The Legacy of Watergate: Why it still matters with Woodward and Bernstein at UT

you you in February of 205 the Ransom Center opened to the public the Woodward and Bernstein Watergate papers since that time students scholars historians and journalists have used these papers to learn more about not only one of the most significant crises in presidential history but also about First Amendment rights and freedom of the press executive power and the limits of the presidency and other issues related to American politics history and journalism this rich collection has become to conduct begun to contribute to an interdisciplinary research agenda on our campus and in the wider scholarly community today in support of this developing research agenda the Ransom Center hosts its second symposium on Watergate titled the legacy of Watergate why it still matters one could even add in why it's still timely but I we are pleased to have Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein with us today to discuss issues of presidential accountability and the media with our distinguished panelists let me take this moment to thank Carl and Bob for their establishment of the Woodward and Bernstein endowment to support future programs related to this archive I would also like to thank the members of our academic committee who helped plan this program committee members include Bruce Buchanan professor of government david ocean ski professor of history roderick Hart Dean of the College of Communication and Frank Gavin associate professor in the LBJ School of Public Affairs we're grateful to the Austin Statesman for their generous sponsorship of this event and their editor rich Appel for agreeing to serve as one of our panelists our first panel of the afternoon is titled Watergate and presidential accountability it will be moderated by Bruce Buchanan professor of government at the University of Texas at Austin Buchan ADIZ Buchanan specialties include the study of presidential politics American political institutions and public policy he's written widely and well on these topics and is the author of several books including the presidential experience what the office does to the man the citizen's presidency standards of choice and judgment and finally the policy partnership presidential elections and American democracy I'm pleased to welcome Bruce Buchanan who will introduce the panelists it's very much so let me get right to our introductions of the panelists beginning with our guests Bob Woodward to my immediate left is assistant managing editor of The Washington Post and he has authored or co-authored many national bestsellers most recently three on the current Bush administration including state of denial and this body of work makes him something of a one-man presidential accountability agent Carl Bernstein was the co-author with Bob of two bestsellers on Watergate all the president's men and the final days and since leaving the Washington Post Carl has worked as a senior correspondent for the ABC network taught at New York University he has authored or co-authored several other books and articles and is currently at work on a biography of Hillary Clinton Sanford Levinson to my immediate right holds the W st. John Garwood of the W st. John Garwood jr. Centennial chair in law at the University of Texas law school and he is also my colleague in the government department he is a prolific author of scholarly and popular articles and books and most recently has written a book entitled our undemocratic Constitution Frank Gavin seated to Sandy's right is professor of public policy at the LBJ School of Public Affairs here at the University of Texas and Frank brings expertise in national security policy and presidential history to our discussions he too was authored many scholarly articles and his most recent book deals with the fiscal side of the Cold War and is entitled gold dollars and power the politics of international monetary relations so we have a distinguished group of experts on the subject before us today and we will proceed by me asking questions of the panel asking each panelist to respond briefly individually to each question before we proceed to a general discussion of that question and then move on to another question and the first question I'd like to put before the panel is intended to give us all some big picture guidance on why presidents abuse power and of course we're very interested to hear from our distinguished visitors their assessment of why it is that Watergate happened in the first place but it's also of interest I think for us to think a little bit about why presidents other than Richard Nixon fairly repeatedly get into Watergate like abuse of power difficulties and you know the questions that occur to me is I raised these possibilities is it presidential personality is it institutional incentives of some sort associated with the presidency itself or is it something else like the atmosphere of urgency surrounding national security issues Bob would you start us off on this why did Watergate happen oh wow first of all I'd like to do with Nixon's personality he loved other people's secrets he knew they were important because he had so many secrets and knew they were important but also you have to go to the time in really night/early 1972 when they set in motion the Watergate operations if you if you look at what was going on in American politics then it was the Vietnam War and it looked like Nixon was vulnerable that some Democrat like muskie who was kind of the front-runner at the time might beat him and so they launched the operations really in part to derail muskie and I think one of the things that's forgotten is how successful it was because McGovern was nominated Carl I'll try to answer your question generally wrong guys I think Bob's answered that very well but I would say all of the above to your question generally about why presidents abuse their power with one edition and that is a simple almost universal human desire to control one's environment and that's a very rarefied environment when you get to the Oval Office and with it what we are seeing today that you mentioned all these abuses of power by various presidents but I think that that the import of them is very varied and that what we are seeing today is an abuse of power in this administration that is even more egregious than in the Nixon administration cause of its consequences and the cause gift has gone unchecked that is a subject on the minds of many that I'm sure will come back to Oh Andy two quick points we're all familiar with the adage power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely but I pick up on what Bob Woodward said John Roach political scientist who was assistant to Linda Johnson added his own twist to this power corrupts and the prospect of losing power corrupts absolutely and I think this is one reason why we sometimes speak of