Dead man drinking

Tricky Dicky is back in the news today, and not because of Watergate or Vietnam. Rather it’s the boozehound in the former president that's made the news. According to new reports, Nixon was too drunk to function five days into the Arab-Israeli war of 1973 and couldn't take a call from the British Prime Minister. Of course, this was at the height of Watergate and Nixon had reason to drink.

But here's the really alarming thing: Yesterday the National Archive publishes 20,000 pages of transcripted phone conversations of Henry Kissinger. The calls must paint a vivid picture of how Kissinger and the president dealt with a constitutional and military crisis. Instead, the lead story the next day is that Nixon got drunk. Truth is, they'll always have Nixon to kick around.