I have to admit to a persistent affection for any important person who answers one of my many importunate missives in detail. There aren't many. But Richard Nixon is one and John Kenneth Galbraith is another.

Galbraith wrote back that I was right about much economic analysis being flawed because the data collection and the models developed are static and, therefor, an inaccurate representation of a dynamic system--one that constantly changes over time. I don't remember what I wrote Nixon or what he wrote back, only that I'd decided that his most significant action and the least reported was cutting the strings between the dollar and the gold bars in Fort Knox--significant because in one fell swoop both the Soviet Union and South Africa saw the store of gold which fueled their repressive regimes rendered virtually worthless. As a result, if these nations wanted to be considered as equals on the global stage, they had to adjust their behavior and become more supportive of human and civil rights. Nixon set the stage for the fall of the walls.

In the interest of fairness, I should probably note that I'm also capable of abiding resentment such as I still feel over the return of a letter (opened and then stapled back together) from the office of Andrew Young when he was Mayor of Atlanta. I didn't expect him to be pleased to read that an out-of-town visitor was disgusted by how many of the city's in-town neighborhoods had been left in disrepair, but scribbling "Return to Sender" and sending it back without even affixing another stamp still strikes me as one of the rudest experiences I've ever had.

Anyway, not only was Richard Nixon's response to me more than polite, but everything he did and his whole demeanor after leaving office was so consistently conscientious that the Watergate break-in looks more and more like an outlier. Not only was the caper at the Democratic offices grossly inelegant and stupid, but the subsequent actions of a number of players suggest, at least to me, that Richard Nixon was set up in the expectation that he would remove himself from office.

I know I haven't watched too many movies, but some of the players (Rumsfeld and Cheney, for example) having absented themselves from the scene while the demise of the President was engineered, has the whiff of a Mafia drama where all the henchmen are suddenly withdrawn when one of the capos is to be taken down. Then they flood back and pledge allegiance to the new chief, just as they did to Gerald Ford.

And the hangers on are still around or resurfacing with renewed vigor. Is it to promote a new Don? What are we to make of the old dirty tricksters, Roger Stone and Charles Black and Paul Manafortshowing up in McCain's entourage?

It's a question that others are asking, as well,

The Palin selection, win or lose will make the Alaska Governor the future face of the Republican Party if she acquits herself well in the 2008 Campaign. This shifts power back to the Western tradition of the Republican Party exemplified by Ronald Reagan, Barry Goldwater, Senator Paul Laxalt and Arizona's John McCain and away from the faux-Texans, Bush 41 and Bush 43. W. went to Yale and is still the grandson of Brahmin Senator Prescott Bush. The Bushes and the Republican establishment are synonymous. John McCain was never in their crowd which is why he challenged the establishment's coronation of George W. Bush in 2000.

concluding with the speculation--

One can only assume that Black, Manafort and Stone and their associate Rick Davis are planning to cash in on a McCain administration as they did in the 1980's when they fused getting officials elected and then lobbying them into an art-form. Each partner reportedly walked away with $9 million when their firm was sold to Burson-Marstellar in 1990.

The anti-elite populist rhetoric from the campaign and the slashing anti-liberal media, anti-establishment politics of resentment and envy are the trademark of Black, Manafort and Stone. They have used these tactics for Nixon, Reagan and Helms. It is the politics of division, galvanizing those who bear a grudge against the establishment, rallying the resentful, the jealous, and the angry against the elites.

It's not a pretty picture. Adding a bit of McCain history doesn't make it any better.

Consider, for example, McCain's apparently gratuitous assault on Rose Mofford, who'd been moved into the governor's chair in Arizona when Governor Ev Mecham was impeached and removed from office in early 1988, just about the time John McCain was hoping to be selected as the running mate of George H.W. Bush.

In mid-April 1988, Mofford and some staff flew to Washington for, as one former aide puts it, the "perfunctory wet kiss" meeting with the Arizona congressional delegation. Even in mean old D.C., there's such a thing as protocol, and the tour was expected to go along without incident.