benevolent despots who at 18th century who didn't have to worry about losing power but presidents for variety reasons do um and I also think this dovetails with the what Garrett Kasper a former law professor at Chicago at Stanford former president of Stanford describes as the increasingly Caesar Asst the presidency in part because I mean you mentioned 72 election one of the things that made that watershed was the importance of primary systems ever more importance television campaigning uh the degree of megalomania that is attached to running for president the first place the being surrounded with sycophants who reinforce the view of the candidate that they really are the indispensable person to save us from whatever the Menace of the day is um and then the fear of losing power that I think begins literally the moment of election so in addition to the personality fabric with Richard Nixon it's impossible not to talk about the personality but I think that there are these structural factors as well um that are very very important uh you know probably the least neurotic or the president least afflicted by this was Gerald Ford who in some ways really was an accidental president he never ran for the office he never would have thought of running for this office I think he had a sense of dual modesty about himself but I don't think that given the way we select presidents that it selects out people who have kind of a realistic sense of their own limitations as well as yeah what did so in an interesting way Ford didn't get a chance it didn't have enough time to become crazy yeah Frank historians often like to look at both short-term proximate causes and long-term causes in these things and I think it's clear from these comments that you can't separate Watergate from the personality of Richard Nixon but I do think it is important to think about some of these structural causes one of the fun counterfactuals to play as if Nixon had been elected in 1960 would you have had a Watergate like scandal there's certainly some evidence to lead you to think because of his personality there might have been but I think the structural factor is looking at the late 1960s and lighten up in early 1970s and to see the political climate that we were in both Bob and Carl mentioned this I think there's two factors that are particularly important by 19 by the late 60s early 70s there was just an increased cultural and political bitterness over via and this had started with LBJ and you saw the beginning of the loss of faith in institutions pretty much across the board and the second thing that I think few people recall but the United States was operating in an environment where they were a declining power where Richard Nixon had to manage US foreign policy at a time where the US for the first time in quite some time was not able to dictate what he wanted to do in the world and those two factors certainly by no means excuse mix-ins monstrous behavior but I think it's important to keep those two important structural factors in mind when trying to make sense of what happened would it be fair to say that this atmosphere of anxiety surrounding national security is especially salient and understanding why presidents with I mean I think wash lines this is something that comes up again and again in history where either through some perceived thread or imagined thread there's the power the executive the executive reaches out for more power Congress either decides to allow that or not allow that but very often it's the national security issues that are the battleground over these issues of power and lead to I think such abuses of power Carl and Bob can you see any rationale or justification whatsoever for what dick Dixon did in the context of the kind of pressure is Frank described no zero and living I always not always to find what Nixon was no I didn't mean to say justify this is a clear explain yeah about an ecologist a point Karl made early in the period we were working on the Watergate story is that it really was an assault on the electoral system it really was vote temporary when you lay out all of the spying espionage sabotage directed at the Democratic candidates it was incredibly disruptive ineffective in some of it when it first came out and our stories people thought it was funny well the first story that we did the first story of the real importance I think that we did actually on this was about Howard hunt the Watergate burglar doing research on Teddy Kennedy and Kennedy in fact was the candidate they feared the most that's and it later came out that one of the things hunt had done is forged cables to show that President John Kennedy had been responsible for dms assassination in Vietnam but on the in the immediate presidential election the things they did were as I was starting to say kind of trivial sending 200 pizzas just someplace and all of a sudden 200 pizzas arrived no one has the money to pay for them no one no incredibly effective some of the other seemingly silly things they would do when the muskie campaign would go out on a trip out of town in hotels where you leave your shoes outside the door well Segretti hired people to go around at 2:00 a.m. and take everyone shoo now you think that's not a problem but if the taller strata snow of New Hampshire is right in it no one brings an extra pair of shoes so you have 50 people in the Bosque campaign looking for shoes they would go in a motor Caravan would pull up to some event and go in and people with the drivers would leave the car the car idling with the keys in it they take the turn the cars off take the keys out of every car we all use something I did I think some of the other excuse me panelists alluded to and that is the evolution of our political system into it a kind of warfare in itself and and that is a more modern tendency that that until the odds in our election and after that I don't think we had the kind and also we didn't have the kind of media concentration and expense until the 60s until the presidential debates until perception became a whole question separate from reality and that that this idea that you are in a state of war when you're running for president carries over to the whole process and it carries over to the governance but more than anything it starts us down a path where truth is as in warfare the first casualty that's no doubt true and certainly the Congress in response to Watergate and Vietnam was quite decisive when presidents abused their power COFF Congress does often push back in the aftermath of the Congress passed legislation like the War Powers Act the budget impoundment and Control Act Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act FISA much in the news of late the ethics and government Act which led to a special prosecutor system this gives rise to a question I'd be interested in hearing our panel comment on regarding how effectively the Congress dealt with