Well, I suppose the moral of the story is that if you want to be seen as the only actor able to address a specific issue, the most effective tack is ruthlessly

Well, I suppose the moral of the story is that if you want to be seen as the only actor able to address a specific issue, the most effective tack is ruthlessly depict the motives of the opposing actors as corrupt and thoroughly tribalize it until you have a faction that will distrust any effort others make regardless of its merits. Then you're the only one that can make an effort to solve the problem. Neat. Maybe someone else besides Nixon could totally have done what he did diplomatically? > If Obama had done this the Republicans would have thrown a total fit. It's an interesting exercise to consider what specific hypotheses for which the conditional didn't evaluate true.