I used to be a bit envious of my friends who went to Yale. After hearing from, perhaps, their most famous current alumnus, J.D. Vance, not so much anymore.
The Vice President of the United States said that if Watergate happened in today’s media world, it would simply be a 24-hour news story. What he seems to have forgotten is that the Watergate story, when it broke, was a one-day story. Most top reporters didn’t even notice it. The Washington Post literally scraped two reporters from the bottom of their reportorial barrel.
It was these two low-rung reporters, Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward, who were barely able to keep the story alive. I represented them for their first book, “All The President’s Men.” When, after working on the story for a month, they decided they wanted to do a book about Watergate, I sent their proposal to New York publishers; every single one of them turned it down. Not even a nibble. The book was finally sold and published due to very peculiar circumstances that I describe in “Too Good to Be Forgotten,” and it became the best-selling nonfiction book of the year.
The other thing Vance said was that Nixon was brought down by the “democratic Deep state.” This is also ridiculous. The Democrats at that time were totally disjointed and foundering. Their convention in Chicago had been a media nightmare. Their Presidential candidate had disappeared under an avalanche of Republican votes.
No, Nixon was brought down when Senate Minority Leader Hugh Scott (R-PA), joined by House Minority Leader John Rhodes (R-AZ), and Senator Barry Goldwater, famously told President Richard Nixon on August 7, 1974, that his support in Congress was gone and that he faced certain impeachment.
Finally, Vance would have us believe that Nixon was set up. Fortunately, Big Brother has not expunged the historical record of this era, and there are enough of us around to remember the facts:
Nixon had his political operatives break into his political opponents’ offices. When caught, he lied and tried to cover it up, but thanks to his having tape-recorded himself, he was nationally disgraced and fled into exile. It was only to prevent a national political bloodbath that he wasn’t tried.
During this period, I represented his daughter and son-in-law for both of their books and spent quite a bit of time in San Clemente, the former home of the Nixon western white house. What I saw and heard is not even close to what Vance described.
Once again, this administration feels it can lie with impunity, but there are still some of us out here who remember the past, and we’re not going to stay silent.
