RICHARD Nixon thought Bill Clinton a "slippery" character who got away with adultery and behaved like a cowardly spoiled brat during the Vietnam War, according to a magazine article about a new book on the former president released yesterday.
But the book, Nixon Off the Record, adapted in an article entitled Nixon Unplugged in the New Yorker magazine, says that Nixon came to admire Mr Clinton as president - partly because the Democrat sought his advice and treated him with respect, even inviting him back to the White House from which he was forced in disgrace in 1974.
The book, by Monica Crowley, Nixon's foreign policy assistant, said Nixon detested the president's wife, Ms Hillary Clinton, dismissing her as a potentially dangerous radical locked in a loveless marriage.
The one person who emerges from the excerpts with Nixon's unqualified praise is the Republican Party's prospective presidential candidate, Mr Bob Dole, who Nixon called the only one in "the country who can lead. He is by far the smartest politician - and Republican - in the country today".