Watergate Exposed

I recently finished watching the five-part HBO mini-series White House Plumbers. It's a "comed-ization" of the Watergate scandal, centered on political operatives Howard Hunt and G. Gordon Liddy, who planned the break-in.

I have often wondered about Watergate whether you simply "had to be there" -- alive at the time -- to fully understand it. It has always felt to me like a Byzantine conspiracy that an unstable person would map out on a wall with lots of red string. Moreover, every account of Watergate I've ever come across feels like it's presuming some knowledge already in the audience. It's a large part of why the critically acclaimed All the President's Men left me cold.

In White House Plumbers, I now have a version of Watergate that, while not "the whole story," certainly makes a large part of the story crystal clear. Best of all, it makes clear that Watergate isn't actually complicated at all. In truth, it's an incredibly stupid story, of stupid people making stupid decisions for stupid reasons, leading to stupid outcomes. It's so stupid!

Now, of course, some artistic license is being taken here in this telling of the story. White House Plumbers is definitely meant to be satirical. It tells you directly at the end of each episode that some of what you've just seen might not have happened exactly the way you just saw it. But it's not all exaggerations and mirth; there is a foundation of truth here. And that truth is: all this was so stupid! Over the course of five episodes, White House Plumbers shows you incompetence at a champion level, from people so blindly certain of their righteousness that it clouds whatever tiny capacity for intelligent thought they might have.

Needless to say, this mini-series feels very much in conversation with the present day. Dialogue is finely crafted in just the right way to make sure the audience sees this story giving them a knowing wink. "It was ever thus," seems to be the message. You think modern political scandals are just so dumb, and they don't make them like they used to? Wrong. Every political scandal you've ever heard of (that isn't feverish fantasy), you've heard of because people involved in it were this stupid. Stupid enough to do something so basic, stupid enough to leave undeniable evidence of doing it. Yes, White House Plumbers, I see what you're saying.

The actors in this mini-series know exactly what way they're telling this story. Justin Theroux gets the spotlight as G. Gordon Liddy, portraying a cartoon fascist with an unwavering moral compass (that never functioned). Doing more subtle work (but only by comparison) is Woody Harrelson as Howard Hunt, who thinks he's the much-put-upon "brains of the operation" (again, only by comparison). Lena Headey channels much of Cersei, her Game of Thrones character, in this role as Dorothy Hunt -- the wife of Howard, who must increasingly to step in and do what the dumb men in her life are incapable of doing. And along the way are more fun performances in roles of various sizes, from Judy Greer, Domhnall Gleeson, Gary Cole, Ike Barinholtz, Kathleen Turner, and many, many more.

I give White House Plumbers a B+. It may take some liberties, but not at the expense of anyone who deserves otherwise. It makes fun of history, and in doing so makes history fun.