Watergate, Nixon, Bush, Edwards

By Dave Winer on 1/2/07; 2:36:20 PM.

Sunday's Meet the Press, which is largely a remembrance of Ford, is worth listening to, for the history of the end of Watergate, a period that rushed by so quickly, a lot of people, including myself, missed the details. My guess is that there wasn't a deal between Ford and Nixon. At the time I felt the pardon was the right thing to do, and I still do.  

Nixon was a bad man, and a worse president, but he was gone and stayed gone, even with the pardon. Losing the presidency and the humiliation that came with it, was punishment enough, and we desperately needed to get together after the 60s, the war, and then Watergate.  

Like many others who lived through that period, I am afraid that when we dig through the remains of the Bush presidency, we'll find that he was an even worse president than Nixon. He made the same mistakes Johnson made, and was even more corrupt than Nixon, if that's to be believed.  

I was struck in the Stephanopoulos interview with John and Elizabeth Edwards, also on Sunday, they said that gay marriage would absolutely not be an issue with their daughter's generation (she's 24). Funny how that is, I probably won't be around to see how that turns out, but I wouldn't be so sure. The sad part is that we were sure, my generation, that we would never repeat the mistakes that led to Vietnam and Watergate, but we have repeated them. Edwards is just 53, and can make the same claim.