Watergate: A New History

by Garrett M. Graff

California representative Jerome Waldie for his turn concluded, “Common sense tells you that a President of the United States does not condemn the payment of over $400,000 to seven people occupying a D.C. jail because they have committed a burglary unless he wants something from them,” and Virginia Republican Caldwell Butler spoke, sadly, about the state of the presidency and the nation, saying that he would vote to impeach, “but there will be no joy in it for me.” The gangly, good-natured Butler had been a strong Nixonite—supporting the candidate throughout his campaigns and earning his own congressional seat on the president’s coattails in the ’72 landslide. “For years we Republicans have campaigned against corruption and misconduct,” he had told the committee, “but Watergate is our shame.” Syndicated columnist Mary McGrory, who would win a Pulitzer for her columns covering the impeachment, called Butler’s words “the single most fiery and liberating sentence spoken” throughout the Watergate investigations, as Butler became “the first Republican to slash the comforting myth that somebody else, of unknown party origin, was to blame.” Drafting