I remember Richard Nixon back in '74
And the final scene at the White House door
And the staff lined up to say good-bye
Tiny tear in his shifty little eye
He said nobody knows me
Nobody understands
These little people were good to me
Oh I'm gonna shake some hands

James Taylor—“Line 'Em Up”

In these weird times that have seen the fall of Bill and Hillary and the rise of chameleon Obama, I think the time is nigh if not already well past to rehabilitate Richard M. Nixon.

Love him or hate him, you never had to ask just where Nixon stood. Like Senator Jesse Helms (whose timing was impeccable as ever by dying on July 4^th) Nixon was always a well-known quantity. In the end it was Nixon’s paranoid style of politics that did him in, but as one wag said, you’re not paranoid if everyone really is out to get you. And God knows, if not everyone, certainly everyone in the media was genuinely out to get Nixon.

Full-disclosure or shall I say personal-confession time: I was not a Nixon fan. My first opportunity to vote was in the 1968 presidential election and I received my first ballot as an absentee aboard a U.S. Navy destroyer on the way to Vietnam. Nixon and Humphrey!

I tore it in half and tossed it overboard in disgust. I was still in the Democrat party of my forebears as a callow youth at the time but Hubert Humphrey was such a ridiculous candidate I couldn’t vote for him and I certainly wasn’t about to vote for the evil Nixon.

I don’t recall voting in the ’72 presidential election either. Nixon and McGovern was just as ridiculous a choice. By then I was out of the Navy and letting my hair grow long and getting high on grass as often as possible, but I was a vet and definitely not anti-war.

And unless you’re a kid or afflicted by CRS Disease (Can’t Remember Squat) as I frequently am as I begin my sixth decade, you know what happened next: Watergate.

Even the Nixon-hating media called it a “third-rate burglary” when Nixon’s dirty tricksters were caught breaking into the safe in Democrat national headquarters in the Watergate Building in Washington just a few weeks before Nixon’s landslide victory.

Just what political secrets of the McGovern campaign were worth stealing? El Squatto.

But as my daddy used to say, a poor excuse is better than none at all and the media took the third-rate burglary and ran with it, all the way to a Pulitzer Prize for “Deep Throat.”

And of course, they ran Nixon out of the White House in 1974. Sure he was guilty, if not of direct involvement in the third-rate burglary, certainly of trying to cover it up.

But here comes the rehabilitation part. What did Nixon do when he knew the jig was up? Hang on through a bitter and bloody fight in the House and Senate in hopes to avoid being impeached by a razor-thin vote? No, he was no Bill Clinton. He simply resigned.

And then he walked out of the White House with his head held high and retired to San Clemente. He even somewhat rehabilitated himself as an elder statesman of the party before he finally went on to his reward, whatever that might be somewhere in eternity.

Fast forward to Bill Clinton and intern sex in, on or under the desk in the Oval Office.

And the same media that hounded Nixon from office was oh, so forgiving. “After all, he’s one of us” was the unwritten message between the lines of Monicagate coverage.

And sure ‘nuff, a few soft-hearted or cowardly Republicans caved in during the impeachment process to save Bill’s sorry hide from getting nailed up to the wall. Now compare Nixon's dignified-if-hurried department to Bill and Hillary's leaving after two full terms in 2000. Looting and trashing the White House on their way out was not one of their finest hours, but all too typical of the gruesome twosome.

Fast forward again to chameleon Obama, Mr. All-things-to-all-people. If you don’t like what he stands for today, as they say about the weather in Missouri, just wait a minute.

If for nothing else, we should be grateful to Obama for finally bringing to an end the media’s love affair with Bill and Hillary. Spurned by a fickle lover for a pretty, new face.

But despite my gratitude for Obama's one real accomplishment, I’m not grateful enough to vote for this political nothing, who’s done nothing, stood for nothing and glibly promises everybody everything.

Unfortunately, I seem to be in a distinct minority of voters. Where there is no vision, the people perish, Solomon said. And I fear far too many voters have gone stone blind.