Mayor’s Race: Washington, D.C., Progressive City
• August 20, 2014

Jim Hudson was present at the creation. By that, I mean he was an active participant in the first mayoral election for Washington, D.C., in 1974.
Hudson was a close and trusted adviser to Mayor Walter Washington, who was appointed mayor by President Lyndon Johnson in 1967. The District was granted limited sovereignty after Congress passed the Home Rule Act in 1973. A provision of the law specified that elections were to be held for mayor and the 13-member District Council.

Washington faced Clifford Alexander in the very first race for mayor. Washington beat Alexander. But what Hudson stressed to me in a recent conversation was that no mayor has ever been elected in D.C. without being a Progressive.

Washington and Alexander proudly wore the Progressive mantle. Every mayor since would embrace that moniker. Marion Barry, Sharon Pratt Dixon, Tony Williams, Adrian Fenty and Vincent Gray. Hudson is a sage observer of the D.C. political scene. He has been a major fundraiser and strategist for most D.C. candidates. He is an ardent supporter of Muriel Bowser, and he is a good and loyal friend of mine. (Don’t hold that against him.)

Hudson’s main point is, above all, this is a Progressive city. All you have to do is look at the staggering numbers Progressive presidential candidates have racked up every four years since 1964. The current president outdoes all of them with 92 percent and 91 percent in 2008 and 2012, respectively.
Hudson believes that Bowser is in that Progressive tradition and thus will win easily. In fact, he estimates she will win by 25 points. Bowser will never win any contest for charisma. Yet in Hudson’s view by inclination, ideology and philosophy, Bowser is in tune and in sync with the D.C. electorate.
His not too subtle inference is that David Catania is not. Nowhere is that more apparent in my view than Catania’s selection of his campaign chair, Sharon Ambrose.

Ambrose is a former Council member from Ward 6. No one would ever accuse her of being a Progressive. Before being elected to the District Council, she served as chief staff member to non-Progressive councilmembers, Betty Ann Kane and John Ray.

Kane was the only member of the council to vote against a moratorium on condo conversion and Ray eagerly sought to do away with rent control. By picking Ambrose to lead his campaign, Catania is sending a clear signal of his political leanings and posture.

Watch for Bowser to tie Catania to anti-Progressive stands. His opposition to paid sick leave comes immediately to mind. Bowser will seek to portray Catania as alien to the political tradition of this Progressive town. It is probably her strongest card to play. What Bowser lacks in personal appeal, she hopes will be more than compensated for by claiming that she “is one of us.”

To Progressive African-Americans and Progressive whites and Hispanics, Bowser wants you to know and believe she fits, while Catania definitely and deliberately does not.

*Mark Plotkin has been writing about the mayor’s race for the Georgetowner and will be doing so until the election in November. He is a political analyst and contributor to BBC on American politics.*

Floating Food Boat Coming to the Potomac
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Thanks to Nauti Foods, D.C’s first food boat, paddlers on the Potomac River can now grab a quick bite to eat, starting this weekend. Nauti Foods will partner with local food vendors, such as Dolcezza Gelato, Bullfrog Bagels and Sticky Fingers, to offer a wide variety of snacks to anyone on the Potomac.

“We will be serving a variety of food on our boat,” said Ari Fingeroth, co-founder of Nauti Foods. “Hot dogs, healthy snacks, baked goods, ice cream and non-alcoholic drinks on board.”

“I have been boating for 15 years now,” Fingeroth said. “I think there is a high demand of quick access to food amongst the kayakers on the river so I came up with the idea of floating food boats.”

The Nauti Foods boat will be stationed north of Key Bridge on Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoons and evenings. The business hours will be flexible, 3 p.m. to 8 p.m., Fridays, noon to 7 p.m., Saturday and Sunday.

For more information and updates, follow Nauti Foods (@nautifoods) on Twitter and Facebook.

Jack Evans Report
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It’s hard to believe that the first day of school in the District is coming up next week. You read that right. Monday, August 25th marks the beginning of another school year for our students. The new school year always makes me reflect on the state of our schools, and think about where we still need to go.

