Carla Carlisle: 'Nixon had a conscience. He experienced shame. I doubt if Trump does'

My new job is dog-sitting for my grand-dog Merlin, a 14-month-old wire-haired vizsla who has the bone structure of a kangaroo. His parents can’t WFH, so Merlin spends his days with us. The

resident Old Dog practices labradorial transcendental meditation in the presence of the charismatic Young Dog.

Providing day care for Merlin has activated feelings long overdue. When I moved to Paris in my twenties, I deposited most of my worldly goods in my parents’ basement, including all my

chattels with US voltage — typewriter, stereo, coffee grinder — and boxes of photographs, old letters, diplomas, books, worn copies of the anti-war newspaper I’d edited. I also left my dog.

The decision to leave the country was impetuous. I didn’t speak French, I didn’t have a trust fund, and, despite a university degree, I lacked any ‘vital skills’. Abandoning my two-year-old

Weimaraner was irresponsible. I look back on my parents’ willingness to adopt their grand-dog with late-in-life gratitude.

They were bewildered, but tolerant when I announced my decision to move to Paris when Nixon resigned. The new chapter in the history of the country felt like a good time to start a new

chapter in my life.

My parents became devoted to my dog, but they were less attached to my stuff. Every trip home, my mother would urge me to edit the boxes. Over the years, I gave my typewriter and stereo to

nephews, consigned the newspapers to recycling and ditched letters of doubtful historical interest. During one exorcism of stuff, I pulled out a stiff grey _objet d’art_ 12in by 18in and put

it in the bottom of my suitcase. Two decades later, I got it framed. A couple of weeks ago, I hung it on the wall above my desk.

From a distance, it looks like Minimalist art in a shade that Farrow & Ball might call Lonesome Dove. Close up, you can make out the letters. At the top in Old Gothic font: _The

Washington Post_. Below in bold 2in-tall letters: NIXON RESIGNS.

The technical word for my relic is ‘flong’, the relief impression created from the handset metal type that, for 300 years, was how newspapers were printed. I didn’t know the legendary team

of Watergate reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — I was a lowly ‘stringer’ — but from my school days hanging out at the local town paper, I’d loved the sounds and smells of the print

room, admired the speed and skill of printers. When Nixon resigned on August 9, 1974, one of the _Post_’s printers presented me with the historical flong because it was my birthday. I saved

it for 50 years because it felt like a piece of history: Nixon’s and mine.

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If I thought the French would be aglow with admiration for the legendary Watergate reporters, I was wrong. The French thought Nixon’s resignation preposterous and petty, the saga of

Watergate proof that Americans are puritanical and politically naïve.

The English had a different concept of justice. I believe they had the advantage of Alistair Cooke’s _Letter from America_. His broadcasts on Watergate are unmatched. With perfect pitch,

clarity and detail, he records history as it unfolds. From his letter of September 17, 1972, he began his account of June 17, when five men with cameras and bugging equipment were caught

burgling the offices of the Democratic National Committee in the building complex known as the Watergate. The leader of the bungled raid was a former employee of the CIA. Cooke may have been

slow to pick up on the story, but he stayed with the elephantine unfolding over the next two years, making dozens of broadcasts. He didn’t stop with the one and only resignation of an

American president. Twenty years later, he covered the funeral of Nixon. Last week, roaming around iPlayer, I found Cooke’s broadcast on the 25th anniversary of Watergate. I listened in

amazement.

I probably sound like a ‘Watergate junkie’, obsessed with every detail of the biggest political scandal of the 20th century. I’m not. I’m bemused the word has become the moniker for every

scandal — ‘partygate’, ‘beergate’ — but I haven’t wallowed in Watergate. Last week, however, I froze when I heard a familiar American voice on Radio 4’s _Today_. It was the anniversary of

the event and the interviewee was drawing a line from the Watergate break-in of 1972 to the insurrection at the US Capitol in 2021. It was John Dean, who had been recruited from the Justice

Department to the Nixon White House as a legal counsel. Mr Dean was 31 years old when he publicly turned against Nixon by testifying to the Senate Watergate committee, accusing the President

of being directly involved in the cover-up. Fifty years later, I listened to him saying he has never been more concerned about US democracy than he is now because ‘the country is more

polarised today than it was during Watergate and Fox News feeds that polarisation’.

Most evenings, my husband and I watch the January 6 hearings on CNN. It feels like a reincarnation of my parents watching the Watergate hearings. I can almost hear the tinkle of ice in their

bourbon and water. Each night I say ‘Trump’s behaviour eclipses Nixon’s’. Each night, my husband replies: ‘The root of their sins is the same: to undermine elections in a democracy.’

For days I’ve lamented that there is no Mr Dean, no one of conscience with the courage to speak truth. Then it came: the 25- year-old former aide to Mr Trump’s Chief of Staff. Cassidy

Hutchinson’s testimony was as powerful and shocking as Mr Dean’s 50 years earlier. Her testimony might not change history, but with her calm, precise and courageous testimony, history

rhymed.

Another thing Mr Dean said on _Today_. ‘Nixon had a conscience. He experienced shame. I doubt if Trump does.’ We never really know who is capable of shame, but when any man — or woman — is

determined to stay in power whatever the electorate says, democracy may be given up for lost. It’s a truth worth hanging on the wall.