RICHARD NIXON and WATERGATE 1974 The Fall (Part 16) The Legacy of Watergate

The Richard Nixon Experience

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In this episode we examine the Legacy of Watergate. It was the one question everyone was asked by historian Timothy Naftali and the answers were fascinating. This is a study of what each person thought the lesson of Watergate is for history. The one that caught the most interest from me was that of Bernard Nussbaum, who was the second in command on the staff of the House Judiciary Committee. He calls the Special Prosecutor's Office " a dangerous, dangerous office."
He runs through all the ways this office can be abused and how President Nixon and his friend President Bill Clinton should never have allowed the office to have been created in either of their cases.
While Nussbaum pays token defenses of the Watergate Special Prosecutor's Office it is clear that he holds the institution in fairly low regard and in every point he makes we are in agreement. His warning is one every President and leader needs to heed. There is no reason the office should ever exist again, in my opinion.
Former Senator Trent Lott also makes a valid point too about what happens when a person gets in trouble and how the price they pay can be very different depending on which political party they are a member of when it happens.
Here is the Legacy of Watergate, including my opinion, which is its unfairness to President Nixon and the battles over the war in Vietnam planted the seeds of the disfunction in politics we see today