Watergate was the biggest controversy of its time. Now, it would be normalized | Opinion

Nearly 50 years ago, in 1974, Richard Nixon was forced to resign as president because he had been caught on tape.

Ironically, it was a tape recording he had made himself when he, in effect, bugged his own office.

Early in his presidency he had voice-activated recording devices secretly placed in the Oval Office so he could have accurate accounts of his meetings as President. It turned out to be the biggest mistake of his otherwise brilliant political career when,in the face of a Congressional investigation of the “Watergate” affair, he taped his own confession.

Watergate had been what President Nixon’s own press secretary called a “third rate burglary.”

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Inside the third rate burglary

In June of 1972 a group of men were caught breaking into the Democratic Party’s headquarters in the Watergate Hotel presumably to spy on and sabotage efforts to defeat Nixon in the 1972 election.

The White House first denied these burglars had any connection with President Nixon or his campaign. But the burglars had cash on them that investigative journalists and Justice Department officials connected to the Committee to Re-Elect the President.

In subsequent Congressional hearings, witnesses including Nixon’s own White House lawyer testified that Nixon had approved plans to cover-up his Administration’s involvement in the break-in and had tried to use federal officials to stop the investigation. Nixon said these witnesses were lying.

But then it was discovered that Nixon had bugged his own office. After a long legal battle that went all the way to the United States Supreme Court, the tapes of Nixon’s meetings regarding the Watergate affair were made public, and everyone could hear Nixon’s own voice directing a cover-up of the activities of the White House after the break-in and a conspiracy to obstruct justice in the resulting investigation.

Richard Nixon had been re-elected in 1972 in the biggest landslide victory in American history. But when the American people heard the tapes of his meetings in the Oval Office, his support evaporated, and in the face of impeachment, he resigned the Presidency.

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A different time

In recent years, many American politicians have also been caught in tape, exposed for bad conduct or lying or both. But unlike Nixon, they are now no consequences for the truth revealed about them.

Congressman Scott DesJarlais of Tennessee was elected to Congress as a pro-life, family man. But tapes of his phone conversations with his pregnant mistress revealed him counseling her to get an abortion.

Despite the tapes, the congressman was re-elected and has since been re-elected five more times.

In 2016, Donald Trump was caught on tape bragging about grabbing women by their private parts. Two weeks after the disclosure of the tapes he was elected President of the United States.

And now tape recordings have revealed Republican House of Representatives leader Kevin McCarthy saying after the January 6, 2021 attack on the Capitol that he had “had it with Donald Trump”, and was going to meet with him and urge him to resign as President. Even after the American people have heard the tapes, McCarthy insists he never said what we hear him saying.

The Eagles famously sang that “you can’t hide your lying eyes.” But nowadays politicians caught on tape hide by telling us to not believe our lying ears.

Bill Haltom is an author who resides in Memphis and Monteagle, Tennessee.  

This article originally appeared on Nashville Tennessean: Why 50 years later, Watergate would be normalized in modern politics