The Altar Of Purity

From my comments in an exchange today with historian and former Nixon tapes archivist Maarja Krusten on her new blog, NixoNARA:

[An important] NixoNARA issue is where a great person’s legacy ultimately resides — in the sum of his or her principles and actions or in the surviving interests of family members and staffers. What’s inescapably true is that, before too long, history will have nothing to grapple with but what Nixon did, which is why it was vital to get the records to Yorba Linda under the public’s stewardship, in a setting that would be as collegial as possible as well as congenial both to Nixon’s and the public’s interests.

Collegiality has been sacrificed on the altar of purity and payback. But thanks to Tim Naftali and the hard work of others who believed in the cause, the records are there. Thanks to them, the Nixon library is the Nixon records.