Politics & Power Quote by Stephen Ambrose

Ambrose’s jab lands because it looks like a casual aside while smuggling in a brutal historiographical verdict. The line is built on the mock-politeness of “save only perhaps,” a phrase that pretends to soften the blow even as it widens it: Nixon isn’t merely bad, he’s competing for the basement with the president most associated with the moral collapse of Reconstruction.

The intent is comparative, but also disciplinary. Ambrose isn’t ranking presidents the way cable news does; he’s invoking a specific kind of failure that historians treat as existential: not incompetence, not policy disagreement, but an assault on democratic legitimacy. Nixon’s Watergate-era abuses and Johnson’s post-Civil War obstruction become parallel warnings about executive power untethered from constitutional restraint. By choosing Johnson as the only plausible rival, Ambrose frames Nixon’s story as more than a scandal of personality. It’s a test case for whether institutions can survive a leader willing to treat the presidency as a personal instrument.

The subtext is also about historical memory and the politics of rehabilitation. Nixon’s defenders have long tried to trade in foreign policy achievements to launder the record. Ambrose refuses that bargain. He ties Nixon to a moment many Americans only half-remember, when the federal commitment to Black citizenship was effectively gutted. That comparison doesn’t just condemn Nixon; it reminds readers that “worst” is a category with consequences, measured in rights lost, norms shattered, and the long hangover of distrust that follows.