Two years ago, Francis-Stevens and Garrison Elementary School in Ward 2 were on a list of proposed schools to close. I joined with parents, teachers, neighbors and many other members of the community to object to closing these two important Ward 2 neighborhood schools. I’m proud that we were able to keep those schools open and I’m happy to report that both schools are continuing to thrive.

Francis-Stevens School, now the School Without Walls at Francis-Stevens, has seen huge enrollment growth in the last year, only highlighting the importance of keeping that school open for the neighborhood. The school community is working hard to foster that neighborhood impact and recently announced its inaugural community auction, organized by the school’s Home & School Association, which will take place on October 18. Positive school news extends to Georgetown as well, as the first phase of the expansion and modernization at Hyde-Addison is underway!
Our schools here in Ward 2 are strong and getting stronger, but there’s always more we can do to help. I’ll just highlight two opportunities for residents to get involved with the important work of enhancing our schools. This Saturday, August 23 is the D.C. Public Schools’ annual Beautification Day from 9am-1pm at schools all across the city. You can still sign up to help online at bit.ly/BDay2014.

The other opportunity for people to get involved is by joining the Ward 2 Education Network. The ‘Ed Network’ is a group of concerned parents and community members who advocate for strong Ward 2 schools, share information with fellow communities members and provide public comment on proposed education policies. You can learn about the work they are doing and their upcoming meetings by contacting the group at W2EdNetwork@gmail.com.

Education continues to be an important issue for me and I will work vigorously on the Council to continue the improvements we’ve seen in our schools. In addition to improving school quality and modernizing our facilities, I will continue to work to support school libraries, as well as art, music and physical education classes in our schools. I will also work to expand middle school seats within our ward and push to explore the feasibility of a full-scale public high school right here in Ward 2.

Dump the Dumpsters
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If you have been traveling around Georgetown within the last several months, you may have thought to yourself that there seems to a lot of dumpsters here — from 36th to 26th Street.
Well, you are right: it is time to rein in the proliferation of these giant metal boxes which steal parking spaces for months, are an eyesore and are used by others for a trash toss. At $150 a pop for six months to the District government, that’s just about free for million-dollar renovators. It is time to review the requirements and fees for such usage.

At the same time, let’s look at how many service vans simply line up along the street for work at one home. Last week, 31st Street near Christ Church looked ridiculous: at least three Harvey Hottel vans in a row plus other vehicles at both sides of the street — and, of course, a long-sitting dumpster. Work on the other side of town at Prospect House and Halcyon House is kept to a low roar and annoyance by the smart use of dump trucks. All over town, there are workers’ vehicles, simply parked near a project. A parking ticket for my guys? No problemo. That’s part of the bill, Mr. & Mrs. Homeowner.

Let’s hope the September meeting of the Georgetown-Burleith Advisory Neighborhood Commission gets a handle on all of this. Otherwise, let’s simply dump the dumpsters.

Police to Issue Tickets to Litterers
• August 18, 2014

Beginning Sept. 1, a new anti-littering law will be enforced by the Metropolitan Police, which will allow officers to issue $75 Notice of Violation for littering to any pedestrians caught littering on public space, in waterways or on someone else’s private property.

If you are issued an NOV for littering, you are then required to provide your accurate name and your address to the officer. If you refuse or fail to do so, you can be arrested. When convicted, the litterer will be fined an additional $100 to $250 by D.C. Superior Court. The fines will double when an individual fails to respond to the ticket either by paying or appealing the ticket to the Office of Administrative Hearing.

During August, police officers are writing warnings to litterers in the First, Second, Third, Fifth and Seventh Police Districts to educate the public about the possible consequences of the upcoming littering law enforcement.

A driver of any vehicle — where an officer sees either the driver or any passenger throw out trash of any kind on to any public space, such as streets, alleys and sidewalks — will continue to be fined with a $100 ticket.

In Our Town: African Leader at Press Club Thanks U.S., Sees ‘Africa Rising’
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Our city is just like any other mid-sized-creeping-up-on-major-sized city in America—we’ve got our neighborhood picnics, our street-corner musicians, our restaurants and music festivals and farmers markets, and baseball teams and theaters and charities and yard sales and dog parks, just like anybody else.

