Word: nixon
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...While going to school at Northwestern University, Blagojevich idolized Nixon, according to friends, frequently defending him during the Watergate scandal. According to a long-time Blagojevich friend, the future governor often found inspiration in Nixon's "me against the world" sensibility. Blagojevich particularly loved the fact that Nixon bounced back after the "you won't have Dick Nixon to kick around anymore" speech after losing the race for California governor...
Blagojevich dismissed Nixon's corruption as par for the political course, asserting (like many Nixon defenders) that the Kennedys did far worse things than anything that happened in Watergate. He admired Nixon for his great ambitions and for his efforts to do big things in office such as the rapproachment with China. As for Watergate, Blagojevich used to say that had the President just burned the tapes, it would have been a footnote in history...
Blagojevich also identified with Nixon's own self-image as a political outsider. Indeed, the young Blagojevich was something of a loner in college, keeping to himself as he traveled daily from his home in Chicago to the Northwestern campus in nearby Evanston. The future governor, says his old friend, was always "aware that he was a bit different from most of the kids on campus, and sort of proud of it. There was without questions an 'I'll show them' edge to him." Several acquaintances and people who graduated the same year as he did were even surprised...
...Watergate scandal, (named after the office building which Republican operatives seeking information to damage Democrats burglarized at the direction of Richard Nixon's White House staff), ended in the only resignation of a President in American history. Although it was ultimately the power of the courts and of the Congress that forced Richard Nixon from office in the middle of his second term, it was the reporting of Woodward and Bernstein that first stymied the efforts of the President's men to cover up the White House involvement in the crime. (See a photo essay on the saga of Mark...
Felt served as a confirming source for many of the scoops produced by the young Washington Post reporters, and his role was critical to the Post's willingness to print incendiary stories about the scandal. As the Post printed scoop after scoop about the scandal, the Nixon White House ratcheted up its threats against the newspaper and its television stations. The fact that a high-level official of the FBI was confirming the stories emboldened the paper's owner Katharine Graham to resist those threats. Felt's motives for helping Woodward (whom Felt had met in the Nixon White House...