More Thoughts on Nixon Around the 40th Anniversary of His Resigning

First is Hunter S. Thompson's seminal obituary of Nixon, titled He was a Crook:

Richard Nixon is gone now, and I am poorer for it. He was the real thing -- a political monster straight out of Grendel and a very dangerous enemy. He could shake your hand and stab you in the back at the same time. He lied to his friends and betrayed the trust of his family. Not even Gerald Ford, the unhappy ex-president who pardoned Nixon and kept him out of prison, was immune to the evil fallout. Ford, who believes strongly in Heaven and Hell, has told more than one of his celebrity golf partners that "I know I will go to hell, because I pardoned Richard Nixon."

The rage of Hunter S. Thompson's is something truly awesome to behold.

I will not disagree with Mr. Ford.  He should be in hell for that.

Then there is John Dean's interview at Salon:

How should we see Nixon now? On one hand, there’s been some Nixon revisionism as Republicans turned so hard to the right that people look at OSHA, at the EPA, and say that Nixon was practically a liberal compared to conservatives today.

Well, first I’m not sure if those are really Nixon. I heard some tapes — I didn’t put everything I heard in there, but there was clearly some stuff where Nixon is telling John Ehrlichman, who is something of a liberal/progressive — certainly a moderate at the time — who wants these ideas. And Nixon, in essence, tells him, go ahead and do whatever you want, just don’t get me arrested, or don’t get me in trouble. Not arrested, but you know, don’t get me politically in trouble for any of this stuff. So it’s really not Nixon driving any of this stuff.

On one hand, the domestic agenda is fairly progressive.

It is.

On the other hand, Nixon going back to his first campaign against Helen Douglas and “the Pink Lady” was a pretty nasty character. And he probably would have been right at home with the Tea Party today.

Exactly what I was going to say. He was an opportunist and I think he would feel very comfortable with the Tea Party.

At the same time, some of Nixon’s abuses, as horrible as it is to hear them being coordinated from the Oval Office, seem almost quaint compared to Iran-Contra, or what we saw under Bush/Cheney, or the extent of the NSA surveillance state revealed by Edward Snowden.

No question. We don’t know what the parallels were from earlier, if the NSA was doing the same kind of stuff.  The Church Committee certainly uncovered a lot of unseemly stuff, and I think because technology changed, the NSA changed. ………

His portrait of Nixon as a political opportunist with little in the way of  core principles seems to ring true to me,  particularly since Nixon was a master of the politics of resentment.

I am rather surprised that Dean tags Erlichman as the architect of Nixon's progressive domestic agenda.

It means that I probably gave Nixon too much credit on his domestic agenda yesterday, but it should be noted that he was still HMFIC when OSHA.EPA/etc. were created.