But after 1964, Nixon led his party back to victory after victory, culminating in the 49-state landslide of 1972 over the antiwar movement propagandized by the Post. By 1973, all U.S. troops were home, the POWs were headed for Clark Field, every provincial capital was in Saigon's hands and Richard Nixon was at 69 percent. And the Establishment was beside itself with hatred.
And so they resolved to finish him. And by his failure to act decisively and ruthlessly to clean his campaign and White House of loyalists who had blundered and, yes, committed crimes, he became ensnared in a cover-up that would destroy his presidency. He gave them a sword, and they ran it right through him. And when he went down, Southeast Asia and everything 58,000 Americans had bled and died for went down with him.
And that is upon the conscience of us all.
But the Establishment did not care, for it had gone over the hill the day Nixon became commander in chief.
When you look back at it, what was Watergate all about? A black bag job at Larry O'Brien's place like the ones "hero" Felt used to run for Hoover. Liddy and Hunt on an escapade to get Daniel Ellsberg's file from his shrink, which probably would have been too heavy to carry anyway. And, oh yes, 200 pizzas Segretti sent with those 30 African ambassadors in native costume to Ed Muskie's D.C. fund-raiser.
Not one miscreancy committed by Nixon's men did not have its antecedent in the White Houses of JFK or LBJ. But they got away with it, including the distribution to the press of dirt on Dr. King, picked up by secret FBI photo and wiretap. What Segretti dirty trick remotely approaches that one, which the liberal press covered up?
Wednesday night, sipping a Chalk Hill, I watched as Ted Koppel, at his most oleaginous and unctuous, fed up one cheese ball after another to Ben Bradlee. What do you think of Buchanan calling Felt a "traitor," said Koppel, misquoting me.
"Gimme a break!" croaked Bradlee.
Well, you give us a break, Ben. All this bullhockey about how you and the Great Stenographers saved the republic is getting so thick the tourists will need to rent chain saws to cut through it.