DEAR PRINCE: The Unexpurgated Counsels of N. Machiavelli to Richard Milhous Nixon

My dear Machiavelli-I was delighted to receive your newly updated version of The Prince with its wily advice on how to weather the political storms of A.D. 1969. I've always remembered your precept that ""a prince who wishes to maintain his own power ought to learn how not to be good."" But really, Niccolo, that piece about letting the blacks ""dwell in their own city-states, exalting their own princes and barons and exulting in their own customs,"" and the bit about ""lessening the resources of the Pentagon, whose monies in the amount of some eighty billions of dollars so fiercely prevents your entire economy from having some equilibrium."" I agree that it is ""both foolish and churlish to forsake an advantage only because there is some virtue in it,"" but do you have to come out sounding so darn liberal-Yours, Tricky Dick.