“The same policy that led us, in countries like Poland, to champion the rights of the ordinary Poles, led us, in countries like Vietnam, to outdo the communists themselves at exterminating the peasantry. It became a monstrosity, that policy.”
“We have been in danger of remembering Nixon as just another crooked office-seeker in the long gray line. He was, however,
the first American president who ever harbored despotic ambition”
“Mailer said he wanted to establish something he called 'the Fifth Estate,' essentially an organization to investigate whether the United States was slipping into totalitarianism through a series of carefully manipulated conspiracies. He said it was the best political idea he ever had”
“One could use that 18 1/2-minute buzz on the June 20 babble session with Hank Haldeman as a sound track for a Kenneth Anger movie which would be titled 'Nixon Sinking.' ”
“For the past 48 hours, while the President and his family had been once again resisting resignation, his closest aides were conspiring behind his back to force him to resign.”
“His cheeks, colored by a network of ruptured blood vessels, were formed by a coalescence of hanging globules, beneath which the double fold of his chin melted into his neck. And his skull was strung with cords of fat.”
