Four decades ago, way back when we got the latest news only each evening from avuncular anchors like Walter Cronkite and David Brinkley on the big three broadcast networks, I knew I was living through the kind of history that would show up in schoolbooks within a few years. Every evening we’d tune in to see what the latest Watergate revelation was, who’d said what at that day’s hearings, which administration official had been the one to scoff or rage at the most recent accusations. And every morning we’d scour the newspaper for more gory details.
Every few years, I’ve thought back to Watergate and how engrossing and important and historic it all felt. In 1999, its 25th anniversary, I thoroughly enjoyed watching all those documentaries with my daughters and trying to explain to them what it was like.
But over the past couple of weeks, I’ve thought about one specific bit of the House Judiciary Committee’s impeachment hearings that’s stuck with me—indeed, I consider it part of my DNA as an American—through all those decades. It echoed for me through both conventions—but especially resonated through the Democratic convention, which I kept wishing she could have seen.
This voice:
(The video is about 13 minutes, but if you don’t have that long, at least watch from 0:45 to 1:50)
James Earl Jones and Morgan Freeman can only aspire to the majesty and grandeur with which Barbara Jordan invests the word “Constitution.” Hers is the voice I hear in my head when I read its Preamble.
But this is the single most American moment I will see in my lifetime:
Mary Griffith 