Richard Nixon Returns From Purgatory to Set the Record Straight

In the pantheon of American presidents, few loom larger—or more controversially—than Richard Milhous Nixon. The only president to resign from office, Nixon’s name is forever chained to Watergate. Yet the man’s legacy is far more complicated than that infamous suffix. He opened relations with China, signed arms control treaties with the Soviet Union, and founded the Environmental Protection Agency. Nixon may have fallen, but his fingerprints remain on America’s institutions, for better or worse.

Today, we attempt the impossible: a conversation with the ghost of Richard Nixon himself. We’ll ask the former president what he makes of the scandals that followed Watergate, and whether history has, at last, been fair to him.

USI: Good evening President Nixon thank you for joining me, I understand it's not easy to escape from purgatory.

Nixon's Ghost: You're very welcome, Arnold, and thank you for having me. Purgatory is like waiting ten thousand years in a dentist's lobby for a root canal, it's good to get away for a short while.

USI: Happy to help. We're going to be talking about presidential scandals and controversies today and what your thoughts are on each of them. Briefly, how do you view President Carter’s handling of the Iranian Hostage Crisis?

Nixon’s Ghost: Let me say this: weakness invites contempt. Carter stood by wringing his hands while our people were paraded through the streets. The American people must understand, when you show fear, the world sees opportunity. I’d have sent the B-52s circling Tehran until the Ayatollah begged for mercy. Sometimes the only diplomacy that works is the diplomacy of fear.

USI: And what’s your view on President Reagan’s Iran-Contra affair?

Nixon’s Ghost: Illegal, yes. But at least it was illegal in the national interest. That’s a damn sight better than what I got the shaft for. Reagan’s mistake was leaving too many fingerprints—memos, meetings, Oliver North in his uniform like a damn Boy Scout. I’d have kept it airtight, no trails, no memos. Always give yourself deniability. That’s Politics 101.

USI: President George H.W. Bush faced the Savings & Loan crisis. How do you see that?

Nixon’s Ghost: Financial crooks in suits, robbing the country blind. The only difference between them and the Watergate burglars is the bankers got golden parachutes instead of prison stripes. If it had been me, I’d have lined up a few CEOs for the cameras, had them in handcuffs. Sacrifice pawns to protect the king—that’s how you keep the public off your back.

USI: Let's move on to President Clinton and the Lewinsky scandal?

Nixon’s Ghost: Downright sacrilegious. To be brought down by a tryst in the Oval Office—it makes a break-in at the Watergate look almost noble by comparison. The shaft I got was over plumbers and tape recorders. Clinton got the shaft for a cigar and a blue dress. Let me tell you, I’d never have been that sloppy. If I wanted company, it wouldn’t be in the West Wing and it wouldn’t end up on CNN.

USI: And George W. Bush’s missing weapons of mass destruction?

Nixon’s Ghost: That wasn’t just a mistake—it was a fabrication dressed up as patriotism. A president sold a war on evidence that never existed, and the press nodded along like trained seals. At first. The American people want to believe their leaders when the flag is flying high. I’d have built the case better—make the evidence ironclad, or at least so murky the press couldn’t poke holes in it. Bush gambled big, and history has called his bluff.

USI: Let’s talk about President Obama and the Crossfire Hurricane operation. What’s your perspective?

Nixon’s Ghost: Now there’s the grand irony of American politics. I get the shaft for a second-rate burglary, and decades later a sitting administration actually uses the FBI to spy on the opposition campaign—an unprecedented screw job if there ever was one. They dressed it up as “intelligence gathering,” but let’s be honest: it was sabotage. They spied, they leaked, they poisoned the well before a single vote was cast. If I had done that—if I had turned the FBI loose on McGovern—they’d have dragged me out of the White House in chains. But Obama? He got a Nobel Prize and a book deal. That, my friend, is what historians call a double standard.

USI: And what do you think of Donald Trump and the Russiagate investigation?

Nixon’s Ghost: A hoax, pure and simple, kept alive by a press that hates him as much as they hated me. The man got the shaft from day one. I sympathize—when the establishment decides you don’t belong, they’ll hound you to the ends of the earth. My advice to Trump? Don’t whine about it—fight. Crush your enemies, because if you don’t, they’ll crush you. Believe me, I know.

USI: Before we let you return to the afterlife, I want to ask about a serious allegation. John Ehrlichman, one of your top aides, once claimed that the “War on Drugs” was designed to target blacks and the anti-war movement. Did you start the drug war for that reason?

Nixon’s Ghost: Let me make this perfectly clear: that is a lie. Ehrlichman was a bitter man, angry at the shaft he thought I gave him, and he made up a story to smear me after I was gone. Drugs were tearing this country apart in the 1960s and ’70s—overdoses, crime, entire communities drowning in addiction. The American people demanded action, and I gave it to them.

The idea that I sat in the Oval Office plotting how to stick it to blacks or hippies is nonsense. I didn’t need a drug policy for that—the hippies were discrediting themselves just fine, and African Americans had enough real problems without me inventing new ones. My drug policies were about law and order, cracking down on the most serious offenses and going after dealers and distributors. My policy was about rehabilitation and about restoring sanity to a country that was spinning apart. You can call me many things, but I won’t let history paint me as some cartoon racist boogeyman.

USI: So you reject Ehrlichman’s claim outright?

Nixon’s Ghost: Absolutely. John got the shaft, and he wanted me to get it too. But the truth is the truth: I fought drugs because they were killing America, not because of who was using them. History may not vindicate me in every respect, but on this, I stand firm.

USI: And before you return for your indefinite stay in purgatory, do you have any closing remarks?

Nixon’s Ghost: Indeed. History is written by the victors, and I was not allowed to be one. They turned my name into a punchline, as if a man who opened China, built the EPA, and kept the Soviets at bay was nothing more than a burglar with a tape recorder. I got the shaft, and I got it but good. However you must mark my words: every president since has played the same dirty game, some dirtier than me. They just had the luck to get away with it, and having those vipers in the press on their side doesn't hurt either.

And now let me say this—the American people want strength, they want order, and they want results. That was my creed. I stumbled, yes. I fell, yes. But I will not apologize for fighting, and I will not repent for surviving as long as I did. One day, history will look back and realize Richard Nixon was not the villain, but the blueprint. And when that day comes, perhaps the record will finally be set straight.