Just Wait: Watergate didn't become Watergate overnight, either.
Hat tip, Paul Farhi:
Great piece of dot-connecting and historical-parallel defining by @frankrichny here.
Link to tweet
Watergate didnt become Watergate overnight, either.
By Frank Rich
Let others wallow in Watergate, we are going to do our job, said Richard Nixon with typical unearned self-righteousness in July 1973. By then, more than a year had passed since a slapstick posse of five had been caught in a bungled burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate complex. It had been nine months since Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein reported in the Washington Post that the break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage conducted by all the presidents men against most of their political opponents. Now the nation was emerging from two solid months of Senate Watergate hearings, a riveting cavalcade of White House misfits and misdeeds viewed live by 71 percent of the public.
Even so, Nixon had some reason to hope that Americans would heed his admonition to change the channel. That summer, the Times reported that both Democratic and Republican congressmen back home for recess were finding a certain numbness about Watergate and no public mandate for any action as bold as impeachment.
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The skids of Trumps collapse are already being greased by some of the same factors that brought down his role model: profound failings of character, disdain for the law (If the president does it, that means that it is not illegal, in Nixons notorious post-resignation formulation to David Frost), an inability to retain the loyalty of feuding White House aides who will lawyer up to save their own skins (H. R. McMaster may bolt faster than the ultimately imprisoned Nixon chief of staff H. R. Haldeman), and dubious physical health (Trumps body seems to be bloating in stress as Nixons phlebitis-stricken leg did). Further down the road, hell no doubt face the desertion of politicians in his own party who hope to cling to power after hes gone. If the good Lordy hears James Comeys prayers, there may yet be incriminating tapes as well, Trumps weirdly worded denial notwithstanding.
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But as was also true with Nixon, some time and much patience will be required while waiting for the endgame. The span between Nixons Second Inaugural and his resignation was almost 19 months. Trumps presidency already seems as if its lasted a lifetime, but its only five months old. Never forget that the Watergate auto-da-fé wasnt built in a day.
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*This article appears in the June 26, 2017, issue of New York Magazine.
murielm99
(30,736 posts)Odd use of that phrase. We are not burning anyone at the stake.
sprinkleeninow
(20,243 posts)They were explained to me years ago in an abbreviated fashion. I got the gist of it.
Our tradition of Faith is unadulterated, except for some doings by its adherents.
It makes me unhappy that some traditions of faith did dastardly things. Thanx much.
-sprink
murielm99
(30,736 posts)converts from Judaism and Islam, to insure their orthodoxy. Of course, it did no such thing. It was a good way for the church to confiscate a lot of property and frighten a lot of people. Torquemada was undoubtedly insane.
That is not a synopsis, and this is not the place for it. Google is your friend.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Auto-da-fé
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_Inquisition
sprinkleeninow
(20,243 posts)adherence and not fake adherence to tenets.
And, the 'church' being the Roman Catholic Rite, its Pope and hierarchical administration in power at that time.
Just sayin'.
You gave me just enuff to jog my memory of what I was told.
Thanx.
MyOwnPeace
(16,926 posts)to talk about a celebratory Bar-B-Que?