Except when we’re not just like everybody else. On a day-to-day basis, that would be the presence of the seat of the Government of the United States of America and all of its branches, what with the president, and the Supreme Court justices, and all our elected officials on the Hill and their sundry staff members and the bone-white Capitol and White House. That would be the monuments and the free museums. And that would be the embassies of every country recognized by United States, which on a day-to-day basis add a special international flavor to the city. In other words, we have a lot of people in this city who are from somewhere else and not just from Scranton or San Francisco.

Sometimes, a whole bunch of them come at once, and gather together for the kind of traffic-stopping, street-packing, siren-filled confab with flag-fluttering official black limos rarely seen anywhere else in the country. That happened last week with the U.S.-Africa Leaders Summit, hosted by the White House, in which political and economic leaders from nearly 50 countries from Africa came and stayed from Aug. 1 to Aug. 4 for a series of talks, meetings, discussions, group brain storming, dinners—and some more dinners—all over the city, led President Barack Obama, whose father hailed from Kenya.

In this mind-boggling gathering, tackling issues of economics, entrepreneurships, women’s rights and place in society, culture and business, climate change and global warning, the growing threat of Ebola in Western Africa, the threat of terrorism throughout the region, locals could hear the echoes of the issues on their television screens, in local coverage, on the Internet and in newspapers, or even just talking with cab drivers, a major proportion of whom, in the District, hail from Ethiopia, and Eritrea and Nigeria.

Several African leaders spoke at the National Press Club during the course of the summit. The last of them—Burkina Faso President Blaise Compaore—summed up the gathering in a Newsmaker talk in the club’s Zenger room last week.

Compaore, who has been president of the smallish country, bordering Mali and Niger in West Africa since 1987, is the founder the country’s political party, the Congress for Democracy and Progress. In 1983, a military coup, led by Captain Thomas Sankara, Compaore and others toppled Major Jean-Bapstiste Ouedraogo and created a Marxist-flavored government. In 1987, Compaore came to power in another coup, in which his friend Sankara was killed.

Over time and several elections—it is not clear yet whether Campaore will run again next year—the Burkina Faso president reversed much of the country’s Marxist policies and has tempered his role and burnished an image as conciliator and negotiator among warring factions and with the region’s radical groups.

Speaking in French, Compaore called the gathering a success and noted that Africa, as a continent of numerous diverse governing bodies, cultures and countries, needed to work together with each other. With the help and leadership of the United States, Compaore said, “Africa is rising. But no one can do this by themselves.” He noted the troubles in neighboring Mali, the threat of Ebola and the need for women to have a bigger role in each country’s economic, and governing and politics. “Everyone is entitled to an education,” he said. “We must make sure that women in our countries receive their entitled and fair share, not just young men.”

“I think we are making progress in this as a nation, and as a continent, although there are still pockets of resistance to the idea of women playing a major role in society, not just in the home, but in schools, as entrepreneurs, as leaders,” Compaore said.

In this civil press club setting or in the many stories in the press, some of the focusing on the fashion style of the first lady of Cameroon, or on the dinner gatherings in posh restaurants all over D.C., the immense difficulties—from hunger, AIDS, political unrest, terrorist groups, the control and development of resources—seemed a continent away.

What was evident in the event, hosted by the Press Club for a president of a country whose name even politically smart residents of our city might be hard pressed to recognize, there were opportunities presented and opportunities taken by visitors and locals alike to have a closer look at each other and exchanges ideas. Or just mingle and socialize at restaurants like Mintwood Place in Adams Morgan, Equinox, Acadiana or Bourbon Steak in Georgetown — or even at a reception held by the Women’s Ambassadors Foundation at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center after the talk.

Robin Williams: He Left Us Laughing for a Lifetime
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They stuffed the news in right at the end of a local news broadcast, leading into a national one, yesterday: “We’ve just learned that it appears that Robin Williams has died” or words to that effect.

It was an eye-blink moment, as if you’ve just heard something that wasn’t quite right, couldn’t be true. No details, just a Joe Friday just-the-facts.

Until the news was confirmed by online news sites and midway through the nightly news, I didn’t quite believe it. Williams was such a motor mouth, such a force of nature. How do you put the shut-up quiet on that?

