Word: ehrlichmans
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...even gossip can be interesting if presented in a lively and humorous style. Ehrlichman, however, writes as if his imagination were chained to a post. His plodding exposition is replace with mixed metaphors, clichers, and spelling errors--its only humor is bitter and sarcastic. A sample of the Ehrlichman...
EVEN IF HE FAILS to convince his readers of his historical importance, Ehrlichman could still achieve his second purpose: self exoneration for his role in the Watergate crisis. But Ehrlichman's efforts here are as tiresome as they are tireless. His version of the Watergate scandal contains not a single previously unknown fact or innovative argument. Instead, it is a string of extraordinarily bitter and venomous recriminations and accusations. His main targets are John Dean, portrayed as a pathological liar, and his two trial judges--Gerhard Gesell and John J. Sirica--both the whom he sees as incompetent grandstanders...
...Watergate cover-up or the break-in at Daniel Ellsberg's psychiatrist's office--the two crimes for which he served 18 months in federal prison. He pins the former caper completely on Dean, and hints quite strongly that Nixon commissioned the later. Far from admitting any wrongdoing. Ehrlichman claims that Nixon though of him as the "conscience" of the Administration. The problem with that story is simple: he enlists no new evidence in his cause and supplements, his charges with no compelling arguments. He merely stakes his word against Dean's, the prosecutors' and the witnesses'. But he tried...
...final chapter, Ehrlichman claims that he doesn't worry anymore about what people-I-don't-know believe about me." The very fact that he has written such a profoundly self-serving account of his political career belies this statement. Ehrlichman cares desperately that people believe he was clean. Like the rest of the Watergate chroniclers, he not only doesn't want to let the public forget Watergate, but he wants us to remember...
...Ehrlichman's historical gymnastics notwithstanding, we must never forget what Watergate really was and what it really meant. The Nixon Administration, pervaded by a paramoic obsession with its "enemies," grievously abused its power and endangered the civil liberties of its critics. Whatever certain individuals may have done. Watergate as a whole was a betrayal of the public treat by the highest officials in the land. Nothing John Ehrlichman did then or says new can ever change that simple fact Witness to Power adds nothing to the public discourse about Watergate. It just proves that the cover up is still going...