Timothy Naftali

And then he had guardrails.

And of course we all talk about them all the time, but his term, his time in office, he had a little more than one term, Richard Nixon had guardrails.

And he would have been a worse president domestically had it not been for the guardrails.

Well, we have now a president with similar, but not identical dark impulses who has no sense of shame and no guardrails.

And that's why the Trump presidency in its 2.0 version cannot be compared to the Nixon presidency at all.

The Trump first term could be compared because you had a president with dark impulses surrounded by good government Republicans with guardrails.

We're in a different world now.

Well, Sapphire, one thing about Sapphire is he had a very nice metaphor for Nixon, which was Nixon was a layer cake.

And think of him as a layer cake.

And you cut down to cut a slice and all these layers, and they're different and they're somewhat contradictory.

One thing I want to mention is that, yes, it's true.

Woodrow Wilson was a historical mentor of sorts, but so was de Gaulle.

Richard Nixon admired Charles de Gaulle of any leading, next to Eisenhower, of any living leader at the time.

And of course, de Gaulle wasn't Wilsonian at all.

I mean, he was the most Machiavellian of leaders.

So Nixon's a complicated man.

Well, and one more thing.

Again, Richard Nixon also understood the international system.

He did not want to destroy the architecture that Truman had constructed.

He also, although he had real doubts about elements, of course, of the great society, he wasn't about to dismantle the New Deal.