A Nixon postscript.

• Author: Knoll, Erwin
• Position: Richard M. Nixon - Editorial - Obituary

For the better part of five years, from his inauguration in January 1969 to my departure from Washington journalism in the summer of 1973, 1 covered Richard Nixon's Presidency for The Progressive. I attended his press conferences and the White House briefings conducted by his aides. I wrote about him, his promises, his policies, his personality. I interviewed some of his defenders and many of his enemies. I speculated on the scope of the Watergate scandal that would ultimately bring about Nixon's downfall. I found my name on his infamous "Enemies' List."

I had a hard time recognizing the Nixon I knew so well in the endless, fulsome tributes to his memory that clogged the airwaves and cluttered the newspapers and news magazines after he died. It was Nixon's posthumous rehabilitation - his final metamorphosis into still another "new Nixon," the last of the dozen or so transmogrifications he had foisted off on the gullible news media and a susceptible public over the years. In death, he was the intellectual titan who had foreseen and ushered in the end of the Cold War, the architect of domestic prosperity, the sage elder statesman who had overcome the "tragedy" of Watergate.

Utter nonsense!

Nixon's contribution to the American Presidency was his total rejection of even a pretense of adherence to the democratic ideal. He was the total cynic who wore an American flag in his lapel - a practice he instituted to show that he and his supporters were true patriots, whereas those of us who criticized him were un-American. He prated about achieving an "honorable peace" in Indochina while allowing a brutal and dishonorable war to claim hundreds of thousands of additional lives. He piously defended freedom of speech while egging on the hard-hat hooligans who beat up peace demonstrators and the triggerhappy National Guard troops who mowed them down at Kent State and Jackson State. He trumpeted the virtues of the "free world" while arranging the overthrow and assassination of Salvador Allende in Chile.

He proclaimed that he was "not a crook" while surrounding himself with as felonious a gang of sociopaths as had infested the White House since at least the days of Warren Gamaliel Harding. He sanctimoniously scolded Harry Truman for his rough language, but when we finally got to read his tape-recorded conversations in the Oval Office, we found they would bring a blush to any seasoned sailor's cheeks.

The Nixon who...