Enrongate vs. Watergate: Which Is Worse?

(2/7/02)  I thought it might be interesting to compare these two scandals and the players.  History repeats, but not exactly.

In Watergate, Nixon was attempting to hide the illegal acts of overzealous underlings.  In Enrongate, Dubya and Cheney are deeply connected to the scandal through their years in the rough-and-tumble anything goes Texas oil business.

In Watergate, Nixon fought the release of tapes made in his office which contained conversations about how to cover up White House connections to the break-in.  He claimed "executive privelege" and lost.  In Enrongate, Cheney is fighting the release of records containing information about public energy policy meetings with his secret "task force".  The "task force" was made up of energy company executives who used the meetings to promote their own business interests.  Cheney is claiming that divulging information about those meetings will somehow "weaken the presidency".  He will lose.

In Watergate, the primary motivation for the chain of events was political ideology; the participants were following the misguided belief that they were so right and the Democrats were so wrong that the ends justified ANY means.  In Enrongate, the motivation is greed, the issue is money, and the method is to consolidate power in the hands of a few of the wealthiest indiduals in the country.  The top 1%, so to speak.

In Watergate, the victim was America's faith in the political system.  Before Watergate, we shared the naive belief that our elected officials basically sought office to perform service to the American insitutions and the people who elected them. Each revelation in Watergate was uglier than the last until that faith was smashed to smithereens and lost forever.  In Enrongate, we have learned how our government is entwined with and corrupted by corporations who wield control over the public, the government, and their own workers.  The victim here is our faith in the economic system, because we now know that corporations, when supported by the highest elected officer in the land, are capable of screwing their workers out of their fortunes without the smallest pang of guilt.