My own relationship with Buchanan goes back to the New Hampshire primary in 1968 when Nixon was still on the dim fringes of his political comeback. We spent about eight hours one night in a Boston hotel room, finishing off a half gallon of Old Crow and arguing savagely about politics: As I recall, I kept asking him why a person who seemed to have good sense would be hanging about with Nixon. It was clear even then that Buchanan considered me stone crazy, and my dismissal of Nixon as a hopeless bum with no chance of winning anything seemed to amuse him more than anything else.

About eight months later, after one of the strangest and most brutal years in American history, Richard Nixon was President and Pat Buchanan was one of his top two speechwriters along with Ray Price, the house moderate. I didn't see Pat again until the McGovern Campaign in '72 when Ron Ziegler refused to have me on the Nixon Press Plane and Buchanan intervened to get me past the White House Guard and into what turned out to be a dull and useless seat on the plane with the rest of the White House press corps. It was also Buchanan who interviewed Garry Wills, introducing him into the Nixon Campaign of 1968 -- an act of principle that resulted in an extremely unfriendly book called Nixon Agonistes.

So it seemed entirely logical, I thought -- going back to Washington in the midst of this stinking Watergate summer -- to call Buchanan and see if he felt like having 13 or 14 drinks on some afternoon when he wasn't at the White House working feverishly in what he calls “the bunker.” Price and Buchanan write almost everything Nixon says and they are busier than usual these days, primarily figuring out what not to say. I spent most of one Saturday afternoon with Pat lounging around a tin umbrella table beside the Watergate pool and talking lazily about politics in general. When I called him at the White House the day before, the first thing he said was “Yeah, I just finished your book.”

“Oh Jesus,” I replied, thinking this naturally meant the end of any relationship we'd ever have. But he laughed. “Yeah, it's one of the funniest things I've ever read.”