Deliberately prolonging a war just to win an election?
Pretty shocking stuff.
But what if he disapproved of the deal LBJ was trying to force the Vietnamese into accepting, and as a policy matter thought the US could and should do better?
Still illegal, but that difference in motive makes for a different objection, this one to the "arrogance of power" mentality, to Nixon's worries about the US being seen as a "pitiful, helpless giant," as reasons for war, or for continuing for one second longer than necessary the foolish war RN inherited from LBJ, that LBJ should never have got into (nor should Kennedy before him have committed us so far as he did by sending "advisers").
Which was it?
All the same, if Clinton deserved impeachment and should have resigned for his perjury then Nixon deserved far worse, not for Watergate but for ruining LBJ's chance to get us out of Vietnam in 1968, years before Nixon would finally give up.
Even if his intentions were not, as seems all too likely, so starkly selfish as to suit the black heart of some Shakespearean Machiavel.
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