Now, more than ever, America needs more Dick

Now that he is no longer holds the title of Worst President Ever (and whoever thought that record would be broken so soon?), Richard Nixon stages a comeback of sorts as the Nixon Library launches The New Nixon, a blog, because, in times like these, we should pay special attention to the only President to ever resign in disgrace (hint...hint).

Since Dick is infinitely indisposed at the moment, the Nixon Library has recruited a veritable Who's He? of Nixonia including the former Mrs. Mitt Romney... Hugh Hewitt:

When John Taylor extended me the invitation to contribute occasional pieces to The New Nixon, I accepted immediately and knew instantly what I would point to in my first post: How I judge whether or not to read a new work on Nixon.

Here’s my test: I open the index and look for a few names. Names that only old Nixon hands know. Names that are not easy to unearth because of decisions made long ago to honor the confidences RN had entrusted to them.

You would be surprised to know how many people worked in close relation to Richard Nixon after he left the White House, first in San Clemente, then during his years in Manhattan and then in Saddle River. President Nixon spent nearly 20 very active years in non-retirement, years that were full of writing, conversation and travel. He was among the last century’s most accomplished, controversial and interesting figures, and the years from August 1974 through April 1994 were full of the sort of interesting stories that historians love to tell for the first time or enlarge upon with new details in subsequent recountings.

Historians would love to tell some mighty fine stories about Nixon, except that, well...

The Richard Nixon Library & Birthplace in Yorba Linda has long been the most kicked-around of presidential libraries, and nothing invited more ridicule than the dim, narrow room purporting to describe the scandal that drove its namesake from office.

Venturing into that room, visitors learned that Watergate, which provoked a constitutional crisis and became an enduring byword for abuses of executive power, was really a "coup" engineered by Nixon enemies. The exhibit accused Washington Post reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein — without evidence — of "offering bribes" to further their famous coverage.

Most conspicuous was a heavily edited, innocent-seeming version of the "smoking gun" tape of June 23, 1972, the resignation-clinching piece of evidence in which Nixon and his top aide are heard conspiring to thwart the FBI probe of Watergate.

This was history as Nixon wanted it remembered, a monument to his decades-long campaign to refurbish his name. Nixon himself approved the exhibit before the library's 1990 opening.

"Everybody who visited it, who knew the first thing about history, thought it was a joke," one Nixon scholar, David Greenberg, said of the Watergate gallery. "You didn't know whether to laugh or cry."

As Digby put it:

I'm sure you must be wondering what kind of low-life historical hack would allow himself or herself to be associated with such an affront to truth and decency:

Asked and answered:

When the $21-million library opened with private funds in July 1990, amid trumpets and a crowd of 50,000 that included Nixon and three other presidents, one biographer called the occasion "a symbolic redemption" for the president who had resigned in disgrace in 1974.

Yet from the start, the library had trouble being taken seriously. Its first director, Hugh Hewitt, announced that researchers deemed unfriendly would be banned from the archives, singling out the Washington Post's Bob Woodward as a candidate for exclusion. Scholars cried foul; Hewitt revoked the plan.

So we can expect that, while this is The New Nixon, it will probably still be the same old Hugh Hewitt. We only hope that it will be as successful as the Victory Caucus where the combined star power of Hewitt, Dean Barnett, Frank Gaffney, Austin Bay, Matt Burden, and Special Ed has propelled them into the blogostratosphere heaven.