Readers React: Richard Nixon: What could have been?

To the editor: It’s kind of funny that 21 years after Richard Nixon’s death, someone has finally figured out that he was probably not completely encased in evil. And that he was rather like countless others who never felt good enough to belong with the swells, and then spent their considerable energies and smarts on devising ways to destroy those swells while still trying to rank with the best of those swells. (“Richard Nixon — upbeat sweetheart,” op-ed, July 17)

One has to wonder what the clearly intelligent Nixon might have achieved had he not felt so poverty-stricken, oddly nosed, poorly educated and stricken for eternity by a bad application of Lazy Shave.

In this case (sadly), no tapes or deleted expletives will ever tell that story.

Mary Stanik, St. Paul, Minn.

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