Watergate

I am currently reading Bob  Woodward's "Shadow: Five Presidents And The Legacy Of Watergate" (Amazon), and finding it quite interesting. 

One thought that has occurred to me, however, is that,even if Watergate hadn't happened, was such a scandal just a matter of time? Social attitudes towards power had changed and were changing, but those wending their way to the top of political power structures were from prior times. Some of what Nixon did was because he felt he had been tricked by John F Kennedy, and politics - particularly parts of US politics - has been a tough place for a long time. 

Some of the changes that social attitudes can cause are being illustrated now in corporate affairs (e.g., see here, here, and here).

So was this all really just a matter of time?