Family Ties could refer to the vice president as “the son of a bitch,” and nobody in the Oval Office thought such a remark out of line. And then there is endless discussion of Nixon’s plan, long before the fall of 1973, to replace Agnew with John Connally. He wanted Big John lined up for the 1976 presidential nomination, fearing that not only Agnew but Ronald Reagan might get it instead. “Reagan, that just can’t be,” says Nixon. “You can’t have a simplicity man in this position.”
Nothing on the tapes is as calculating and phony as the indignation of Democrats during Watergate, but reading these transcripts one is struck again by their sheer idleness and stupidity. They make a strong case, too, for Agnew’s belief that his own undoing and Nixon’s were related events: “Too late President Nixon realized he had been suckered by his foes into going along with my ruination, ostensibly to save himself.”
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