Even sixteen years after his death, Richard M. Nixon can't catch a break. Just when the Republican party is charging to the right, thereby making him look sane by comparison, more of this crap has to come out…more tapes that show Nixon's innate distrust of minorities. Even while the man was alive, everyone knew he was like that but his supporters could deny it to others and maybe even to themselves. Only a little of it had made it into the public sector.
Nixon's most prominent supporter, at least during the Watergate mess, was a rabbi named Baruch Korff, a man of sterling reputation and sincerity, though he was largely clueless about Washington and the president he backed. Given Nixon's power and '72 landslide, you would have thought his chief public defender would have been some G.O.P. biggie — a senator or governor but no. All those guys dove under their desks when evidence of Nixonian lawlessness began to leak, especially when it was revealed that endless hours of private Nixon conversations might become public. Rabbi Korff rode in and filled the position nobody else wanted. Some nights, when newsmen had to report the latest bad news for Nixon and they looked around for a spokesperson who could defend the then-president, Korff was often the only human being willing to go on camera in that role. That was a big part of what doomed Nixon: Few Republicans wanted to tether their futures to his…and Rabbi Korff, who wound up making the public case for R.M.N. was a thoroughly inept advocate.
Korff had an impossible job. It was bad enough that he had to explain "Nixon's side" of so many revelations without knowing what it was…or would be. (Nixon's strategy seemed to be to let all the bad stuff come out, then try to weave an innocent, self-exonerating explanation.) What made the Rabbi's chore even harder was that as Oval Office conversations leaked or were officially released, so was all that presidential anti-semitism. Korff discounted it, explaining it couldn't be so — never mind what Nixon actually said — because of the president's strong support of Israel. That was a weak defense — the "some of my best friends" gambit. And now we have these new tapes showing how Nixon admired Israeli Jews and distrusted their American counterparts. Exactly what you would have expected of the man. It's amazing how "readable" he was in these regards, just as it's amazing how Rabbi Korff turned out to be wrong about darn near everything.