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Jeremiah Jennings really ought to review some Presidential history. Maybe you could make this case for Presidents of the last 50 or so years: FDR (apparently his private life was a bit messy, though -- right-wing zanies to the contrary -- he did not connive at Pearl Harbor), Truman (who tolerated much bad stuff from intelligence agencies at home and abroad whose cronies were petty-ante sloppy on such things as conflicts of interst), Eisenhower (who was very lame on such things, whose cronies and aides were no better, and who also tolerated and indulged some highly suspect domestic and foreign intelligence crap), JFK (whose assassination, cynics can well argue, was almost a lucky break), LBJ (who is the textbook illustration of that weird American combo, high-minded and corrupt at the same time), Ford (who may have been penny-ante corrupt), Carter (personally honest but politically inept and cursed with sloppy cronies, to boot), Reagan (need I say more?), Bush (ditto), and Clinton (the luckiest President since Calvin Coolidge). But, in some crucial ways, Nixon WAS different and not just because he got caught. He did his damnedest to circumvent the Constitution's limits on Presidential power -- he set out to destroy constitutional safeguards of individual rights and limited government, to blow apart the doctrines of checks and balances, to subvert the rule of law in ways and for purposes that resonated exactly with England's King Charles I (who lost his head for it). Again, all I can say is, "Vive la difference!"
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