Arthur Graham’s Reviews > The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time > Status Update
Arthur Graham
is 55% done
For as long as he lives, Richard Nixon will be on the federal dole forever at $400,000 a year -- $60,000 pension, $96,000 to cover his personal staff salaries, $40,000 for travel, $21,000 to cover his telephone bills and $100,000 for "miscellaneous."
— Jul 07, 2026 07:13PM
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Arthur Graham
is 54% done
Nixon's entire political career -- and in fact his whole life -- is a gloomy monument to the notion that not even pure schizophrenia or malignant psychosis can prevent a determined loser from rising to the top of the heap in this strange society we have built for ourselves in the name of "democracy" and "free enterprise."
— Jul 07, 2026 05:35AM
Arthur Graham
is 53% done
Despite all its menacing implications, the desperate plight of the national economy was not a story that called up the same kind of journalistic adrenaline that Washington and most of the country had been living on for so long that the prospect of giving it up caused a serious panic in the ranks of all the Watergate junkies who never even knew they were hooked until the cold turkey swooped into their closets.
— Jul 03, 2026 11:30AM
Arthur Graham
is 52% done
The main reaction to Richard Nixon's passing -- especially among journalists who had been on the Deathwatch for two years -- was a wild and wordless orgasm of long-awaited relief that tailed off almost instantly to a dull, post-coital sort of depression that still endures.
— Jul 03, 2026 11:24AM
Arthur Graham
is 48% done
[Nixon] will be grouped, along with presidents like Grant and Harding, as a corrupt and incompetent mockery of the American Dream he praised so long and loud in all his speeches. . . not just as a "crook," but so crooked that he required the help of a personal valet to screw his pants on every morning.
— Jun 26, 2026 03:45PM
Arthur Graham
is 47% done
"I think I'll give up covering Nixon for a while -- at least until I can whip this drinking problem."
"Maybe what you should do is get into a different line of work, or have yourself committed."
"No." I said. "I think I'll get a job teaching journalism."
— Jun 24, 2026 06:07PM
"Maybe what you should do is get into a different line of work, or have yourself committed."
"No." I said. "I think I'll get a job teaching journalism."
Arthur Graham
is 46% done
It is far better to know the Secret Service is keeping an eye on you than to suspect it all the time without ever being sure.
— Jun 09, 2026 03:50PM
Arthur Graham
is on page 281 of 624
Even the most conservative betting in DC has Nixon either resigning or being impeached by the autumn of '74 - if not for reasons connected to the "Watergate scandal," then because of his inability to explain how he paid for his beach-mansion at San Clemente, or why most of his original White House command staff is under indictment for felonies ranging from Extortion and Perjury to Burglary and Obstruction of Justice.
— Jun 14, 2014 05:40PM
Arthur Graham
is on page 277 of 624
A long and serious look at the "dirty tricks" aspect of national campaigning would be a death-blow to the daily soap-opera syndrome that apparently grips most of the nation's housewives. The cast of characters, and the twisted tales they could tell, would shame every soap-opera scriptwriter in America.
— Jun 14, 2014 08:41AM
Arthur Graham
is on page 275 of 624
the weird truth is that Washington is the only place in the country where the Watergate story seems dull. I can sit up here in Boston and get totally locked into it, on the tube, but when I go down there to that goddamn Hearing Room I get so bored and depressed I can't think.
— Jun 09, 2014 05:34PM
Arthur Graham
is on page 265 of 624
Sitting on this porch, naked in a rocking chair in the shade of a juniper tree - looking out at snow-covered mountains from this hot lizard's perch at 8000 feet - it is hard to grasp that this dim blue tube sitting on an old bullet-pocked tree stump is bringing me every uncensored detail - for 5 or 6 hours a day from 2000 miles east - of a story that is beginning to look like it can only have one incredible outcome:
— May 14, 2014 06:46PM
So. . . what we are looking at here is a millionaire ex-president and admitted felon; a congenital thief and pathological liar who spent 28 years on the public sugar tit and then quit just in time to avoid the axe. If he had fought to the bitter end, as he'd promised Julie he would "as long as even one senator believes in me," he risked losing about 95% of the $400,000 annual allowance he became qualified for under the "Former Presidents' Act" by resigning. . . But a president who gets impeached, convicted and dragged out of the White House by U.S. marshals is not covered by the "Former Presidents' Act." If Nixon had fought to the end and lost-- which had become absolutely inevitable by the tune he resigned-- he would have forfeited all but about $15,000 a year from the federal dole. . . So, in retrospect, the reason he quit is as easy to see as the numbers on his personal balance sheet The difference between resignation and being kicked out of office was about $385,000 a year for the rest of his life.