It was, commentators agreed, a case of "prosecutorial overreach." There was "no underlying crime" except a minor burglary, and the Constitution of the United States wasn't designed to deal with trivial items on the local police blotter. Talking heads had already agreed that the mass firings at the Justice Department, which included Attorney General Elliott Richardson and Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox, were justified. Justice Department officials "serve at the pleasure of the President," after all.
When the Attorney General assigned Leon Jaworski as replacement prosecutor, he soon became the target of pundits throughout Washington. His investigation was described as a Democratic vendetta, despite the fact that he was a Nixon appointee. He was only able to bring one indictment, against White House aide Charles "Chuck" Colson, before being stonewalled by a series of government witnesses acting with widespread support from the commentariat.
Jaworski was "compulsively compulsive," Richard Cohen wrote in the Washington Post. Cohen added that " Jaworski was appointed to look into a run-of-the-mill burglary and wound up prosecuting not the burglar but Colson, convicted in the end of lying. This is not an entirely trivial matter .... but neither should they be called to account for practicing the dark art of politics. As with sex or real estate, it is often best to keep the lights off."
"As Jaworski worked his wonders," Cohen continued, "threatening jail and going after government gossips with splendid pluck, many opponents of the Vietnam war cheered. They thought -- if 'thought' can be used in this context -- that if the thread was pulled on who committed minor break-ins at Ellsberg's shrink and a Democratic office, the effort to snooker an entire nation ... would unravel and this would show . . . who knows? Something."
Cohen wasn't the only pundit to leap to Nixon's defense, of course. "All this pompous bloviation in the left-wing blogosphere about the rule of law, and no special cases, is just so much baloney," wrote Joe Klein. Colson's "perjury," as Klein described it in ironic quotation marks, "would never be considered significant enough to reach trial, much less sentencing, much less time in stir if he weren't Dick Nixon's hatchet man."
David Brooks used the prestigious New York Times to sum up the case for his peers: "In retrospect, Watergate was a farce in five acts ... Act Two opened with a cast of thousands crowding the stage, filling the air with fevered vapors and gleeful rage. Perhaps you can remember those days, when the Watergate story pretended to be a minor burglary. Perhaps you can remember the howls of outrage from our liberal friends, about the threat to national security, the secret White House plot to discredit its enemies."
"Of course, the howlers howl," continued Brooks. "That is their assigned posture in this drama. They entered howling, they will leave howling and the only thing you can count on is their anger has been cynically manufactured from start to finish."
Democrats, guided by a flotilla of highly paid consultants, responded to this outpouring of commentator wrath with their customary caution. Impeachment of Nixon was "off the table," they flatly declared. Colson's refusal to cooperate with investigators ensured that the inquiry could go no further, especially when Republicans in Congress continued to oppose any decisive Congressional action. When Colson's sentence was commuted by Nixon on the very day his prison sentence was confirmed, all the other Nixon appointees got the message: Obstruct the investigation and we'll take care of you.
Nixon served the full term of his Presidency. Americans remember the joyful wave of his hand as he stepped into a helicopter in 1976 on his way to an honored retirement in Pearl River, NY. Leon Jaworski had difficulty finding jobs after what pundits agreed was a botched investigation. Daniel Ellsberg and John Dean both died in mysterious accidents. Republicans have held all three branches of government for the last thirty years.
It was up to Brooks to have the last word on behalf of his peers: "The farce is over. It has no significance. Nobody but Colson's family will remember it in a few weeks time."
History has proven him right.
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NOTE: All pundit quotes are verbatim except for indicated changes.
Remember when everybody said "the system worked" during Watergate? That "system" includes the independent branches of government working in balance, and the corrective influence of a free and honest press.
This week, the system didn't work.