The Way It Is

 There is no real surprise to the HBO's scheduling All The President's Men in heavy rotation this month. You can usually find it at an hour or during a day when the January 6th Committee is not meeting. The story of how two reporters from the Washington Post helped bring down one of the most corrupt administrations in U.S. history should be required viewing for Americans across this great land of ours. 

Of course time has not necessarily been kind to reporters. Journalists were once hailed as the protectors of our freedoms. These days we spend about as much time investigating our journalists as they do investigating the truth, as subjective as that might be. Once upon a time, Walter Cronkite could sign off by saying, "And that's the way it is," without a trace of irony. When Woodward and Bernstein broke the story about just how high up the conspiracy connected to the Watergate break-in went, there was skepticism, but in the end the facts checked out and Richard Nixon resigned in disgrace. It should be further noted that this happened even though the Washington Post and its editor-in-chief Ben Bradlee had already shown off his liberal stripes when he chose to publish the Pentagon Papers just a few years before Watergate. 

Yes, dear reader, there was a time when a newspaper could bring down a sitting American president. Over the past six years, we have watched as a former game show host and adulterer rose to the highest office in the land and proceeded to make more of a mess of things than Richard Nixon ever imagined. 

And nothing happened. 

Okay, that's not entirely true. The former game show host was impeached. Twice. But in spite of overwhelming evidence and surging public opinion, he was able to hold on to his office and the minions who surrounded him. So secure was this dangerous twit in his apparent inculpability that he decided to try his hand at doing Richard Nixon one better by not just influencing the outcome of a free and fair election but to overturn the results. Because he lost. Somehow this maleficent ninny escaped prosecution and has been allowed to continue to influence political contests across the country for the past two years. There has been no retreat to his beachfront property. No disgrace. Just continued promises that he's not done yet. 

No matter what the press has to say about him. Bob Woodward, now looks back at the reporting he did in 1972 seemed like connecting the dots compared to the outrages of "president" 45. He and his partner Carl Bernstein have been making the circuit of news shows over the past couple months as still more evidence gets stacked up in front of the "Trump Legacy." How could they have imagined that fifty years later an American "president" could be called out in the way this one has - and still be talking loudly about how he'd like another run at it. 

And that's the way it is, July 2022.