Going "Deep" and Stooping Too Low

You know the conservatives are thinking with their talking points instead of their brains when they start bashing Mark Felt, the former FBI official who has been exposed as "Deep Throat," Bob Woodward's fabled source for his Watergate coverage. I can't tell you how my heart lept when we got the definitive answer. I thought it was going to be like Jackie Kennedy's papers and I was going to die before we found out the truth. There's been a lot of speculation over the years, but there's no thrill like finding out for sure. It's a 30 year-old mystery and we have the answer. Sheesh! We still don't know even who D.B. Cooper was and what happened to the money. This is cool!

But not for the conservatives. Beyond all reason, they still feel the need to defend a Republican administration that symbolizes corruption, greed, and the worst in politics. Nobody ever talks about the Republicans as "The Great Party of Richard Nixon" and rightly so. The best thing they can do is agree that this chapter of our history was a horrible embarrassment and we're lucky we all survived. We were all much kinder about Nixon's legacy than he deserved when he died. Both the right and the left can declare "no harm, no foul" and move the hell on.

Instead, they trot out such pillars of Republican credibility as G. Gordon Liddy (total wing-nut and convicted felon who led the Watergate team of burglars) and Charles Colson (former Nixon advisor who was supposedly "born again" in prison but apparently gained no wisdom) to tell the rest of us what a criminal Felt was and is. Another example of how "good Republican soldiers" can't look beyond the talking points to see what was at stake and the risks Felt took on all of our behalf.

Recently, I expressed amazement that Felt appeared to be driven by hurt ego because he was passed over for the FBI Director's job and not out of patriotism, but I was straightened out quickly by a friend who asked, "Well, really, who did he work for?" He was right...Felt may have been pissed about losing out on a promotion, but he also watched as Nixon crony and appointee Patrick Gray ordered agents to destroy evidence so that Nixon could avoid prosecution. He saw the FBI's endangered status and reputation and he couldn't stand by and watch. It may have begun as a personal issue, but ultimately Felt's actions served a much larger constituency. That's more than we can say about the veritable sieve that is Washington, D.C. today. Anonymous sources abound, leaks are rampant and no one is thinking about the big picture.

So,thank you Mr. Felt. No matter what your motives were, the nation is better off because of you and I am grateful. You aided justice in a time when we thought there never would be any. Bravo!