Watergate did Congress overreact with restrictive legislation that constrained the presidency too much in other words do President Bush and Vice President Cheney who complained about that have a point Carl you want to start us on that one no particulate in first of all that I think that their complaint is not about that kind of constraint their complaint has been that Watergate and the Vietnam War weakened the country and that therefore an assertion of presidential power subject to almost no constraints was necessary to counterbalance something that was going on in the political system and that the president couldn't operate without it but I don't think they were talking so much about things like the ethics and government act as a general atmosphere in which there was accountability through truthfulness they didn't like the newspaper stories yeah but but there they're complaining about the War Powers Act right the budget act and for a long time I'm saying though that what I'm saying is that their complaints are really a red herring especially in the case of this administration did Congress okay yeah and I think again I think the answer is no because I think you have to look at it as a continuum the Congress in Watergate acted with great responsibility by having the urban hearings and the impeachment proceedings against Richard Nixon thereafter the Congress in its attempt to exercise the prerogatives of the legislative branch sought ways in which overreaching would be constrained and in response to that presidents and other people in the government tried to find loopholes in in the acts where some it was some of the legislation very badly drawn like the ethics and government act act absolutely a special prosecutor became uncontrollable and clearly you had to have some kind of ability to to rein him in but but generally it seems to me that if you look for instance at the campaign finance laws they found loopholes then I don't think you know was there bad legislation yes was it an overreaction to the problem no okay sandy how do you see it um I basically agree I mean this administration and I come back to my comment a moment ago about a Caesars presidency it objects to any limitations at all its conception of the presidency and actually some of the what we now know to call oil bushes us like John you are quite willing to say this in print uh their conception of the president and of article two is of a handled area mark it's an elected monarch for four years and there is the accountability that comes with elections but these are not people who will recognize any constraints when the president purports to think it's important for some national interest or whatever so I think we could have a very worthwhile discussion on whether every piece of legislation was written perfectly and as Carl says it wasn't and we could find Tunes and stuff and undoubtedly we could agree that there's some legislation that might impend to much on the presidency but that's not really what this administration is about it's resisting our limitations at all secondly I think it's a mistake to say to talk about Congress performing its role in the 70s because I think that it is a reality that it's the Democrats who controlled Congress and who performed a role that in part was generated by party incentives uh James Madison argued in the 51st Federalist that you know the basic theory of checks and balances that Congress will inevitably because of its own institutional interest counterbalance the presidency that's false and it really became false no later than 1800 with the rise of the party system uh so that although I do not view the impeachment of Richard Nixon is a Democratic plot and I applaud what happened to President Nixon nonetheless I think it has to be recognized that it never would have happened had the Republicans control Congress but but you've got to make a distinction between initiating the investigations and following through as they were developing very concrete information about what had gone on I think this brings up a second point that the party system in the late sixties early 70s was a much more fluid party system than it is now for a variety of reasons the curves of the two parties in fact intersected well you didn't how you didn't have an ideological divide except coming with the Goldwater election in that you have now but I want to disagree with something you said and and that is about the role of the Democrats as if the Republicans had nothing to do with the impeachment of Richard Nixon yes it was initiated the Watergate investigation by a Democratic Congress and at the same time the Republicans on that committee from Howard Baker on you know they saw that they had a duty as well and they they rose above partisanship most of them and it was the Republicans that saw their future you know going out the window among other things but also for the right reasons Barry Goldwater marched down to the White House with with other Republican leaders and told Nixon he was you know they were going to vote against him in the Senate can you imagine that happening a delegation of Republicans going down to the White House today to tell George Bush he's got to start to obey the law seems less likely for him yeah but so this gets to my next question that is how I just would like to frame this discussion and I think that the professor has raised an interesting thing and that is that this administration I think is more is not evolutionary I think it's soo and generous in that its unwillingness to embrace the truth and recognize the truth and its objection to the truth about anything whether it's Katrina and the president's response to it and for instance saying well there was no way of knowing that the levees were going to break when in fact there's a tape that's right on television of the president being briefed about how the levees can break that we are dealing here with a level of untruthfulness that that is so constant that that it it is exceeding what we saw in the Nixon presidency and it determines everything that we're talking about including the deaths of thousands and thousands of our people and others this is something we might come back to Frank did you want to weigh in I think one of the things that is coming up in what is behind your question is what is the cause you talked about and the comments have mentioned there's cycles where this seems to happen where there's this battle between the executive and Congress and this back and forth and the reason it's why I'd love to hear the answer from our esteemed guests about what they think a Nixon presidency in 1960 would have been like because it's clear that there are abuses of power to what extent do they have to do with the personalities of the people involved to what extent do they have to do with the particular cultural and political environment to what extent do they have to do with the structure