No mere “dirty tricks”

Am I hypersensitive because William Safire was a Nixon speechwriter, or is saying the Bush-Guard forgery scandal is “no mere ‘dirty trick’” part of a subtle campaign to rehabilitate Tricky Dick? At any rate, all this forgery hoo-ha has got me thinking: who stands to gain from this mash-up? Before the scandal broke, it was settled fact (I thought?) that Bush had 1) gotten into the Guard (thereby evading the draft) at least in part because of family connections, 2) had been at least somewhat derelict in his Guard duties (he missed routine physicals and may have been absent long periods, worked on a campaign when he should have been flying, etc.), 3) had not faced the repercussions we’d expect for such dereliction. Now that documents purporting to say just those things have been exposed as fakes, the charges themselves lose their power. Anyone who accuses Bush of shirking Guard duty can now be called out as a liar for repeating the conclusions of discredited evidence. A once plausible charge now seems dishonorable. Is this good for Bush, or what?