Hunter S. Thompson // "Well...the goddamn thing is over now; it ended on Thursday afternoon with all the grace and meaning of a Coke bottle thrown off a third-floor fire escape...exploding on the sidewalk and scaring the shit out of everybody in range, from the ones who got righteously ripped full of glass splinters to the swarm of 'innocent bystanders’ who still don’t know what happened... And probably never will; there is a weird, unsettled, painfully incomplete quality about the whole thing. All over Washington tonight is the stench of a massive psychic battle that nobody really won...even for me there is no real crank or elation in having been a front-row spectator at the final scenes, the Deathwatch... Looking back on the final few months of his presidency, it is easy to see that Nixon was doomed all along... On the...morning of Richard Milhous Nixon’s last breakfast in the White House I put on my swimming trunks and a red rain parka...and took an elevator down to the big pool below my window in the National Affairs Suite at the Washington Hilton. It was still raining... The lower lobby was empty, except for the night watchman... 'Mornin’, Doc,' said the watchman. 'Up a little early, ain’t you? Especially on a nasty day like this.' 'Nasty?' I replied...'Don’t you know who’s leaving town today?' He looked puzzled for a moment, then his face cracked into a grin. 'You’re right, by God! I almost forgot. We finally got rid of that man, didn’t we, Doc?' He nodded happily. 'Yes sir, we finally got rid of him.' I reached into my bag and opened two Bass ales. 'This is a time for celebration,' I said, handing him one of the bottles. I held mine out in front of me: 'To Richard Nixon,' I said. 'May he choke on the money he stole.' The watchman glanced furtively over his shoulder before lifting his ale for the toast. The clink of the two bottles coming together echoed briefly in the vast, deserted lobby. 'See you later,' I said. 'I have to meditate for a while, then hustle down to the White House to make sure he really leaves. I won’t believe it until I see it with my own eyes.'"