of power I actually disagree a bit with Sandi about how the executive and Congress has battled for power I think in the last hundred years I think there are many times where the executive is set up to be pretty weak during times of national emergency we sort of de facto let them go and then when there's that transition out there's a period of great stress and tension we have a tendency to forget that immediately after 9/11 people were furious that the fact that intelligence agencies appeared to miss this attack and a lot of what people certainly came out in the 9/11 Commission report was that their inability to cooperate their inability to have discussions with each other to share intelligence some of that emerge from this 1970s legislation that's not to say it's right or wrong but I think it's important to move this conversation to identify the causes is it just Nixon and bush are bad people is it that the cultural and political times created this or is there something in the structure of the political system that either the common thread is a war all right Andrew the the connection between the war that Nixon was fighting which he'd inherited Vietnam and the the one particularly in Iraq that Bush initiated in that context when you report on either of those White House's you find a sense on the part of the president and the people working for him that my god we've got this awful war we've got to do everything possible there are no limits and then there people up in Congress passing things like the War Powers Act asking for notification asking for timelines and so forth and that looks absurd to them and the great difficulty is that in in fighting that war they the the presidents become so sure they're doing the right thing that there's no other alternative one of the interviews I did with President Bush he and this is not a question I asked though I'm asking why the Iraq war and he just sat in the Oval Office and he said literally I believe we have a duty to free people to liberate people now as you know sandy it's nowhere in the Constitution that we are supposed to liberate people there's no law that I know that was passed but he jumps in his chair when he says duty now that's a big word maybe the biggest word in English language for a president and so consumed with that that self-righteousness and incertitude gee this is the right course no one's going to get in his way let alone the press or the Congress or in fact the public in terms of public opinion well now we're talking about psychological factors at sea among other things and it seems to me that one of the things that Nixon and Bush - and contrast Bush won in Bush - in this regard that the Nixon and Bush to share is a psychological unfitness for the presidency that the monstre Bob believed I don't lady dr. Bernstein and dr. Woodward has talked many times about Nixon's psychological unfitness and what yes so so I'm furthering the diagnosis and and and so doing though I want to try and make it fact-based because part of the problem with our discussion of the Bush administration in this country is that it's not fact-based enough and a lot of what I'm saying might not sound fact-based but I think if we go back and look at the demonstrable record of what the president has said and what he has done of what mr. Cheney has said and what he has done of what this White House has said and Condoleezza Rice has said and what they have done there is a demonstrable record and that is not opinion and that we need to bring our discussions conceptually to that central fact this two would have two different explanations for you it's war for you it's these are monstrous personalities and that's or you don't know they're not to tear monstrous president they're psychologically on sunup right I think both of us agreed at Nixon was psychologically unfit for the presidency you've said it in fact I might have even picked it up from you I was reluctant to say it till you came out with I I don't you know first that's a restraint no one will find predator you go back if I know you said in the first here's the problem with and this is revealed in in the Nixon tapes and Carl and I have not listened to or read them all but we are the only people who have Nixon tapes on cassettes and we played them in our autumn in the car garage all right it's instead of his right but you you see that this veteran hiphop Nixon in his own words regularly orders crimes abuse of power but what end you were the one who was on to this the earliest the what the tapes show is a smallness personality that it's always about him how do I use the power of the presidency to screw some enemy or pay off some big political contributor it was almost as if the presidency became an instrument of personal revenge now in the case of Bush what Bush is doing is fighting this war in his own mind he is convinced that it is absolutely necessary and absolutely right I agree I would not give a psychiatric diagnosis but I would agree with Karl that when you look at it and I think I've spent as much time as anyone on what they said and what they did it is shocking the difference that secret reports come in saying full of violence and Iraq is going up and up and up to the point last spring where it was there were four attacks terrorist attacks and US forces or Iraq II authorities for an hour 100 attacks a day 700 800 tax a week an unimaginable number until this year when it got up to about seven an hour at this time the president and the other people you mentioned particularly the vice president are out saying we have turned the corner in Iraq the is Cheney said the terrorists are in the last throes which and at the same time secret reports are coming in saying it's getting worse it's going to get worse next year this was in 2006 which is exactly what's happened but I wouldn't bring them all together and say they're exactly alike the alarming thing about this war is as you pointed out the consequence but it's not just a few months or a couple of years of untruth telling no it is four years right although God telling the truth and look at Katrina though look at the Katrina as that's what interests me how is it that a domestic event is subject to exactly the same technique and exactly the same pattern as as this war so it becomes more than trying to liberate that's my point if I could what about deliberating here okay yeah boils I will conduct thinner and the reason I want to jump in is because this is a good moment to try to broaden this beyond just mr. Nixon and put it into the context of the impact of Watergate and the Congress's treatment of Watergate on the practices of all the presidents that followed Nixon including Ford Carter Reagan the first Bush Clinton and of course the second Bush Frank how would you characterize that impact has it to put it another way has it been has watergate's impact on the actual behavior of presidents Ben