Transcript
Tape
June 17, 1972
June 17, 1972 just after midnight · The Watergate, Washington, D.C.
Frank Wills, twenty-four, worked the midnight shift as a guard at the Watergate office building. The job paid eighty dollars a week. Mostly, he checked doors.
On his first round, a door between the stairwell and the garage wouldn't lock.
At 1:47 a.m., he wrote it in his log: call police, found tape on doors.
On the sixth floor, in the Democratic National Committee's offices, police caught five men in surgical gloves. They carried bugging devices, cameras, and hundred-dollar bills numbered in sequence.
One of them, James McCord, was security coordinator for President Nixon's reelection committee. The White House press secretary called it a third-rate burglary attempt. Two years later, the President resigned.
In 1964, about three Americans in four said they trusted Washington to do what is right most of the time. By 1980, one in four did.
What broke that trust? And who stepped into the gap?
Yelling Stop
1955–1964
Rewind.
By 1960, both parties had accepted the New Deal. Highways, dams, Social Security. Both parties were for them.
A young writer named William F. Buckley Jr. thought that was the problem.
William F. Buckley Jr. It stands athwart history, yelling Stop.
In 1960, about ninety young conservatives met at his family's home and founded Young Americans for Freedom.
Their Sharon Statement braided three strands: freedom from government, free markets, and victory over Communism.
M. Stanton Evans That the United States should stress victory over, rather than coexistence with, this menace.
In 1962 the Supreme Court banned official prayer in public schools.
In 1964 they nominated one of their own, Senator Barry Goldwater of Arizona.
Barry Goldwater I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.
His slogan: 'In your heart, you know he's right.' Democrats answered: 'In your guts, you know he's nuts.'
Goldwater lost forty-four states. But he carried five in the Deep South. That June, he had voted against the Civil Rights Act.
Ronald Reagan You and I have a rendezvous with destiny.
The speaker was an actor, Ronald Reagan. He'd borrowed it from Franklin Roosevelt, whom he'd voted for four times.
The Silent Majority
1968–1972
The counter clicks forward to 1968.
By 1968, many Americans thought the country was coming apart. Riots, assassinations, war protests, rising crime.
Alabama's George Wallace ran against busing, protesters and federal judges.
Richard Nixon won with 43 percent, promising law and order. Wallace took 13. Together, 57 percent voted against the liberal sixties.
Richard Nixon And so tonight—to you, the great silent majority of my fellow Americans—I ask for your support.
Zoom out, and you can see who he meant. People who hadn't marched. Many of them were Democrats.
His Southern strategy courted white voters angry about desegregation.
Yet Southern schools desegregated faster under Nixon than under any president before. Historians still argue about what kind of conservative he was.
In 1972, Nixon won forty-nine states. Only Massachusetts voted the other way. During Watergate, its drivers bought bumper stickers: Don't blame me, I'm from Massachusetts.
The Pentagon Papers leaked. White House aides set up the Plumbers to stop leaks. They broke into the office of Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist.
Nixon's reelection committee, CREEP to its critics, kept piles of cash. Some of it paid for the Watergate job.
Expletive Deleted
1972–1974
Two Washington Post reporters, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, followed the money, helped by a secret source.
In 1973, a Senate committee held hearings on live TV.
Fred Thompson Mr. Butterfield, are you aware of the installation of any listening devices in the Oval Office of the President?
Alexander Butterfield I was aware of listening devices; yes, sir.
Since February 1971, the President had been recording himself.
Six days after the break-in, the President approved using the CIA to block the FBI. That was obstruction of justice.
When the special prosecutor demanded the tapes, Nixon had him fired. The attorney general quit rather than do it.
Richard Nixon And in all of my years of public life, I have never obstructed justice.
Richard Nixon People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook. Well, I am not a crook.
He said it at Walt Disney World.
One tape had an 18½-minute gap. His secretary said she'd erased part of it by accident. Court experts found at least five separate erasures.
Nixon released edited transcripts instead of the tapes. All through them ran two words: 'expletive deleted.'
Barbara Jordan My faith in the Constitution is whole; it is complete; it is total.
The committee voted three articles of impeachment. Some of its Republicans voted yes.
On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled 8 to 0: hand over the tapes. A Nixon appointee wrote the opinion.
When the June 23 tape came out, Barry Goldwater, the hero of 1964, told Nixon he'd lose a Senate trial.
On August 9, Nixon resigned, in a one-sentence letter.
Gerald Ford My fellow Americans, our long national nightmare is over. Our Constitution works.
Some said the system had worked. Trust fell anyway.
Whip Inflation Now
1974–1975
Nixon had resigned in August. The counter read 1974.
A month after taking office, Ford pardoned Nixon. Approval fell from 71 percent to 50 percent.
Gerald Ford …a full, free, and absolute pardon unto Richard Nixon for all offenses against the United States…
A Senate committee found CIA plots to kill Fidel Castro. It found an FBI campaign against Martin Luther King Jr.
Prices and unemployment rose together. Economists had thought that couldn't happen. Economists called it stagflation. Oil prices had jumped, and factories in Germany and Japan were beating American ones.
Gerald Ford It bears the single word WIN. I think that tells it all.
He asked Americans to save energy, plant gardens, and wear the button. Unemployment hit 9 percent anyway.
Laffer drew a curve on a napkin for two Ford aides. Cut tax rates, and the government might collect more. He later said he'd never have ruined a nice cloth napkin. It's in the Smithsonian.
New York City nearly went broke, and Ford refused a bailout. He never said 'drop dead.' The headline stuck. He signed loans that December.
