I remember Richard Nixon back in '74 / and the final scene at the White House door
and the staff lined up to say good-bye / tiny tear in his shifty little eye,
he said, "nobody knows me / nobody understands.
These little people were good to me / oh I'm gonna shake some hands."
James Taylor, singing about a moment, exactly 40 years ago today, when Nixon resigned the presidency and left the White House--a moment that also, as I think both JT's song and a little reflection on anyone's part makes clear, encapsulates the rueful, confused, broken introspection which characterized (all too briefly!) America in the 1970s. Too bad it couldn't have lasted.
