1. Richard Nixon and the Watergate Scandal
Richard Nixon broke the mold on the usual Republican presidential scandals. He was not caught trying to make money off the government like the Republican wrongdoers before him, nor was he unfaithful to his wife, along the lines of the Democratic tradition of presidential scandals. Instead, Nixon was caught spying on others, something that government regularly does today, without creating any sort of scandal.
In 1972 five men were caught breaking into the Watergate Complex, where the Democratic National Headquarters were housed. Their purpose was not to steal anything. They were breaking in to wiretap. They were engaged in “campaign intelligence.” They wanted to know what the rival political party was planning. When it was learned that this intelligence gathering mission was approved of and overseen by the president, Nixon resigned. He has gone down in current history books as our most crooked president. But was he?
Today, the NSA spies on each of us all the time. When Edward Snowden revealed the magnitude of the violation of all our rights, the government labeled him a traitor and a criminal. This did not cause a scandal for the current administration nor the one before it. Nobody is scandalized all. It’s business as usual.
We still like our scandals, but they usually revolve around small time titillation. Somebody said something lewd, or somebody did something crude. Or money was stolen or somebody took a bribe or did not report income on his or her tax forms. But the real scandal is that we are allowing all our rights to be abrogated, while arguing which flavor of corruption we like best: Democrat or Republican.
