H & E were both idiots who couldn't have organized a cover-up if they tried.

John Dean was the brain behind both the break-in and the cover-up. Recall, the most notable break-in was actually the second of two. Dean organized the false testimony of various witnesses, and the payment of hush money to Hunt and others. Before all of that, he created the infamous "enemies list" on his own initiative, and worked with unaffiliated entities to dig up illegal dirt for Nixon.

Watergate was, in essence, "opposition research" run amok.

All of that made him the stand-out crook, by Watergate standards.

But that was only a warm-up act. Continuing to ostensibly serve as White House counsel, he gave Nixon bogus advice at the behest of prosecutors in order to further incriminate him. That was a big reason he was disbarred -- it was a total break down of legal ethics, and he did it to protect his own ass.

(By contrast, Liddy was a zealot and a criminal. But he had at least some loyalty; Dean was utterly without redemption, in any possible direction).

His subsequent career as a liberal scold was not repentence. It is cashola. He can appear on MSNBC and condemn Bush as a man who learned the lessons of Watergate the hard way. If he hadn't been disbarred, there is no way he would be doing this kind of humiliating "work."

You do realize, don't you, that John Dean was the very worst criminal in Watergate?

After he was disbarred, he went into a new line of work: the repentent liberal scold. It was just another racket.

The man is deplorable.

* * *

Look, I have a few misgivings about Wilson.

I've mentioned before that my great-grandfather x3 fought in the Civil War, and named a child after Charles Sumner. Sumner, of course, was beaten by a southerner on the floor of the Senate. So, I'm naturally sympathetic to the Sumnerite position, which in some respects probably flows to Obama.

That said, being the unreconstructed 19th century constitutionalist, monetarist, and McKinleyite Republican that I am, I have no problem attaching my affinities to Sarah Palin, and thus to a man who speaks out (literally) against defamation directed her way.

Obama's speech was too much. He's on TV practically every night. Did you know he's going to do Letterman next Monday, after all five Sunday shows this week, his prime time address, and 60 Minutes? And then, when he does go out, he does this humorless condemnation routine. It's garish. I was glad to see some rebuttal.

I'm all for civility, but you can't expect me to diss the man who dissed the man who dissed my favorite public figure.

Obama used the "liar" charge first. I was glad to see him get kicked in the nuts.

If I had to guess on someone like Wilson, the ratio of animating force is probably 80% policy and 20% racial dig.

If you look at Limbaugh's commentary today, it's 100% race, but he's playing the race card -- and fueling white insecurity -- by purportedly playing off the overreaction by liberals. I'm sure you could throw a penalty flag on that sort of play, but who is going to enforce it, and actually move the ball ten yards back?

Speaking only for myself, I can honestly say that health care concerns have nothing to do with Obama's race. You might even say there is a racial reason for that -- I am looking beyond Obama, and at the white duffers in the Senate, to see where this is going.

* * *

By the way, the Hill.com reports tonight that Olympia Snowe will not support the Senate Finance Committee bill. I predicted this twice on Joan Walsh's most recent thread! I'm expecting baloons to drop on my head any moment upon this glorious occasion.

Look, with Mike Davis, for all I know he might have suffered slights and pangs in his day-to-day life which fueled his racial insecurity. Kind of like your esoteric reference to things of which I know nothing.

Unfortunately for Davis, when those insecurities spilled over into press conferences, and the sports page, for people like me many miles away -- with no sense of predicate or context -- it just looked like whining. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn't.

Same thing here. When I flip through the news and see a bunch of people commenting on Joe Wilson and speculating about what might be going on inside his head, I feel like I'm watching a Michael Moore movie. (By the way, Moore sang a nice rendition of a Dylan song on the new Jay Leno show tonight).

I feel like I've lived through the whole Obama experience, vis-a-vis Davis, from courtship to divorce. So believe me, I have some feeling for this. The sad thing for Obama is -- I'm not sure he wants all this pity. If I were him, I sure as hell wouldn't. I'd tell Jimmy Carter to take all the wisdom he gleaned from his one term presidency and shove it up his ass.