Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 presidential hopes were sunk when he buckled under to “authoritarian” conservatives hellbent on smearing his military record as part of a larger “proto-facist” movement, says a former top White House aide whose testimony helped sink Richard Nixon during the Watergate scandal. John Dean, a Republican who served as Nixon’s top counsel, said Kerry slipped up during the 2004 campaign against President Bush by not suing the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth when they published a book calling into question the Bay State senator’s Vietnam service. “What most surprised me is that Kerry never did anything with...