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From what I know of Nixon (which is admittedly not enough to have a firmly held position), this all seems entirely consistent with the core of his personality as a deeply insecure man that was sure everyone was out to get him. As others have noted, the reality is that a lot of people were out to get him! Nonetheless, his insecurity is something that his enemies could consciously use against him, and it doesn't seem out of character for him to have been willing to go along with some extremely sketchy characters and then justify a coverup. While adding in some anti-Nixon conspiracy doesn't simplify the story, it does tie it together more coherently without adding any elements that seem implausible for the people involved.
There's so much about the whole thing that seems so very relevant to modern scandals, with the most striking part being that very few people seem to be able to articulate what exactly the events that occurred were with any degree of accuracy. This is true of both supporters and enemies of both Trump and Clinton. What exactly did Trump just get convicted of? What did Hillary Clinton do with an email server? What was Nixons' role in Watergate? I would bet quite a bit that fewer than 10% of people that have strong opinions on the matter could pass a pretty simple test about the facts.
@Skibboleth
This is where, in the standard thumbnail psychological sketch of Nixon, we talk about the Franklins and the Kennedys and how he just never felt loved. One theory is that the break-in was trying to dig up dirt on Ted Kennedy re:Chappaquidick, as part of Nixon's long running grudge against the Kennedy clan he always felt got away with everything. There was definitely a degree to the whole ratfucking enterprise by which Nixon self-justified by pointing to his enemies' actions and to his even larger suspicions of their actions, he felt this was revenge or par for the course variously.
Shades of the psychology of Fascism, how the worst atrocities often come from a sense of having been oppressed oneself.
The majority of people who wanted Clinton in jail saw the Emails as a fair pretext to put the woman who had been accused of everything from killing aides to raping (female and male) Air Force One stewards over the years behind bars. Trump's actual prosecutions are so pretextual as to strain credulity. Nixon is in that same tradition in many ways: if he hadn't done so much else, he might have gotten away with Watergate.
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