As former Governor and Senator Lowell Weicker of Connecticut crosses the Rainbow Bridge, we cats recall how ordinary the members of the Senate Watergate Committee were 50 years ago this summer.
There weren't any "stars" on the committee — nobody the country would recognize, like Ted Kennedy, Hubert Humphrey or Barry Goldwater. (The Senate did have an obscure young man named Joe Biden at the time, but he wasn't assigned to the Watergate investigation. His drama came almost 20 years later.) Instead, leaders appointed guys who, at the time, were unknown: Ed Gurney from Florida, Dan Inouye from Hawaii, Joe Montoya from New Mexico, Howard Baker from Tennessee, and its chair, Sam Ervin from North Carolina. And, of course, Weicker.
A savvy move. With nobodies like these on the committee, it was harder for Team Nixon to claim that the hearings were partisan, axe-grinding, or merely opportunities to persecute and showboat. And then by the end of the summer, everybody was famous (or in-).
Sadly, Weicker's most memorable moment during the hearings was one in which he was unerringly wrong. Frustrated by the antidemocratic Nixonian dirt that was being revealed, he declared, "Let me make it clear, because I have got to have my partisan moment: Republicans do not cover up; Republicans do not go ahead and threaten; Republicans do not go ahead and commit illegal acts; and, God knows, Republicans don’t view their fellow Americans as enemies to be harassed."
Well, sure they do — Nixon was just a warm-up for Trump. To his credit, Weicker lived long enough to call Benedict Donald "a total con artist." We cats salute him for that, and we PURR.
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