Customer Reviews

Watergate in American Memory: How We Remember, Forget, and Reconstruct the Past

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The Watergate crisis dominated national politics for the last quarter of the twentieth century, and indeed its effects are still persistent in national discourse. Witness the use of the term "gate" to characterize virtually every political scandal since that time; "Contragate" is only one such instance. Many have written books on the Watergate break-in and the toppling of President Richard Nixon as a result of the cover-up that followed. This book is different, however, sociologist Michael Schudson explores in this fine work how Americans have remembered the scandal and used it since 1972. Schudson investigates how the crisis's formidable shadow has affected public life since that time, using collective memory to map the various ways in which Watergate has informed the larger society. Eschewing postmodern theory, he offers an accessible and insightful analysis of history, memory, and culture, emphasizing how the various uses of Watergate in constructing the past emerged and suggests that "the past in highly resistant to efforts to make it over" (p. 206).

Schudson argues that any event opens certain paths of interpretation and closes other, but that those undertaking the interpretation may draw the meanings that they seek from the experience. At this level, these events offer a discontinuity with the past. At the same time, continuity reigns precisely because it is remembered in certain ways, and a timeline is constructed based on this remembrance, or as often as not its misremembrance. These condition the manner in which subsequent experiences and events are perceived by the various communities recollecting them. This suggests a wide divergence of lessons that may be drawn from any event, and we see it in how Watergate is perceived by the various groups who consider it. In working out the implications of this situation with Watergate, Schudson engagingly considers the use and abuse of history/memory in relation to this important event in American history.

Using a four part framework, Schudson organizes the responses to Watergate. He discusses the constitutional crisis mindset in which opponents of Nixon interpreted Watergate as an abuse of presidential power and obstruction of justice. Many Democrats, certainly the majority involved in dealing with the crisis, accepted this as the dominant theme to be dealt with in Watergate. Since the crisis this position has dominated in American recollection. At the opposite extreme, Many Republicans have viewed the crisis as a "scandal" but not one driven by misconduct by the president and his lieutenants. Instead, Watergate represented a media-driven overreach that unjustly brought down a president. In this sense Nixon was simply a politician doing what all politicians do but was nonetheless hounded out of office by the reporting of the two leading newspapers of the era, the Washington Post and the New York Times.

These two dominant narratives, perhaps they should be called meta-narratives, then subdivide into additional permutations. Among these are the mutually exclusive beliefs that Watergate represented the failings of a single politician, Richard Nixon aided and abetted by his subordinates, or that it represented a massive crisis in the American democratic system that required fundamental reform to ensure that it did not destroy the nation. The Nixon "bad apple" theory predominated among Republicans who were horrified by Watergate but still believed in the basic characteristics of American political culture. Those accepting the systemic problem theory held sway among many people on the political left and they pressed for reforms to the system, many of which were enacted into law after Nixon's resignation.

Schudson's complex analysis of the Watergate crisis offers a much more nuanced perspective on the episode than left/right or pro/anti interpretations of the event. In the end he insists that Watergate is a living memory that serves the needs of those interpreting it, regardless of their persuasion. There are, accordingly, multiple versions each taking specific parts of the story and using it for specific purposes. These versions of the past are often mutually exclusive but not necessarily incorrect. It is a Roshomen experience as each observer perceives different truths from the same incident. There is, of course, a cottage industry in providing reconceptualizations to these various groups and there will be no resolution of how this event will be interpreted into the future. Those diverse interpretations offer a legitimatization of the group holding certain beliefs about the past and present. Again, this will not change.

At sum, "Watergate in American Memory" is a powerful explanation of the meaning of Watergate in the nation's collective memory since the 1970s. It offers the insight that history is not so much a recitation of what actually happened in the past as it is a riff on what we think happened and how it might be usable for the present. In such a context it seems meaningless to memorize names and dates, as so many people remember having to do in high school, as to explore how we use the past to illuminate issues of current concern. There is no higher calling in the study of history to my mind and Michael Schudson has offered a creditable example of how the past may be used by focusing on a single dramatic event in recent political history and demonstrating its multi-faceted understandings.

I feel I must use this opportunity to review amazon.com's reviewing practices, which appear mechanistic. Otherwise, how can they highlight the one truly uninformed review as "the MOST helpful critical review" when only one out of 22 people found it helpful? Gadzooks! 1 out of 22 is not "most helpful" by any stretch, except as any review rated helpful by just one person is considered thus. And, by the way, excellent book, but not meant to be an encyclopedia of history for lazy, clueless teens, or an alternate reading to a novel such as "The Scarlet Letter." So maybe the teacher who devised the reading list (I infer) was the clueless one.

I am using this book as a secondary source for an historical study on Watergate and the media. It is well written and informative. The author dispels several misconceptions about Watergate and provides several excellent examples.

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AND I MUST SAY.... To the 16-year-old reviewer (A Customer) that gave the book one star.....

Imagine one book not telling you absolutely everything you need to know about a specific subject. It is so hard to find and read other books or use an online encyclopedia to look up background information. On behalf of the academic community, I am so sorry you have experienced such trauma!

This review is a sad example of many students today. If any further action is required beyond sitting at a desk and breathing, it is too much effort. It is not only sad that this person does already know this piece of history, but it is sad to realize that this person expects others to do the thinking for him.

I encourage others to place a quick 5-star review with me to help offset the insipid nonsense review left by a child.

This is one of the best books out there. Comprehensive and myth-dispelling, I think this is an essential read for anyone interested in politics, the media, and/or collective memory.

This book is so bad. The author, Michael Schudson, doesn't realize that books are around longer than human beings live and some people around the age of 16 at present day don't know what watergate was about. He should've explained what it was in the beginning of the book. I had to ask my dad about it because I couldn't understand what the author was talking about without background knowledge about watergate. I'd take the Scarlet Letter over this book anyday (and believe me the scarlet letter was pretty bad itself).