"So what did you think of him?" I asked Richard Nixon after his first meeting with Bill Clinton.
"You know," Nixon replied, "he came from dirt and I came from dirt."He lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the presidency, and I lost a gubernatorial race and came back to win the presidency.
"He overcame a scandal in his first campaign for national office, and I overcame a scandal in my first national campaign. We both just gutted it out. He was an outsider from the South, and I was an outsider from the West."
Thus the 37th president revealed the special kinship he felt with the 42nd, despite their differences in party, philosophy and generation.
Nixon wanted the United States to increase aid for the emerging republics of the former Soviet Union, so he sent intermediaries to urge Clinton to meet with him on foreign policy.
Clinton is reported to have said "good idea" and asked for Nixon's phone number.
But months went by with no call.
In any event, the call finally did come, and a few days later, on March 8, 1993, the two men met in the White House for a long private talk about aid to Russia.
It was a moment Nixon had foreseen.
In 1992, he heard through the grapevine that President George Bush's strategists were weighing inviting him to the Republican National Convention.
He could go to the convention and praise Bush, he said, or he could "deliver a rip-snorting attack on Clinton. If I do that and Clinton is elected, it would be very hard for me to reach out to him on the situation in Russia."
Although Nixon wanted badly to be accepted again at his party's convention, he issued a statement that afternoon that he would not attend.
In the end, Nixon came to like Clinton and had enormous respect for his political talents.
"You know that bit he does where he bites his lip and looks like he is pondering the question?" he asked me. "I think it's practiced, but let me tell you, it's great television."
He thought the Whitewater affair could pose serious problems. When I pointed out that the poll numbers reflected no damage to Clinton's popularity, Nixon observed that Watergate had not hurt him either, until the televised Senate hearings.
"The American people don't believe anything's real until they see it on television," he said.
If Nixon's advice to his young successor provides for a surer American foreign policy and increases the chances of peace, then we all profited more than either of them.