as he writes in The Atlantic in a piece titled Five Reasons Why the Comey Affair Is Worse Than Watergate.
Fallows had joined the staff of Washington Monthly upon leaving graduate school in 1972, and thus
Over the next two years, until Richard Nixon’s resignation, I was living in D.C. and tracking the daily progress in clue-following and domino-toppling via stories in The Washington Post and elsewhere—and then the riveting, televised Watergate hearings...
which as he notes made national figures of “Senator Sam” Erving, Howard Baker, John Dean, and others. He writes of that time
Anyone of conscious age in that time can probably remember the jolts to national sentiment that the near-daily revelations evoked.
Perhaps some who like Fallows and me lived through those times can look at idea of “near-daily revelations” and find some similarities with our time.
Fallows decided to examine current events, especially post-Comey firing, and compare them with that time 40+ years ago:
As with anything involving Donald Trump, we have no idea where this will lead, what is “true,” and when the next bombshell will go off.
But based simply on what is known so far, this scandal looks worse than Watergate. Worse for and about the president. Worse for the overall national interest. Worse in what it suggests about the American democratic system’s ability to defend itself.