Watergate: Now that was a real scandal

Gather around you high-schoolers. Remove those white iPod earbuds, and spare me 10 minutes, please. It’s old-fogy story time.

When I. Lewis “Scooter” Libby, former White House staffer, was charged with five felonies Friday, I felt sorry for you youngsters. Your generation’s presidential scandal is kind of pathetic.

My baby boomer generation lived through a presidential scandal we still reminisce about in a fond way. Allow me to compare the two.

• Our scandal had an excellent name: Watergate. It was named after the Washington, D.C., building where burglars broke into Democratic headquarters on June 17, 1972.

President Richard Nixon, and all the president’s men, lied about their roles in the break-in and ensuing cover-up. Watergate became the shorthand word for corruption.

Subsequent scandals tried to adapt the word. So we had Iran-Contragate in the ‘80s and Monicagate in the ‘90s. But the term never worked that well again. It was like singer Elton John rearranging the words to “Candle in the Wind” to honor Princess Diana when she died. Slightly embarrassing.

Your scandal is called the CIA Leak Investigation. Enough said.

• Our scandal featured glamorous and interesting people. Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein, young and eager reporters, inspired an entire generation of investigative reporters. They had a mystery source with a mysterious name, Deep Throat.

The villains played their parts well, too. One of Nixon’s bad boys, G. Gordon Liddy, was so macho he placed his hand over burning candles to see how long he could stand it.

We also had the handsome John Dean, former White House counsel, and his stoic and beautiful wife, Mo, who sat behind her husband at the Watergate hearings, looking like actress Grace Kelly.

Your scandal features Judith Miller, a New York Times reporter so crabby and arrogant, even her newspaper colleagues wish her ill. And you don’t have any mystery sources with mysterious names.

You have “Official A,” rumored to be White House staffer Karl Rove, who looks as if he would place someone else’s hand over a burning candle to demonstrate his machismo.

Valerie Plame, the CIA agent outed in your scandal, has a great name and good looks, too. But she and her husband lost some of their charm for me by posing for glamour shots in a convertible in Vanity Fair magazine soon after the scandal broke. People didn’t capitalize on their fame so quickly during Watergate; most served their prison terms first.

• Our scandal possessed shock value. In the early 1970s, we still found it hard to believe that a president, and his willing staffers, would go after others out of paranoia and pettiness, and then cover their misdeeds in sinister ways.

Your scandal elicited yawns until the Friday indictment of Scooter. We accept corruption as normal in government now. We expect presidents, vice presidents, Congress and their staffers to lie if needed to retain power.

It’s not just a Republican thing, either. Remember Bill Clinton’s denial during Monicagate? Talk about your candle in the wind.

In “Austin Powers,” the popular spy-spoof movie, Dr. Evil gets transported from the 1960s to the present. He tells his henchman that he will nuke the entire world unless the government pays him $1 million! His henchmen explain to Dr. Evil that $1 million is no big deal anymore.

Your scandal won’t be a big deal for long. Already, the Bush administration is distracting us with bird flu scares and a controversial Supreme Court nominee. Sad to say, the distractions are working.

• Our scandal and your scandal share one thing in common. Both stole something irreplaceable. Watergate stole an inherent respect for those who serve in public office. The CIA leak sped the United States into Iraq, where thousands of lives have been stolen, on both sides of the conflict.

Pathetic.