Finally, I also think a lot of the strife between left and right we’re experiencing in America these days, the paralysis born by an absolute loathing for the other side, can be traced back to the Nixon administration, or, rather, to Watergate.
They shouldn’t have humiliated him like that, the Democrats, I mean. They shouldn’t have forced him out of office. It was a bad precedence which came back to bite them in the backside during the Clinton administration, and derailed a formerly sound protocol of loyal opposition cooperating with the majority party in government.
Many other factors were involved, but, after all is said and done, the bitterness that that coup by special prosecutor has planted in the psyche of American politics will never go away.
They should have let him get away with a slap on the wrist: Bad president, bad, bad president, now go back to the Oval Office and think about the consequences of your break-in, and never do it again.
So I’m letting him get away with a foul mouth and the kind of irrepressible antisemitism harbored by so many of his generation—and our own. It doesn’t matter. What matters is that he saved my life and he saved my country.
Don’t let them get to you, Mr. Nixon, you’re still my hero.