Watergate, Babygate, Nixon and Palin

Last weekend's headlines: Watergate’s Chuck Colson is dead. 

Dubbed the “evil genius,” Chuck Colson was among the first of the dirty political tricksters tracked down and exposed by modern investigative journalism. The  1971 burglary of the Democratic election headquarters a the Watergate hotel put the suffix “gate” into the English language to turn a noun into an accusation of criminally malicious political maneuverings. 

Babygate, Sarah Palin’s fake pregnancy in 2008, may have more things in common with Watergate itself, than most, if not all, the other “gates” since Chuck Colson, John Dean, Paul Ehrichman, and H.R. Haldeman served the Nixon White House. As I've done many times this post  looks back into history help us with Babygate today.  Clues get overlooked. Hindsight gives us a different vantage point. Whatever… there are truths to be unearthed by looking at the pieces again. 

Watergate and Babygate have the same plot line -  covering up of an event, denial by elected officials that there is anything to investigate that’s worthwhile, putting out the word that it is ludicrous to consider a high standing elected official could be involved in such a stunt.  In both cases, the tip-of-the-iceberg events don’t sound extraordinary, not a big deal when taken in the larger context of national or statewide politics. And,  at first, no one links the Watergate break-in or the Trig Palin birth announcement to top-level political maneuvering with the potential to manipulate presidential election results.   

In 1972, the Watergate break-in story was a little filler of a newspaper story. In 2008, Sarah Palin’s announced delivery of Trig Paxon Van Palin was a feel good piece with a tiny target audience -  voting-age Alaskans.  Because the governor of Alaska had her sights set on the White House, Alaskan tax dollars were spent putting her story into magazines with national readership, and Trig became a useful prop, but few suspected he was anything more than that.

The 2008 Presidential candidate John McCain has never been openly confronted about what he knew or should have known about Babygate, but if he were, we can be sure he would not only deny any knowledge of a fake pregnancy by Governor Palin but would bluff and bluster and attack the interviewer for daring to repeat the gutter-level rumor. 

Nixon denied knowing anything about the actions that small group that entered the Watergate offices 40 years ago, too.  Yet, on August 9, 1974, Richard Nixon, disgraced, stepped down from the highest office in the land.  

Four weeks ago, presenting a lecture at the University of Tulsa, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein spoke about events 40-years ago.  As cub reporters for The Washington Post assigned to look into a break-in at Democratic National Committee headquarters on June 17, 1972, they had no reason to suspect that the assignment, their reporting, and subsequent congressional investigations would lead to the uncovering of  a multi-faceted plan to steal the 1972 presidential election.  A massive campaign of political espionage and sabotage was underway, to “make your vote - everybody's vote - not count through illegal and unconstitutional means," Bernstein said. They named five wars Nixon waged during - and even before - his presidency; targets, i.e. enemies were the Democratic Party, the anti-Vietnam War movement, the press, the U.S. justice system and history itself.

Let’s stop there and compare how far we’ve come in the four decades that moved us into the age of  Babygate.  Below are headlines from 2012.

RE: Stealing elections:

Palin: We can’t let ‘leftist groups…steal this election     CNN October 13, 2008

Democrats warn that GOP is trying to ‘steal’New York election like 2000    CNN April 3, 2009

Which Side is Trying To Steal the Election? The Other One      Slate.com October 27, 2008

RE: espionage and sabotage:

Truthout senses attempted sabotage in McGinniss leak of Bailey book manuscript
Anchorage Daily News September 2nd, 2011 12:30 PM

“Evidence Seized” in Shailey Tripp Matter DESTROYED by the ANCHORAGE POLICE

Malia Litman's Blog, January 12, 2012

 Frank Bailey: Sarah Palin knowingly broke election law      Alaska Dispatch Feb. 19 2011

RE: Making sure votes don’t count:

Good ol’ days voting law undermines democracy    Orlando Sentinel April 25, 2012

Americans for Prosperity Accused of Voter Suppression in Wisconsin Recall Elections   Huffington Post April 25, 2012

How states are rigging the 2012 election  Washington Post (opinion writer) June 19, 2011

Palin Republicans are this generation's Nixon Republicans.  To understand that, we must remember that Watergate was about Nixon as a person. Nixon as a small, vindictive and vengeful man with a lot of power. Babygate is about Sarah Palin. Sarah is a small, vindictive and vengeful woman with a lot of clout.  Nixon’s five wars in the sixties and seventies are now Palin’s wars.  

– Democratic Party, members of which she put “in the crosshairs.” And specifically the head of the party, Barack Obama, for whom she has a personal loathing which she cannot contain and does not attempt to hide.

--Anti-War Movement – In the former governor’s eyes, every American in a uniform is a patriot and a hero. She never spoke publicly about her hometown hero Jeremy Morlock’s participation in cold-blooded murder of innocent civilians.  She turns a blind eye to the reality of war, and was ignorant of why the U.S. became involved in a war in Iraq even though her own son was to be deployed in that war.  According to Game Change, she thought Saddam Hussein was behind the 911 attacks.  Blindly pro-war. Any of ‘em, all of ‘em.

--Media AKA the lamestream media with whom she will not sit down and talk.  Katie Couric is Palin’s most hated newsperson because she asked her what papers she read to inform her understanding of events. Last June 10. Politico ran the headline "Palin emails show history of media distrust."

--Justice System – Sarah would like to see Roe v Wade overturned, thinks a kid who figured out her Google passwords deserved jail time, and had no problem with her own husband and staff ignoring subpoenas in the Troopergate investigation.

