1974

On this date in 1974, Richard Nixon in deep disgrace announced his resignation from the nation's highest office. How is it that 33 years later, many of the same authoritarian Republicans hold power? How is it that the Republican Party, once host to "a cancer on the Presidency", has now metastasized into a self-sustaining monolithic organism with no higher purpose than tribal loyalty to its own power? How is it that the Democratic Party is so easy to bully and so unable to deliver a sustained and pointed political message? How is that the American people aren't more dissatisfied? How did self-government become too much trouble?

I've just written a letter to my daughter, who is the same age I was when Nixon resigned. I had to apologize for the tattered state of American democracy. But I am going to go upstairs and fly the flag in honor of a time not so long ago when the Constitution worked.