Former National Broadcasting Network Nightly News anchor Tom Brokaw did much of the reputation-building and journalistic work that would land him the editorial and anchor chair with that program due to his coverage of the events that would culminate in Richard Nixon resigning the United States Presidency on August 9, 1974.
(Former US President Richard Nixon, left, being interviewed by reporter Tom Brokaw during Nixon‘s presidency. Brokaw wrote the book The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate).
Tom Brokaw wrote the book The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate. Released in October of 2019, the book in part aimed to offer a comparison to the recent impeachment of current US President Donald Trump. Trump was impeached yet survived the process without being removed from office. History tells us that Richard Nixon would have been impeached yet resigned rather than facing formal articles of impeachment followed by a trial.
(Tom Brokaw on August 8, 1974, reporting that former US President Richard Nixon would resign. Photo credit to Edward R. Vidinghoff of NBC News. Brokaw wrote the book The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate).
Much of the story that Brokaw tells in the book The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate clearly is told without the ability of Nixon to respond, as Nixon died in 1994. The underlying criminal behavior that led to a cover-up from Nixon and others within his administration stemmed first from a burglary perpetrated at The Watergate Hotel in Washington DC. The Watergate Scandal included interlocking political scandals of the administration of Nixon revealed after the arrest of five burglars at Democratic National Committee (DNC) headquarters at the Watergate.
(This is a view of The Watergate Hotel in Washington DC. The burglary and resulting Watergate Scandal ultimately forced Richard Nixon to resign the US Presidency).
Much of what struck me as interesting about the narrative offered by Brokaw, whose recollection and subsequently learned history recounted within the book I largely trust, came from two main paths. The first of those paths is that the reality of how news was reported and how opinion was formed was much different 45-years ago when Brokaw was reporting things around the scandal. The work of the journalists was constant, for sure, though the pace of reporting with the demand for news that could be made public through the electronic media sources available today were vastly different. In certain ways, this meant that journalism was handled differently. It feels to me that news was more fully formed when delivered to the public with opinion offering and interpretation offered from the outset.
(An image of Richard Nixon‘s resignation letter to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger dated August 9, 1974).
Second, my sense was that the politics of the day in the early 1970s, which were no doubt cutthroat and in ways meant to enmesh political power to one party or another more than serve the people being governed, compromise and reason at some level among leaders felt more real when push came to shove. Clearly, this is easy and perhaps naive of me to say since the politics of the fifteen years leading to the resignation of Richard Nixon were highly charged, which included two presidents, a presidential candidate, and a vice president departing politics, twice through violence, prior to Nixon‘s resignation.
(An image from Richard Nixon‘s resignation address from August 8th, 1974).
I came away from reading the book The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate with a better feeling for the people, the lying and the criminality that permeated the Nixon administration in the time leading up to the resignation. I see the common sense of Brokaw‘s sharing insight from his coverage at a time where the United States is facing another round of these questions with a different president and different party leaders. That there likely is and was self-delusion among those in power through both processes of potential impeachment is apparent. I rate The Fall of Richard Nixon: A Reporter Remembers Watergate by Tom Brokaw at 3.75-stars on a scale of one-to-five.
Matt – Saturday, February 8, 2020
Matt Lynn Digital 