Watergate enabled the Democrats to cut off all aid to South Vietnam and ensure American defeat in a war their party entered and had effectively lost before Nixon salvaged a non-Communist South Vietnam while effecting a complete American withdrawal.

Until we have a better relationship between private performance and the public truth as was demonstrated with Watergate we as the public are absolutely right to remain suspicious contemptuous even of the secrecy and the misinformation which is the digest of our news.

In the seventies a group of American artists seized the means not of production but of reproduction. They tore apart visual culture at a time of no money no market and no one paying attention except other artists. Vietnam and Watergate had happened everything in America was being questioned.

After Nixon resigned in 1974 he engaged in a very aggressive war with history attempting to wipe out the Watergate stain and memory. Happily history won largely because of Nixon's tapes.

You must pursue this investigation of Watergate even if it leads to the president. I'm innocent. You've got to believe I'm innocent. If you don't take my job.

I can see clearly now... that I was wrong in not acting more decisively and more forthrightly in dealing with Watergate.

Watergate provides a model case study of the interaction and powers of each of the branches of government. It also is a morality play with a sad and dramatic ending.

This is a generation weaned on Watergate and there is no presumption of innocence and no presumption of good intentions. Instead there is a presumption that without relentless scrutiny the government will misbehave.

The American Dream has run out of gas. The car has stopped. It no longer supplies the world with its images its dreams its fantasies. No more. It's over. It supplies the world with its nightmares now: the Kennedy assassination Watergate Vietnam.