Watergate
Richard Nixon, the only president ever to resign, left office 40 years ago this Saturday. The scandal that brought down his presidency began as a burglary at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate Hotel. Nixon’s re-election campaign committee, CREEP, had bankrolled the break-in. In the aftermath of Watergate, Congress put limits on wealthy campaign contributors, barred corporate donations to politicians and required public disclosure of campaign funding and spending. Today, however, the Supreme Court has dismantled many of the post-Watergate campaign finance reforms. The undoing of the decades-old laws began in 2010 with the court’s disastrous decision in Citizens United vs. the Federal Election Commission. The losing party in that case, the FEC, was created by Congress in 1975, one year after Nixon resigned in shame.
Sen. Bernie Sanders and others have proposed amending the Constitution to reverse the Citizens United rulings and others in its wake that have gutted the post-Watergate campaign finance laws. The Senate in September will vote on a constitutional amendment on campaign funding. “When large corporations and a few wealthy families can spend unlimited sums of money to buy and sell politicians, it is now clear to most Americans that the foundation of American democracy is under severe attack,” he wrote in an essay for The Progressive magazine.
