Michael Barone Takes the Side of that Third-Rate Burglar, Richard Nixon

Why oh why can't we have a better press corps?

Outsourced to David Gross:

Daniel Gross: June 11, 2006 - June 17, 2006 Archives: DEFEAT FOR AMERICA?; It wouldn't be a complete week without at least a few lines of shockingly stupid analysis from the Wall Street Journal editorial page, the kind of sentence (or sentences) that make you spit your coffee onto the desk and then launch into a paroxysm of sustained laughter. Thank you, Michael Barone, for making my week complete. He writes, in a piece about Vietnam, Watergate and Karl Rove.

Vietnam and Watergate were... defeats for America -- and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world. They ushered in an era when the political opposition and much of the press have sought not just to defeat administrations but to delegitimize them...

Read it again. Barone apparently believes Watergate was a defeat for America -- and for millions of freedom-loving people in the world.

Let's let Michael Barone's hero speak for himself:

Nixon: Did they get the Brookings Institute raided last night? No? Get it done. I want it done. I want the Brookings Institute's safe cleaned out and have it cleaned out in a way that it makes somebody else responsible....

Stanley L. Kutler, ed. (1997), Abuse of Power: The New Nixon Tapes (New York: Free Press: 0684841274), pp. 7-8.