McGoverning #2: Appointment in Samarra

Colson had been too quiet for too long, was the start of it.

The fear of what might happen, rather than the covert plans and dirty tricks Charles Colson had already pulled off — always with panache, always with the devil’s own luck — on behalf of Richard Nixon, thirty-seventh President of the United States, was what drove the swap.

Now that it was the year of Dick Nixon’s reelection campaign, the wise heads of the administration wanted to put distance between Nixon’s worst impulses and Colson’s faithful execution. Certainly more than their adjoining offices in the Old Executive Office Building, where the reclusive president liked to retreat and think thoughts of dark ambition.