The Summer of '73

In the Summer of 1973, I was 13 years old. Like most 13 year-old American boys then (and, I reckon, now), I planned to spend my summer vacation swimming, playing baseball, riding my bicycle, and developing a crush on a girl I would never have the courage to speak to. The farthest thing from my mind was H. L. Mencken's acerbic aphorism that "Every decent man is ashamed of the government he lives under." As fate would have it, however, my summertime fascinations would not be limited to athletics and girls. Indeed, by September, I would find myself well on the road to Mencken's idea of decency.

Two interventions took place during the Summer of '73 that determined the course of my personal and political development. The first intervention was the televised hearings of the U. S. Senate's Watergate Committee.

I had been disappointed the previous year when George McGovern's Presidential bid had fizzled out (watching the televised speeches at the Democratic convention had won me over to the idea that the Democratic Party was the party of peace, fairness, and positive change). Even so, I had also managed to convince myself that Nixon's landslide victory in the Fall elections was an expression of the inscrutable wisdom of the American people. Moreover, I suspected that the hearings themselves were motivated by sour grapes. Why couldn't the Democrats simply accept the will of the electorate and try to work with the President to accomplish his ambitious agenda (continuing to thaw the Cold War, dealing with OPEC, ending the Viet Nam war "with honor," etc.)? Remember: I was 13. I also assumed, as so many Americans do, that only those of the highest moral character are chosen to occupy the Oval Office. As a consequence, I dedicated several hours each day to viewing the hearings, caught up in the unfolding drama, but also confident that the trail of evidence would run cold as it approached 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I clung to that simple faith right up to the moment that John W. Dean began his devastating testimony...

Later that Summer, the second intervention occurred. As I prepared to leave with my family for a holiday in New Hampshire, I searched our bookshelves for something to read that would reflect both a New England sensibility and also a "classically" American sensibility--one of which I could be proud. I settled on Thoreau's Walden, a book that I had never before considered reading, but that quickly became a kind of secular Scripture for me, and has remained so ever since.