Prior to leading the United States Senate through "our long national nightmare," Sam Erin, the nononsense North Carolinian, once explained that a "city lawyer learns more and more about less and less until he knows nothing," while a "country lawyer learns less and less about more and more until he knows nothing." Those prophetic words aptly punctuated the final chapter of Richard Nixon's unmitigated rampage from the California penumbra to the Washington eclipse. After RN's last rank of mulish followers retreated to the Capital in preparation for the trial of the century--and of democracy--the world's most powerful legislators and their...