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One of the least understood aspects of the Nixon Presidency is that the Christmas Bombing of December, 1972, after Nixon had been re-elected with what is still the largest majority in the history of U.S. presidential elections (more than 13 million votes) led his badly beaten enemies to realize that Nixon meant what he said: he would continue, as necessary, to use U.S. air power to sustain a viable Korea type stalement between North and South Vietnam. This, together with the sort of sanctimonious prattle of the likes of middie led to an unprecedented, concerted assault by Congress and the media on the presidency -- one that coincided with the budget-minded concerns of a broad spectrum of the U.S. population and nullified the election result. To McGovern's everlasting credit, he finally said, in the summer of 2004, that the result of the election would have turned out no differently even if White House involvement in the Watergate burglary had been revealed in the middle of the 1972 election. Plainly, and simply, when Mitchell was moved out of the White House in the wake of the Watergate burglary, that was as far as Nixon was prepared to go in conceding the guilt of his friend John Mitchell for what had happened [Even at the time, those of us who were savvy in the ways of Washington had a strong inkling that this was a tacit admission of the guilt of CREEP, and in particular of John Mitchell, in connection with this silly bungled exercize in futility].

This being the case, the fuss over Watergate, which made Woodward far wealthier than Nixon ever dreamed of being, was the most lucrative exercize in Stawmanology that any journalist ever pulled off in world history. Worthy of a Barnum & Bailey world! It is no coincidence that the film, The Sting, won the Hollywood Oscar in the same year that Watergate occupied the headlines. When Redford later played the sanctimonious Woodward in another Hollywood effort, All The President's Men, I was surprised that no reviewer of the latter film ever mentioned that Redford's earlier role in The Sting came closer to capturing Woodward's character than did his role in All The President's Men. What I cannot understand is why the Justice Department has not indicted Woodward for having obstructed justice (and contributing to injustice) by shielding the identity of Deep Throat, who was, after all, the 2IC at the FBI and had grievously betrayed his oath to his agency and to his country. There shouldn't be a statute of limitations on treason or of Woodward's faciltation of it. As Ben Stein noted when Deep Throat outed himself, Felt and Woodward bear heavy responsibility for the pointless waste of the lives of 6 million Indochinese (including the 3 million Cambodians whose fate was left to the tender mercies of Pol Pot) when they destroyed a presidency that would have redeemed the enormous loss-of-life by achieving a viable South Korea type democracy in South Vietnam. Thanks for your supporting remarks. Merry Christmas.