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`I WOULD HAVE made a good Pope," said Richard Milhous Nixon. I AM emboldened by the minor recollections and remembrances of others to write about my own glancing meetings with Richard Nixon during his post-Watergate life.
I first met RMN at a private party for then-UN Ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick. Nixon was brought up to me, earnestly shook my hand, leveled me with a penetrating gaze and said, "I always read your column and watch you on television!"
This gave me pause. Somehow I felt a man who was a former U.S. president would be too busy to keep up with popular culture. But then Nixon asked, still holding my hand, "Do they pay you a lot to do what you do on television?" I said indeed they did, and that it was not only fun, but rather like stealing money. At that, RMN gave me another congratulatory handshake and said, "Good! Good! Be sure they always pay you at a top-notch rate, whatever the traffic will bear."
Sometime later, I sat behind the former president in a front pew at St. Bartholomew's for the funeral of Malcolm Forbes. While waiting for the service to begin, RMN turned around, spotted me, and said, "Liz, I just read about you in the cover story on gossip in Time magazine. You came off well. Congratulations!"
It was then I realized that although Nixon was living a quiet private life, ruminating on large matters, writing...