Former CBS News anchor Dan Rather took to his Facebook page Tuesday to deliver a unique Valentine’s Day message to his 1.8 million followers. Rather framed his post within the context of Richard Nixon and Watergate saying the story “is cascading in intensity” and in the end may be “at least as big” as the scandal that led to the resignation of the 37th president:
Considering his own front row seat at the Shakespearean tragedy that was the last days of the Nixon presidency, Rather’s invocation of the Watergate affair brings gravity to the discussion of Flynn, Trump, and the alleged contacts with Russia.
But Rather was involved in his own political drama several decades after Watergate and the circumstances surrounding “Rathergate” provide necessary context for his provocative declaration.
In 2004, THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s John Podhoretz penned the definitive take-down of Rather after his humiliating attempt to destroy President George W. Bush’s reelection efforts over bogus allegations that Bush had shirked his duties for the Texas Air National Guard in 1972.
A key paragraph from that article provides important background for Rather’s invocation of Watergate this week:
Podhoretz goes on to detail the decades-long war between the mainstream media and conservatives, which originated with the Goldwater campaign. He declares that the Rathergate scandal (which led to the ouster of four senior producers at CBS News and, eventually, Rather himself) was the definitive smoking gun of liberal media bias.
This indictment surely has haunted Rather ever since. His lack of a major media platform has possibly made him even more desperate to have one last moment in the sun where he can relive his glory years and take down one final Republican president. And, perhaps, he hopes to find redemption of some sort so that his lasting epitaph will not be that of a man who exemplified the liberal bias of the mainstream media.
In 2015 the Rathergate affair was memorialize in an embarrassing and inaccurate film titled (with no recognition of the irony) Truth. Director James Vanderbilt even cast Robert Redford, who played the heroic Bob Woodward in All The President’s Men, to portray Rather in the film so the Watergate loop could be completed. The film tanked, earning only $2.5 million domestically.
This isn’t to say the Flynn story might not develop into a major scandal. Indeed, THE WEEKLY STANDARD’s own William Kristol has likened the behavior from the Trump White House to that of Nixon’s in 1973:
I was merrily Tweeting this morning, and hadn’t seen President Trump’s Tweet storm. I’m not so merry anymore. We’re in Nixon 1973 territory.
— Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) February 15, 2017
And Daniel Henninger at the Wall Street Journal has raised a Watergate comparison of his own:
Sure, Rather may be right and this affair may very well end up being “as big as Watergate.” But knowing his sad Captain Ahab-esque downfall sheds instructive light on the Facebook message which has been shared over 100,000 times within the first twenty four hours of its publication garnering over 10,000 comments.
After all, when Truth was released Rather did a full publicity blitz praising the film for its accuracy and continued to insist to anyone who would still listen that his Bush story was legitimate. For a man whose career was made during the Nixon presidency and the Watergate affair that behavior is positively… Nixonian.
