When you think of how unnecessary Watergate was (Nixon was going to win-in-a-walk anyway), and when you think how Watergate put the American Nation in the hands of this Peanut Traitor for 4 utterly disastrous years, then you get a sense what a colossal blunder that stupid act of burglarly really was. Nixon didn't just risk his own presidency on nothing, he gambled away the security of America and the world. For nothing. Perhaps the single largest blunder in American politics, ever.
Hindsight is 20-20. In 1972, Nixon thought he was still battling pro-Soviets for supremacy in the world, and his tactics were justified in choking the anti-Americans who were using the Soviet threat to regain political power here in the US.
But there was a shift in strategy. Rather than simply support the pro-Soviet forces, the anti-Americans shifted their emphasis to another bunch with a growing rage with America, the anti-Israel Muslims (which is all of the jihadists), making the Soviets and the militant Muslims de facto allies in the War on America.
The Soviets had the bad judgment to arouse animosities among the Muslims, however, by their clumsy handling of Afghanistan. Bogged down in a seemingly endless war there, the Soviet Union went into self-destruct mode.
But not before the new anti-American force that is jihadist Islam had been given a push onto the world stage by the anti-Israel and pro-Soviet apologist, Jimmy Carter. The Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi was "bad", and the Ayatollah Ruhollah Musavi Khomeini was a "Godly man", in Jimmy Carter's estimation. The thing was, that the Ayatollah did not consider JIMMY CARTER to be a "Godly man".
One of them made a pretty good assessment of character. The other one was dead wrong.