Watergate in the handling of Watergate has it been positive neutral or negative well I think jumping on Carl Bernstein's answer if we had Watergate and we had George Bush and these things are true than clearly not right because the system then didn't work how did we get George Bush after Watergate I mean clearly the political and cultural environment since the late 60s and early 70s is far more poisoned it's far more culturally ribbon there's a lot less every poll shows much less faith in our political institutions there's more legalism I mean I think what's always fascinating is you should chart how many lawyers work for different agencies now compared to you look at something like the National Security Council and you see how many lawyers worked under the kennedy administration how many work there now just handling legal leaders it's exploded and perhaps given this story that we've heard I think the most damaging effect has been to decrease the talent pool of potential politicians increase your D decrease dramatically decrease and not and so I think you overall have larger cynicism about institutions with the president so you write people expect so much less than they once did I wouldn't limit it to the presidency I'd say all the polling shows people feel less faith in Congress I would even include the media you know that most people don't have great faith in the media as you know it so clearly things are worse than they were and there's nothing to signal especially if this is to be believed that this is getting any better and it's the impact is worse for presidents sandy had worse on presidents as was suggested by John Connolly 70s what Cindy tape from Watergate is answer in Washington we this but I want to Howard Baker for just a moment um I get very loyal Republican he did and when he starts manager of what president know when he know it I think he was quite certain that there would not enjoy what God when the evidence was overwhelming then he rose to what we would describe as nonpartisan to provide partisanship but I think that that whole mantra in the whole notion that if you didn't find smoking gun it felt right was destructive and it's just a happy accident that Alexander Butterfield testified honestly about the existence of the tapes and then they indeed hadn't been burnt and the information came out um I agree with Frank about legal is about the the the cost of legalization but put it somewhat differently I think that one of the very very high costs of Watergate is to legalize the notion of impeachment so I will put in a very brief plug for my book section of which is why it's better to have a criminal than incompetent as president and the answer is that if you've got a criminal and especially if they're smoking on evidence that the person is a criminal we have a language to get rid of that person but I think one of the things that unites all of us in this panel is the unfitness of the current president to be in this office we can give a variety of different reasons for that but but the very same editorials or columns that say isn't it really terrible that we have another six hundred seventy days or so in his term all treated as just nothing we can do and unless you can pin a criminal offense on Bush and frankly I don't know that you can and ironically enough one of the costs of the quittin impeachment is that his defender were said well perjury really isn't crime but even if it is a crime it isn't a high crime and misdemeanor and so unless it's a certain kind of crime then we're stuck with a person in the white house and I think that's a terrible feature our police you said something really important and that is that the legacy of the smoking gun is the worst of the legal legacies to come out of the of the process of impeachment because you're you're right that Nixon would not in all likelihood have had to leave office had it not been for that smoking gun and and that precedent is a terrible one Bob you're the author of a book shadow in which you address this question I raised quite specifically for each one of these presidents could you kind of summarize what you find about the impact of Watergate on those folks well they all of the presidents after Nixon responded somewhat differently but they didn't like the constraint the Independent Counsel Act understandably which when it came up for renewal no one absolutely no one in the House or Senate proposed renewing it it just died because it was it had a year when it had to either be re-enacted or it would die I'm I find it interesting what the presidents after Nixon learned or thought they learned from Watergate and take President Clinton his response to Watergate was in many ways to learn the lesson oh don't confide in anyone no notes yet no notes no tapes and if you think about it in the Lewinsky matter the people who could have testified against him Monica Lewinsky his secretary betty curry and his friend Vernon Jordan all did testifying said he never told me to destroy anything he never told me to do anything illegal there was much concealment there was much embarrassment but there was no act and so you know that's a strange lesson to take away from Watergate but in practice that's what he did well I sense as I listen to each of the panelists discuss the impacts of Watergate on the system and on the operation of presidential accountability that there's so much unhappiness with it and that leads me to the next question I'd like to pose generally to the group which is that you know the system is not ideal the way it's set up now it has a quality of cyclicity to it or a kind of a pendulum like effect in which we we have a period of relatively lacks accountability such as existed right before Watergate then Watergate comes along with then we have a substantial tightening during which time presidents are constrained with more or less success followed by the emergence of some crisis like 9/11 which lead to cries for heroic leadership and of course the accountability system has to track these events and one way or another so what you have is this this situation in which pendulum like the system kind of tightens the screws for a while then they loosen again in response to a crisis and a strengthening of a presidency and then they're tightened again and my question is is this the best way to operate the accountability system Sandy's kind of anticipated this by saying that it's you know the impeachment feature needs to be modified we have our we have two starters we haven't talked about one but we disconnected all of this from the people of the country we haven't talked for a moment about the people of the country and and it's not totally incidental that these things have happened and first of all people have voted for these presidents in all but one cases one case a majority and how do you really feel right and the Latin that hasn't it that's about the court that's not about