It's a goddamn good story

What [Mark] Felt helped produce was a weakened president who was a serious president at a serious time

writes Peggy Noonan.

Nixon's ruin led to a cascade of catastrophic events--the crude and humiliating abandonment of Vietnam and the Vietnamese, the rise of a monster named Pol Pot, and millions--millions--killed in his genocide. America lost confidence; the Soviet Union gained brazenness. What a terrible time. Is it terrible when an American president lies and surrounds himself by dirty tricksters? Yes, it is. How about the butchering of children in the South China Sea. Is that worse? Yes. Infinitely, unforgettably and forever.

… Is the Deep Throat story over? Yes, in the sense that it will no longer be treated as a mystery. In spite of the million questions we'll be hearing--and there are and will be many serious questions--the MSM will stick with the heroic narrative. Mr. Felt was Deep Throat. Deep Throat was a great man who helped a great newspaper put the stop to the lies and abuses of an out-of-control White House. End of story. Why? Because in celebrating this story in a certain way journalists of a certain age celebrate themselves. Because to bring unwelcome and unwanted skepticism to the narrative would be to deny 20th-century journalism--and 21st-century journalists--their great claim to glory. Because the MSM is still liberal, and the great Satan of all liberals, still, is Richard Nixon. And because, as Ben Bradlee might say, It's a goddamn good story.

Or as they put it in yet another John Ford masterpiece, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, "When the legend becomes the fact, print the legend."