There are of course positive and negatives about the truth.  I do miss having a character on the news that I could look up to and one that teared up on air when the president was shot, but I don’t miss the coffins.  Two distinct memories from childhood are:  1. Our teachers showing us the Watergate hearings and 2.  the bodies of the men killed in action in Vietnam being taken off the planes.  Walter was an early version of E.F. Hutton in our house.  When he spoke no one talked, and as the young men killed in action returned to the United States we cried and prayed for our country.

Odd that despite the scars of the later it was at least honest.  There was a link between what was happening to us as a country and what we were shown on television.  I don’t miss the sadness evoked by the seemingly endless number of slain soldiers being taken from the planes, but I do miss the feeling of being able to trust my government because someone was keeping an eye on them.  For a lot of us Watergate was the end of respecting the presidency,  but as an odd turn of events Watergate reassured us that the powerful were accountable (eventually).  The lesson today is that with enough money, and with an utter absence of morals, there is virtually no limit to how high you can rise.  Even worse than that is that no one is keeping them honest.