--History – Sarah loves to revise history. From Paul Revere’s ride to her support for the Bridge to Nowhere.  She’s even given different locations for the birth of Trig Palin – the Mat-Su Valley and Anchorage are quite different locals. 

All of you can add to the list above. Like the break-in, each is relatively small. The accumulation is what boggles the mind. To the audience in Tulsa, Bernstein said the Watergate burglary "was the key to unlocking the Nixon presidency and understanding what it was fundamentally about."  Woodward said, one could not help but be struck by the fact that the tragedy of Watergate was more than the crimes and abuse of power, it revealed "the smallness of Nixon…It was always about Nixon. Let's use the presidency as an instrument of personal revenge." 

Long forgotten in the history of Watergate are the little, sneaky, mean things Nixon’s henchmen carried out to win his approval. Preferring to run against Democratic Sen. George McGovern rather than Senator Edward Muskie,, the White House stopped at nothing to halt the Muskie campaign."Sen. Muskie's chauffeur - the Nixon campaign literally hired him to spy and photocopy all of the documents that were taken between Muskie's Senate office and his campaign headquarters," Woodward said.  No plot was beneath them. After long days on the road, campaign workers would leave their shoes outside their hotel room doors to be shined. Even shoes became targets. Woodward said, "One of Nixon's people would come around with a trash bag and collect all of the shoes, including Muskie's, and throw them in a Dumpster a couple of miles out of town.”

Like  Dick Nixon, Chuck Colson and the lot , John McCain, Steve Schmitt and the 2008 campaign staff  know more than they are willing to admit. In the movie “Game Change” we were sold a storyline wherein John McCain was protected from hearing about the dead-awful ignorance and dishonesty of his super-star running mate.  Who among us believes that? I don’t. I  have a “Nixon Now” button in my junk drawer that reminds me what happened in that election. I am able to retain the history lessons I learned in real time during the 70s.  I’m sure there are people in high places who want us to believe that “Game Change” got it right, and John McCain hardly got to know Sarah Palin, and his staff protected him from the bad news of their bad advice and his bad pick.  I’m sure  journalists everywhere are missing a great story.

Just think for a minute what it is we are asked to believe.  McCain had to name the leaders of foreign countries, pronounce them correctly, recite policies held by foreign leaders and explain in detail how he would or would not approach them about US interests.  National security gives him his bonefides. “He fought for you.”   And once the real vetting began, and Steve Schmitt was briefed on findings, it’s not credible that he did not learn of Todd Palin running an illegal business that influences high ranking government and military personal to give big military contracts to Todd Palin’s clients. Wouldn’t that  be a potential risk to national security?   You betcha.  And John McCain would have to be told. Absolutely. 

Shailey Tripp isn’t the only woman Todd Palin paid, used, and pimped. Todd’s emails to Shaily in the book Boys Will Be Boys are not the only emails Todd wrote while conducting interstate prostitution business.  When the teen’s MySpace pages got scrubbed, imagine what got scrubbed from Todd’s email!  Don’t even try to tell me  Senator John McCain is unaware of all this. The truth of this matter, is that the man running for POTUS in 2008 and who sits in the senate today knows almost everything about the lives of Sarah, Todd, Track, and Bristol Palin that could have come up during the 2008 campaign. If it came up as a question by a rogue reporter, the campaign could not have him be blindsided. He was told about Todd's prostitutes. 

John McCain knows Sarah Palin did not give birth to Trig Palin. He  knows how many pregnancies Bristol Palin had before delivering Tripp.  Who other than the Arizona Senator and 2008 Republican presidential candidate could have arranged to have the Palin family members’ Social Security data sealed tighter than that of any other governor in history – an action that included the baby born to Bristol after the November, 2008 election?  John McCain knows everything the National Enquirer knows. He probably has even heard and forgotten the name Dylan Kolvig. No doubt in my mind that the senator from Alaska, who wants to see America’s war in Afghanistan go on indefinitely,  knows that Todd Palin pockets illegal profits servicing military officials to clinch big military contracts for big corporations. I’m not so stupid or naive as to think he’s stupid or naive.

In an hour’s meeting with fellow journalists at the Tulsa World, the Pulitzer Prize winning reporters talked candidly about today’s political climate.  Woodward said his biggest worry for the nation is the secretive nature of government; as "the concentration of power in government grows, the secrecy is increased, (and) the capacity to manage and control the message goes up," he said.  

How true that is. Again, take Alaska as an example. Sarah Palin’s administration used personal email and confined it’s actions to a small group of intimate friends of the governor. A recipe for secrecy and control of the message. No wonder we have yet to learn who really gave birth to Trig Palin, and when, and how the plot was hatched to make him the key opening the door for Sarah to run for an office she was not fit to consider. 

 Woodward said that when big problems arise, the public still wants to know what really happened. Bernstein was less optimistic: "People in this country are less interested in real truth, the complex truth, contextual truth." 

I wonder if  Woodward and Bernstein  have even heard of Babygate. I wonder if either has read Frank Bailey’s “Blind Allegiance to Sarah Palin."

Both men said they could not have done the work they did without the support of their publisher at the Post, Katherine Graham.

She would not take anything less than the full story. Woodward said he remembers the day he had to tell Graham that the public might never know the full story. "I remember looking at her, and she had this wounded look on her face, and she said the following: 'Never, don't tell me never."

I can identify with that.