Nixon felt that Dean was being “melodramatic.” He failed to see that he had arrived at a moment of truth. Here was the chance to finally “prick the boil,” to use a Nixon term, to get Watergate behind him, at great cost and amid inevitable tumult, but in a way that would save his presidency. It was too late to spare his top advisers from criminal investigations or to spare himself from serious embarrassment. But had Nixon called in an outside lawyer and run a truly open investigation, his presidency would have endured—weakened, badly shaken, but also purified. Nixon did, for a brief instant,
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