Earlier today, Glenn Reynolds linked to Ben Stein's rather grim "what-if" reflections on Watergate and the Deep Throat fallout:

When his enemies brought him down, and they had been laying for him since he proved that Alger Hiss was a traitor, since Alger Hiss was their fair-haired boy, this is what they bought for themselves in the Kharma Supermarket that is life:

1.) The defeat of the South Vietnamese government with decades of death and hardship for the people of Vietnam.

2.) The assumption of power in Cambodia by the bloodiest government of all time, the Khmer Rouge, who killed a third of their own people, often by making children beat their own parents to death. No one doubts RN would never have let this happen.

So, this is the great boast of the enemies of Richard Nixon, including Mark Felt: they made the conditions necessary for the Cambodian genocide. If there is such a thing as kharma, if there is such a thing as justice in this life of the next, Mark Felt has bought himself the worst future of any man on this earth. And Bob Woodward is right behind him, with Ben Bradlee bringing up the rear. Out of their smug arrogance and contempt, they hatched the worst nightmare imaginable: genocide. I hope they are happy now -- because their future looks pretty bleak to me.

....I don't see any reason to think that events in Cambodia would have gone differently had Nixon finished his term.

However, Henry Kissinger and others have complained about a post-Watergate malaise as a reason for American paralysis -- not just in Cambodia, but in other places around the world. That includes the Iranian hostage mess (which sowed the seeds for today's predicament).

See my earlier related posts.

I don't need Kissinger's or anyone else's opinion as confirmation, though, because remember the post-Watergate malaise quite well. I reached adulthood right in the middle of it. And while I think it's problematic to attribute specific historical events to Watergate, there is little question in my mind that but for Watergate, there'd have been no post-Watergate malaise. Hell, I think that but for Watergate (which led to directly to that peculiar arrogance which sprang quite understandably from post-Watergate media triumphalism), there might not have been talk radio. And but for talk radio, there might not have even been a blogosphere. (Which means that some good did come from the post-Watergate malaise.)

One thing is for certain: but for Watergate, I would not be writing this post.

(Just don't ask me to write an alternative history, OK?)

MORE: Commenter Clint raises the distinction between the post-Watergate and post-Vietnam malaise. A good argument can be made that Watergate was seen by the Communists as their carte blanche:

We are all familiar with the number of US casualties in the Vietnam war, a figure around 57,000. Lost in the annals of revisionist history is the fact more people of South Vietnam were killed by the communist North Vietnamese in the six months following the US withdrawal then in the entire ten year conflict. And this was after the North had already "won" the war. When the Watergate 'scandal' hit, all media attention was focused on Nixon, and he quickly lost the ability to run the nation, and resigned. US troops were rapidly pulled out of Vietnam and all supply to Cambodia and South Vietnam was cut off. The North Vietnamese general leading the aggression, upon hearing of the resignation of Nixon, stated on record that he knew they would now win the war. Soon south Vietnam fell to the communist north invaders, 600,000 south Vietnamese residents took flight in make shift rafts into the south China sea fearing the communist invaders. Most of them drowned. An additional 1,000,000 (1 million) South Vietnamese residents were executed. I would like to see these 1.6 million names added to the Vietnam memorial. Neighboring Cambodia fared much worse
The Khmer rouge under the loose rule of Pol Pot took power with support from the North Vietnamese armies and supplies from the Soviet Union, easily defeating the pro western Lon Nol, who now had no support from the US thanks to the US congress decision to end aide and 'not intervene' The Cambodians "need peace, not guns" was the pacifist rallying cry. Unfortunately what they actually needed was guns. The Khmer Rouge proceeded to forciblye evacuate all cities in Cambodia, as they were symbols of capitalism. Patients were thrown from hospitals while undergoing surgery, the Doctors and medical staff were executed, anyone with money was executed, anyone who could speak English or French was executed. The forcible evacuation marched millions of people into the peasants lands, under Pol Pot's collectivization plan everyone was to be a peasant farmer. Witnesses (the ones who survived) reported that the marching lines stretched as far as the eye could see, the sick and the infirm crawled and dragged themselves. The population was forced to farm. If you showed affection for a loved one, expressed any affectionate sentiments, or even expressed sorrow at the loss of a child, you were executed, as this was a reflection of your criticism of the state. All told, the Khmer rouge executed 2.5 to 3 million of the Cambodian people, an event that was directly possible because of the US's abandonment of the south east Asian region.