"Watergate," as it is called, is a grand example in the Yankee vs Cowboy theory, proposed by the late Carl Oglesby as a way to analyze all recent American political history. Watch the program and think about the parallels between then and now.
Oglesby captured the essence of his model in this opening to his introduction to the concept:
The assassination of John Kennedy and the downfall of Richard-Nixon have both been viewed as isolated moral disasters for American democracy: Kennedy's murder as a demonstration of our continuing national inability or unwillingness to cope with violence; Nixon's downfall as a demonstration of the failure of our democratic institutions to overcome the abuses of secret intelligence and electronic surveillance at the seat of national power.
But these two events represent neither isolated disasters nor a generalized failure of American institutions but something almost beyond the ability of ordinary people even to see, much less control. The two events - Dallas and Watergate - are actually concrete links in a chain of related and ominous events passing through the entire decade in which they occurred and beyond. And this chain of events itself represents only the violent eruptions of a deeper struggle of rival power elites identified here as Yankees and Cowboys.
This book proposes to show that Dallas and Watergate are intrinsically linked conspiracies in a hidden drama of coup and countercoup which represents the life of an inner oligarchic power sphere, and "invisible government," capable of any act in the pursuit of its objectives, that sets itself above the law and beyond the moral rule: a clandestine American state, perhaps an embryonic police state.... ~ Carl Oglesby, "The Yankee and Cowboy War," The Education Forum, July 4, 2017.
Watergate is in the air again because of the similarities felt by political observers and commentators between the firings of investigators looking into the actions of President Nixon and President Trump.
Let us take a trip down memory lane observing the newspaper headlines from the Watergate days and how the "headlines" in tabloids, television, and newspapers appear today regarding what's occurring in 2017. Will the current events go down in history as Russiagate, Trumpgate or some other name?
Jim Comey—and his prominence and subsequent career have been driven almost entirely by his dramatic testimony on March 15, 2007.
That hearing, purportedly into the politicization of the Justice Department and the partisan firings of U.S. attorneys by Ashcroft’s successor, Alberto Gonzales, was a carefully orchestrated yet seemingly spontaneous moment. The week before, Comey had carefully walked his former colleague Preet Bharara—then counsel to Senator Chuck Schumer—through the 2004 episode for the first time. “The hair stood up on the back of my neck, because I realized what a significant story this was, and I was sworn to secrecy and nobody knew about it,” Bharara told the New Yorker years later. The three men—Comey, Schumer and Bharara—kept quiet about the revelations in advance. “I was afraid that if the story got out of what Jim was going to say, the Bush administration would figure out a way to prevent him from testifying,” Bharara recalled later. “We needed to preserve the element of surprise.” by Garrett M. Graff, "What Donald Trump Needs to Know About Bob Mueller and Jim Comey," Politico Magazine, May 18, 2017.
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