We are approaching the 28^th anniversary of President Nixon's resignation from office.  For many, especially those under 40, Watergate is only a vague political incident.  For those of us who lived through it, it remains a painful memory.  I was one of five Republican leaders during that time.  I was at the White House numerous times during 1973 and 1974, probably once a week.  For most of us in Washington, Watergate started as a small story in the Washington Post.  There had been a break-in at the Democrat headquarters at the Watergate Hotel, but it wasn't a big deal.  Everybody in politics knows that there is nothing of value in any political headquarters.  Furthermore, Nixon was so far ahead of McGovern that any information was superfluous.
 
As Republicans, we were riding high.  Some of us in the House had been meeting with our Democrat House colleagues and had reached an agreement with many, mostly Southern conservatives, to switch to the Republican party in 1973 and give the Republican's the majority for the first time in several decades.  My first indication that there might be a problem was when I was riding in a subway from the Rayburn Building to the Capitol with Phil Burton.  Phil Burton was a liberal Democrat congressman from California who intensely disliked Nixon and was extremely talented politically.  As we sat in the train for the brief 30 second ride, he said to me "Lou, we're going to get Nixon, wait and see.  Nixon is going to be impeached."  I remember looking at Phil and asking what he was smoking.  I put it out of my mind for sometime.  I thought it was just Phil's dislike of Nixon showing through. 

Little by little information on Nixon's involvement began to appear in the Washington Post and the other papers dutifully followed.  It was like Chinese water torture.  We had the hearings in the Senate where Republican freshman Senator Ed Gurney played a major role in defending Nixon, which sealed his political demise.  We eventually had the revelation that Nixon had recorded meetings at the White House.  We had the decision by the courts that the tapes would have to be released.  Eventually impeachment hearings began in the House judiciary committee chaired by Democrat Peter Rodino.

For approximately a year before Nixon resigned, most everything of any importance came to a halt on the Hill.  The entire Congress and the country were focused on the hearings.  During this time Alexander Haig, who was Chief of Staff, ran the White House.  President Nixon seemed to distance himself from what was going on and at White House meetings had a hard time focusing on legislative issues.  Several of my close friends on the Democrat side were chief players on the judiciary committee; Congressman Walter Flowers (D-AL), Congressman Jim Mann (D-SC), and Congressman Ray Thornton (D-AR).  President Nixon was reported to have said that if Flowers votes for impeachment, it's all over.  Walter and I shared an apartment for some time and I knew several weeks before the final vote in the judiciary committee that he was going to vote for impeachment.  I remember sitting in the Republican cloak room and having a cup of coffee in early August, '74.  There were a number of phone booths in the Republican cloak room.  Congressman Chuck Wiggins (R-CA) was the major Nixon defender on the House judiciary committee.  He burst out of one of the phone booths and said to everybody in the cloak room, "It's all over; there's a smoking gun."  And, of course, there was a smoking gun and a few days later Nixon resigned.

The impact of Watergate on our political system and the Republican Party, specifically, was dramatic.  None of the Democrats who were thinking of switching parties did so.  To do so would have been political suicide.  The Republicans lost close to 90 seats in the '74 election in the House.  A new generation of Democrats called the "Watergate Babies" came in with liberal ideas and a great deal of energy and drive.  They changed the legislative priorities in the House and some of them are still there working effectively for their beliefs.  Watergate cast a pall over the entire political system.  The public viewed the political process with disdain and found it easy to say that all politicians were crooks.  Yet, when I teach in colleges, I remind the young people that Watergate proved our system worked.  It showed that no person, even the President of the United States, was above the law.  It proved that we had a process under our Constitution to follow and that the most powerful person in the world could be driven from office.  There was no call up of the military and no troops on the streets during this constitutional crisis.  Our country was like a sailboat that was battered by the wind and storm and pushed violently to one side.  But, because it had a deep keel, the Constitution, it managed to survive the storm and come back to the center.  I hope and pray that no member of Congress has to go through those terrible, painful times in the future.