No, I haven’t gone mad — not in the sense of having lost my sanity. But “mad,” as in inexpressibly angry? Oh, indeed, yes! Haven’t we all, to some extent, these past 100 days?

I was reminded by History.com that yesterday was the 51st anniversary of then-President Nixon’s release of the Watergate tapes to the Congressional committee investigating the break-in of the Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters some two years earlier.

Not all of you were around back then, though I’m sure you’re at least somewhat familiar with the history of the Watergate scandal. But I lived through those turbulent times, and I have always hoped and prayed that this country would never again have to experience anything like it.

Each day felt as though you had popped through Alice’s looking glass and found yourself in the most bizarre version of her psychedelic nightmare . . . day after day, month after month.

Without trying to regurgitate the already heavily-documented history of that era, let me just say that — instead of Alice’s White Rabbit, the Cheshire Cat, the hookah-smoking Caterpillar with his magic mushrooms, the Mad Hatter, and the Queen constantly screaming “Off with their heads” — Watergate had Richard M. Nixon, H.R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman, John Dean, John Mitchell, E. Howard Hunt, G. Gordon Liddy, the ever-popular Martha Mitchell . . . and an organization ironically known by its acronym: CREEP (the Committee for the Re-election of the President).

And, of course, the notorious 18.5 minutes of erased tapes.

Numerous analogies have been drawn between the illegal acts undertaken by Nixon and his people and those of Donald Trump’s band of merry men (and women). But there are vast differences . . . differences that make this time around much, much worse . . . two of which were circumstances that enabled our country to finally resolve the issues surrounding Watergate and to begin healing from the trauma of those years.

Those conditions do not exist today; and their absence may well be our undoing.

First was the fact that both the U.S. Senate and the House of Representatives consisted in 1964 of Democratic majorities, while the President — Richard Nixon — was a Republican. He did not own the Congress. He did not own the Supreme Court. Those estimable bodies were comprised of members who had the interests of the country at heart; who remembered that they had sworn to uphold the Constitution; and who had the cojones to stand up to a president who sometimes forgot his own oath. When the Watergate break-in, and the subsequent fallout from that failed adventure, became known, Congress launched an appropriate investigation and followed through without fear of retribution or having to make concessions.

And second, Richard Nixon — though certainly possessed of an outsized ego and an instinct for self-preservation — was not delusional. Though he thought he could get away with it, in the end he did not believe he was a god, above the law, impervious to punishment. When he realized he was about to be impeached, he did the smart — actually, the honorable — thing: he resigned.

And that is the part of the Watergate episode — the ending — that I would like to see repeated now. What we are missing is a government with guts: a legislature that truly represents the will of the people who elected them; a judiciary, up to and including the U.S. Supreme Court, that will consistently rule in accordance with the law of the land, and enforce those rulings through proper action by a Department of Justice that understands and reveres the concept of “justice.”

But in order to do this, they need to come together. And as long as they continue to be guided and controlled by partisanship and fear of retribution, that won’t happen.

What will happen, though, is that many of those who have failed us will be standing for election again next year. And if things don’t improve, but continue to deteriorate under this administration, those elections will accomplish the very thing they have been trying to avoid: the loss of their jobs and their political careers.

That is, if we survive that long. And to ensure our survival, the government we elected needs to take action now, and not wait for another election cycle.

We need to take our country back . . . even if it means another Watergate investigation.

Just sayin’ . . .

Brendochka
4/30/25