Well-intentioned reforms in the 1970s produced a parade of unintended consequences that made government less functional and eroded checks and balances.
Fifty years ago, Richard Nixon resigned and became the first and (so far) the only President of the U.S. driven from the nation’s highest office. Unlike in the highly partisan impeachments of Presidents Bill Clinton and Donald Trump, who served out their terms after acquittal in the U.S. Senate, the American political establishment came together to force Nixon out of office because of his role in the Watergate scandals. After a bipartisan majority of the House Judiciary Committee voted for articles of impeachment, senior leaders of Nixon’s own Republican Party visited the White House to recommend his departure. The experience of Watergate, Nixon’s successor asserted, had vindicated American democracy. “Our Constitution works,” President Gerald Ford declared.
[time-brightcove not-tgx=”true”]Nixon’s removal ignited bipartisan efforts to limit presidential power, clean up political corruption, and make government more transparent. In the early 1970s, it seemed like the nation’s leadership, Republicans and Democrats, had closed ranks to preserve widely held norms and restrain the imperial presidency.
Today, half a century later, the lessons of Watergate look very different. Instead of constraining the executive branch, Nixon’s ouster marked the beginning of a long-term effort to strengthen the presidency that culminated with last month’s Supreme Court ruling granting presidents immunity from criminal prosecution for certain actions. Today’s Americans live not in the immediate, reassuring afterglow of Watergate, but in its long, destabilizing shadow.
After Nixon’s resignation, the nation restored norms and restrained power. With bipartisan support, Congress reformed the campaign finance system (laundered campaign contributions had partly financed the Watergate break-in and other illegal Nixon administration operations) and passed a wide-ranging Ethics in Government Act that provided for routine disclosures by public officials and established a mechanism for independent counsel investigations of executive branch scandals. And, while the Supreme Court ordered the release of Nixon’s White House tapes and ruled unanimously in U.S. v. Nixon that the president must comply with subpoenas, the Presidential Records Act of 1978 made clear that the papers of the President and Vice President belonged to the public, and not to the occupants of the White House.
In diplomacy and covert activities, Watergate also produced a broad, bipartisan consensus to rein in what 1970s Americans termed “the imperial presidency.” Convinced that Nixon and his predecessors had abused the power of undercover intelligence agencies like the CIA and FBI, Congress established intelligence oversight committees with access to classified materials. Even before Nixon’s resignation, large majorities overrode his veto of the War Powers Resolution, which forced the president to get congressional approval for overseas military action within 60 days of deploying troops.
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The scandal also produced unprecedented respect for the media that had played a large role in exposing Watergate and bringing down Nixon’s presidency (it didn’t hurt that Hollywood cast movie stars Dustin Hoffman and Robert Redford to play reporters Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward in the movie adaptation of the journalists’ book on the episode). In 1974, trust in the media hit an all-time high: 72%.
It also inspired a new generation of political reformers to run for office. In the 1974 midterm elections, Democrats dramatically enlarged their congressional majorities. The new “Watergate babies” undid the seniority system that had governed Congress, opened up the candidate nomination process, and brought into the open previously back-room decision making. They even brought TV cameras into the House of Representatives.
The first post-Watergate presidential contest pitted the modest incumbent (“I am a Ford, not a Lincoln”) against a non-ideological southern governor who campaigned on a fairly credible claim that he would not lie to the American people. “What the voters are looking for,” Jimmy Carter said in 1976, “is someone who can run the government competently, who understands their problems and will tell the truth. … We’re not dealing in ideologies this year.”
And yet, 50 years later the scandal’s impact looks very different. What happened?
Wiping out mainstream Republicans like Nixon and Ford, Watergate cleared the way for the takeover of the GOP by Sunbelt conservatives while simultaneously stoking the distrust in government that fueled the Reagan Revolution. Meanwhile, the Watergate babies — younger, more educated, more suburban — launched the Democrats’ transition from the voice of blue collar workers into today’s more affluent, educated coastal party.
Institutional changes mainly backfired. The media became more adversarial, as well as more fractured and partisan. Many newspapers created special investigative units. A new zeal for exposé brought down many public officials and heightened animosity between journalists and politicians, many of whom had long been after work drinking buddies. Following in the footsteps of Woodward and Bernstein, many journalists searched for fame and became TV personalities on programs like Crossfire and The McLaughlin Group, where they became advocates rather than neutral reporters. They became less respected, too. By 2016, only 32% of Americans reported at least a fair amount of trust in the media.
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Ethics rules also became tools for partisan combat — a way to force out rivals you couldn’t defeat at the ballot box. For example, in 1988 Newt Gingrich (R-GA), an aggressive, ambitious young Republican Congressman, filed ethics charges against Speaker of the House Jim Wright (D-TX), ultimately ousting him from office the following year. And he was not alone. Before Watergate, federal indictments of public officials were almost unheard of. In the following two decades there were more than a thousand.
Congress became more open and transparent, but less effective. In the House, the Watergate Babies forced out five long-serving committee chairmen, diluting the leadership’s power over committee assignments and the legislative agenda. The Senate lowered the bar for ending filibusters, and empowered junior members with larger staffs and changes to the seniority system.
Cameras came to the House floor and cable TV gave ordinary members of Congress easy access to media. On both sides of Capitol Hill, leadership lost power to discipline members and force through legislation. Today, rank-and-file legislators like Georgia Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene have become celebrities and even pressure their party leaders to adopt extremist positions. A deadlocked Congress has become almost completely unproductive.
With members of Congress functioning more like independent agents, they no longer focused on checking executive power. And so, presidents regained it. With aid from conservative majorities on the Supreme Court, presidents reasserted broad claims of executive privilege, expanded war powers, and won immunity from prosecution. Ridiculed in the 1970s, Nixon’s claims of “inherent” presidential power — “when the president does it, that means that it is not illegal,” he famously told an interviewer — have now become law.
Today’s political landscape, with its more polarized parties, hollowed out Congress, ineffective ethics codes, and threat of a truly imperial presidency, may look little like the 1970s. But they are long-term outgrowths of the Watergate era. Today, Ford’s claims no longer hold true: our constitutional system may no longer work.
Bruce J. Schulman is the William Huntington professor of history at Boston University and author of The Seventies: The Great Shift in American Culture, Politics, and Society.
Made by History takes readers beyond the headlines with articles written and edited by professional historians. Learn more about Made by History at TIME here. Opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of TIME editors.