English but but we have this view that this system is broken in a much larger way the electoral system itself is broke first of all sandy has raised this point I think of it we have 300 million people in this country and look who the people are who have sought the office of president of late especially look at the class of candidates and how narrowly they fit into the ideological warfare that we're in the midst of they come from within this system they've been willing to go through this system we we've had a primary system it's getting a little better this time in which basically the people the country have almost nothing to do with choosing the president because by the time it gets to New York or California the nominees of each each party you know it had been chosen so the people have been excluded really from from participation meaningfully in in choosing our leaders then you have the role of money in politics which really is driving so much we have an ideological or cultural war going on in the country that has been going on for for some time and on on top of that we we have a media environment that makes it very hard for thoughtful discourse and consideration to get through so all of this together this cacophony and all of these were and we have no draft I would suggest that you know if we had a draft there would be no war you know it's not an accident not an accident that they are so few I don't know what the number is it's fewer than 25 I believe kids of members of Congress serving in Iraq yeah a lot fewer it's uh you know I'm waiting for bush girls to go over there and Bree up and so all of these factors contribute to a corrosion and a breakdown of our system particularly the role of money in politics until we find a way of funding you know mr. Smith could not go to Washington today couldn't happen he's got to first come up with it with a hundred and fifty million bucks before mr. Smith can go to Washington if I can jump in on this um first of all unfortunately it's not only George Bush who didn't have a majority vote since World War two Harry Truman John Kennedy Richard Nixon in 1968 right bill could and with these elections and had what 41 we have 41 real right way of electing presidents so that um it is at least as common that people get to the White House with less than 50 percent of the vote of those who vote we only talk about people who don't uh as that they have any plausible mandate and then this goes back actually the very first question of why it is that people who get to the White House with 49% or 42% or the like wouldn't he be fearful of losing power secondly I think every bit as bad as the row of money in presidential politics is partisan gerrymandering particularly in the house which is one of the things that explains the culture in the current House you guaranteed incumbents your incumbency and the fact that you will draw me basically most districts natural reserves are one party districts the number of competitive races in the house is something in do you know that he 5 in a very very long other 435 very very few but I would come back the point before therefore really serious about oversight and if it's true as I think it is that you get oversight only when you have divided government that when Congress and presidency are controlled by the same party you're just not going to have oversight period then I think we might look to the UK or to Germany for example which places control of certain key committees in the hands of the opposition because they realize that it's not going to be the Madisonian institutional incentive it will be party incentives the Conservatives that England have an incentive to ride herd at least a bit on Tony Blair are members of the Opposition in Germany have an incentive to make sure that national security isn't being decided for partisan political reasons um now obviously if you win the house in the Senate you should get control of most of the committees but it's a very very real question whether winning elections should necessarily give the president's own party control of certain committees relating to truly vital interests where it means we talked but where it's very very important to separate notions of national interest from notions of straight partisan politics and I think this is a defect in our system because our system is not structured it was not structured originally and it's not been modified since then really to take account of the fact that we live in a party system but but I one of the reactions I have to what Carla's saying what you're saying is that there you know there's a big lament about what's going on I have a friend in Europe who said to me not too long ago he said America but you got the war you deserved that it yes it's Bush's war but it's a it's our country's war the Democrats and the Republicans collectively in the house and the Senate voted three to one that's right to give George Bush a blank check to use the US military in Iraq is he deemed appropriate and necessary which meant he could do anything so all of us those of us in the media and I have castigated myself regularly for not being more aggressive in reporting on things like weapons of mass destruction and and so forth but this is our war and what what fascinates me is that we can't find a way to get out of it and people are looking for legislation or legalisms when is somebody going to wake up in the political leadership in this country whether it's President Bush or Nancy Pelosi or Harry Reid the Senate Majority Leader and say wait a minute we all did this let's at least make an effort in reaching some sort of political consensus and figure a way out it really is time for a Bill Clinton late night at the dorm for President Bush to call Pelosi and Reid down and tell them to bring sleeping bags in sandwiches and lots of bottled water and they're going to lock themselves in the Oval Office and they're going to see if they can come up with some kind of agreement about where we go because you know we've got right now stalemate and you know what we're going to have until January 20th 2009 stalemate unless somebody can find some way to give a little and sit down and talk the opposition I mean that's the nightmare and if we can't do that I agree with my friend who says we've got the war we deserve I agree with you but from my perspective this is just more evidence of a defective constitutional system that if in fact we could vote Bush out of the Congress could vote out Bush out of also the vote of no-confidence or if they're all in the party if we more like the Brits where Margaret Thatcher the by far the most important peacetime prime minister in the history of the United Kingdom was just thrown out of office on ceremoniously by the Tories and replaced with John Major when they came to the conclusion that she no longer fit their party interest or the national interest my hunch is that if we have a