1976
The counter rolled to 1976.
Two Hundred
1976
On July 4, 1976, the United States turned two hundred. At 2 p.m., bells rang across the country.
Sixteen tall ships from fourteen countries sailed up New York Harbor. Two flew the Soviet flag.
That summer, Ronald Reagan nearly took the Republican nomination from a sitting president. He opposed giving up the Panama Canal.
Ronald Reagan We bought it, we paid for it, we built it, and we intend to keep it.
Barbara Jordan What is different? What is special? I, Barbara Jordan, am a keynote speaker.
She was the first woman, and the first Black American, to give the Democrats' keynote.
The Democrats chose an outsider: Jimmy Carter, a peanut farmer and former governor of Georgia. He told voters, 'I will never lie to you.' After Watergate, that was a platform.
Carter taught Sunday school and called himself born again. So did about one American in three.
Carter won, carrying nearly the whole South.
Trust in Washington kept falling anyway.
Houston
1972–1982
The counter clicks forward to 1977.
In 1972 Congress sent the states the Equal Rights Amendment. Thirty states ratified it by the end of 1973. It needed thirty-eight.
Phyllis Schlafly's STOP ERA warned that women would be drafted and homemakers would lose legal protections.
Phyllis Schlafly Of all the classes of people who ever lived, the American woman is the most privileged.
Her volunteers brought legislators homemade bread and jam. The sign said, to the breadwinners from the breadmakers. It worked.
In Roe v. Wade, the Court ruled that privacy covered a woman's decision to end a pregnancy. Catholics, and soon evangelicals, built a right-to-life movement to reverse it.
In June 1977, Miami-area voters repealed a county law protecting gay people from discrimination. The singer Anita Bryant led the campaign.
That November, both sides of the women's argument came to Houston.
In 1978, California voted on banning gay teachers. Ronald Reagan opposed the ban. It lost.
Three weeks later, Harvey Milk, a gay city supervisor who had fought the ban, was shot dead in City Hall. So was Mayor George Moscone.
The ERA ran out of time on June 30, 1982, three states short. The Republicans, the first major party to back it, had already dropped it.
Mad as Hell
1974–1980
The counter clicks forward to 1978.
In June 1978, California voters passed Proposition 13 by nearly two to one. Its leader, Howard Jarvis, later titled his memoir I'm Mad as Hell.
Zoom out. Inflation was pushing tax bills up. It wasn't only California. Trust in Washington stood at 29 percent.
In the 1978 Bakke case, the Court struck down racial quotas in admissions. The Court let race count as one factor.
In Boston, a federal judge ordered busing in 1974. At South Boston High, crowds stoned buses carrying Black students.
In the Bicentennial year, a white teenager attacked Ted Landsmark, a Black lawyer, with an American flag. It happened within sight of the Old State House, where the Boston Massacre had happened.
Evangelical churches were booming. Televangelists reached about twenty million viewers a week.
In 1965, Jerry Falwell preached that ministers should stay out of civil rights marches.
Jerry Falwell I feel that we need to get off the streets and back into the pulpits and into the prayer rooms.
In 1979 he founded the Moral Majority, to elect conservative candidates.
Jerry Falwell I preached against what I'm doing… because I never really believed that a Supreme Court of this country would legalize abortion on demand.
The historian Randall Balmer points instead to a 1978 fight with the IRS over private Christian schools.
In 1980, Reagan told a gathering of evangelical leaders:
Ronald Reagan I want you to know that I endorse you and what you're doing.
Crisis of Confidence
1979–1980
The counter clicks forward to 1979.
In April 1979, a swamp rabbit swam straight at the President's fishing boat. He splashed it away with a paddle.
It made the front page that August. That was the kind of year it was.
The gas lines came back that summer. By December, inflation was past 13 percent.
Carter spent ten days at Camp David, asking Americans what was wrong.
Jimmy Carter It is a crisis of confidence. It is a crisis that strikes at the very heart and soul and spirit of our national will.
About 65 million people watched, and his ratings rose. Two days later, he asked his whole cabinet to resign. Now the crisis sounded like his.
the “malaise” speech
Reporters called it the 'malaise speech.' Carter never said 'malaise.'
Iranian students seized the American embassy in Tehran and took 66 Americans hostage.
They were furious the U.S. had let in the deposed Shah for medical treatment. Fifty-two Americans were held for 444 days.
Families tied yellow ribbons around trees and waited.
In April 1980, a rescue mission failed in the Iranian desert. Eight American servicemen died.
Maj. Richard L. Bakke Maj. Harold L. Lewis Jr. TSgt. Joel C. Mayo Maj. Lyn D. McIntosh Capt. Charles T. McMillan II Sgt. John D. Harvey Cpl. George N. Holmes Jr. SSgt. Dewey L. Johnson
On November 4, 1980, a year to the day after the embassy was seized, Ronald Reagan won forty-four states.
Republicans won the Senate for the first time since the 1950s.
By then, one American in four trusted Washington to do what is right most of the time. The hostages were still in Tehran.
Zoom Out
1960–1980
Zoom out.
Trust broke in pieces: a war, a scandal, an economy that stalled, and a crisis abroad nobody could end.
Into that gap stepped a movement that had been building since 1960. It said government was the problem, not the answer.
Its opponents said the fight for equal rights wasn't finished. Americans are still having both arguments.
That's contextualization. A source makes sense when you know what surrounded it.
It started with a guard who checked a door twice. Frank Wills played himself in the movie about Watergate. He died in 2000, at fifty-two.