Nostalgic for Watergate, Oblivious to the Parallels

Toward the end of what he previously billed as a put-the-cards-on-the-table effort to prove that he hadn’t made a practice of doing favors for big campaign donors, Mayor de Blasio lamented that the days of “legislators, prosecutors and journalists seeking the truth and celebrating its triumph” had vanished after the Watergate probe that culminated in Richard Nixon’s resignation as President.

“I rarely see the spirit of that collective responsibility anymore,” he stated in the Sept. 1 essay that was intended to prove he wasn’t ethically tainted yet he chose to post at the start of the Labor Day weekend on an obscure website known as medium.com. “I rarely see an appreciation for historical progress or any semblance of notice when things work the way they’re supposed to in government. A bitterness between those in power and those who hold us accountable has set in. A frequently undeserved cynicism nearly always crowds out the facts. It refused to recognize that our democracy is built—rightly or wrongly—on the reality that candidates must seek private donations to hold public office. I hope for a time when the boundless energy spent distorting the donor-City Hall relationship can be redirected toward a demand for publicly-financed elections. But some basic modicum of media fairness shouldn’t wait for this achievement.”