At 10 in the morning on April 12, Mofford testified before the Senate Energy and Water Development Subcommittee on Appropriations on the topic of the Central Arizona Project.

Now, Mofford had been governor for only eight days. Before that, her main task had been running the state's elections department. This appearance (there was a similar one, later that day, before the House) had been billed as ceremonial. She was not familiar with the particulars of federal water law. Nor did her staff think she'd be expected to be — just then.....

Coincidentally, that very same day, Pat Murphy, then publisher of the Arizona Republic, was also in Washington to meet with the delegation. He and his wife had lunch plans with McCain, and as Murphy recalls, they went to the hearing room where Mofford was testifying, to meet up with him....

"We peeked in the room," wrote Murphy. "McCain saw us, excused himself, and we three went to the Senate dining room for lunch.

"During lunch, McCain said, almost with mischievous glee, that he had slipped some highly technical questions to James McClure to ask Mofford — questions she wouldn't be prepared to answer or expected to answer.

"Flabbergasted, I asked McCain why would he want to sabotage Mofford's testimony, when in fact the CAP was the nonpartisan pet of Republicans and Democrats — such as far-left Udall and far-right Goldwater — since its inception.

"His reply, as near as I remember, was, 'I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance.'

Pure vindictiveness. The question is, given subsequent behavior towards other women (his wives and now Governor Palin), was he attacking a Democrat or someone who had something he thought he ought to have--like a platform for his leap into the White House in the train of G.H.W. Bush?

Because, yes, that's what he was rumored to be angling for before J. Danforth Quayle was chosen and the Keating Five blew up in his face.

The selection of Quayle, rather than himself, must have come as a bit of a shock to McCain, but shouldn't have been a surprise. After all, Dan Quayle is the grandson of Eugene C. Pulliam, owner and publisher of the Arizona Republic with roots in Indiana and a large number of descendants, including Kathryn L. Munro who replaced Quayle on board of Central Newspapers, Inc. when he resigned.

Now it seems sort of ironic to have McCain's designee for the Vice Presidency, Sarah Palin, compared to the Pulliam scion. Not only was Dan Quayle ever bit as experienced for public office as Barack Obama is now,

Dan Quayle's public service began in July 1971 when he became an investigator for the Consumer Protection Division of the Indiana Attorney General's Office. Later that year, he became an administrative assistant to Governor Edgar Whitcomb. From 1973-74, he was the Director of the Inheritance Tax Division of the Indiana Department of Revenue. Upon receiving his law degree, he worked as associate publisher of his family's newspaper, the Huntington Herald-Press, and practiced law with his wife in Huntington.

Dan Quayle's political career began when he was elected to the United States Congress in 1976 at age 29. He was elected to the United States Senate at age 33. On January 20, 1989 he took the oath of office as the 44th Vice President of the United States at age 41.

the absence of military service to interrupt Quayle's swift rise to political prominence might well have been galling to the man who'd given five and a half years to his country as a POW.

Which just makes one wonder if, like the fox with the grapes, John McCain decided at some point that the Vice Presidency isn't worth having anyway (a decision he was to repeat in 2004?) and so, just to demonstrate once and for all what he means, he's given the totally inexperienced Sarah Palin to the country--the country he didn't learn to love until he was "deprived of her company."

It's long been my belief that Richard Nixon resigning was a mistake. It prevented the country from finding out what really happened and who the real rats were--who engineered the petty burglary followed by a cover up to get rid of a man who'd obviously decided that trading and talking with the competition is a better alternative than setting up military bases on other continents.

Because, you know, that's what the U.S. lost in Vietnam--military bases on Asia's southeast edge. And that's what John McCain doesn't want to lose--military bases on Asia's southwest edge.

So, if I were suspicious, I might speculate that it's the ghost of Richard Nixon that's causing havoc in the McCain campaign.