THE LAST WEEK
When the nation's worst political scandal finally rendered the presidency of Richard Nixon inoperative, it did so with savage swiftness. Hopelessly entrapped in the two-year tangle of his own deceit, forced into a confession of past lies, he watched the support of his most loyal defenders collapse in a political maelstrom, driven by their bitterness over the realization that he had betrayed their trust. Yet, as throughout his self-inflicted Watergate ordeal, Nixon remained unwilling to admit, perhaps even to himself, the weight of his transgressions against truth and the Constitution. He was among the last to appreciate...