Memories of another time and place

Back in the 1990s I used to have lunch with Archibald Cox regularly in the CU faculty lounge (For many years he spent his summers in Boulder).  Archie, as he was known, was a gentleman in the old style: it might be 90 degrees in July, and he was long retired, but he would still wear a suit, complete with a bow tie, if he was going to be at the law school.   He had many interesting tales to tell. The ones I remember best were about things like grading 200 blue books — all written in long hand of course: a task that would take several weeks of every summer when he was a law professor.  I never had the nerve to ask him about the Saturday Night Massacre, although it was one of my earliest and most vivid political memories (I was 13 at the time).

In retrospect, what seems most anachronistic about that incident was the behavior of old-style Republican brahmins like Elliott Richardson and William Ruckelshaus, who chose to resign rather than advancing their careers by allowing themselves to be complicit in Richard Nixon’s sordid machinations.

Now all the truth is out,

Be secret and take defeat

From any brazen throat,

For how can you compete,

Being honor bred, with one

Who were it proved he lies

Were neither shamed in his own

Nor in his neighbors’ eyes;

Bred to a harder thing

Than Triumph, turn away

And like a laughing string

Whereon mad fingers play

Amid a place of stone,

Be secret and exult,

Because of all things known

That is most difficult.