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About the Story: The man who implicated members of the Nixon Administration during Watergate examines the current state of the federal government and finds damage everywhere he looks. Saul Gonzalez talks with John Dean about his latest book Broken Government: How Republican Rule Destroyed the Legislative, Executive and Judicial Branches. (TRT: 8:17)

: AlterNet’s “Harriet Mier’s Contempt of Congress” Blog; The Brad Blog’s “Video—John Dean on Secrets, Leaks and the Path to Dictatorship” Article; FindLaw; Los Angeles Times’ “How the Bush Administration Wields Power” Article; MSN Encarta’s “John Dean” Article; MSNBC’s “June 25-29, 1973” Multimedia Archive; PW’s “Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 7/30/07” Blog; Reason Hit & Run’s “John Dean on Rudy (And Hillary?)” Blog; Who2?’s “John Dean” Article; Wikipedia’s “John Dean” Article; Tags: Book, Government, Politics

John Dean

Publish date: September 13, 2007
Last updated: November 22, 2008

Reporter's NOTES

Saul Gonzalez
There are few people as familiar with how power can corrupt Washington, D.C. as John Dean. More than three decades ago, as White House legal counsel to President Richard Nixon, Dean both witnessed and participated in acts of wrongdoing at the highest levels of government.

Informed by his Watergate experiences, in more recent years, Dean has dedicated himself to attacking what he believes is a Republican Party leadership that is addicted to power and influence and increasingly willing to trample on cherished freedoms and constitutional principles. In our conversation, Dean explores what he thinks has gone so wrong with the Grand Old Party.

Insider Viewpoints

In his latest anti-Republican polemic, ex–Nixon White House counsel and Watergate whistle-blower Dean…moves from policy to “process”—how necessary government functions are corrupted and hobbled by Republican politicians and their ethos of authoritarianism, secrecy, partisanship and dogmatic contempt for the public sphere…The last Republican Congress, Dean contends, rubber-stamped Bush's policies, shut Democrats out of the legislative process, neglected pressing issues and made a shambles of government finances.

Meanwhile, the Bush administration—“the worst presidency ever”—has sought to replace constitutional checks and balances with a “unitary executive” that brooks no congressional interference and undermines civil rights. All of this is enabled by the swelling ranks of “fundamentalists” on the federal bench and Supreme Court…

The author, a former Republican, bolsters his procedural analysis with insights from political scientists, but doesn't offer procedural reforms; the cure he prescribes is to stop voting Republican…Dean's take on “process”—mainly a conventional reverence for the Constitution and bipartisanship—isn't acute, but he presents a vigorous critique of the Republican machinery.

--Excerpt taken from PW’s “Nonfiction Reviews: Week of 7/30/07” Blog by the staff of Publishers Weekly

In a media world where frightened editors worry about ever-more fickle readers, viewers and Web surfers, it takes a courageous journalist to approach the boss with an idea for a story on political "process." Today's news must be hot and a pitch for a story on a vague, bland concept that doesn't instantly translate into "hits" takes some amount of guts, believe it or not.

Still, despite the demands of the news business, process is important. Often, it's everything—as John W. Dean shows in his thoughtful, enlightening new book Broken Government.

Think of policy as the idea. Process is how the idea is carried out.

Process, as Dean explains, is how things happen, how an idea starts in an obscure White House office, winds its way through the bureaucracy and ends up permitting the alleged torture chambers of Guantanamo Bay or leading us into a war that now seems endless. But it's hard to sell a story on the meandering road between the conception of a policy and the moment it begins to affect all our lives…

--Excerpt taken from Los Angeles Times’ “How the Bush Administration Wields Power” Article by Bill Boyarsky

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