Fifty years ago today, politics was turned upside down. At the time it seemed like a bad moment for democracy but hindsight suggests it was one of the few shining ones of the last half-century and history itself suggests we may never see a more active and engaged media and mobilized citizenry as we did at that time.
A half-century ago while on his regular security sweep Frank Wills discovered a lock had been tampered with on a door in the Watergate Office building preventing the door from closing, He closed the door after removing the tape that had been placed across the hasp and continued on his rounds.
When he returned, the tape had been reapplied. He called the police and what had started out as a third-class burglary of the Democratic National Committee headquarters became the undoing of the Presidency of Richard Nixon.
The expression "A lie can travel halfway around the world while the truth is putting on its shoes" has been often incorrectly attributed to Mark Twain, Winston Churchill, as well as Thomas Jefferson. Scholars suspect it's most likely a variant of a line from Jonathan Swift: "Falsehood flies, and the truth comes limping after it." Watergate is when it started; when it stops is anyone's guess.
And in another fifty years, based on so much casual acceptance of lies as part of the price and cost of politics, no one will remember June 17,1972, or January 6, 2021. Our progress might be considered by some to be truly breathtaking.
-bill kenny
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