水门事件：美国总统被扳倒
原标题：Watergate
视频首发于 2021 年 5 月 24 日
The most famous political scandal in American history is, of course, Watergate. It’s so famous that even now, 50 years after it happened, almost every scandal of any kind comes with an obligatory “gate” after it.
美国史上最著名的政治丑闻当属水门事件。它著名到即便在今天，事发 50 年后，几乎任何种类丑闻都习惯性地加上后缀「门」。
If you ask most people to explain what Watergate was all about, they draw a blank. If they know a bit of history, or perhaps they lived through it, they might say something like this: “It was about a bungled break-in that brought down a president.” That’s true. But the break-in is the least significant part of the story.
如果你让多数人解释水门事件到底是怎么回事，他们都会毫无头绪。如果他们稍微了解一点历史，或可能经历过这次事件，他们也许这样说：「一次拙劣的非法闯入扳倒了总统。」这没错。但非法闯入是这次事件最不重要的部分。
Watergate was, first and foremost, a political war between the president, Richard Nixon, and the media, which in those pre-cable days meant ABC, CBS, NBC, the New York Times, and the Washington Post. The media’s aim, in the words of British historian Paul Johnson, “was to use publicity to reverse the electoral verdict of 1972.”
水门事件首先是一场政治战争，发生在理查德·尼克松总统与媒体之间，在前有线电视时期意味着 ABC、CBS、NBC、《纽约时报》与《华盛顿邮报》。媒体的目标，用英国历史学家保罗·约翰逊的话说，是「用宣传手段扭转 1972 年的选举结果。」
Why? What did the media have against Nixon? That’s a complex question, but we can essentially boil it down to three things: 1. He was despised by the East Coast liberal elite, of which the Washington press corps was a key component. 2. He was a staunch anti-communist. The media considered the communist threat to be overblown. 3. He refused to abandon South Vietnam. Nixon insisted on “a peace with honor.” The media was entirely “anti-war.”
为什么？为什么媒体反对尼克松？这是个复杂的问题，但我们能基本上简化成三点：1. 他被东海岸自由左派精英鄙视，而他们把持了相当大部分华盛顿媒体。2. 他坚定反贡，而媒体认为贡主义的威胁被过分夸大了。3. 他拒绝抛弃南越。尼克松坚持「光荣的和平」，而媒体几乎都「反战」。
Even though Nixon spent most of his adult life in New York and Washington, he never fit in. Born in a small town in California, there were no Ivy League degrees on his resume. To make matters worse, while not being part of McCarthyism, he made his reputation aggressively exposing Alger Hiss, a communist in the U.S. State Department in the late 1940s. After serving as vice president under Dwight Eisenhower for eight years, he ran against and nearly defeated John F. Kennedy, the paragon of East Coast elitism in 1960.
虽然尼克松成年后的生活大多在纽约和华盛顿度过，他从未适应。他出生于加州一个小镇，简历上没有常青藤的经历。更糟的是，虽然没有参与麦卡锡主义，但他在 1940 年代晚期由于积极曝光美国国务院的共主义者阿尔杰·希斯而知名。当了八年德怀特·艾森豪威尔的副总统后，他竞选总统，差点打败约翰·F 肯尼迪，这位 1960 年东海岸精英主义的典型代表。
Then, eight years later, and much to the media’s dismay, Nixon mounted an improbable political comeback to win that year’s presidential election. And then, as if rubbing the media’s nose in it, he won again in a 49-state landslide in 1972.
接着在八年后，让媒体特别失望的是，尼克松发起了难以置信的二次挑战并赢得当年的总统选举。之后，就像是为了让媒体难堪似的，1972 年他又以 49 州的压倒性优势当选。
Something had to be done. Ironically, Nixon’s own people provided the opportunity the media had been waiting for. On June 17, 1972, five men associated with the Nixon re-election campaign broke into the offices of the Democratic National Committee headquarters in the Watergate office building in Washington, D.C. Presumably, they intended to gather information about the Democrats’ campaign strategy. Whatever their purpose, it was a painfully dumb plan that turned catastrophic when the burglars were caught in the act and arrested by D.C. police.
必须做点什么了。讽刺的是，尼克松自己的人给了等待已久的媒体机会。1972 年 6 月 17 号，与尼克松连任竞选团队有联系的五人闯进位于华盛顿特区水门综合大厦的民主党全国委员会，他们的目的可能是收集民主党的竞选策略。不管他们的意图是什么，这个愚蠢至极的计划结果是灾难的，窃贼们被华盛顿特区警察当场抓获。
Nixon found out about it—like everyone else—in the morning papers. Initially, he didn’t think it was a big deal. “I had been in politics too long,” he later wrote, “and had seen everything from dirty tricks to vote fraud. I could not muster much moral outrage over a political bugging.”