system that allowed votes of no confidence instead of requiring this whole impeachment sort of talk that Republicans would be delighted or a lot of Republicans would be delighted to be the first to replace Bush with somebody they had confidence in but I think what makes your scenario however appealing it is unrealistic is that the very description you've given of George Bush's psychology makes it extraordinarily unlikely that he will admit that he's not Winston Churchill that he really has you know gotten us this is Gallipoli yeah and that what he has to do I mean in another political system what he would do was resign the problem there is that would give us Dick Cheney and nobody wants that um but in you know a better radicular lee misuk a better design political system would provide us a way of talking of getting rid of him rather than beseeching the great decide so yeah I defer I like it the last word yeah you gotta go with the Constitution you can yes that's right yes I born like a break it's like what Churchill said about liberal democracy it's the worst system except for every other one we it's a bad time but the fact that we have discussions like this that people are able to realize something is wrong and to go through a period of self correction if you stand back and look at it compare it with how most people live throughout the rest of the world even in democracies and how much stability they've had in the last few decades or so and if you look at our country historically it gives you a little more pause and this is where I think Bob's point about trying to understand some of these larger causes it's a lot of fun to focus on Nixon psychology and Bush's psychology but the fact is as Carl pointed out people elected them why did that happen people reelected them why did that happen and so you know that they larger here I'm sorry but why did that have our grandchildren they're going to have videos of Nixon's checkers speech and his resignation speech in 1974 and our grandchildren are going to say what was wrong people in America but how could this person become president what I did with 43 42 percent of the vote let me ask a question other historians here and as follows I have a notion that that maybe the problem is is even more basic that we come back to the nature we talked about a consensus the possibility Bob talks of a consensus are trying to have a consensus it seems to me you have to have a system in which people value the truth real truth and I'm interested in whether the historians think that we have devalued truth in our present political culture and larger culture in a way that it has never been devalued in our country before I don't know the answer I'm just trying to throw an idea out there because I think that because of you know we have been in an ideological state of ideal logical war going back before the Bork nomination and and you know we can't even allow the truth of our dead soldiers to be seen by the people coming home in caskets that this president has made that a black out ostensibly and we know this is not the truth because somehow it might it might offend the the families of those coming home my point is that when we reach this point in which truth is so devalued have we been here before in this country in our political system and in the culture at large I don't Frank well I I think there's been plenty of times where I think the big difference of course is there's a lot more information out there there's a lot more technology to disseminate this information it's very difficult for people to weigh what is true and what is not true that's a problem that's always existed but I would point out in consensus I just was in Moscow if Vladimir Putin has over seventy percent approval ratings in Russia and this is someone who has no problem with violence and with lying with doing all sorts of things about the Russian people no it is but well but I think it's an important the fact that we have these sharp divides are often what allow us to discover when people are doing things bad I don't know that necessarily consensus and everyone agreeing on everything they discover goes there that's my point the discovery looking you look at the polls you look at anything else two numbers are out there we know the people in this country know Bob has just been out there he'd said to me this morning he said you know people in this country are up in arms about this war well it's not doing any good to be up in arms and in terms of getting a result in that the point where is it making these people more truthful so I I mean the frustration that people feel is we can't redo the Constitution at least not this week and there is a dispute about what is true but it's so pretty clear now in it can't be refuted that it's been four years downhill in Iraq and I think there's just no mechanism in the system to fix it quickly and that's why I say it calls for some political leadership and I think you're right it would be very difficult there's a lot of evidence Bush isn't going to change but somebody's got to do something Emery are we gonna believe are we going to be here and when x daily has his next watergate symposium in 2008 again talking about the Iraq war yes because we are I'm not coming fighting let me just finish yeah one little round little point here that goes back to something sandy was saying as well and Bob that so we know the truth basically a little hard core 25-30 percent in the country that won't acknowledge whatever this truth is and in fact it is measurable by fact right and and yet we have a president and vice president who won't acknowledge it there are enough smart Republicans who also know this isn't true so the question in my mind becomes why is it today that unlike in the Nixon example those people won't march down to the White House and say you only had Hagel and a few others out in front enough to say mr. president this is untenable this has to stop you have lost our support why is it you know the Democratic Party was almost willing to do that with Clinton in terms of censoring him that on some other stuff why and I'm not sure the Democrats are any better about this kind of thing but why is it it in something the great question of our era these people will not do this means a very quick and dirty answer one is that since there is no mechanism for something like they go to no confidence it's basically a plea and the president has ever greater power to dispense a variety of goodies the both parties but particularly the Republican parties become ever more centralized with regard to funding elections and things like that so it really does require a mixture of full hardiness and courage to do that and your point I mean with Clinton you can ask some of the same questions of you know a vote of censure could be viewed as close to the functional equivalent of the Nunn binding resolution that it's kind of nice but it