Iran Affair Is Higher Drama Than Watergate, but Watergate Had Nixon

The country has not seen anything like it since 1973: televised congressional hearings exposing charges and denials of misdeeds at the highest levels of government.

Both dramas are intensely fascinating. Then it was Watergate. Now it is the Iran- contra affair. Watergate brought down the President and sent his senior aides to prison. The end of the Iran affair has yet to be written, but it is unlikely to be so bleak for its central characters.

The plots of these two morality plays are superficially similar. Both have as their central character the President of the United States. In both, he repeats almost endlessly the same mind-numbing theme: “I did not know what was happening.” In both, congressional investigators interrogate parades of bureaucrats while battalions of media commentators in the wings provide a Greek chorus of antiphonal huzzahs and harrumphs. Meanwhile, off stage, special prosecutors methodically maneuver through more intricately tangled subplots that the televised drama cannot explore.

Both proceedings have had the necessary comic relief. In Watergate it was the Falstaffian former New York City policeman, Tony Ulascewicz, who delighted viewers by explaining that his secret assignments for the White House “plumbers” required so many telephone calls from random pay phones that he carried a bus driver’s coin holder wherever he went. In the Iran-contra affair the award for comedic achievement goes to the panelof well-intentioned contributors to the contra cause who were able to earmark varying levels of donations for specific kinds of munitions and to receive a souvenir photograph, presumably suitable for framing, to commemorate their commitment to Latin American freedom-fighters. To the bemused audience their efforts were a bizarre cross between a survivalists’ Tupperware party and a visit to the National Security Council’s equivalentof a green-stamp catalogue showroom.

Like good mysteries, both plays have kept their audiences somewhat off balance, wondering what will happen next. Will we know “who dun it”? Will a deus ex machina (like Watergate’s John Dean) appear magically on stage to rescue the heroes, whoever they are, from the forces of evil? Will the sleuths discover a smoking gun--the prop that is most predictable in theatrical mysteries but so elusive in real life--so that the audience will know, incontrovertibly, who must shoulder the guilt for the tawdry affair? In Watergate the Nixon tapes provided the key to unlocking the plot, but so far the National Security Council memoranda that survived the shredder have proved a bit less useful.

Beneath the surface, though, these two dramas are different. Watergate was a relatively simple piece. The crimes were common: burglary, perjury, obstruction of justice. The front-line operative, G. Gordon Liddy, was simply burlesque. The main culprits were rather one-dimensional characters: John Mitchell, H. R. Haldeman, John Ehrlichman--gray men whose flaws were so ordinary that they scarcely deserved the starring roles that were thrust upon them. Their chief accuser, the owlish informer Dean, did not have the charisma that his crucial role demanded.

Thus Watergate was largely a play without heroes--except perhaps for special prosecutor Archibald Cox, who was killed off in the first act during the “Saturday Night Massacre,” and the avuncular philosopher, Sen. Sam Ervin, who served as interlocutor--rather than interrogator--during the congressional hearings. In short, Watergate lacked the high melodrama of “Orestes” or “Antigone” or the political intrigue of “Richard II.” Instead, it more resembled a pedestrian crime novel by, say, Margaret Truman or Mickey Spillane.

By contrast, the Iran-contra affair is political and moral theater on a grand scale. As befits an epic tale, much about it is ambiguous and far more difficult to appraise than Watergate. There are fewer bright lines between the good and the bad, at least as the audience sees it. Motives are more complex, the stakes more awesome.

The Iran-contra affair raises issues of deep importance: the battle for freedom from alien oppressors, the importance of a superpower confronting terrorist thugs, the ironic use of deceit to promote the good and the true, the clash between powerful, jealous and mistrustful branches of government, and the struggle for the soul of the President, if not of the nation. We remain uncertain at this point, of course, who fills the role of the Mephistopheles in that struggle, since so many characters are eligible for the part.

The characters themselves are infinitely more interesting than in Watergate, at least those in the witness box. The leading figure is a shadowy Marine Corps officer with beribboned chest and self-righteous mien, who overcame advance billing as the villain of the piece and turned the audience to his side. Playing a major supporting role is an otherwise obscure admiral who furiously puffed his pipe through the scenes in which he resolutely defended the wisdom of protecting his commander-in-chief from the hazards of information. The metaphor was palpable: the destroyer captain laying down a smokescreen to shield the flagship of the convoy from the preying eyes of hostile gunboats (camouflaged to look like congressmen or reporters) heading in harm’s way.

In one of the strangest roles, the long-time Washington insider now serving as the secretary of state ascended the battlement to insist that he always knew that the campaign was ill-advised and repeatedly tried to warn his chief, but that he and his entire diplomatic retinue had been out-flanked by the Marine and the admiral, with the connivance of the person cast as the archfiend--the late director of central intelligence.

Although the CIA director died early on in the present drama, his spirit hangs heavily over the proceedings. All fingers point at him, or at least at his shadow. It was he, according to the secretary of state, who masterminded the chicanery and lured the President and the nation into the morass. Here we are reminded of the treacherous thane of Cawdor, who is executed off stage early in “ Macbeth.” He is never allowed a word in his own defense, and the only good thing that any of the central characters will say about him is that “nothing in his life became him like the leaving of it.”

The most profound difference between these two dramas, however, is the difference between their tragic heroes, Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan. Both swept into second terms with lopsided electoral margins. But few people really liked President Nixon, while even opponents are fond of President Reagan. Most people were quite prepared to assume the worst about Nixon, or indeed even to hope for it. People want to believe in Reagan, even if it means crediting the less sinister explanation for the Iran-contra affair--that he just wasn’t paying attention. How else can one explain why Nixon was forced to cede his office while the contemporary audience, even though it doubts Reagan’s explanation, supports his presidency and would endorse pardons for the suspects?

Although the final curtain has yet to descend on the Iran-contra affair, its ending will be more upbeat for the main characters than Watergate was. Few if any will see the inside of a prison cell. Unless there is a last-minute plot twist that no one foresees, Ronald Reagan will safely exit stage right, with alarums and excursions.