politics
The Lesson Watergate Was Supposed to Teach
Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. thought Nixon's downfall would restrain presidents for generations. Instead, Watergate helped write the script for the scandals that followed.
TL;DR
- Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. believed Watergate would lead to a lasting decrease in presidential abuses of power.
- He argued that Nixon's actions were symptomatic of a larger trend of executive power aggregation, accelerated by historical events like WWII and the Cold War.
- Schlesinger's optimism about Watergate's impact has proven incorrect, as scandals today are often short-lived.
- Reforms were enacted between 1973 and 1978 to address abuses exposed by Watergate and restrain presidential power.
- Schlesinger himself acknowledged that historians and political scientists contributed to the "presidential mystique."