"Dear Richard"

       Dear Richard;

      I never thought I would be saying this after all of the chaos and uncertainty you left behind, but you were right! I'll never forget my own skepticism when you probably said to yourself  "Someday everyone will understand what they have done to me and they will miss me."  It was August 8, 1974 and you must have pleaded with yourself over and over to reconsider the decision you were planning to make the following day.

    Since then all of us have had to acquire a taste for Humble Pie because if we weren't right about anything else we were right that we were the victims in all of that mess the Democrats caused by enlisting the media to help run you off. (My God! Did they treat you unfairly!)

    Nevertheless, what we didn't know then, but now do is we were victims of our own recklessness by not paying attention to what you were trying to tell us for our own good; a case of shortsightedness on our part of epic proportions! Some celebrated when you said goodbye and I must confess that I did too but since then I have run out of words and excuses to explain why. If only we had the Internet back then. Maybe if we had we wouldn't have been so quick to trust people like Howard K. Smith, Dan Rather, Tom Brokaw and the rest of that pack of media trouble makers to tell us the truth.

    You should have listened to your heart and trusted your instincts Richard because you were right all along. I don't know enough words to say it, but what this country wouldn't give to have you back and back in control! We were wrong about about you, Dick. We have nearly self-destructed since everyone made such a big fuss about that harmless little scavenger hunt your friends went on in the middle of the night over there at the Watergate Hotel, when all it was proven to be was an attempt to thoroughly vet someone who wanted to take your place. Now we bitch when candidates are NOT vetted properly!

    You knew the Democrats were hiding something that might someday destroy all of us, and you only did what any responsible sitting president should do by wanting to make sure we didn't make a disastrous mistake by voting for another candidate we didn't know much about. I think I can speak for at least half of the country now when I say we are sorry we so grossly underestimated your benevolent intentions and that you were only thinking of what was best for everyone that had a stake in America.

    If only you could come back from wherever you are and once again throw your hat into the ring in 2016 to lead us through these dark and dangerous times, because our pickings have never been slimmer and those damn Democrats are at it again! This latest crop of them looks like the most dangerous band of malcontents this country ever had to choose from.

   There is an old gal named Hillary Clinton who lies so much, that any you were ever accused of now seem like little white fibs. Yours only embarrassed us a little but hers could get us all killed! You have probably never heard of her but she is the matriarch of what has come to be known as The Clinton Dynasty. They are a family that came out of Arkansas to amass an obscene fortune that is being spent to build an oligarchy that they can control and benefit most from. Many believe that if they succeed it will leave the rest of us jobless, homeless and fighting in the streets over the food scraps they and their supporters throw out.


   Then there is another loudmouthed old Hippie like her that can't be trusted either because he keeps picking the scabs of old wounds and reigniting the volatile rhetoric that caused all of those poor race relations that you and LBJ had to confront back in the 1960s! I think your people probably kept him under surveillance because of his anti-everything civil disobedience when he was just an angry college kid that no one ever heard of. He is like a false prophet taking advantage of millions of lost and confused minions; someone who will build them all houses made of bricks instead of sticks and straw, and stock their pantries daily with free food!

    His name is Bernie Sanders; a longtime Washington freeloader from Vermont that looks and behaves like Professor Irwin Corey but sounds like George McGovern! He has vowed to spend seventy-million dollars or more if he has to between now and the convention just to stay in the limelight even though he knows he can't possibly win this thing.

    Think about that Mr. President; he is willing to piss away $70,000.000.00 of other people's money to keep telling everyone else that WE need to care more about the disadvantaged and the poorest people. He speaks of wasteful spending and how the rest of us need to be more responsible if there is money that can be channeled to neighborhoods that need it most! Can you even imagine such pompous arrogance? I am sure that if you were still in charge you would have a man like him jailed! Things are getting worse, not only because they are worse or  ever were, but because these two knuckleheads seem to be missing the '60s and want to push the progress we made back 50 years by encouraging only more economic and social divide!

   What these people are threatening to do (and have done) makes your policies look like a curriculum for successful innovation through higher education, everyone living healthier and longer, expanding the opportunities for more people to achieve the American Dream and the safest world the planet ever saw! I am dumbfounded that I and so many others didn't see that when we had the chance.

   I am telling you Richard, things are a real mess right now, and more than half of us are afraid that we may never again see the country you led and wanted us to be during your tenure as Commander and Chief, while the other half doesn't even want it! As for the Grand Old Party, there is ONE man that is willing to step up and take a shot at fixing everything we have broken in the years since you left. He isn't exactly like you but he is the nearest we have to anyone with balls as big as yours must have been. His name is Donald Trump; perhaps you knew his dad, and he wants to make America Great again just as you tried to make it.

    There hasn't been a leader since you left that could do it and make it last for any more than 8 years or so and this could be our last chance to ever get there. Because now we are engaged in a new Civil War that this Sanders dude and this Clinton dame started, and this one is as hate-filled and bloody in rhetoric as the first war between the states was with rifles and cannons. America doesn't like itself much anymore and fewer and fewer countries around the world even respect us, and I think you predicted it would come to this someday if we turned our backs on people like you.

   You were right, Richard. We must have been wearing blinders when we allowed you to return the keys to the White House before you were finished back in '74. We should have listened to you and tried to understand you better. Someone should have crawled to that podium on their hands and knees that day and thrown them self at your mercy and begged shamelessly for you to reconsider your decision to just quit and leave us dangling with little hope for the future. I have survived to see it all unfold just as you predicted it would; the future is here and it is a mess!

    Please share this letter with Pat and tell her we miss her too.

    Neither of you would believe some of the First Lady's that have hung curtains in your old home since you moved out of it. We know because we have had to endure their husbands and some of them were so pussy-whipped and meek that some of us have forgotten what it was like to have a classy and powerful first couple to look up to. I hope you can forgive us for our reckless acceptance to let you go, because as it all unfolded you were right along.

   Oh, and if you see Spiro tell him all is forgiven also; even he would be better than most of the choices we have now!

    Sincerely,
    Richard.