Deep Throat and the Partisan Echo Chamber

My brother chided me after a recrnt post that I'm long-winded and only occasionally amusing- like this is *any* news to me or anyone else for that matter. Well strap yourselves in because this will probably take a while as well. There is of course only one story that I could possibly write about this week and that is the revelation of Mark Felt as Deep Throat, the deep background source for Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein's reporting during the Watergate investigation. There are many obvious reasons why the story interests me: my love of presidential history, my childhood desire to be a journalist, and the strange affinity I have for all things Nixonian. I was born Sunday morning November 3, 1968 in San Diego (about 100 miles south of Nixon's birthplace of Yorba Linda) only 48 hours before Nixon was elected president. One of my first memories was watching Nixon resign on television (I was only 6, but precocious). One glance at my bookcases will tell you that I find Nixon most compelling (I have about a dozen books on Nixon/Watergate/or Nixon related matters.) And for good reason. Richard Nixon is one, if not the most, powerful figures in politics in the US in the second half of the 20th century. His successes and failures, from his days in Congress to the Vice Presidency to the Presidency to his post administration years, are virtually unparalleled. As I was growing up and getting increasingly political, my father and I had many clashes of political ideology, but one thing we seemed to be able to agree on was our mutual loathing of John Dean. Though we never discussed too deeply the crimes and misdemeanors of Nixon, I knew we both thought Dean to be a "rat". What bothered me wasn't so much Dean's squealing, but the fact that he was obviously very involved in the criminal activity underneath Watergate and yet like a rat, jumped ship and sold out everyone else. Felt's situation was much different. He was not a part of the criminal activity in Watergate, and sensing the corruption all around and unable to determine who was clean, he went to the only other outlet he had- the press. Did he have other motives as well? Probably. But they don't mitigate the fact that he had no other place to go. Is he a hero? Perhaps, perhaps not. I'm still undecided. However he most certainly is NOT the villain that Nixon apologists and conservative demagogues in the right-wing media would have you to believe. To hear G. Gordon Liddy and Chuck Colson, villify Felt as a criminal, etc is absurd. Liddy and Colson (and others) did time for their criminal activity, most of which was exposed in part due to Felt's activity, therefore they have little to no credibility in my opinion. History's greatest challenge is the constantly guard against its rewriting for partisan agenda. True, history should judge President Nixon not just for the sins of Watergate, but for the victories of a great deal of his foreign policy (including detente and opening the door to China), yet the sins must exist in the record not be whitewashed by a partisan echo chamber.