“It’s clear now the Watergate reporting was not journalism but rather a partisan attack on Nixon.”
I think what is clear is that Saints Woodward & Bernstein couldn’t have brought that story in without the copious leaking from the Deputy Director of the CIA.
I was too young then to have more than the vaguest memories of Nixon’s presidency, but read quite a bit about it, including the “All the President’s Men” series, and believed the conventional wisdom about Nixon’s corruption. I’ve started to think more and more, though, that maybe if Nixon had been a Democrat, he would have finished out his term and “Watergate” wouldn’t be a word for scandal.