doesn't in fact change the fundamental political reality that he stays in the White House with all of the considerable prerogatives of presidency well let me answer might this seize control yeah gotta seize the podium not remember we're running low on time and it's time really to try to wrap it up and my proposed question to each of you for your final summations has to do with what not only the events that brought us here the Watergate events but also the subsequent events that we've discussed up to and including the current administration and it's foibles what all that offers by way of lessons that should be impressed upon the winner of the 2008 presidential camp and Frank why don't you start us off just got five quick things that I would tell her or him don't lie or cheat admit mistakes and quickly move on don't cover them up be humble listen to voices outside of your inner circle and get diverse views and try to make the press your friend little is to be gained by making them your enemy succinct in to the point sandy well I agree exactly everything that Frank says I'll have to incorporate that and it won't be surprising to learn that whoever wins 2008 election what I would say to our fellow citizens is that we should think about the extent to which we really do have problems in the structure of our basic institutions and that the problems we're talking about are not simply the function personality are not simply the function of buttering up the press or being more adept in acknowledging error but that we it is time for a long overdue conversation about you know it you had this in 70 this is what the War Powers Act was about although it hasn't been effective but it but we really haven't aren't having a serious conversation even as we speak about these more structural issues because it's so tempting for very good reason to talk about the personal aspects of the presidency or kind of political strategy and for me obviously you know I've now become perhaps obsessed by the extent to which our basic structures are part of the problem as well as all these other things but I think Frank's absent right fair enough Karl I agree with Frank I agree with sandy and but I think that the most important thing that has happened that is a reason for optimism in all of this is that once again the press has come up with the truth and that it is that it really has performed its function it stumbled a little at the beginning but almost everything we know about the truth of this presidency of this war we know through the press its they've told almost nothing of the truth so I would go back to Frank's point about about the press but also I would recommend that if we're going to have real systemic change in this country it has to begin with young people and that we need to have a system of universal national service in which every kid in America does one or two years of some kind of government service including you know you can choose the military or whatever but Institute some kind of draft because if there was a draft in which most people's kids were in this army we wouldn't ever get in a situation like this again but also the all of these structural problems might be addressed by another generation with less cynicism and that some of that cynicism might come from a couple of years how many people in this audience er students here how many of you all would welcome doing national service not necessarily in the Army you've got four people oh that's just an yes I think that's a damn shame yeah yeah I bet but that would I would think you know a commission on some kind of national service that really moves toward implementing legislation would be the biggest structural change you could have in this country over time Thank You Carl Bob you get the last word I'm worried about how we're going to get to 2008 you read about the campaign that's going on and I think it they're going to even dumb it down again yep and it is going to be a campaign that rather than shedding light diverts light and that will be the media environment of cable news and the internet and so forth is so infused the business with two characteristic speed and the impatience we could work on stories for weeks and Watergate if you get something where we would have a little piece of the story if you get the equivalent now somebody's in your office and they're saying let's get it on the web by 10:00 a.m. you see what happened today yeah well yeah the example tell them so you mean a Politico or don't Washington Post Oh what what happened today is did The Washington Post on its foot in my newspaper on board okay they did well by me I had I'm an alumnus okay they prepared three different versions of the story for the web on on what the way I read it yeah on on whether or not as a result of his wife's cancer Oh Edwards Edwards was going to drop out right and on the web they had to push a button apparently right when it when you knew which one it was and somehow the wrong button got pushed I'm speaking figuratively but not right and for 51 seconds the wrong version was up on the web saying it was going to pull out and there's a big front page web story on the Washington Post site now but to your point about shade it so here for what the hell what the hell is so important about those 51 seconds that you have to be in that kind of position or call thank God we got to type our stories that's right and we were responsible for all the buttons being put we know but but but the election instead of being about this speed and impatience and if I may commend my former partner here Carl the issue is character who are these people running tell me who they are and it will be easy to vote and if we have a political media system of covering the horse race and worrying about this and trying to get this poll up faster or this story up faster we're going to run right by the thing that matters and that is who these people are in Carl to his credit has a biography coming out on Hillary Clinton and that will tell you who she is and that's much more important than who her campaign staff is or what the latest poll is or what the latest you know back and forth with Barack Obama is and so forth who she is is the issue and if we drive journalism away from biography we truly let down the people in Lou you know who knows what will come up with in 2008 on that note we do very much you

Channel: Moody College of Communication

Views: 17,974

Rating: 4.5047617 out of 5

Keywords: Watergate, Richard Nixon, Bob Woodward, Carl Bernstein, Woodward and Bernstein, UT, UT Austin, University of Texas, College of Communication, UT College of Communication, Texas, Texas College of Communication, Bruce Buchanan, UT Government, Francis J. Gavin, LBJ School of Public Affairs, Sanford Levinson, UT School of Law, UT Law, Panel Discussions

Id: GWG-Rf8XNo8

Length: 73min 10sec (4390 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 06 2012