I can't help but derive a certain sense of reassurance every time another batch of Nixon tapes and documents gets released. He really was everything his detractors said he was. You'd like to think the Presidency would ennoble a man…cause him to rise above petty hatreds and prejudices and try to be the leader of all. But Richard Milhous Nixon truly embraced the mindset that his evil Jiminy Cricket, Pat Buchanan, summarized in an infamous memo; that it was fine to break the nation in two as long as "their side" got the bigger piece. An overlooked aspect of Watergate was the revelation of how much was done to use governmental power to reward Nixon's "friends" and punish his "enemies."
Right after Nixon was elected, there was a famous photo of him greeting crowds and one young lady was holding up a handmade sign that said, "Bring Us Together." That's a nice thought but the Nixon administration never had the slightest interest in bringing "us" together except by nuking the opposition into oblivion. Oddly enough, it was not the politics of the other side that he loathed — he made an awful lot of things on the Liberal Wish List happen. It was merely this deep-rooted belief that in life, if someone isn't demonstrably with you, they're against you…and if they're against you, you have to kill them before they kill you. I always thought it was poetic and appropriate that Nixon's political demise was largely because of what the people who were "with him" did to and for him.