Posted by
The Hermit Crab on Thursday, October 01, 2009 2:08:28 PM
For the first time in awhile, I heard a bit of Glenn Beck's program this morning (usually I'm already working by 9:00). I don't know who the man was with him this morning, but one of them said that President Richard Nixon did not himself enter the Watergate Hotel, but that the Watergate burglars "were carrying out his wishes".
No, they weren't.
Once for all, Richard Nixon did not order the Watergate break-in. For one thing, he had no reason to. He had a double-digit lead over the Democratic candidate, George McGovern, who was far left for his day. (Of course, McGovern would be a moderate in today's Social Democratic Party.) Another reason is that for Nixon to order the break-in would have been futile. As he explained in his memoirs, presidential campaigns are not run from party headquarters; they are run from the headquarters of the candidate's campaign. This was, after all, RN's fifth nationwide campaign. I loved how he put this in his memoirs (I think it was his memoirs. It may have been in one of his other books.): "If my opponents didn't believe in my integrity, they could have at least respected my intelligence."
The best researched and most persuasive account of the Watergate scandal is the book
Silent Coup, by Len Colodny and Robert Gettlin. The authors conclude that the Watergate break-ins (there were two) were ordered by White House Councel John Dean. The story is too complex to summarize briefly here, but the authors managed to convince G. Gordon Liddy, who had for years believed that former Attorney General John Mitchell had given the orders.
If you want to know the whole story, I guess you'll have to read the book. I guess Glenn Beck should, too.