WATERGATE HANGOVER

摘要

Watergate has been to domestic controversy in this country what Vietnam has been to foreign-policy discussion: a deforming influence, an impediment to thought. For the past two decades we have tended to see in every dispute that has engaged us abroad a lurking, smirking, just-waiting-to-pull-us-under Vietnam. The "quagmire" is what we call it. In domestic controversies the comparable tip-off that we are entering the Watergate zone is the term "smoking gun." We are all supposed to be looking for one (as if every genuine impropriety in government were, if not a homicide, at least an indictable felony enumerated somewhere in the criminal code); failing to find a smoking gun we are meant to conclude that there is nothing worth worrying about there.