of actual hisotry.

I really wish consequences and justice were inevitable. I would like it to be the case that a little reporting, a little more reporting, a few headlines, then boom. I want the arc of the universe to bend and to have to bend.

But the lesson of history, as I understand it, is we live in contingency. Contingency is deep. It’s broad. It’s everywhere, every moment, every decision.

That means you never know—you cannot know—if what you do is going to matter. You have to decide to do what you’re going to do, or not do, not knowing. You can pick the principle you want to live by. That’s it.

Then you just have to leap into history.

Maybe Watergate will matter. Maybe it won’t. You only get your decision.

Selected bibliography

I spent a lot of time eating, breathing, dreaming, thinking, writing Nixon. If you’re interested in my interpretation of his spiritual life—and how his relationship to God was behind and underneath everything—pick up my book, One Lost Soul: Richard Nixon’s Search for Salvation.

For everything—literally, everything—about Watergate, see Garret M. Graff’s history.

Check out They Said No to Nixon for the story of the Republicans who did not fall into line with pressure of partisanship, prompting, finally, Nixon’s resignation.

Woodward and Bernstein’s book about reporting on Watergate, All the President’s Men, is still a masterpiece.

One of my favorite books in the field is also by Woodward, telling the story of Alexander Butterfield, the man who decided he wouldn’t lie about the secret tapes. Check out The Last of the President’s Men.

The best look at the politics of the investigation and push to impeachment is maybe the journalist’s book done at the time, Jimmy Breslin’s How the Good Guys Finally Won.