Rick Perlstein versus Pat Buchanan on live television. I shit you not.
I would just add that a president can do one of two things when faced with a polarized country: He can try to heal the rift, or he can try and sharpen the division. In this segment, Buchanan argues that Nixon didn't create the 60s, he just took advantage of them. Buchanan seems to view this as a defense of Nixon's behavior, but for the life of me, I can't figure out why he thinks that. There's a beautiful line from Ted Kennedy's eulogy for Robert Kennedy, where he describes RFK as a man "who saw wrong and tried to right it, saw suffering and tried to heal it, saw war and tried to stop it." Buchanan is saying that Nixon was a man who saw wrong and tried to use it, saw suffering and tried to harness it, saw war and tried to exploit it. This, in Buchanan's mind, is what passes for absolution.
