Guardian Piece by Conrad Black

The Guardian has published what appears to be either an excerpt from Conrad Black's new Nixon book or a promotional teaser. To call it favorable toward Nixon is an understatement. It also appears horribly overwritten. And I was looking forward to reading this.

By leaving so quietly and without recriminations, he had made it temporarily unseemly to all but the nastiest Nixon-haters to speak too ill of him. Most important, and most subtly, he had taken in hand his opponents' terrible, swift sword. The great puritanical conscience of America, irrepressible no matter how overlaid by the mawkishness, cynicism and pecuniary baseness and vulgarity of some parts of American life, had been roused to end his presidency. He had already mustered it anew to revisit the issue of Richard Nixon himself, the patriot more sinned against than sinning, even before he had handed over his office.

His achievements had been great. He had stolen nothing, physically threatened no one, obeyed the law after some hesitation, gone quietly from office, loved his country, and been singled out unjustly as a uniquely opprobrious president, which, in fact, he was not. It's not clear that Nixon had any criminal intent. He had gone, the hate would fade away, and the subject of the hate would become a matter first of forgetful indifference, then mystery, then guilt. It would take time, but America had punished Richard Nixon, one of its unique and most devoted sons, and he, by clinging to his mother's "peace at the centre" and her Quaker turning of the other cheek, no longer being able to return blow for blow, as was his natural impulse, would punish America. He would torment the national conscience that had tormented him and that had been roused to an Old Testament destruction of his career.