Editorial Review - Kirkus Reviews Maureen Dean's experience of Watergate centers on what clothing to wear according to the configurations of the stars (though she says she doesn't exactly believe in astrology), and how a woman can spend time alone with her increasingly preoccupied, sleepless, and near-alcoholic husband. It is the extreme ""Penelope"" view. One she regrets in hindsight, for Maureen thinks the Watergate cover-up could never have become so dense if only the Nixon men had confided in their--presumably more moral--wives. As it was, what else was there for her to do but worry about knit dresses as she followed the incommunicado John Dean from Key Biscayne to San Clemente to Las Vegas to Camp David on the peregrinations that were supposed to save a government but finally toppled it? No one in politics talked to her, except politely, as a duty, or crudely, as a tomato; the power sincerely bores her; she thinks the pomp is childish--she'd rather be alone with her husband. Her book is actually a love paean to John Dean whom Mo sees as witty, supportive, loving and principled (we have to take it on faith since in this busy period he was rarely around); the ""collapsing world"" she is forever talking about is her home and expectations, not the country which she's glad is purged of Nixon. It is a sentimental book by the unliberated housewife, but then, bourgeois sentiment may be a better emotion than the lust for power among those who ran the country: we cannot depend on nightwatchmen with astute eyes to catch all our criminals.
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