Notes on Scandal and the Watergate Legacy

Abstract

Watergate refers to the political scandal that broke in 1972 and forced Richard M. Nixon to resign as president of the United States 2 years later. It offered a language and framework for public discourse about scandal around the world in the decades since. This article recounts the basic story of Watergate, discusses the impact of Watergate on American politics, and focuses on how comparisons to Watergate shaped the unfolding of later American political scandals, notably Iran-Contra, Whitewater, and Monica Lewinsky. The article concludes by reviewing John Thompson’s sociology of political scandals and argues that scandal, although not peculiar to democracies, has an especially important role in a system of government that encourages distrust of authority.