Watergate and the Gathering Storm

Between rumors of a possible Cheney indictment (and resignation) and today's news that Bush knew all along that Rove did it, this is, as Mark Kleiman says, "start[ing] to sound and smell like the summer of 1974."

We see one aspect of that similarity in the current irrational exuberance in the pony market. The giddiness among liberals right now reminds me of my elation at each new Watergate disclosure, culiminating in August 8, 1974--the happiest day of my life up to that point (I was 13 at the time).

But as the noose tightens I recall the deep sense of anxiety we felt at the time, right up to the resignation. We knew Nixon was in trouble, and we knew the rest of the country was coming around to what we had known all along; what we didn't know was how far he would go to hang on to power. We knew he would go pretty goddamn far; the Saturday Night Massacre gave us a solid basis for wild speculation about Nixon declaring martial law. We could hope, but we just didn't know.

I'm feeling a similar anxiety today...and judging by these posts, I'm not the only one. Lurking beneath the pony boom is the unsettling question: how far will they go to hang on to power?

Because these people aren't the Nixon administration--they're far more ruthless. Because the first lesson they took away from Watergate is that Nixon didn't cover up enough, and it's no stretch to speculate that they second lesson they took away is that Nixon fell because he lacked the will to hang on. Because we're at war, because 9/11 changed everything, because we are led by a man who combines an aristocrat's sense of entitlement with the disposition of a petulant bully with messianic delusions about being the savior of his nation.

The first phase, the war against the prosecutor, has already started...and it's going to get really vicious when (and if) indictments are issued. What happens if it gets closer to the top, though--if it threatens Cheney or Bush? These people have carefully laid down the ideological groundwork for an executive branch above the law, immune to oversight from any quarter; they have demonized the judiciary and neutered Congress; what are the odds that, when push comes to shove, they will fail to fall back on that?

I am not immune to the giddy optimism; I've been hoping for the best just like everybody else. It's just that whatever optimism I feel is tempered by the knowledge that it will get ugly, and that the ugliness will be in direct proportion to how justified we are in our optimism.