I remember the end of the Watergate scandal

Forty years ago today, I was on vacation in North Carolina, far removed from my subscription to the Washington Post, where I had followed faithfully the reporting about President Nixon's "second-rate burglary."

Instead of being among the throngs who waited outside the White House or who went about their business in the nation's capital while a president resigned for the first time in American history, I sat on the floor of my father-in-law's house and watched Richard Nixon announce that he would resign. I would have preferred being in Washington, reading in minute detail the Washington Post's reporting and hearing the talk of Washingtonians all around me.

As mesmerized as I was by the Watergate scandal and the persistent, detailed reporting of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, I did not despise Nixon, as so many of my generation did. I recognized his political skills and even admired the boldness of his foreign policy. But by 1974, after two years of watching the administration crumble under the weight of its own paranoia, deceit and disdain for the law and the Constitution, I was contemptuous of Nixon, who thought he was invulnerable after his 1972 landslide.

As I watched his speech on television, as he spoke of sacrifice and family and his own betrayal of American principles, I felt sorry for the man. I remarked that if he had given that speech two years earlier, at the beginning of the scandal, he might have avoided impeachment.

When Nixon flew off from the White House lawn, days before I returned to my job in Washington and my apartment in the suburbs, I felt a sense of relief that the nightmare was over. Gerald Ford, whom few (including Nixon) ever considered presidential material, turned out to be a reassuring father figure when America needed one. At Jimmy Carter's inauguration, after Ford's crushing and narrow defeat, the new president graciously acknowledged Ford's "healing" of America.

Forty years after Watergate, lesser scandals seem larger, public scorn of elected officials is more widespread and political anger is never-ending. Many pundits in 1974 celebrated by saying "the system worked" — Nixon resigned because the news media performed its watchdog role, the Senate was ready to remove him from office, and a new president took office without a military coup or an insurrection. But the legacy of Watergate is a different outlook from the American public. Politics is seen not as a means of running a democracy but as a slimey, crooked business. The news media, certainly one of the heroes of Watergate, suffer from a distrust almost as deep as the public's scorn for politicians.

Watergate is history, as distant in the past as Spanish Civil War had been when I was a young man in Washington. Like war, its impact lingers long after the big guns have been silenced.

Remembering Betty Ford and the 1970s

I watched a few minutes of Betty Ford's funeral last night, a delayed broadcast on C-Span, and was reminded of my only partly facetious proposal in a column several years ago that someone launch a Funeral Channel, which would televise celebrity funerals along with archival video of funerals past. I still think it's a concept that seems macabre at first glance but would probably succeed.

Betty Ford's funeral proves my point. There on the front pew were Rosalynn Carter, Michelle Obama, George W. Bush, Hillary Clinton and Nancy Reagan. If Mitch McConnel and Harry Reid had attended the funeral, we might have a debt limit increase by now. Such are the good feelings generated by shared mourning.

I was transfixed by Rosalynn Carter's eulogy, which was obviously sincere and leavened with deep affection. Beyond her hard Georgia accent, Carter poignantly described her relationship with Ford and their mutual respect and love for each other. Carter obviously admired Ford's achievements but also admired her priorities, her support for her husband and her love of her children. It was one of the most moving eulogies I've ever heard. Later, journalist Cokie Roberts delivered an unscripted talk about the demands of being in a political family and the loss of camaraderie that used to be common when her father, Hale Boggs, and Betty's husband were opposing party leaders in the U.S. House. They were also close friends. Betty was appalled by the venom and the insults that have become part of political dialogue, she said and urged the politicians in the room to re-examine their tactics.

It's easy to forget the Ford presidency, which lasted only a couple of years. In one sense it was a minor footnote to history, but in another, it was a great achievement. After six years of the paranoid, conniving, suspicious, insecure Richard Nixon, good ol' Jerry Ford was such a breath of fresh air! The Washington Post (I was a subscriber at the time) published a front-page picture of the bathrobe-wearing new president retrieving the morning paper on his front porch. Before Congress, he proclaimed himself to be "a Ford, not a Lincoln," and the country found a comfort that had been impossible with Nixon. Ford was probably not a great intellectual or a creative thinker or "policy wonk." Lyndon Johnson dismissed him as having "played football without a helmet." He was an amiable politician, the kind of guy you vote for because you like him, and he had a very successful career, even if you don't count his appointment to vice president or his presidency.

Betty Ford's outspoken candor and honesty contributed to the aura of her husband's presidency. Like her husband, she had no pretensions. She didn't mind speaking her mind, and she was brave enough to expose her own vulnerabilities. Her death at age 93 reminds us of the good times in the 1970s when problems seemed huge but are forgotten today.

The Funeral Channel could provide that comforting nostalgia.