For those that livedthrough both, which was the bigger scandal: Watergate or Lewinsky?

[Aenygma]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

Those involved in the Oval Office Blow Job Scandal seemed like boy scouts getting caught in a circle jerk at a Catholic retreat.

The voice of experience.

 

[Nefrodite]

Originally posted by: Harvey
Lewinsky was nothing. Nixon was a paranoid speed freak (documented) and criminal who should have spend the rest of his life in prison for his malicious abuse of power. He used the FBI and IRS as offensive weapons for his personal and polical motives to investigate and audit those who opposed him. :|

If you didn't see Tim Russert's interview with Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein (All The President's Men), catch it in reruns, tonight on CNBC. Here are some excerpts from the transcript of the show

MR. CARL BERNSTEIN: Richard Nixon, who he was and how his presidency really was unique, in terms of its criminality and in terms of a president willing to undermine the Constitution of the United States in a basic, fundamental way that we?ve never seen before or since.

MR. BOB WOODWARD: Watergate really was kind of the real end of innocence probably for most people in the country. Gerald Ford, when he took over for Nixon, said Watergate had been a nightmare.

And it really was a nightmare. I mean, in the ?60s, there?d been the assassination of Kennedy, Martin Luther King, Bobby Kennedy, Vietnam and that tragedy, and then along comes Nixon and Watergate. And as Carl said, this was a criminal president. But not only was he a criminal president, but the investigations and the records showed that he had criminal intent in the White House. He would say to his aides, as we now know and as the whole story unraveled, ?Lie to the grand jury, pay hush money to the burglars, abuse the FBI, the IRS.? And then in this massive record is?you see that there was such zeal on Nixon?s part, not only to beat back his enemies, but to destroy them, to crush them. And

Probably the best example of that is the Ellsburg burglary. Here, Daniel Ellsburg had leaked the Pentagon Papers to The New York Times, and there was a feeling?and they were going to prosecute him and indict him. But that wasn?t enough. In the Nixon White House, you had to rub him out almost.
.
.
MR. WOODWARD: Unbelievable. And then Nixon tapes all of these conversations.

MR. BERNSTEIN: Including one in which he then says, ?Let?s firebomb the Brookings Institution,? a think tank, and repeatedly says, ? Well, use a fire bomb.?

Or, you can listen to the interview with Daniel Shorr, yesterday morning on NPR, including a tape of his live report, thirty years ago, keeping his cool as he read his own name on Nixon's infamous Enemies List for the first time.

Anyone who made that list is a hero of mine.

why o why did they have to use real media. #@% evil bastids!! a nice low bitrate mp3 or windows media would have worked perfectly.. grumble now i can't listen to it.

anyone know if they have a hacked real media codec?

 

[Red Dawn]

The voice of experience.

No, the voice of your conscious Bubba!

 

[db]

There's really no comparing the two events.
However, nobody seemed to notice that Clinton's enemies saw to it that the US gov't published all the nasty detailed testimony, which was also published on the net, which could be read by all children from the comfort of their bedrooms or family room or from their classrooms and school libraries. A double standard? Nah.

 

[Harvey]

Originally posted by: Squisher
I seem to remeber Watergate consuming more of the media spotlight than Lewinsky(congressional hearings went on for weeks). At least it had a much more profound affect on the country, myself included.

Either you're too young to really remember Watergate, or you've got to be joking. It took a couple of years of investigation, hearings, and the infamous Saturday night massacre, where Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox refused a presidential order to make no further attempts to subpoena the Nixon tapes.

Nixon then ordered Attorney General Richardson to fire Cox. Richardson refusee and resigned. Deputy Attorney General William Ruckleshaus also refused the presidential order and was fired by Nixon. Robert H. Bork, the Solicitor General and next in line at the Justice Department became acting attorney general and fired Cox.

Later that evening, FBI agents sealed off the offices of Richardson, Ruckleshaus and Cox's entire team.

To put it bluntly, Nixon was a meglomaniacal criminal and a hair-raising asshole! :|

 

[UltraQuiet]

Do you really remember more media (not counting Internet) coverage of the Lewinsky deal?

Yes definetly

 

[UltraQuiet]

To put it bluntly, Nixon was a meglomaniacal criminal and a hair-raising asshole!

You may be understating the case. If we knew what we know now and Ford had not pardoned him ( which he would have done anyway) he would have spent a long time in jail.

 

[GingerSynapse]

I was not around at the time, but (thanks to my grandmother) I have learned quite a bit about the Army/McCarthy Hearings in the early 1950's (related to rooting out supposed Communists in the media.) From what I understand, that had a bigger impact on the nation than either Watergate or Monicagate.

There are still people in Hollywood whose careers never recovered after they were rumored to be Communists. The passage of fifty years doesn't undo all the wrongs.

 

[Pliablemoose]

Watergate, it was a shock to realize Nixon was so involved with all of it.

Then, to be subjected to poor Gerald Ford, who couldn't manage to walk down a flight of stairs without nearly killing himself

 

[Gaard]

Originally posted by: Pliablemoose
Watergate, it was a shock to realize Nixon was so involved with all of it.

Then, to be subjected to poor Gerald Ford, who couldn't manage to walk down a flight of stairs without nearly killing himself

Hey now. No badmouthing our most famous Grand Rapids native. He's very popular here. The local museum is named after him, the local airport is named after him...hell, even one of the freeways that cuts thru the heart of town bears his name. And to top it off, about 1/4 of the cars I see these days has his name fastened to the backs of them.

