Postcard From a Child's Memories of WatergateSanta Monica, 1972: Forty Junes ago, I was a girl with my father when the Watergate break-in surfaced on CBS News radio. Excited, he told me it meant Democrats might win the election against the sitting president, Richard M. Nixon. Nice try, Dad. Washington, Monday: I heard Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, the investigative reporting duo, speak at a lavish "Watergate at 40" gathering given by The Washington Post. Timed to the break-in anniversary date, the place was the atmospheric Watergate building. Perfect! Character portraits were drawn for old times' sake. Woodward spoke of "the smallness of Richard Nixon" in conducting a litany of deeds and cover-ups like the ones that led to his resignation. Bernstein spoke more harshly of his "horrifying" crimes and plots against democracy. Their own contrasts came out. It dawned on Bernstein first, early on over coffee, that Nixon could get impeached! The temperate Woodward, replied: yes, but we can never use that word in the newsroom because we don't want people to think we have an agenda. Back on that Santa Monica day, my dad and I were on our way to play tennis in the station wagon. Was the news a ray of light to cross the horizon — still in shadows from the Vietnam War and other tears and tragedies? In my family, Nixon's election in 1968 was a cruel end to the cruelest year. In my generation — and Barack Obama's — we had seen much at age 6 or 7, such as murdered dreams and dreamers. It's all cut in the glass of my early childhood memory. The Watergate crisis assaulted our age of innocence again. Let me spell it out, the lesson a nation of schoolchildren learned from Nixon.
Feeling the ceaseless current of living history in that large rough space Monday, it was clear we yet dwell with Nixon's deeds. They live long after him. So count me out of the liberals who say, half in jest, they miss Nixon compared to today's brigade of congressional Republicans far to his right. In the throng at the Post event, I ran into Katie O'Malley, a Baltimore judge and Maryland's first lady, the wife of Gov. Martin O'Malley, a Democrat. She said the panel discussion brought back a flood of feelings, of being "obsessed" as a girl by the televised Watergate hearings on Capitol Hill. She grew up in a political family, the Currans, and the summer-long hearings held a curious fascination. O'Malley is far from the only one who passed up hours at the pool for the solemn proceedings against the president. Just a nice shared experience for many of us growing up then. At least one friend remembers her family's telephone was tapped when she was a child. Then there was the so-called enemies list. We had hints my mother, a professor, was on it. "If she's not, she should be," my father said. But who knew what my mother was up to the August day Nixon resigned in 1974? She watched his painful rendition of "Exit: the King" on television live, and then decided she had to witness the man get off the plane. Her heart racing, she dropped her daughters off somewhere and, without telling us, drove from Santa Monica to San Clemente. The people standing on the tarmac were evenly divided between Nixon's supporters and critics, my mother said. When he appeared, anguish and vindication mixed, and Watergate melted into moments of utter silence. That was the last page of my Watergate album. To find out more about Jamie Stiehm, and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit www.creators.com. COPYRIGHT 2012 CREATORS.COM 
|
 |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
 |
