That ugly description of Nixon's staff operations comes from a New York Times editorial on Thursday, October 12th. But neither Nixon nor anyone else felt it would have much effect on his steady two-to-one lead over McGovern in all the national polls. Four days later the Times /Yankelovich poll showed Nixon ahead by an incredible twenty points (57 percent to 37 percent, with 16 percent undecided) over the man Bobby Kennedy described as “the most decent man in the Senate.”

“Ominous” is not quite the right word for a situation where one of the most consistently unpopular politicians in American history suddenly skryockets to Folk Hero status while his closest advisors are being caught almost daily in nazi-style gigs that would have embarrassed Martin Bormann. How long will it be before “demented extremists” in Germany or maybe Japan, start calling us A Nation of Pigs? How would Nixon react? “No comment”? And how would the popularity polls react if he just came right out and admitted it?

Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail,

San Francisco, Straight Arrow Books, 1973

Epitaph

Four More Years. . . Nixon Uber Alles. . . Fear and Loathing at the Super Bowl. . .

President Nixon will be sworn into office for a second term today, emboldened by his sweeping electoral triumph of last November and a Vietnam peace settlement apparently within his grasp. . . In the most expensive inauguration in American history -- the cost is officially estimated at more than $4 million -- Mr. Nixon will once again take the oath on a temporary stand outside the east front of the Capitol, then ride in a parade expected to draw 200,000 people to Pennsylvania Avenue and its environs, and millions more to their television sets. . . It will be the President's first statement to the American people since his television appearance on November 6, election eve. Since then the peace talks have collapsed, massive bombing of North Vietnam has been instituted and then called off, and the talks have resumed without extended public comment from Mr. Nixon . . .

-- San Francisco Chronicle, January 20, 1973

When the Great Scorer comes to write

against your name -- he marks --

Not that you won or lost --

But how you played the game.

-- Grantland Rice: who was known -- prior to his death in the late fifties -- as “The Dean of American Sportswriters,” and one of Richard Nixon's favorite authors.

They came together on a hot afternoon in Los Angeles, howling and clawing at each other like wild beasts in heat. Under a brown California sky, the fierceness of their struggle brought tears to the eyes of 90,000 God-fearing fans.

They were twenty-two men who were somehow more than men.

They were giants, idols, titans. . .

Behemoths.

They stood for everything Good and True and Right in the American Spirit.

Because they had guts.

And they yearned for the Ultimate Glory, the Great Prize, the Final Fruits of a long and vicious campaign.