The best way to make history, Winston Churchill wrote, is to write it. And the best way to revise history is to get a bunch of people to lie their heads off. That’s what’s happening right now with regard to Richard Nixon’s reputation, which has lain rightfully in tatters for half a century, due to his cover-up of the Watergate investigation.

It’s easy to understand why Nixon’s apologists are working overtime to clean up his image. President Donald Trump tosses pardons around like Ronald Reagan’s jellybeans. A younger generation of conservatives rightfully lionizes Nixon as a foreign policy genius and doesn’t have first-hand memories of the damage Nixon did by lying repeatedly to the American people. But I do.