[CyberAnt]

Well .. what we might or might not "believe" about this situation doesn't matter. What matters to me is that I will not just stand by and allow people to make misstatements about Nixon. Yes, he made a terrible mistake, but he knew how the vultures in the media would react. And .. at the time the media had much more power than they do now.

[Verginius Rufus]

I have mixed feelings about Nixon. He was good on some issues, not so good on others. The liberals hated him for his early anti-Communist activities (helping to bring down their hero Alger Hiss), and he returned their hatred. He had the 1972 election in the bag but wanted an overwhelming victory, and that seems to be what led to the campaign abuses that resulted in his ultimate downfall.

What he should have done in 1973 when Agnew resigned was to pick Ronald Reagan for V.P. (Two people from the same state are never on the ticket because electors can't cast both votes for people from their home state, but that wouldn't matter since Nixon would never run again.) That might have dampened the Democrats' enthusiasm for getting rid of Nixon, or if not would have meant Reagan would have been at the helm in early 1975 when the crisis in South Vietnam arose.