Richard Nixon: The traitor
I want to congratulate Charles Taylor for his brilliant, properly scathing denunciation of Richard Nixon in his review of Anthony Summers' new biography of our late, demented president.
Taylor is absolutely right -- forget the story that Nixon may have beaten poor Pat (as if she did not have enough to bear, simply being married to that paranoid, cold-hearted son of a bitch), or even the shocker that he was likely self-medicating with drugs provided by one of America's leading businessmen. (Ah, the genius of the private sector!)
The really significant story is that Nixon's own defense secretary thought the president was so far gone during his last months in office that he ordered the military to ignore orders from the White House. Now there's a genuinely terrifying thought that should engage our nation in soul-searching discussion.
And as Taylor emphasizes, the most important revelation of the book -- the one that all U.S. history texts should henceforth include -- is the near certainty that Nixon, as a private citizen during the 1968 presidential race, sought to delay and disrupt the Paris peace talks, thereby prolonging the war in Vietnam and leading to the deaths of thousands of American soldiers and millions of Vietnamese.
Again, as Taylor writes -- and it bears repeating -- Nixon committed treason. I might add that Summers' story of Nixon's treachery builds on previous accounts, including veteran reporter Jules Witcover's book "1968: The Year the Dream Died."
From his earliest days in politics, Nixon embodied America's darkest impulses. It's important to remember just how deplorable and dangerous a man he was.
