Richard Nixon was a transformative president. He opened the gate to China, forged detente with the Soviet Union, took America out of Vietnam, abolished the military draft, completed the desegregation of schools, carried out reforms in welfare and environmental protection and saved Israel in the Yom Kippur War. But his presidency ended as a train wreck, with Nixon cast as a paranoid perpetrator, walking around the White House in his pajamas while talking to the portraits on the wall.