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New York Times columnist Bob Herbert says reminders of Watergate have come at a good time:

The trauma of Watergate, which brought down a president who seemed pathologically compelled to deceive, came toward the end of that extended exercise in governmental folly and deceit, Vietnam. Taken together, these two disasters, both of which shook the nation, provided a case study in how citizens should view their government: with extreme skepticism.

Trust, said Ronald Reagan, but verify.

Now, with George W. Bush in charge, the nation is mired in yet another tragic period marked by incompetence, duplicity, bad faith and outright lies coming once again from the very top of the government. Just last month we had the disclosure of a previously secret British government memorandum that offered further confirmation that the American public and the world were spoon-fed bogus information by the Bush administration in the run-up to the invasion of Iraq.

President Bush, as we know, wanted to remove Saddam Hussein through military action. With that in mind, the memo damningly explained, “the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy.”

That’s the kind of deceit that was in play as American men and women were suiting up and marching off to combat at the president’s command. Mr. Bush wanted war, and he got it. Many thousands have died as a result.

From the PERRspectives blog:

Which brings to the Bush White House. Thirty years after Nixon’s resignation, the Bush team is waging a more subtle and successful war against the media. The most paranoid, secretive and vengeful White House since Nixon has sought to create its own news reality through bogus science, fake news, fake reporters, staged events and scripted interviews. Retribution against leakers, whistle-blowers, and objective truth itself is certain, swift and severe. Just ask General Shinseki, Paul O’Neil, Richard Clarke, Richard Foster or Joseph Wilson.

In the wake of the Newsweek fiasco, the uproar over the Amnesty International report, and the unending revelations from Guantanamo Bay, the Bush White House attacks the messenger, just as Nixon did 30 years ago. Scott McClellan argued, “This was a report based on a single anonymous source that could not substantiate the allegation that was made. The report has had serious consequences.” And an “outraged” President Bush merely said the allegations came from “people who hate America, people that had been trained in some instances to disassemble — that means not tell the truth. And so it was an absurd report”.

Robert F. Kennedy once famously said, “Richard Nixon represents the dark side of the American spirit.” Well, RFK never met George W. Bush.