You couldn’t talk to him in adult logic. Teenage logic was necessary. - Bob Woodward

After Watergate, I never expected another impeachment investigation of a president in my lifetime, let alone an actual impeachment and a Senate trial. Nixon's successors, I thought, would recognize the price of scandal and learn the two fundamental lessons of Watergate. First, if there is questionable activity, release the facts, whatever they are, as early and completely as possible. Second, do not allow outside inquiries, whether conducted by prosecutors, congressmen or reporters, to harden into a permanent state of suspicion and warfare.
But the overwhelming evidence is that five presidents after Nixon didn't understand these lessons. It wasn't that they lacked the political skill. Four of these presidents had mastered American electoral politics to win political power, and Ford almost did. Of the five, Reagan managed his problems best, although belatedly, when, after three months of Iran-contra, he permitted a broad internal White House investigation of his own actions.
Why did they not see that they would be held fully accountable for their exercise of power?
Historians and psychiatrists will have their own answers to that question, but I have one preliminary conclusion. They have become victims of the myth of the big-time president. As successors to George Washington and Franklin Roosevelt, they expect to rule. But after Vietnam and Watergate, the modern presidency has been limited and diminished. Its inner workings and the behavior of the presidents are fully exposed.

Former General John Kelly had stood in the Trump Tower lobby as Trump took questions with a grim look on his face. Colbert said, “This guy is a four-star general. Iraq, no problem. Afghanistan, we can do it. Twenty-minute Trump press conference? A quagmire.

Trump said he wished he had fired Comey at the beginning of the administration but now he wanted Comey out. Bannon disagreed and offered this argument to Trump alone in the Oval Office: “Seventy-five percent of the agents do hate Comey. No doubt. The moment you fire him he’s J. fucking Edgar Hoover. The day you fire him, he’s the greatest martyr in American history. A weapon to come and get you. They’re going to name a special fucking counsel. You can fire Comey. You can’t fire the FBI. The minute you fire him, the FBI as an institution, they have to destroy you and they will destroy you.” Bannon thought Trump did not understand the power of the permanent institutions — the FBI, CIA, the Pentagon and the broader military establishment. He also did not understand the sweeping powers of a special counsel who could be appointed to investigate everything a president touched.