How could this happen? With Spiro Agnew and his guests looking out from the elegant museum on the eve of his inauguration as Vice-President of the U.S., a mob of dissident “pacifists” mauls a cop assigned to protect the party. This man Lennox had read too many old newspapers, too many reports about “cowardly, non-violent demonstrators.” So he rushed in to grab one of them -- to enforce The Law -- and they nearly did him in. A man standing next to the action said: “They took turns kicking him in the head. They tore everything off of him -- thirty more seconds and they'd have stripped him completely naked.”

Rotten behavior, no doubt about it. Several hours later, riding in a cab in another part of Washington, I told the black cabbie what had happened. “Beautiful, beautiful,” he said. “I used to be on The Force and I was ready to go back. . . but not now; hell, I don't want to be a public enemy.”

I went to the Inauguration for several reasons, but mainly to be sure it wasn't a TV trick. It seemed impossible that it could actually happen: President Nixon. Enroute to Washington, crossing the Rockies in a big jet with a drink in my hand I wrote in my notebook: “One year later, flying east again to cover Nixon. . . last time it was to New York and then on the Yellowbird Special to Manchester, New Hampshire. . . to Nixon headquarters at the Holiday Inn, greeted by speechwriter Pat Buchanan who didn't approve of my garb. . . Mistah Nixon, he doan like ski jackets, boy -- and Where's yore tie? Buchanan, a rude suspicious geek, Liberty Lobby type. . . but now he's in Washington, and so is ”The Boss."

All the staffers called him “the boss.” His speeches and campaign appearances were called “drills.” I'm not sure what they called me, but it must have been ugly. Here is an excerpt from the article I wrote after following him around New Hampshire for ten days:

Richard Nixon has never been one of my favorite people. He was. . . a man with no soul, no inner convictions. . . The “old Nixon” didn't make it. Neither did earlier models of the “new Nixon.” So now we have “Nixon Mark IV,” and as a journalist I suppose it's only fair to say that this latest model might be different and maybe even better in some ways. But as a customer, I wouldn't touch it -- except with a long cattle prod.