尼克松，就像任何人一样，是在晨间新闻报纸上看到这件事。起初他不觉得这是件大事。「我涉足政坛太久了，」他后来写道：「见过从肮脏手段到选举欺诈各种各样的事。我不会对一次政治窃听有多少道德愤慨。」
Today, most would conclude that if he had simply acknowledged his campaign’s responsibility—“owned it,” as we say, fired those responsible, and apologized, the whole sorry mess would have been rendered the minor incident it was. But, as historian Evan Thomas noted, Nixon “wasn’t paying attention and when he was confronted with the problems below deck, he didn’t really engage… by the time he did, it was too late.”
今天，许多人会得出结论，假如他简单地承认他竞选团队的责任——「认栽，」正如我们说的，解雇涉事人员并且道歉，一切就会大事化小。但是，如历史学家伊凡·托马斯指出，尼克松「没有太在意，他本来可以在台面下解决这个问题，他并不怎么上心......等他这么做的时候，一切已经太迟了。」
So the scandal grew beyond his control. Three men made sure of that: a publicity-seeking judge, a revenge-seeking FBI official, and a partisan special prosecutor.
于是这场丑闻发展得超出他的控制。有三个人功劳最大：一个渴望名声的法官，一个渴望复仇的 FBI 官员与一个党派意识强的特别检察官。
The judge was John Sirica. Suspecting a vast conspiracy, Sirica threatened the burglars with lifetime prison sentences if they didn’t rat out the people who authorized the crime. The media loved Sirica. For a time, he was the most famous jurist in the country.
法官是约翰·希来卡。希来卡怀疑有巨大阴谋，他以终身监禁威胁窃贼们，要他们揭发授权这次行动的人。媒体爱希来卡。他一度成为全国最知名的法官。
The vengeful official was FBI Deputy Director Mark Felt, known by his code name “Deep Throat.” Felt thought that he deserved to become head of the FBI, but Nixon appointed someone else. So Felt leaked a steady stream of tips to the Washington Post writing team of Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein. Meeting secretly, he told them where to look and what questions to ask. Without him, the duo would have gotten nowhere. Because of him, they became folk heroes.
渴望复仇的官员是 FBI 副局长马克·费尔特，更为人熟知的是他的代号「深喉」。费尔特认为自己应该成为 FBI 局长，但尼克松任命了别人。因此他源源不断地泄露消息给《华盛顿邮报》写作团队的鲍勃·伍德沃德和卡尔·伯恩斯坦。秘密会见，他告诉他们调查哪里，问什么问题。没有他，这双人组只会一无所获。因为他，他们成了民间英雄。
With Sirica applying pressure from the bench and Felt from inside the FBI, the White House defenses began to weaken, then crack, and then shatter. Special Prosecutor Archibald Cox piled on, appointing 34 Democrat lawyers to investigate nearly every aspect of the Nixon administration.
希来卡从法庭上施压，而费尔特从 FBI 内部施压，白宫的辩护开始变弱，接着破裂，并最终粉碎。特别检察官阿奇博德·考克斯再加码，任命了 34 个民主党律师调查尼克松政府的几乎所有方面。
In April 1973, White House Counsel John Dean, the “chief desk officer” of the cover up, turned on his boss, testifying against the president in Senate hearings before a huge national TV audience. As the political jeopardy grew, Nixon naturally became more involved. One biographer wrote, “To Nixon, this was all routine hardball…” But really, this was quicksand: the more he struggled, the deeper he sank. He was caught in the cover-up.
1973 年 4 月，白宫顾问约翰·迪恩，这场掩盖行动的「首席事务官」背叛了他的上司，在参议院听证会上，庞大TV电视观众面前，作证反对总统。这场政治危机愈演愈烈，尼克松自然更加牵涉其中。一名传记作者写道：「对尼克松来说，这不过是一场硬仗……」但其实这是流沙：他越挣扎，就陷得越深。他掩盖真相被抓住了。
When it emerged that many of Nixon’s private conversations were recorded, his fate was sealed. Citing executive privilege, he tried to keep the tapes from Sirica and Congress. On July 24, 1974, the Supreme Court ruled against the president.
当尼克松的许多私人录音被公开，他的命运就注定了。他以行政特权为由，试图向希来卡与国会隐藏这些录音。1974 年 7 月 24 号，最高法院判总统败诉。
The support of Republican senators far from assured, and deeply concerned that an impeachment trial would paralyze the country in the middle of the Cold War, Nixon was boxed in. He resigned from office on August 9, the first and only president to do so.
共和党参议员对总统的支持远非牢固，而且他们深深担忧弹劾审判将让这个处于冷战中的国家瘫痪，尼克松陷入了困境。他于 8 月 9 号辞职，是第一位也是唯一这么做的总统。
The media had its victory. And a newfound sense of power.
媒体赢了。并且得到了新权力。
The country has not been the same since.
这个国家自此已不复往日。
I’m Hugh Hewitt for Prager University.
我是休·休伊特，为 PragerU 制作。
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