Watergate and Children’s Attitudes toward Political Authority Revisited

As the Watergate crisis passes further into history, questions recur as to whether the agonizing events have had any lasting effects upon our national politics. While attention has been properly directed at the institutional arrangements of power of the national government,' the impact upon the beliefs of our citizens may, in the long run, be equally as profound, particularly given the consequences of a decline in perceptions of the legitimacy of our political institutions. The events surrounding the misuse of presidential authority are commonly assumed to have fostered greater cynicism among the populace; yet scholars are only beginning to weigh this assertion. A separate question concerns the impact of these events upon individuals who have never developed a well-formed belief in the fundamental legitimacy of our political institutions-i.e., children. Slightly more than a year ago, I reported the results of research on the attitudes of children toward the presidency during the height of the collective events called Watergate.2 In December of 1973, children in an upper-income suburb of Boston were found to hold attitudes which