Is it serendipity? Destiny? Or deja vu?

The Herald-Mail
·3 min read
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Serendipity.

The word can mean things happen by chance with good results. I love it when things seem to take place magically — without any effort from me.

Destiny?

Oh, for Pete's sake, Kate. It’s just a column for the local newspaper.

Am I making way too big a fuss? Maybe not.

Let me explain.

I am writing this shortly after I finished reading “Personal History,” the wonderful autobiography of Katharine Graham, publisher of The Washington Post during the Watergate era. The book and Graham herself are inspirations to me.

I’ve never really considered myself a journalist. I was an English major in college, and my first real job after graduation was at The Associated Press in Washington, D.C. I was a research assistant — not for the news department, but for the guy who sold the AP’s broadcast wire to publications and businesses all over the country.

My boss was one of the nicest people I ever have known. Our desks were on the ground floor right next to the window. I could look out on the Connecticut Avenue sidewalk, just a block from Dupont Circle.

I got an apartment a couple of blocks away, and during the 1973 Watergate hearings, I would run home to my tiny studio apartment to watch them on television.

I'm amazed as I write this nearly 50 years later in 2022, that it seems to be happening all over again. I’ve been watching the House Select Committee hearings investigating former President Donald J. Trump’s efforts to hold onto power. And seeing the January 6 invasion of the U.S. Capitol building was horrifying.

Deja vu all over again, baby.

The Watergate hearings, of course, dealt with the “dirty tricks" committed by former President Richard M. Nixon’s cronies who broke in to the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. The reporting and investigation by the Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein led to Nixon's eventual resignation and downfall.

Of course, because it was just happening, I didn't realize that it was such an amazing time to be in Washington, D.C., working — even peripherally — in the news business.

It was too early for me to realize how big a deal it really was; how significant a moment it was in my life and in America.

Now I write a column that runs on the first Sunday of the month in this newspaper. Things have come a long way since Watergate.

Or maybe not.

I honestly cannot believe that America is going through a very similar situation again — a president being investigated for thinking he can do whatever he wants to get whatever he wants.

Destiny? I don’t think so.

We have to pay attention. We have to stay involved. We can’t let things happen by chance.

I like that I began my working life in the news business during Watergate. And here I am, decades later, dealing with another presidential scandal.

Deja vu all over again, baby.

Kate Coleman writes a monthly Lifestyle column for The Herald-Mail.

This article originally appeared on The Herald-Mail: 50 years after Watergate, I'm glued to congressional hearings again