COMMENTARY: Remembering Watergate and the costs of impeachment

c. 1998 Religion News Service (Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.) UNDATED _ As the nation prepares to endure the second presidential impeachment probe of this century, the sense of both anxiety […]

c. 1998 Religion News Service

(Samuel K. Atchison is an ordained minister and has worked as a policy analyst and social worker to the homeless. He currently is a prison chaplain in Trenton, N.J.)

UNDATED _ As the nation prepares to endure the second presidential impeachment probe of this century, the sense of both anxiety and opportunity, of careers made and lost, is unmistakable. Indeed, as Congress prepares to conduct formal hearings to determine whether President Clinton should remain in office, one cannot help remembering the final days of a previous administration.


A generation ago, as the Nixon administration lay hanging in the balance, its fate and that of the nation became almost an afterthought as a new personality cult began to emerge.

The southern drawl and charm of Sen. Sam Ervin, D-N.C., the no-nonsense questioning of Sen. Howard Baker, R-Tenn., and the crusading reportage of CBS’s Dan Rather and the Washington Post’s Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein provided images a shell-shocked nation, suddenly devoid of heroes, desperately needed.

As with the Great Depression _ which created new fortunes even as it destroyed others _ Watergate established careers and instituted icons to replace those that had betrayed the country.

Yet in the aftermath of Watergate _ and all the celebrities it made and unmade _ there remained in the end the task of rebuilding the nation’s morale. For the first time in recent memory, the country was forced to reckon with the fact that it was not as good as its image.

Emotionally depleted and struggling to regain a sense of national identity, the populace embraced a bumbling Gerald Ford and a well-meaning but ineffective Jimmy Carter, before being convinced by Ronald Reagan that it was”morning again in America.” Today, a mere 25 years after Watergate, we are again preparing to go through the impeachment process. While Clinton struggles vainly to appear presidential, most people are likely to focus on Congress and its cast of characters.

Much attention will be paid to House Judiciary Committee Chairman Henry Hyde, R-Ill., and the degree of fairness he brings to the proceedings. In the glare of the lights and cameras, how well will he work with Rep. John Conyers, D-Mich., the committee’s potentially acerbic minority leader?

Are there any potential stars among the otherwise obscure members on the panel? How will they respond to their moment in the sun?


And what of the media? With C-SPAN, CNN, MSNBC and other networks challenging the Big Three and the print media, we can be sure that no lead will be too small and no nuance will go unexamined. There are, after all, stars to be born, awards to be won and book deals to be made.

And that, given the nature of our society, is as it should be.

But when the lights go out, the cameras are turned off and the scandal addicts go into withdrawal, what will be left in their wake?

Regardless of the outcome, the nation will once again be dispirited and in need of encouragement. As with Watergate, it will need to lick its wounds and begin the process of healing.

And if the impeachment process is necessary for our collective good, then should not its beneficiaries help facilitate our healing?

MJP END ATCHISON

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