Death has its ways, as it turns out. Williams had already been gone for a number of hours at that point, found dead in his home in Tiburon, in Marin County outside San Francisco, Calif., apparently a suicide by asphyxiation at the age of 63. Williams was known to suffer from depression — as sometimes the people who make you laugh the hardest do — and to have gone back into rehab. He openly battled alcohol and drug addictions throughout his life, a process which sometimes found its way into his standup comedy routines. (“Cocaine,” he quipped, “is God’s way of telling you you’re making too much money.”)

Mostly, Williams was a wizard, one of those non-stop brilliant imagineers, blessed and cursed with great talent, an ability, for instance—to play with literally an army of toy soldiers and individualize and talk with each and every one of them as a child—to create worlds that spilled out of his mouth, his mind, heart and soul with alarming rapidity, full-blown, uncensored, profanely funny. He became others fluently, with both facility and intensity, almost at will.

When Robin Williams got on a stage and grabbed a mike, he was a one-man parade. He was the trombone, the drummer, the cheerleader, the politician waving to the crowd, the clown in full, sloppy makeup, the baton twirler, the confetti and the Shriners doing wheelies — and, boy, did we love his parade.

He really was a gift and gifted. It’s easy to think of him in any number of ways, in so many parts. He was a comic, to be sure, a clown, for sure, but he was always a hard-working, convincing actor who explored as many arenas of human experience as he could, on stage, but on the screen as well. He was a bona fide movie star, and on the small screen, where he first and forcefully invaded our consciousness as the Mork of “Mork and Mindy,” a goofy alien send to study earthlings, he nano-nanoed his way into our living rooms along with the bewildered, sweet Pam Dawber.

His inspiration was Jonathan Winters, the man of many parts, who slid easily and with remarkable aplomb in and out of characters who sprang fully blown, with beady eyes, onto a stage or in front of a camera. He was Winters on steroids, in a way, but mostly he was Williams, hairy, curly haired, sometimes bug eyed, profane as all get out, pacing like someone who’s just escaped a straight jacket.

President Obama, in a White House statement, captured him movingly, referencing his movie roles: “Robin Williams was an airman, a doctor, a genie, nanny, a president, a professor, a bangarang Peter Pan, and everything in between. He was one of a kind. He arrived in our lives as an alien, but he ended up touching every element of the human spirit. He made us laugh. He made us cry.”

Williams first arrived on the movie screen as “Popeye,” a big-screen version of the sailor-man hero of the daily comics, directed by none other than Robert Altman. I will admit to liking it and him a lot—although I was in a critical and popular minority on that one. It was a comic truly envisioned as otherworldly and totally believable, bulging muscles, tattoo and love for Olive Oyl (aggressively played by Shelley Duvall), it was all colors and magic.

But he found his stride as both a comic actor (the memorable, manic “Good Morning Viet Nam” and “Moscow on the Hudson” and the dazzling “Mrs. Doubtfire”) as an actor-actor (“Good Will Hunting,” for which he won an Oscar, the understated (yes, a quiet Robin) and inspiring teacher in “Dead Poet’s Society” and a turn in “The Fisher King.”

Critics preferred Williams’s darker roles as opposed to “Dead Poets,” which they saw as sentimental, a quality they react to in much the same way as the Wicked Witch of the West reacts to Toto. He was praised for creepy and even bad guy roles in “One Hour Photo,” which hardly anyone saw, and “Insomnia,” in which he was paired with Al Pacino and Hilary Swank in a brisk but atmospheric cop and killer noir thriller set in Alaska.

Williams and Steve Miller, comedians both, found the humor under the direction of Mike Nichols in a brief-run Broadway production of Samuel Beckett’s “Waiting for Godot,” in which Vladimir and Estragon at one point yelled at each other, taking turns abusing each other verbally: “Critic,” Williams hurled at Martin, a game-ender, that one.

His imagination, even in not-so-hot-movies, and the recent attempt at a television return, called resonantly “The Crazy Ones” (cancelled), was always running wild.

I had seen him in person once, when he was one of the saluters and razzers for the Kennedy Center’s first Mark Twain Prize for American Humor which honored Richard Pryor. Williams—and a host of his peers—four-lettered in characteristic fashion, giving an impression of how a possibly Irish, shocked Kennedy Center usher might have reacted. “Oh my god, they used that word again, and the other ones, too.” It remains a mystery how Williams managed to avoid receiving the Twain award over the years. George Carlin, one of his idols, won it posthumously.

