J. Walter Iago, Public Servant

My fellow conservatives: grab hold of the sideboard, pour yourself a glass of Courvoisier, and send a check in the amount of one dollar to The New Republic, Americans for Democratic Action, AFTRA, or some other great moral enterprise of your choice. The Rather-Gates opus is not at all bad. I approached the book through the bush, on all fours, a wicked glint in my eye. By the time I had digested the first chapter, I had put myself in mind of that old curmudgeon, Hector Berlioz, who wrote that “It is sweet to praise an enemy when that enemy has merit, indeed it is the proud duty of an honest man. . . .” In the clear, albeit corny, vulgate of the Old Journalism, two representatives of the liberal media’s Coldstream Guard trace the inexorable unfolding, within the bosom of the Nixon Presidency, of the series of events that culminated in the Watergate circus. Delinquency begins at home.

Even if the full measure of this studied indictment of the late Nixon Administration were reduced by half, it would be of sufficient grossness to persuade me to give tongue to a conclusion to which I had previously arrived in a more or less tacit way: that, as our former eponymous archon, Richard Nixon was a neurotic incompetent surrounded by abysmally ignorant, shallow, and banal men: men who were fundamentally aware of their essential defects and who attempted to abort the possible development of that awareness in their associates by subjecting them to the ludicrous regimen of an ad agency and the juvenile humiliations that are generally reserved for a lineup of Greek-letter fraternity pledges. It was once possible, so I firmly believe, to describe most unfairly the doings and aspirations of Mr. Nixon. But since he walked into the Oval Office in 1969 and closed the door, it appears that while it may at times have been unkind to think ill of the man, it has seldom been a mistake.

CW

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Chilton Williamson Jr.

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My fellow conservatives: grab hold of the sideboard, pour yourself a glass of Courvoisier, and send a check in the amount of one dollar to The New Republic, Americans for Democratic Action, AFTRA, or some other great moral enterprise of your choice. The Rather-Gates opus is not at all bad. I approached the book through the bush, on all fours, a wicked glint in my eye. By the time I had digested the first chapter, I had put myself in mind of that old curmudgeon, Hector Berlioz, who wrote that “It is sweet to praise an enemy when that enemy has merit, indeed it is the proud duty of an honest man. . . .” In the clear, albeit corny, vulgate of the Old Journalism, two representatives of the liberal media’s Coldstream Guard trace the inexorable unfolding, within the bosom of the Nixon Presidency, of the series of events that culminated in the Watergate circus. Delinquency begins at home.

Even if the full measure of this studied indictment of the late Nixon Administration were reduced by half, it would be of sufficient grossness to persuade me to give tongue to a conclusion to which I had previously arrived in a more or less tacit way: that, as our former eponymous archon, Richard Nixon was a neurotic incompetent surrounded by abysmally ignorant, shallow, and banal men: men who were fundamentally aware of their essential defects and who attempted to abort the possible development of that awareness in their associates by subjecting them to the ludicrous regimen of an ad agency and the juvenile humiliations that are generally reserved for a lineup of Greek-letter fraternity pledges. It was once possible, so I firmly believe, to describe most unfairly the doings and aspirations of Mr. Nixon. But since he walked into the Oval Office in 1969 and closed the door, it appears that while it may at times have been unkind to think ill of the man, it has seldom been a mistake.