Quotes About Watergate

The political lesson of Watergate is this: Never again must America allow an arrogant, elite guard of political adolescents to by-pass the regular party organization and dictate the terms of a national election.

Voters who disregarded Richard Nixon's involvement in the questionable ethics issue that led to his Checkers speech should not have been surprised when he orchestrated the Watergate cover-up as president.

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth, as was demonstrated with Watergate, we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious, contemptuous even, of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

In hindsight, Watergate was a curse as well as a blessing for American journalism. The courageous reporting of the 'Post' and the 'New York Times' - coupled with the favourable Supreme Court rulings on publication of the Pentagon Papers - were landmarks for the interpretation of First Amendment rights and the freedom of the press.

Nixon was a crook, but he was our crook. He didn't have the KGB do the Watergate job.

Like most Americans of my age, I was very impressed by the dynamic capacities of the law, demonstrated by the Civil Rights Movement and then Watergate, animated by Sam Ervin's mantra that no person is above the law.

Indeed, it was largely the clubbiness of the Washington village press corps that let Nixon get away with Watergate and still win his landslide in 1972.

Golf mogul Donald Trump sports an arrangement of hair that is less a comb-over than a 'do-over, a candy-floss confection of gossamer wisps that comes off as the clumsiest cover-up since Watergate.

I have tender feelings for Nixon because everybody has warm feelings about their childhood. Actually, I didn't like the Watergate trials 'cause they interrupted 'The Munsters.'

There have been as many investigative reporters on this newspaper working on Clinton's many problems as I can remember there were working on Watergate.

It I talked about Watergate, I was described as struggling to free myself from the morass. If I did not talk about Watergate, I was accused of being out of touch with reality.

I remember being a kid and the Vietnam War was huge and looking at Watergate.

I suspect there have been a number of conspiracies that never were described or leaked out. But I suspect none of the magnitude and sweep of Watergate.

Suppose Watergate had not been uncovered? I'd still be on the City Desk.

I recently read some of the transcripts of Nixon's Watergate tapes, and they spent hours trying to figure out who was leaking and providing information to Carl and myself.

Because of Watergate in part, I am kind of a magnet for calls and information and suggestions.

I hope you will respond to the crisis of confidence that Watergate has created by opening up your administration and reaching out to people in a more magnanimous spirit.

Even before Watergate and his resignation, Nixon had inspired conflicting and passionate emotions.

The institution of the presidency was profoundly affected by Watergate.

Gerald R. Ford was a decent and honorable man. Under his steady hand, the nation began the process of recovering from the terrible trauma of Watergate - the lies, distortions, cover-ups, misuses of federal agencies to exact political revenge, illegal wiretapping, burglaries.

Watergate got us to think of leaders as mere mortals. America began to think of itself in a very different way - I would say a salutary way - and Reagan was most important in shifting the grand dynamic thrust of the American historical process by ending that.

Nixon had been to China. He had been to Russia doing arms negotiation. And so, he was on his way toward what happened in November, which was an electoral win with 49 states. And the sheer unnecessariness of the Watergate break-in is something that must have tormented him and his allies in all of the years that followed.

Watergate was a constitutional crisis of the highest order.

It wasn't until 1973 that Congress and journalists began to investigate 'Operation Menu,' around the same moment that the Watergate scandal was unfolding.