Thirty-five years ago this month, the edifice began to collapse. “People have got to know whether or not their President is a crook,” said President Richard Nixon at a televised press conference on November 17, 1973. “Well, I'm not a crook. I've earned everything I've got." Of course, Nixon was a crook, and less than a year later he would resign from the White House, his legacy saturated with scandal. Nixon’s disgraceful departure inflicted a wound upon the American psyche that would not be fully healed until the election of Ronald Reagan six years later. Some believed that Jimmy Carter’s...