A Glossary of 'Watargot'
MARGOLIS, RICHARD J.
States of the Union A GLOSSARY OF WATARGOT BY RICHARD J. MARGOLIS Many Americans have complained that they do not understand the Watergate affair. "Too complicated," says an Omaha retailer....
...An adjective commonly used by persons desperate to describe White House behavior visa-vis the Congress, the judicial system, the electorate, and the Washington Post...
...Poor Forbes bolted out and booked passage on the first ship to Europe...
...Preventive detention...
...A charming form of government, full of variety and disorder" (Plato...
...I had a modest hand in the mischief," she might say today...
...Makes me dizzy," whimpers a homemaker from Little Rock...
...If we had known how to decode former Attorney General John N. Mitchell's many tributes to wiretapping, we might have intervened in time...
...When corruption is discovered, the embarrassed political leaders generally point an accusing finger at the opposition...
...Many people thought it clever of the Times to have found that Biblical bit of relevance...
...The set of 11 articles of impeachment which the House framed fin 1868]," notes historian John M. Blum, "was a rambling, tautological...
...The vote on Johnson was 35-19, one short of dismissal...
...The feature she lists first: "Excellent security...
...Credit Mobilier, Teapot Dome, Watergate...
...anything that restrains a flood or outpouring...
...She apparently means to confess it was she who wrote the falsely signed love letters to Sir Lucius O'Trigger...
...And Ezra the priest brought the law before the congregation both of men and women...
...The New York Times oped page of April 28 featured the following passage from Nehemiah: "And all the people gathered themselves together as one man into the street that was before the water gate...
...In the same speech the President called Elliot Richardson "a man of unimpeachable integrity," by which he meant that under no circumstances should Richardson be impeached...
...A gate used to control the flow of a body of water...
...John Maurice Clark, a lady from Westport, Connecticut, and an aunt of Mrs...
...Impeach, impeachment, unimpeachable...
...e.g...
...In his view, we now know, "most recognized law enforcement experts" meant the Republican party, while "this organized criminal syndicate" was shorthand for the Democrats...
...Study this easy-to-read guide 10 minutes every night before going to sleep...
...On August 13, 1969, in a speech to the American Bar Association, Mitchell declared, "Most recognized law enforcement experts have repeatedly stated that wiretapping is our most useful tool in obtaining information about this organized criminal syndicate...
...Each tribe was assigned work on a different section of the wall...
...In impeachment proceedings, the House indicts and the Senate, by a two-thirds majority, can convict...
...Paine did not specifically cite the Watergate coverup...
...See arrogant, above...
...An awkward means of getting at some awkward truths...
...Let me make one thing perfectly clear: Watergate is not hard to understand...
...confused indictment...
...She explained: "It was just after the Babylonian captivity...
...Impeach" comes from the Latin, impedicare, meaning to tangle one's feet, or put in fetters...
...Water gate...
...It is with a pious fraud as with a bad action," observed Thomas Paine, "it begets a calamitous necessity of going on...
...Some alternatives that come to mind include: self-righteous, insolent, pompous, sanctimonious, high-handed, holier-than-thou, canting, tartuffian (not recommended), unctuous, and mealy-mouthed...
...Room rates range from $30-$ 140 a day (for the Presidential Suite...
...Jessup, in turn, was indebted to Mrs...
...Jessup...
...The wall had to be rebuilt and so did the water system...
...Guilt is personal and corruption knows no party...
...Most commonly corrupted by the insolence of demagogues" (Aristotle...
...Arrogant...
...Occasionally this private, local foible becomes a public, national affair...
...T am indebted to Mary Lou Tardio, a consultant to the hotel, for the following advice: "Do please avoid the cliches and incorrect data that have appeared . . . during the past five years, i.e., that Watergate is a 'Republican stronghold.' I know there are as many (if not more) Democrats as Republicans living here...
...The sequence was clearly coincidental...
...So all the people gathered at the water gate to hear Ezra read the Laws of Moses...
...Nixon said something similar April 30 when he accepted the responsibility for Watergate but not the blame...
...Also, a nagging weakness best kept to oneself...
...Recently I telephoned Mrs...
...There are crooks in every community and in every party," thundered Harding's former secretary of state, Charles Evans Hughes, as he surveyed the wreckage of Teapot Dome, ". . . Let wrongs be exposed and punished, but let not partisan Pecksniffs affect 'a holier than thou' attitude...
...As Mrs...
...Malaprop makes this peculiar announcement: "I own the soft impeachment...
...Cyrus-that benevolent Persian monarch-had told Nehemiah he could lead his people back to Palestine...
...As it happened, the pool was located near the huge square in front of the Temple...
...The bewildered citizen is deprived of pleasures he might have deposited in his memory bank against a leaner, less chicaning era...
...Democracy...
...Richard Nixon, in his televised confession last month, said much the same thing...
...Our investigations," Will Rogers observed, "have always contributed more to our amusement than they have to our knowledge...
...he intoned, displaying an uncanny felicity of speech, "do not make a right...
...Two insights per night or your money back...
...Well, when they reached Jerusalem, things were in a bad state...
...Pious fraud" is effective if not overdone...
...The words have different meanings for different persons on different occasions...
...Belknap escaped conviction when certain Senators argued that their chamber lacked jurisdiction in the case...
...When Warren Gamaliel Harding learned that his Veterans Bureau director, Charles Forbes, had been shamelessly robbing the Federal treasury, he summoned the culprit to the White House and shook him, according to a witness, "as a dog would a rat...
...He referred darkly to "campaign excesses" on both sides...
...Investigations...
...Then the President of the United States confesses he has been the last to hear about it...
...It "represented only a venemous effort of the Radicals to depose a President who hated and opposed them...
...I think it's pertinent, don't you...
...Miss Tardio says, "The complex offers a number of advantages for the person living alone...
...Its target this time was a member of the Grant Administration, Secretary of War William W. Belknap, who had accepted annual bribes from traders at Indian posts in the West...
...Once you have grasped the basic vocabulary-the "watargot," if you will— everything else falls into place...
...A modern crime-fighting technique, tirelessly promoted by the present Administration, that could have saved us from the Watergate mess...
...It's a shame...
...A sleek hotel, apartment and office complex eight blocks from the White House...
...The next day Congressman John E. Moss of Pennsylvania urged House Democratic leaders to open a formal inquiry into the possible impeachment of Nixon...
...Corruption...
...For example, in Sheridan's play, The Rivals, Mrs...
...Eight years after the Johnson affair, the House again indulged in impeachment dreams...
...When making predictions about impeachment, however, one should not rely on history...
...Clark and asked her how a water gate had slipped into the Bible...
...People who choose this word continually grope for a better one...
...In free-enterprise democracies, a bedrock of the human condition...
...Of all our Presidents only the bootless Andrew Johnson was ever thus entangled, and most historians agree it was a frameup...
...Malaprop remarked, "We will not anticipate the past...
...It is simply a matter of getting the semantics straight...
...It should be enunciated with a rising inflection, as in "They're so Arrogant...
...Two wrongs...
...Unfortunately, the editors forgot to mention that their memories were jogged by John Knox Jessup, the erudite CBS commentator, who had cited the same passage four days earlier...
...One part was near the Pool of Siloam, and that's where they built the water gate, to allow the water to flow into the city...
...Accordingly, and as a public service, I have compiled a simple Watergate glossary guaranteed to bring instant understanding...
Vol. 56 • May 1973 • No. 11
