For the record, I agree with Vice President Vance: If the right-wing media empire that exists today had been in place in the seventies, President Nixon would have survived Watergate. What the president and his cronies are now so flagrantly doing to corrupt our democratic institutions is far worse than what Nixon did, and it wasn’t pattycakes back then.

How can Vance chuckle over how easy it is to get away with what would have been impeachable two generations ago? What is the administration he’s serving doing that dwarfs what Nixon did? Lies, cover-ups, and hush-money deals were hallmarks of the seventies’ corrupt power players. Judging by Vance’s smugness, he knows a lot more than he’s telling us.

I wasn’t yet in Washington, but you didn’t need to live here to be shocked at Nixon’s coarseness, his bigotry, how he weaponized the CIA and turned the IRS on his political enemies. Aside from all that, though, he wasn’t crazy—and he did some big, bold, and lasting things, including creating the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) and PBS (Public Broadcasting System), and signing Title 1X that broke down barriers for women in sports.

And though he yearned to be a president with the Trumpian heft to believe, if not assert, that if he said something, it was true, Nixon did feel a sense of shame over being driven from office. He spent the rest of his life trying to recast his legacy and........

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