“Worse than Watergate” has become a Washington cliche that is both inescapable and meaningless. Dozens of political scandals since then have been objectively worse, but the scandal still looms large. This is because of the mythos it created involving a press corps and a Washington establishment allegedly concerned with moving heaven and earth to get at the truth, even when the story involved little more than “third-rate burglary,” as Richard Nixon’s secretary famously called it. Watergate also marked a sea change in how we held presidents accountable. Prior to his downfall, Nixon’s sentiment that “if the president does it, it’s not illegal” was to some extent the informal understanding, even if that sounds outrageous to contemporary ears. A corrupt president could either be impeached by Congress or thrown out of office by voters, but there was no constitutional middle ground to hold them accountable. Since Watergate, the FBI and the Department of Justice more broadly have…
The damning Durham Report