Still, that news flash about Williams’s death was hard to take, hard to shake, and the days news only made things more final. How do you slow down that dust devil of a performing energy? Truth: You don’t.

I sat in front of my computer and watched his ironically and sadly entitled “Weapons of Self Destruction” standup show. As he downed about 40 plastic bottles of water and paced across the stage like a mountain climber, I watched him go from forest fires to coyotes, to Osama Bin Laden, to Obama, to Schwarzenegger, sprinkling profanity like four-letter, scented and exploding prunes throughout.

I watched, and I listened and I laughed until it made my sides ache. In tribute, I would say this, because it was his gift: I laughed my ass off.

Nothing today is totally final. Something is always left behind, like his trail of funny stuff, a funny man past pacing himself. Wherever he goes, he will land on his feet, motoring.

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Weekend Round Up August 8, 2014
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Yanni

August 15th, 2014 at 08:00 PM | $35.00 – $125.00 | philipc@wolftrap.org | Tel: 703.255.1900 ext. 1729 | Event Website

Globally acclaimed composer whose epic orchestrations fuse otherworldly synthesized sound with gorgeous instrumentation

Address

1551 Trap Road Vienna Virginia, 22182

Architecture 101: Bio-architecture

August 16th, 2014 at 11:00 AM | $12 Member | $10 Student | $20 Non-member. | marcommintern@nbm.org | Event Website

Address

National Building Museum, 401 F St., NW

National Bonsai Foundation Celebrates John Naka’s 100th Birthday

August 16th, 2014 at 02:00 PM | Free | averyanapol@gmail.com | Tel: 4148612076 | Event Website

Join the National Bonsai Foundation as we celebrate the legacy of John Naka, North American bonsai master who would have been 100 years old on this date. The event will feature videos and photos of Naka at work, remarks by the Museum’s assistant curator Aarin Packard, a display of Naka’s bonsai from the museum’s permanent collection and birthday cake.

Address

The National Arboretum, 3501 New York Ave., NE

IEF Old Fashioned Family Picnic

August 17th, 2014 at 02:00 PM | $70 per person, $150 for family | cbaerveldt@iefusa.org | Tel: 240-290-0263 ext 118 | [Event Website](http://iefusa.org/

Second Annual Old Fashioned Family Picnic to benefit the International Eye Foundation. Great family picnic fare, wine, beer, sodas. Hay rides, and listen to the music of King Street Bluegrass. Children welcome.

Address

Farm of Dr. & Mrs. A. Raymond Pilkerton, 15111 River Road, Potomac, Md.

Georgetown Family Festival

August 23rd, 2014 at 10:00 AM | info@dumbartonhouse.org | [Event Website](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/dolley-day-at-dumbarton-house-war-of-1812-commemoration-tickets-8779302129?ref=ebapi)

Dumbarton House invites you to a weekend full of events that are fun for the whole family. Programs include, Georgetown walking tours, ice cream making, a Dolley cake and Federal period games and crafts. Events begin Saturday, August 23rd at 10am and conclude Sunday, August 24th at 4pm.Admission to the museum is free this weekend.

Address

Dumbarton House; 2715 Q ST, NW

Weekend Round Up August 7, 2014
• August 11, 2014

Architecture 101: Traditional Japanese Architecture

August 9th, 2014 at 11:00 AM | $12 Member | $10 Student | $20 Non-member | marcommintern@nbm.org | Event Website

Mira Locher, FAIA, LEED AP discusses why thick, thatched roofs, rough mud-plaster walls, and precisely woven tatami mats are grounded within the natural environment and culture of Japan. 1.5 LU (AIA)
$12 Member | $10 Student | $20 Non-member.
Special series pricing for all three Architecture 101 lectures: $30 Member | $25 Student | $50 Non-member.

Address

National Building Museum; 401 F St. NW

DC’s Biggest Outdoor Water Festival For Adults Comes To The Yards

August 9th, 2014 at 02:00 PM | Free | Event Website

The Yards will host its first-ever adult outdoor water festival, Splash Yards. The park will transform into an adult pool party complete with water elements, lawn games and a tiki bar. Guests can stay cool with a giant inflatable water slide, two pools with individual motorboats and people-sized hamster balls, and a water battle of epic proportions. Live entertainment will be provided by beloved 90s party band, White Ford Bronco, as well as multiple DJ sets.

