Dicky, meet Jeffrey: "I Am Not A Crook: How A Phrase Got A Life Of Its Own."

Funny dude, that Richard Nixon. From 2013, this explanation.

'I Am Not A Crook': How A Phrase Got A Life Of Its Own (NPR)

Forty years ago Sunday, then-President Richard Nixon first uttered the now infamous phrase, "I am not a crook." Nixon made the declaration during a press conference in Orlando, Fla., amid charges related to the Watergate break-in and subsequent scandal. Host Arun Rath explores the five little words that brought down the presidency.

Hunter S. Thompson eulogizes Richard M. Nixon (1994): "He Was a Crook."

(Wikipedia)

Arguably, the finest political obituary in American history. A Facebook friend linked to it yesterday, remarking that he rereads the piece every few months. It's a sign that I should, too -- and now it's your turn.

It is impossible to read Dr. Thompson's masterwork without laughing aloud. It is equally impossible to pull one representative passage. One simply must read the whole piece.

On occasion it will occur to me that I've borrowed a phrase from Thompson while writing. This is the reason why I limit my reading of his essays, because doing so influences my own style. Unconsciously, I try to emulate it. The same applies to H.L. Mencken.

My heroes are the polemicists. Ah, yes; always and forever.

He Was a Crook

By Hunter S. Thompson (The Atlantic; originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994)

DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

... It was Richard Nixon who got me into politics, and now that he's gone, I feel lonely. He was a giant in his way. As long as Nixon was politically alive -- and he was, all the way to the end -- we could always be sure of finding the enemy on the Low Road. There was no need to look anywhere else for the evil bastard. He had the fighting instincts of a badger trapped by hounds. The badger will roll over on its back and emit a smell of death, which confuses the dogs and lures them in for the traditional ripping and tearing action. But it is usually the badger who does the ripping and tearing. It is a beast that fights best on its back: rolling under the throat of the enemy and seizing it by the head with all four claws.

That was Nixon's style -- and if you forgot, he would kill you as a lesson to the others. Badgers don't fight fair, bubba. That's why God made dachshunds ...

... It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values" ...

And yes, it SHOULD be a national holiday.

Richard M. Nixon resigned the presidency on August 8, 1974.

I was 14 years old, vacationing with my parents at Mt. Rainier National Park. Inside the lodge, there was a rectangular common area with a vast carpet occupying the center. Apparently there wasn't adequate television reception, because the news was coming from a radio sitting stop of a simple wooden chair at one end of the carpet.

People had lined up around the carpet's edge to listen, as though stepping on the carpet itself would be an impolite transgression. My father suggested returning to the car, where we turned on the radio and listened to Nixon's speech, his words bizarrely echoing through the parking lot from the cars of other visitors who had the same idea.

Meanwhile, the silent behemoth looked on, impassive, unimpressed with the transitory nature of human affairs.

"Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

The late Hunter S. Thompson ... writing in 1972.

"This may be the year when we finally come face to face with ourselves; finally just lay back and say it—that we are really just a nation of 220 million used car salesmen with all the money we need to buy guns, and no qualms at all about killing anybody else in the world who tries to make us uncomfortable. The tragedy of all this is that George McGovern, for all his mistakes... understands what a fantastic monument to all the best instincts of the human race this country might have been, if we could have kept it out of the hands of greedy little hustlers like Richard Nixon. McGovern made some stupid mistakes, but in context they seem almost frivolous compared to the things Richard Nixon does every day of his life, on purpose as a matter of policy and a perfect expression of everything he stands for. Jesus! Where will it end? How low do you have to stoop in this country to be President?"

From: The Moment You Realize Trump Finally Crossed the Line, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

Do something fast, or else he'll start drawing up plays.

Nixon's tricks not in Redskins' playbook, by Jennifer Allen (ESPN)

"Why Today’s GOP Crackup Is the Final Unraveling of Nixon’s 'Southern Strategy.’"

The reason why I cannot be a Republican: Neither country-club elites nor social-issue hard liners serve Kool-Aid to my taste.

At the same time, I'm cognizant of what unprincipled one-party dominance is doing to erode New Albany's future prospects -- and they're Democrats, not Republicans.

I suppose one must continue his search for a third way: Non-partisan localism, fiscally conservative and socially liberal.

