Pieces of Watergate

In the summer of 1974, only half a year after coming to America, my parents and I went to see a drive-in movie. My father worked three jobs—full-time as an engineer during the weekdays, driving a taxi cab on weekends, and as a cook in the kitchen of the concession stand at a drive-in theater. One of the perks of working at a drive-in theater was that my dad could take his family to work and let them watch a whole night of movies for free. We arrived an hour before the gates officially opened, when the parking lot’s tire spikes were still lowered to allow employees to come in through the exits.

I remember watching a double feature of Disney’s The Three Caballeros and Gus, the football-kicking mule. I remember being eight years old and sitting in the driver’s seat and pretending to drive. I remember almost crashing the car because I accidentally shifted it into reverse without the emergency brake on. The car was a Ford Pinto so it wouldn’t have done much damage, but that was probably my first official “this is the end of my world” moment, the first of many to come.

I remember falling asleep in the back seat during the drive home, and then waking up to hear the radio talking about the new president (Gerald Ford) pardoning the old president (Richard Nixon). Back then, I thought that Gerald Ford was a democrat and Richard Nixon was a republican. I thought that when a republican got kicked out of office, a democrat would automatically take over, and vice versa. I thought it was like baseball—when the Yankees weren’t World Series champs, then it was probably the Dodgers. I didn’t yet know how politics worked, and I didn’t know that the president had that much power.

Years later, during college, I rented the movie All the President’s Men, with Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman. Older movies were $1 rentals back then, so I wound up watching a lot of westerns, Hitchcock movies, as well as 70’s political thrillers, including Marathon Man (also starring Dustin Hoffman) and Three Days of the Condor (Robert Redford).

Since then, I have watched All the President’s Men at least a dozen times, often in pieces as they pop up on cable TV and when I watch my DVD copy to watch a specific scene. Over time, my understanding of Richard Nixon, Watergate, Woodward and Bernstein, and everything else involved, becomes more complete, but still remains unclear. We now know that Mark Felt is Deep Throat, we have now heard the tape recorded meetings between Nixon and his aides, and Ron Howard’s latest movie, Frost/Nixon, uncovers yet one more piece to this mosaic of understanding that for me began thirty-five years ago.

But it still feels like a puzzle to me, and I don’t know why. Maybe when I understand a bit better how political lobbying works, it will be more clear to me. Or when I understand how the presidential chain of command is really structured. Or if one more movie, or book, or an Associated Press report comes out, maybe that’s when I’ll be able to complete the puzzle.

Or maybe that’s the point, that the puzzle isn’t meant to be completed, or even understood. Maybe the pieces were never meant to fit. Because if all the pieces did fit, there would be a certain acceptance of the whole mess of it.