per Politico, where the elite go for their political integrity fix

Bob Dole yesterday sent a scalding email to Scott McClellan, excoriating the former White House spokesman as a "miserable creature" who greedily betrayed his former patron for a fast buck.

In an extraordinary message obtained and authenticated by Politico, Dole uses his trademark biting wit to portray McClellan as a classic Washington opportunist.

"There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues," Dole wrote in a message sent yesterday morning. "No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurred on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique."

...

Dole assures McClellan that he won't read the book -- "because if all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job"

"That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively," Dole concludes.

this Bob Dole

Then the Republican Party's national chairman, Dole was a vocal defender of the Nixon White House during the early stages of the Watergate investigation. U.N. Representative George Bush took over Dole's party post after the 1972 elections, but the senator remained a Nixon loyalist. In September 1973, he introduced an unsuccessful Senate resolution to stop live TV coverage of the congressional Watergate hearings. "It is time to turn off the TV lights," Dole said. "It is time to move the Watergate investigation from the living rooms of America and put it where it belongs -- behind the closed doors of the committee room and before the judge and jury in the courtroom."

Later, Dole was one of the most prominent GOP lawmakers to urge Nixon to comply with a congressional subpoena seeking the president's secret Oval Office recordings.

I guess he's the man who knows.

edit: and in other historical misunderestimation news, Doghouse, who I heart, on the kernfuffle du jour, here and here

edit again: Welcome, Kossacks. If it's the kind of thing you're interested in, I have a piece up right now at Firedoglake about Bill Donohue of the Catholic League and his newfound love of Sen. McCain's temporary friend Pastor Hagee