This forum has noted on multiple occasions striking similarities between our 37th president and the current resident of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Now John Podhoretz of Commentary tells us the next person who’s likely to reside at that address also bears some resemblance to an infamous predecessor.

DONALD TRUMP IS attempting to claim the mantle of Richard Nixon’s “law and order” strategy that helped him win the White House in 1968. But in truth, the candidate in this race who most resembles Nixon is Hillary Clinton—and she always has. The secrecy, the dissembling, the penchant for surrounding herself with third-rate yes-men, and the sense of grievance and persecution despite being one of the world’s most powerful people: These were Nixon in a nutshell, and they are Hillary in a nutshell.

Nearly every mistake she’s made in public life is, I believe, based on her conviction that people are out to get her—and due to that belief, she gives herself permission to defend herself by any means necessary.

The major difference is that Nixon was harmed by his paranoia, while Hillary Clinton may well have been aided by hers. …

… Hillary Clinton had a kind of luck Nixon never had. The outrage generated by her all-but-criminal conduct among those of us who were on to her bad character decades ago, and who watched her skate despite it, probably helped produce the noxious atmosphere within the GOP that led to the nomination of Donald Trump. How many times did I hear, during the primary season, that Trump was the only one of the candidates who would really “take it to Hillary”? Well, it turns out he’s rotten at it.

Nixon’s self-destructive obsession with his enemies destroyed him. Despite the parlous effect her obsession with her enemies has had on her reputation, Hillary Clinton may not have acted self-destructively at all. She may, in fact, have helped bring about the self-destruction of those self-same enemies in helping to summon up the only rival she could have beaten this year.