Art Buchwald's Hilarious Satire

This is a continuing flashback series into the amazing past when the world was in turmoil with no- nonsense strait-laced communism, led by China and the powerful Marxist Soviet Union. Communism was increasingly seen by the Free World as a worrying dangerous force, both doctrinally and militarily. Thus, the U.S. found itself embroiled in a war against the communists in Vietnam in the bitterly controversial "Viet Nam War". At the same time, in the domestic front, back home in the United States, its popular eloquent president was himself fighting an uphill battle to defend his powerful position in the Oval Office against the opposition Democrats and even some of his own Republicans in their furious pursuit of justice following an illegal covert operation against the Democratic Party by the president's men and the subsequent cover-up by the conspiratorial administration.

The traumatic scandal for Americans was infamously dubbed "Watergate", after the name of the building that was used by the Democratic Party as its campaign headquarters. (Interestingly, Monica Lewingsky, President Bill Clinton's lover, would use one of its apartments as her residence during her exciting internship at the Whitehouse)

Here is an excerpt from Art Buchwald's famous hilarious satirical comments in his best-seller "I Am Not a Crook". Please bear in mind that whatever Brezhnev says in this piece was what the former repressive Marxist Soviet regime's leaders used to commonly practise and encourage in those days.

(Soviet Union President) Brezhnev and Watergate

Communist Party Chief Leonard Brezhnez met with Henry Kissinger recently at the Soviet leader's home outside Moscow. The conversation, naturally got around to the Watergate, and this, in essence, is what was said.

"Gospodin Kissinger, I do not understand all this business about Watergate that is taking place in your country."

"Well, Mr. Brezhnez, it's rather difficult to explain. It appears that members of the President's political party bugged the headquarters of the opposition party."

"What's wrong with that, Gospodin Kissinger? We do it all the time."

"But you have no opposition party."

"That's true. So we bug our own party. You never can tell when our members are up to no good."

"In any case, Mr. Brezhnev, seven men were caught and tried for the crime. One of them confessed that higher members of the President's political party were involved."

"What's wrong with higher members of the President's party finding out what the revisionist counterrevolutionaries are up to?"

"That's the way our people felt about it too. But unfortunately, some newspapermen got wind of the story and started to write about it."

"Why didn't the President put the newspapermen in insane asylums?"

"We cannot do that in the United States, Mr. Brezhnev."

"That's too bad. You cannot have order and discipline in a country if you are unable to put writers in mental institutions."

"That's true. The real problem, though, was that after the Watergate trial, it was revealed that members of the White House staff tried to obstruct justice and try to keep any higher-ups from being implicated."

"Naturally, Gospodin Kissinger. What other choice would they have?"

"In our country the people want to get to the bottom of things. They want to know who is responsible for a crime."

"Even if the president is involved?"

"Yes, sir, even if the president is involved."

"Why didn't President Nixon shoot everyone who had anything to do with Watergate, so that nobody would talk?"

"Some of the people involved were his best friends."

"In the Soviet Union, a leader has no friends. He must do what's right for the people even if it means losing a few bureaucrats."

"We're aware you do have a different system, Mr. Brezhnev, but we must deal with the Constitution. The President has to take responsibility for what his subordinates do, no matter how serious the crime."

"What kind of system of justice is that? The President should torture his subordinates until they confess he has nothing to do with it."

"We've thought of that, but it just wouldn't work in the United States because the Congress would get wind of it and raise a storm."

"Why doesn't the President get the army to arrest Congress?"

"We can't do that, Mr. Brezhnev. The people would never stand for it."

"In our country, we're the people. And we arrest anybody we want to."

"I know, Mr. Brezhnev, I know. Now to get back to your meeting with President Nixon..."

"I'm not sure I want to meet with a world leader who doesn't know how to bug his enemies without getting caught."