[Squantos]

with President Nixon and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush......

So Spiro and Gerald were just figureheads ?

[Cultural Jihad]

> . . . with President Nixon and then-Vice President George H. W. Bush......

So Spiro and Gerald were just figureheads ?

I dwelled on that sentence a while, too. We don't say "then-President" Nixon, since it's an honorary title kept for life. But in the case of GHWBush, he was both the VP and President, and hence what the article tried to say was that the discredited reporter had "testy exchanges with him" (read: rude, ideologically-addled barbs thrown at him) when he was the VP.