High life | 28 February 2013

‘I was distressed to learn of some of your current problems and wanted to send you a word of encouragement. Since the time Bob Tyrrell introduced us a few years ago, I have been one of your admirers…’ This letter, dated 23 January 1985, was addressed to me and was signed by Richard Nixon. I had it framed and it hangs in my office. The only other letter hanging next to it is from Sir Denis Thatcher, after he and the Lady visited me in Switzerland. Nixon and Thatcher, two vastly misunderstood leaders who one day will be seen rightly as giants among the midgets who preceded and followed them. Lady T I do not know well. President Nixon and I grew close during the late Seventies and Eighties. He was the best-read politician I ever met, which might not be saying much, but his grasp of history was as astounding as the loathing the eastern liberal establishment had for him.

The media’s hate for Richard Nixon rivals that of Hollywood. Here’s William Goldman, screenwriter of All the President’s Men, the film about Watergate: ‘It is not important what is true; it is important what audiences accept is true.’ In other words, go as far as you can with the big lie, just as long as the suckers swallow it. Almost 40 years after Nixon left office, the attacks against him remain relentless. A recent article by a nonentity in the New Yorker refers to the 37th President as politically and personally awful. The nonentity does not qualify this. Was the approach to China an awful thing? Or the one to the Soviet Union? Or the exposure of Alger Hiss as a wartime spy? Or the ending of the draft? Or the creation of the National Cancer Institute? What about the Council on Environmental Quality? Or the most sweeping landslide in history, 49 states and 60 per cent of the vote in 1972? I could go on.

The media is full of bums who wish to prove their liberal credentials by flogging a long-dead president who was by far the greatest leader America has had since Washington and Jefferson.