After the Glory: the Struggles of Black Civil War Veterans

Behind the current Clinton scandal stands the specter of Watergate. That it should be there is understandable. The bungled burglary at the Democratic Party national headquarters occurred twenty-six years ago this past summer. Next August will see the twenty-fifth anniversary of Richard Nixon's resignation as President of the United States. Watergate then is still very much a part of living memory, and living memory is the type of history most relevant to the general public because it is the history with which they are most familiar. Consequently, Watergate has come to exert a powerful influence on the terms of reference by which people understand the Clinton scandal.

Some analogies to Watergate are admittedly quite apt. Monica Lewinsky's stained cocktail dress was a "smoking gun," providing definitive proof the President lied in denying a sexual relationship with the intern. Clinton's August 17 confession also was a quintessential "modified limited hangout." However, much of the use of Watergate analogies distorts the meaning and significance of the Clinton case. Some of the distortion is merely irritating. For instance, a lot of journalists and politicians seem to have the ambition of becoming the Howard Baker of the scandal. Lately, there have appeared too many strained variations on his classic line, "What did the President know, and when did he know it?" However, the Watergate-isms forced on the Clinton scandal are not all the product of awkward attempts to paraphrase Howard Baker or the temporal proximity of Watergate. There also has been a conscious attempt by some Clinton opponents to emphasize Watergate in order to make Bill Clinton's misdeeds seem more serious than they are in reality. While these efforts are understandable politically, they are questionable historically.

Of greater disappointment to this historian has been the temporal myopia in the search for insight into the Clinton scandal. Watergate was not the first serious attempt to impeach a... [continues]

Read full essay