It's late on the night of 17 June 1972, and a bleary-eyed security guard called Frank Wills is doing his rounds at the Watergate building in Washington, DC. Shortly before two o'clock, Wills notices a piece of duct tape over the latch of a door. He takes it off and carries on with his patrol. A little later, his colleague Bernie appears with a pizza; distracted, Wills never notices the tape has been replaced.
Meanwhile, the second term of Richard Nixon's presidency has been slowly building into one of the most productive periods of leadership in history. With a new mandate from the American people, he cements his reputation as the architect of détente, making a second trip to China in 1975 and signing a new arms deal with the Russians a year later. In south-east Asia, his support for South Vietnam helps to prop up the Saigon regime. Even today, 20 years after South Vietnamese troops unified the country by force, the walls of Saigon still carry posters of the man local people call their "saviour".
But it was Nixon's domestic record that really earned him that spot on Mount Rushmore. In his first term he talked of becoming an "American Disraeli"; in his second term he delivered, approving huge new spending projects on cancer care and food stamps, as well as a sweeping minimum-income welfare plan. Many hardcore Republicans were horrified, but when the so-called New Right formed a new party under California's governor, Ronald Reagan, they found little support. Today Nixon stands alongside Washington, Jefferson and Roosevelt - but who, except film buffs, remembers Reagan?
Indeed, to visit the magnificent Nixon Library in Los Angeles is to be reminded of the man's historic stature. Beside the display devoted to his 1976 Nobel Peace Prize are messages of goodwill from the Queen, Mother Teresa and John Lennon, whose famed Oval Office photo opportunity after Nixon's drug-law reforms appears on trinkets and postcards. It makes for a powerful contrast with the little-visited Kennedy Library, a shrine to Nixon's despised and discredited rival.
Historians often shudder at the popular caricatures of these two iconic figures: JFK, the sleazy, immoral rich boy, and Nixon, the decent, hard-working lad from a poor background. Some scholars even suggest that Nixon had a dark side - that, like Kennedy, he was up to his share of dirty tricks. But despite all the rumours about tapes and the mysterious bonfire the day he left office, there has never been any evidence. What kind of idiot would bug himself, anyway?
