OPENING UNDERSTATEMENT: Iran-Contra
has never quite lived up to its potential as a political scandal.
- Watergate fires on all cylinders: a villainous president, a Constitutional Crisis™, a smoking gun, a resignation.
- You can make a pretty good movie about Watergate.
Iran-Contra Paved the Way for Trump to Defy Democratic Norms
A new book argues that Ronald Reagan’s signature scandal foreshadowed today’s sidelining of Congress by the executive branch.
Illustration: Hokyoung Kim for Bloomberg
All
of those hearings and court cases, all those thousands of pages of
testimony and diaries and internal documents have never coalesced into a
memorable political fable.
Sure, some rogue spies and security state
officials were so committed to fighting baddies that they sold a few
weapons and supported a few freedom fighters in ways that may
technically have violated some statutes.
But what was the harm?
It
certainly did no lasting damage to Ronald Reagan’s reputation. The only people who still care about Iran-Contra are history buffs and the civics-obsessed.
The Wall Street Journal
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