J.D. Vance is trolling us again:
Vance described his admiration for Nixon during a conversation Thursday at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in Yorba Linda, California….
“If Watergate happened tomorrow, it would be like a 12-hour news story. The idea that it would have taken down a presidency is crazy,” Vance said.
Some observers see this as a comment on modern attention spans. In The New York Times, Matthew Purdy writes:
… Mr. Vance … speaks from experience about the current life cycle of scandals, which age like fruit flies.
Questions of impropriety — or worse — buzz around, then flutter off. Presidential stock trades are replaced by pardons to contributors, which are replaced by new presidential branding schemes, which are replaced by contracts to the connected, which are replaced by elective surgery to national landmarks.
Well, actually, we’ve been talking about a particular act of “elective surgery to national landmarks” — the failed restoration of the Reflecting Pool on the National Mall — for nearly two weeks. Scandals don’t always have a twelve-hour lifespan.
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