Watergate and the concurrent Church Hearings into abuses by the CIA both had the perverse effect on the Democrats of making government less trusted and less popular, with, in the end, making the anti government Republican Ronald Reagan more popular.
I know some Republicans of the day dispute that, but there has actually been considerable scholarly research into the impact Watergate and the Church Hearings had on public sentiment towards government and there is a great deal of unanimity that the main beneficiary was the anti government Republicans.
The inability of President Carter to control inflation and the blame placed on the Federal Reserve for this by Milton Friedman also fed into all of that.
I've never seen this case presented before but it does make sense. Thank you for sharing this.