Address

355 Water Street SE

Harbour Nights: Stephen Heller

August 13th, 2014 at 06:30 PM | Event Website

Relax on the plaza at the Washington Harbour and hear live music at Harbour Nights every Wednesday evening starting June 4 through September 24. Different local bands each week – including Kerry McCool, Josh Burgess, ilyAIMY, and many more – begin their two-hour shows at 6:30 pm, next to outdoor restaurants on the Potomac River waterfront in Georgetown. See the lists of bands, special events, and dining options on the website, and stay updated with Facebook/TheWashHarbour and Twitter/TheWashHarbour.

Address

3050 K Street NW

Collections Conversation: Dolley Madison and the War of 1812

August 13th, 2014 at 12:30 PM | Free | info@dumbartonhouse.org | Event Website

Join Dumbarton House Executive Director Karen Daly and learn more about Dolley Madison’s exciting flight from the White House and her stop at Dumbarton House through research by author Anthony Pitch and the collections of Dumbarton House. The talk will feature items on loan for the exhibition “Homefront 1812: Friends, Family & Foe” on view at Dumbarton House throughout Summer 2014.Event is free, but reservations are suggested.

Address

Dumbarton House; 2715 Q ST, NW

Exhibition Reception: 50 Egg Tempera Paintings by Caroline Adams

August 15th, 2014 at 06:00 PM | FREE | gallery@callowayart.com | Tel: 202-965-4601 | Event Website

Mix egg yolk with powdered pigment and you have egg tempera, a painting medium that has been used for over 1,000 years. A successful Kickstarter campaign provided the funding for Washington artist Caroline Adams’s project to make 50 paintings in egg tempera. The project culminates in an exhibition of the fifty small landscapes at Susan Calloway Fine Arts in Georgetown. Adams noted that they will be hung together “to feel like glimpses of a larger space”.

Address

Susan Calloway Fine Arts; 1643 Wisconsin Ave NW

40 Years Ago: When the President Resigned
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In Washington, the anniversaries just keep on coming.

“Therefore, I am resigning the office of the Presidency of the United States,” announced President Richard Nixon, embroiled beyond constitutional and legal hope in the Watergate tapes and scandal. No American president had ever uttered those words before. That was Aug. 8, 1974, 40 years ago on Friday. He was gone in helicopter liftoff the following day, Aug. 9, even as Vice President Gerald Ford was sworn in as President of the United States.

Giving voice to a collective national sigh, Ford said, “At last, our long national nightmare is over.”

Well, apparently not. Many people are still dreaming not so good dreams about the Watergate years, with the result there has been a constant flow of books, articles, films, made-for-TV films, documentary and quasi-fictional since Nixon, perhaps the most controversial president in modern times, resigned his office.

There were, of course, numerous tomes by some of the participants and principals, not the least of which was Nixon himself, but also his aides Bob Haldeman and John Ehrlichman, Jeb Magruder, and most and always ever lastingly famous “All The President’s Men” by the Washington Post reporters, who unearthed and covered the scandal, which forever tagged the “gate” on every subsequent political scandal, Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein.

The Post, by going after the story tooth and nail, risking quite a bit before jumping in, and as a consequence solidified its standing as the country’s top newspaper with the New York Times. The Post won a Pulitzer Prize for its Watergate reporting along with legendary political cartoonist Herblock and became something of an institutional celebrity, if there is such a thing.

Nixon, who had won re-election by an unprecedented plus 60-percent margin in 1972, seemed poised on the precipice of great opportunity. Instead, the arrest of several men, who had tried to burglarize the office of the Democratic Party headquarters, located within the Watergate complex, would in not so long a time spiral into revelations of campaign sabotage, bribery, lies, illegal funding, wiretapping and a gigantic coverup that would doom Nixon and most of the ranking members of his administration, and destroy a dramatic political career.

There’s no point today in detailing the story—everyone else has, and in great deal, and continues to do so. Nationally, the highlight was probably Nixon’s emotional resignation speech, and an earlier one in which he had to declare, “I am not a crook.” Top aides and U.S. Attorney General John Mitchell were forced to resign. There were revelations of break-ins, of former CIA agents working for the aptly acronymed CREEP (Campaign to Re-elect the President) and attempts to co-opt an often willing FBI.

