The Post-Watergate Order is Dying

What Comes Next?

Richard Nixon leaves the White House for the last time (public domain)

It always surprises me how many of the things we take for granted about American government aren’t actually that old. A lot of our system doesn’t date to 1776 or even 1865 — much of the modern system took shape in the 1960s and 1970s. Many of the basic pieces of our political system and social contract date back to this pivotal era:

• The basic healthcare guarantees of Medicare and Medicaid, which keep so many Americans alive and healthy today, date to 1965.
• The Freedom of Information Act, which dictates that American citizens are entitled to information about what their government is doing, passed in 1966.
• The Supreme Court only guaranteed the right to interracial relationships in the Loving v. Virginia case in 1967.
• Environmental regulations that keep our air and water clean date to the early 1970s.
• In fact, some would argue that our country has only been a true democracy — in which every adult, not just men or white people can vote in every election — since the middle of the 1960s.

This period of reform and optimism is usually thought to have ended in the mid-1970s, as the twin blows of Vietnam and Watergate shattered many Americans’ faith in the post-New Deal order. But those messes triggered one last…