In the interim, don't expect me to mourn the national GOP's travails.

Why Today’s GOP Crackup Is the Final Unraveling of Nixon’s ‘Southern Strategy’: Tea Party rebels are exposing the deep rifts between country-club elites and social-issue hard-liners, by William Greider (The Nation)

Fresh chatter among Washington insiders is not about whether the Republican Party will win in 2016 but whether it will survive. Donald Trump—the fear that he might actually become the GOP nominee—is the ultimate nightmare. Some gleeful Democrats are rooting (sotto voce) for the Donald, though many expect he will self-destruct.

Nevertheless, Republicans face a larger problem. The GOP finds itself trapped in a marriage that has not only gone bad but is coming apart in full public view. After five decades of shrewd strategy, the Republican coalition Richard Nixon put together in 1968—welcoming the segregationist white South into the Party of Lincoln—is now devouring itself in ugly, spiteful recriminations.

Hunter S. Thompson eulogizes Richard M. Nixon: "He Was a Crook."

(Wikipedia)

Arguably, the finest political obituary in American history.

It is impossible to read it without laughing aloud. It is equally impossible to pull one representative passage. One simply must read the whole piece.

You may have noticed that just two days ago, I borrowed a phrase from Dr. Thompson. This is the reason why I limit my reading of his essays, because doing so influences my own writing. Unconsciously, I try to emulate it. The same applies to H.L. Mencken.

My heroes, the polemicists. Ah, yes.

He Was a Crook

By Hunter S. Thompson (The Atlantic; originally published in Rolling Stone on June 16, 1994)

DATE: MAY 1, 1994
FROM: DR. HUNTER S. THOMPSON
SUBJECT: THE DEATH OF RICHARD NIXON: NOTES ON THE PASSING OF AN AMERICAN MONSTER.... HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA.... BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.

... It is fitting that Richard Nixon's final gesture to the American people was a clearly illegal series of 21 105-mm howitzer blasts that shattered the peace of a residential neighborhood and permanently disturbed many children. Neighbors also complained about another unsanctioned burial in the yard at the old Nixon place, which was brazenly illegal. "It makes the whole neighborhood like a graveyard," said one. "And it fucks up my children's sense of values."

Mitch McConnell is corrected by Charles P. Pierce.

The culminating disappointment of Indiana's political drift toward quasi-Neanderthal Mussolini cult is that it prevents proper, civilized guffaws at Kentucky's senior tool.

In Which I Help Mitch McConnell, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

... Hold on a second there, terrapin head. I consider one of the curators of that most precious of all political pejoratives — "Nixonian" ... (and) Nixon would laugh at your outrage.

Pierce, Thompson and the Manics on the life of Richard Nixon.

That's right: One hundred years ago on Wednesday, Richard Nixon was born. The tributes are effusive and deadly accurate, as with Charlie Pierce's take.

Happy Birthday And I'm Glad You're Still Dead, by Charles P. Pierce (Esquire)

If he were still alive, and the existence of god thereby utterly disproved in a huge and public way, this would have been Richard Nixon's 100th birthday ...

... There will be a lot of chin-rubbing and beard-pulling, and discreet apologias on the theme of what a "quintessentially American" life was led by Richard Nixon. This a whole load of bollocks. I know hundreds of Americans who live their quintessentially American lives without doing a fraction of the damage that Richard Nixon did to his country and to the world simply by getting out of bed in the morning. His crimes are not excused by his neuroses. The subsequent dementia of the Republican party does not absolve him of the damage he did to our politics. Nixon was not "us." Most of us don't kill Asians to prove to someone else how tough we are. Most of us don't cover our workplaces with shame and disgrace and then claim that somebody else, and there was always somebody else with him, was really to blame.

But there's more!

Let's not forget Hunter S. Thompson's world-classic Nixon obituary from 1994, as originally published in Rolling Stone: He Was a Crook.

If the right people had been in charge of Nixon's funeral, his casket would have been launched into one of those open-sewage canals that empty into the ocean just south of Los Angeles. He was a swine of a man and a jabbering dupe of a president. Nixon was so crooked that he needed servants to help him screw his pants on every morning. Even his funeral was illegal. He was queer in the deepest way. His body should have been burned in a trash bin.

The last word goes to the Manic Street Preachers (from the album Lifeblood, 2004).