he·roe
- In mythology and legend, a man, often of divine ancestry, who is endowed with great courage and strength, celebrated for his bold exploits, and favored by the gods.
- A person noted for feats of courage or nobility of purpose, especially one who has risked or sacrificed his or her life: soldiers and nurses who were heroes in an unpopular war.
There is nothing in the above which would point to acknowledging as such an individual who hides in the darkness, arranges signals and signs for clandestine meetings with journalists resulting in an assault upon a President who passed him over for promotion. Nothing.
Hero's are large men and women, Felt is not a large person, he is and was a very small minded bureaucrat who likely would have died silent and ashamed, as perhaps he should have, were it not for the apparent greed for cash and glimmer of his family.
His weakness and cowardice caused him to both use, as well as be used by the team of Woodward and Bernstein. Now his fraility permits his own family to use him. The Felt's of the world are not people that make a nation like this one great. They are the fodder that people its institutions and drag them down always to average.
Nixon was ultimately a tragic figure consumed by his times and his passions, true. But like his times and his passions, Richard Milhouse Nixon was great. From understanding communism, globalization and the nature of the modern press, the man was ahead of his time and more than fit to lead America.
Felt moved flower pots to arrange meetings; Nixon moved the nation and much of the world. How ironic that the very thing for which Nixon has most often been mocked - an enemies list, is the very thing that ultimately has inspired so much of the new media and most particularly many conservative blogs.
Nixon knew many of his enemies - yesterday we learned the relatively insignificant name of just one more.
I was 17 when Richard M. Nixon resigned the Presidency. In the racially-mixed blue collar neighborhood in which I was raised, he, and not a Kennedy was the first President many my age ever truly admired. Of course, every house, including my own had a Kennedy plate on the wall. Afterall, it was a predominantly Catholic neighborhood.
But those were simply the icons of our parents, most of whom worked in diners, factories and shops and never hoped or dreamed for anything else. To a person, i'm thinking that those of us who wanted to fight to get out, gain a college education and genuine opportunity somehow knew instincually that a political ideology that left tin plate memorials upon your walls and paper ones on your table wasn't something we wanted to buy into - we wanted more.
I never lost my admiration or fond regard for Nixon. Yesterday's revelation caused me to feel none at all for Mr. Felt. More and more it seems the forces that stoked my ambition as a youngster still serve to fuel my conservatism as I age.
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