Why We Hate Us

My column last week tried to tie some of themes of Why We Hate Us to the 35^th anniversary of the end of the Watergate hearings in the summer of 1973. It was the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of high school and I watched the hearings every chance I got. I was already a political junkie; that happened in 1968.

In the chapter called “A Civic War,” I discussed in some detail how Watergate was followed by a weakening of political parties, a rise in political consulting and marketing, and perpetual series of feckless pseudo-reforms. In this piece, I talk more about the civic distrust fostered by Watergate, distrust which hasn’t lifted more than three decades later. Admittedly, it was a stretch to hang that on Watergate, but I do think it is interesting how little change there has been in the basic civic mood since the 1970s.