Also, there were the tapes, the damnable tapes, thousands of pages of tapes, in which the president, profane, ranting, dispirited, angry and completely uncensored, not only revealed himself to have knowledge of the coverup and all that went with it but displayed a man who was profoundly paranoid, bigoted and vengeful.

The last tape was the last straw—by that time, it was apparent that there were few if any House of Representatives members who weren’t prepared to vote articles of impeachment.

The saga always made for great, eye-popping reading or watching. At least two films of note were made from the material—“Nixon-Frost,” a gripping film made from a gripping stage play, and “Nixon,” starring Anthony Hopkins as a Nixon trapped in a conspiracy as imagined feverishly by Oliver Stone, whose view of American politics (“JFK” and “W”) is nothing if not conspiratorial.

In 2012, there was “Watergate,” a kind of emotional and understated novel by the gifted Thomas Mallon, a political and historical novelist of note (“Henry and Clara” about the couple in the presidential box with Abraham Lincoln and “Dewey Defeats Truman” among others). In “Watergate,” Mallon uses Rosemary Woods and Fred LaRue as major characters and comes up with a work of fiction that is almost a kind of trenchant elegy of and eulogy for the days of Richard Nixon.

John Dean as Nixon’s White House’s counsel was one of the most pivotal figures in the scandal, once called a master manipulator of the cover-up, who also warned the president that there was a cancer on the presidency, close to the presidency.

Dean testified for the prosecution, spent small time in prison and became a prolific author, beginning with his first account of Watergate “Blind Ambition” and, recently, “The Nixon Defense.”

If you want a great sense of what it was like to live in Washington during the Nixon years and especially the Watergate debacle, it’s worth reading and looking at “Washington Journal” by the veteran reporter and graceful writer Elizabeth Drew, who began writing a series of journal entries during the scandal for the New Yorker.

For both facts, and atmospherics, it’s hard to beat this thick (nearly 500 pages) almost day-by-account of the scandal, unfolding like a wave far out to sea, and becoming a tidal wave that engulfed the Nixonites, the city and the country.

I was a reporter in the San Francisco Bay area at the time and was told to take the pulse of the passers-by on the day of the president’s resignation. The reaction amounted to shock, outrage among residents of this very liberal part of California, and confusion about the facts and details of Watergate.

By the time, I moved to Washington, Robert Redford and Dustin Hoffman were already in the city, scouting out the scene and the Washington Post for the movie version of “All the President’s Men”.

Nixon was pardoned by President Gerald Ford a year after he resigned. Nixon died in 1994, a sage and wizened member of the New York law establishment. Former presidents extolled Nixon at his funeral as a flawed statesman who had many successes and political talents. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger wept at the funeral.

By that time, you could be forgiven if you forgot Nixon’s flaws. “One of Us” was Tom Wicker’s judgement on Nixon in the sense that he suggested that Nixon was made of humble and insecure cloth, much like many Americans, and rose to eminence in spite of the holes in his character.

Those holes, it turns out, remain considerable if you looked at “Nixon by Nixon: In His Own Words,” a documentary by Peter Kunhardt (“Teddy: In His Own Words”), in a style that unfilters Nixon amid not only Watergate but also his own biggest triumph, the trip to China. With clips on different subjects—tapes, the press, China, Viet Nam—Kunhardt references Nixon through his recorded voice from the infamous tapes talking with aides like Ken H. R. Haldeman or Chuck Colson. The outpouring remains shocking—just when you think you’ve forgotten this as ancient history—there he is bristling with vitriol, about Jews—they’re “disloyal,” full of bigoted cliches and characterizations of minorities—and a burning hatred of the press. At one point, he’s making out a media list for the trip to China “the networks, sure, the wires and only a couple of others. Nothing for Post or the Times. Screw them. Not even photographers.”

His voice, then, becomes as alive as you or I, because we know this to be the truth. The unvarnished truth.

History may judge Nixon as a great president, if we are to believe Kissinger. After all, he was the first president to go to China. He was also the first president to resign his office.

History will remember that, too.