 

[HermitGuy]

Watergate is what first peaked my interest in politics, it would have to be considered the bigger of the two simply because it did bring down a President. Don't kid yourselves though the Democrats acted just as partisan then as they did to protect Clinton. They had more than 80 articles of impeachment drawn up and ready to vote on before there was even any hearings to find out if there was evidence for one article. The Republicans did not do that to Clinton, they voted for hearing first to see if there was evidence and let the artiicles come out of those hearing. The reason Watergate was as nonpartisan as it was, is that Republicans voted for impeachment hearing against Nixon in large numbers, something Democrats refused to do against Clinton even though some admitted that he committed impeachable offences. If Clinton had been a Republican almost every democrat would have voted for impeachment and explained how terrible it was for a President of the United States to lie and get others lie to win a sexual harassment case, why this was about women's rights they would have said, something of this nature could set back women's rights a hundred years.
I had no sympathy for Nixon then and I have none for Clinton now, perjury is and should be an impeachable offence because it goes to the very heart the justice system, without laws against perjury there is no hope of a fair justice system, you might as well close the doors go home and let anarchy rain.

 

[Red Dawn]

I have none for Clinton now, perjury is and should be an impeachable offence because it goes to the very heart the justice system, without laws against perjury there is no hope of a fair justice system, you might as well close the doors go home and let anarchy rain.

Getting caught perjuring yourself is an impeachable crime you mean. Leaders of all countries including the leaders of our nation have been perjuring themselves siunce the begiining. The trick is being good enough not to bet busted. Lying about porkng a porcine puta like Monica is indefensible.. almost as indefensible as going for it when you are the most powerful man in the world. It's like crapping your pants and then denying it. Hey everybody can smell it and they know they didn't crap their pants so the only person he was kidding was himself.

 

[Aenygma]

Originally posted by: Red Dawn

The voice of experience.

No, the voice of your conscious Bubba!

Oh WOW.. that was soo good.. Who thought that one up for you?

Face it dude, the wit flows like molasses from you

 

[JellyBaby]

Don't kid yourselves though the Democrats acted just as partisan then as they did to protect Clinton. They had more than 80 articles of impeachment drawn up and ready to vote on before there was even any hearings to find out if there was evidence for one article.

Why does that not surprise me?

The AP put out a blurb about Watergate....find it here.:

Nixon felt hampered by the checks and balances our Founding Fathers didn't feel hampered by, and he tried systematically to eliminate the other factors: Congress, the press, the courts, the bureaucracy

There's no doubt in my mind Nixon's scandal is an order of magnitude larger than Clinton though both are disgraces to the nation.

 

[Tiger]

He used the FBI and IRS as offensive weapons for his personal and polical motives to investigate and audit those who opposed him.

Clinton did the same damn thing Harvey so save your righteous indignation.
I witnessed both and there was way more coverage of Watergate. Gavel to gavel coverage of the Senate hearings and House impeachment proceedings.

 

[Red Dawn]

Cyst

Face it dude, the wit flows like molasses from you

Why thank you

 

[DevilsAdvocate]

As far as the media thing goes.... Lewinsky was much bigger. Watergate would have consumed the Nixon presidency much faster had there been the ravenous round-the-clock coverage that Fornigate received.

As far as which one is bigger historically, Watergate was much bigger because it took out a president.

 

[Siddhartha]

Watergate.
I am sure history will record the Clinton\Lewinsky mess as a stupid sex scandal lead by Clinton's political enemies. But Nixon's Watergate changed the US goverment and how the its citizens related to it

 

[Spamela]

watergate by far. lewinsky may have seemed like a big scandal, but it was only because the press is much more open now to reporting salacious material in order to get more viewers/greater sales/etc. prior to 1980 a politician would have had to rape someone in daylight on the white house lawn before it would have been reported.

lying about sex is trivial compared to what nixon and his crew did or tried to do.
btw, i was 20 when nixon resigned.

 

[Brutuskend]

I was in the Marines during the whole Watergate thing.
That on top of the whole Vietnam fiasco helped me to become the cynic I am today.

Thanks dick..(You DICK)

 

[Thump553]

Harvey's reply is what I would have stated. NFS, were you joking when you asked this question? Watergate literally shook our system of government to its roots, and nearly everyone, regardless of their political bent, came to regard Nixon as the evil being he was. Lewinksy, on the other hand, was about a politician who couldn't keep his pants zipped-a dime a dozen scandal blown up to big time because of the party line manuverings of congressional republicans.

To put them on a scale of 100, Watergate would be somewhere in the 90s while Lewinsky was single digits.

 

[rudder]

Edit: BTW, I'd been out of the country for most of the Lewinsky media coverage so I can't really compare apples to apples. But I dont think that Lewinsky has had such a demoralizing effect upon most Americans as Watergate did; especially after the disillusion of Viet Nam.



your absolutely right. Probably 99% percent of the democrats stood by slick willie and called it all a right wing witch hunt. So although it was incredibly shocking that a president would do this, half the voting public had the attitude, "well he is just a human being." So none of the country's democrats were demoralized in the slightest.

 

[phantom309]

Lived through both.
Lewinsky = OKC bombing
Watergate = Sep. 11

 

[Ferocious]

I was very young during Watergate. But I would think that one was the bigger scandal.

Though it could be argued that the Lewinsky scandal ended up being more damaging to the country......since the Democrats surely would have easily won the 2000 Presidential election if it were not for that fiasco.

 

[Brutuskend]

George Carlin on Kennedy and Clinton
HERE