From Watergate to January 6th – How much has America changed? by Joel Wong

If I were a political science professor, I would surely assign my students to compare and contrast two constitutional crises that happened in recent times – the Watergate and the January 6th incident.

On June 17, 1972, a political crime, often characterized as “a third-rate burglary”, ballooned into a major political scandal known as “Watergate”. The Watergate break-in was part of a massive campaign of political spying and sabotage on behalf of the Nixon re-election committee.

Almost exactly 50 years later, on January 6, 2021, following Donald Trump’s defeat in the 2020 presidential election, an unruly mob of his supporters attacked the Capitol Building in Washington, D.C. in an attempt to keep Trump in power by preventing a joint session of Congress from counting the electoral college votes to formalize the victory of President-elect Joe Biden. Vice-President Mike Pence and practically all the Congressional members from both sides of the aisles escaped to safe havens, just in time to avoid serious bodily harm. In the process several capitol police officers were seriously harmed and some eventually died because of this incident.

The former event was a secretive and illegal attempt to steal information by the Republicans to gain advantage in the pending Presidential election. The latter was an outright attempt to prevent congress from formally verifying the vote counts to formalize the Presidential election results. In both cases, the Republicans circled their wagons around their respective Presidents to protect their party and further their partisan interests.

I think the comparison ended right there. In the former case, there were enough Republicans who put our country’s interest first and foremost to eventually force President Nixon to resign. In the latter case the drama is still being played out as most if not all Republicans still circle their wagons to protect former President Trump and their own interests. Many Trump followers are still deluded to claim that the “Election Was Stolen”

I am sure that my “students” will find a lot of good, interesting and relevant materials to complete their assignments.

• Anti-Asian Hate;
• Contribution of Asian Americans to our country;
• and, Improving the US-China Relationship.