Watergate

If you ask many people to describe what Watergate was all about, they might say that it was about a bungled break-in that brought down a president. That’s real, but the break-in is the least significant part of the scandal.

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Script:.

The most popular political scandal in American history is, obviously, Watergate. It’s so well-known that even now, 50 years after it took place, practically every scandal of any kind includes an obligatory “gate” after it.

If you ask most people to explain what Watergate was all about, they draw a blank. The burglary is the least significant part of the story.

Watergate was, primarily, a political war between the president, Richard Nixon, and the media, which in those pre-cable days indicated ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. The media’s goal, in the words of British historian Paul Johnson, “was to utilize publicity to reverse the electoral verdict of 1972.”.

What did the media have versus Nixon? The media considered the communist threat to be overblown. The media was entirely “anti-war.”.

Although Nixon spent the majority of his adult life in New York and Washington, he never suit. Born in a small town in California, there were no Ivy League degrees on his resume. To make matters worse, while not being part of McCarthyism, he made his reputation strongly exposing Alger Hiss, a communist in the U.S. State Department in the late 1940s. After working as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower for 8 years, he ran versus and almost defeated John F. Kennedy, the paragon of East Coast elitism in 1960.

Then, eight years later on, and much to the media’s discouragement, Nixon mounted an improbable political comeback to win that year’s presidential election. And after that, as if rubbing the media’s nose in it, he won once again in a 49-state landslide in 1972.

Paradoxically, Nixon’s own individuals provided the opportunity the media had actually been waiting for. On June 17, 1972, 5 men associated with the Nixon re-election campaign broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee head office in the Watergate workplace structure in Washington, D.C. Presumably, they intended to collect info about the Democrats’ project method.

Nixon discovered out about it– like everybody else– in the morning documents. I could not muster much moral outrage over a political bugging.”.

Today, the majority of would conclude that if he had just acknowledged his project’s duty–” owned it,” as we state, fired those accountable, and said sorry, the whole sorry mess would have been rendered the minor event it was. As historian Evan Thomas kept in mind, Nixon “wasn’t paying attention and when he was faced with the problems listed below deck, he didn’t truly engage … by the time he did, it was too late.”.

The scandal grew beyond his control. Three males made certain of that: a publicity-seeking judge, a revenge-seeking FBI official, and a partisan special prosecutor.

The judge was John Sirica. Suspecting a huge conspiracy, Sirica threatened the burglars with life time prison sentences if they didn’t rat out individuals who licensed the crime. The media loved Sirica. For a time, he was the most well-known jurist in the country.

For the total script along with FACTS & SOURCES, check out https://www.prageru.com/video/watergate.

source

If you ask many individuals to explain what Watergate was all about, they might say that it was about a mishandled break-in that brought down a president. If you ask most people to discuss what Watergate was all about, they draw a blank. What did the media have against Nixon? Ironically, Nixon’s own individuals supplied the chance the media had been waiting for. On June 17, 1972, 5 males associated with the Nixon re-election campaign broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate workplace structure in Washington, D.C. Presumably, they meant to gather info about the Democrats’ project strategy.