This op-ed was originally published by The Atlantic, here.

January 6 marked the first time an American president incited a lethal attack on another branch of government—but the second attempt to hold on to power through a coordinated and subversive campaign. Watergate was the first.

As the House January 6 Select Committee prepares for its slate of public hearings—coinciding, as it happens, with the 50th anniversary of the break-in—Representative Jamie Raskin, a panel member, has promised something akin to the “Watergate hearings … in terms of explaining to America what actually happened.” But given the failure of the Watergate affair’s true nature to take root in popular memory, perhaps we should hope for better.

Read the full op-ed in The Atlantic, here.