Commentary
On June 17, it will be 50 years since operatives connected to President Richard Nixon’s Committee to Re-elect the President (also known as CREEP) were arrested trying to plant surveillance equipment at the Democratic National Committee’s headquarters in the Watergate building in Washington.
This was the beginning of the process that was ultimately to drive the president from office a little more than two years later, despite his landslide victory over the hapless George McGovern in that fall’s presidential election.
As more than one commentator has mentioned since, the irony was that there was no need for the attempted bugging, since Nixon won easily without it. Even at the time, hardly anyone regarded what White House press secretary Ron Ziegler described as a “third-rate burglary” as any big deal….