To me, the break in has always been simple. Larry O’Brien, Howard Hughes, Don Nixon, Loan for Nixons…home of the Nixon Burger. I didn’t make that up…

In 1956, HH loans $300,000 to Don Nixon to establish a restaurant chain…”Nixons”. The short answer is that Don defaults on the loan, and HH takes the property in payment. “Nixons” go belly up.

RN was bothered by questions about the loan in 1960 and the race for Governor of California in 1962.

So what’s this have to do with Larry O’Brien. After O’Brien left the JFK campaign, he became HHs personal attorney. RN always feared anything JFK, especially the artitect of his defeat in 1960. He detested O’Brien.

Because of this, during the beginning of 1972, RN wanted O’Brien to be held accountable for his retainer with HH, and other things. Harass O’Brien. This became RNs obsession during the year.

I’ve always thought of the break in as being a result of a Thomas Becket type thing… “Who will give me information on O’Brien. Possibly information that O’Brien might have on the loan…perhaps something to discredit O’Brien.

Someone, maybe Colson…in that group, wanted to get the information for the President. How convenience that O’Brien had a office at the Watergate — where he was Chairman of the DNC….

If someone has a better theory, I am all ears and paper.

2. A Man for All Seasons, by Robert Bolt:

– “Why Richard, it profits a man nothing to give his soul for the whole world… but for Wales?” Sir Thomas More to Richard Roper

– “Why does your Grace need my poor support?” Sir Thomas More to King Henry VIII.

“Because you’re honest… and what is more to the purpose, you’re known to be honest. There are those like Norfolk who follow me because I wear the crown; and those like Master Cromwell who follow me because they are jackals with sharp teeth and I’m their tiger; there’s a mass that follows me because it follows anything that moves. And then there’s you… “ King Henry VIII to Sir Thomas More

3. MK’s thoughts: The need first to recognize, then to face and somehow integrate the ethos of the political world and the ethos of the governmental world creates many challenges for those who seek the presidency. Would self-reflection cripple those in the White House, as John Podhoretz implied in his Bush I administration White House memoir? If the principals struggle to work their way through the ethical issues, what about pundits? Don’t we see daily in newspapers and blogs how people who have convinced themselves that they have a strong moral compass struggle to confront issues honestly? Too often, they, also, find excuses to explain away actions by those whom they support and scramble to pick up mud to fling at those they don’t, thereby coarsening the political culture rather than shining a guiding light. Who is there, in practical terms, to help a President confronted with a Watergate? It all comes down to the man himself.

Shankar Vedantam used to write a column on The Department of Human Behavior for the Washington Post (I don’t know if he still does). He once discussed actor-observer bias and how people view actions as situational or dispositional. He wrote

“Where a Republican might say that another Republican who failed had a hard job to do, Democrats would be likely to conclude the person was incompetent — we choose situational explanations to justify the errors of our allies, and we choose dispositional explanations to judge the errors of our opponents.

Our psychological perceptions get flipped when our allies and opponents do the right thing. Republicans are likely to see the success of other Republicans as dispositional — reflecting the innate nature of Republicans. But Democrats are likely to see the success of a Republican as situational — thus depriving their opponents of credit.”

As well as I know what happened during the Nixon presidency – I’ve listened to 2,000 hours of the tapes, some yet to be released by NARA – I don’t have the answers for why Nixon handled Watergate as he did. I believe there is more to it than what you offered in your essay. For instance, I don’t think we’ll ever have hard, verifiable data to explain why the Watergate break-in occurred, although people have offered various theories. On tape, Nixon said it made no sense to break into the DNC if one’s aim was gathering operational intelligence about the opposing candidate. Makes sense. And yet . . . . Nixon knew the tapes were running when he said that. How did that affect what he said in recorded conversations? When did he remember the tape reels were turning and when did he forget? We’ll never know.

Most of the people around a President can be fired at will. They have zero job protection. I sometimes wonder how academics would do, if placed in a situation where they have to nudge a power player off a course that clearly is wrong. It can be very difficult. Unfortunately, a President’s greatest strength – his vested power – can be his greatest weakness. From studying Nixon I believe it is easy to lose perspective, to lose one’s sense of self, to conflate personal political goals with governmental ones, to forget what it is that one holds as a steward. A President has to fight those tendencies. Ultimately, it is up to the man at the top to reward, not shoot, the messenger. Nixon needed more people around him capable of telling him “no, that’s not a good idea.” Sometimes, there was no such person there. When an angry Nixon reacted to release of what he viewed as damaging employment figures by saying he wanted Fred Malek to determine how many Jews worked in the Bureau of Labor Statistics, no one pushed back and said, “no, we can’t do that with civil servants, it’s wrong.”

The White House aide who worked with the Plumbers,“Bud” Krogh, explained in a 2007 book why such an environment led him to prison for his role in the break in into Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office. His book is called Integrity and is well worth reading. Krogh’s website has this at its top: “The soul is dyed the color of its thoughts. Think only on those things that are in line with your principles and can bear the full light of day. The content of your character is your choice. Day by day, what you choose, what you think, and what you do is who you become. Your integrity is your destiny. It is the light that guides your way. Heraclitus, Greek Poet and Philosopher, 6th Century B.C.”

Perhaps some who read this site or write here will laugh at that. I don’t think you will, David. I know I don’t. As one federal official said a few years ago, “Those in positions of power and trust must understand that the law represents the floor of acceptable behavior.” Watergate’s anniversary is sad in many, many ways. As his biographer Stephen Ambrose noted, the nation may have lost much more than it gained, when Richard Nixon had to resign.