Quoted

"The Watergate that we wrote about in The Washington Post from 1972 to 1974 is not Watergate as we know it today. It was only a glimpse into something far worse. By the time he was forced to resign, Nixon had turned his White House, to a remarkable extent, into a criminal enterprise."

- Carl Bernstein and Bob Woodward
"40 Years After Watergate, Nixon Was Far Worse Than We Thought" from The Washington Post

I'm trying to keep from venturing too far down the rabbit hole on Mad Men, but in the past few days I keep wondering whether the general air of foreboding and cynicism creeping into the show is pointing right towards Nixon. There's of course the first-season dealings with his first presidential campaign, and Henry's continued presence has kept Republican politics on the show's periphery in a way that could easily shift into more prominent plot points. I thought all the malaise was going to be about mirroring the decline of New York City as the seventies approach. But the events of the last two episodes suggest that there are also some questions being brought forward about what happens when your success is derived from being complicit in a corrupt enterprise.