Preston landed on the South Lawn, but soon thereafter took off again, angling the helicopter on a return route to Fort Meade. Two Maryland Police Helicopters began following him, but Preston took his helicopter on a series of “erratic maneuvers,” making it hard for the Maryland Police to force him to land. Preston instead decided to return to the White House.

This time, the Secret Service was ready. They began shooting at the helicopter, with both submachine guns and shotguns. The helicopter was forced to the ground and “after a short foot chase” Preston was arrested.

President Richard Nixon wasn’t in the White House to witness the event, as he was traveling in Florida at the time. However, the event is believed to have inspired failed presidential assassin Samuel Byck, who tried to kill Nixon a week later by hijacking an airliner and crashing it into the White House.

Heads must roll at the Washington Post's Style section. Specifically, editors. After all, these people are paid to show some news judgment, and in today's edition of the paper, Style's editors showed absolutely none.

They need to account for why they placed Sally Quinn's news-breaking, conventional wisdom-blasting column deep within the Style pages. Not since the Post buried Walter Pincus' reporting about the Bush administration's flaky case for war against Iraq has the paper so botched a news-placement decision.

Where to begin with Quinn's amazing column? How many bombshells can a single columnist pack in one piece of writing?

This instaclassic piece is titled "Administrations should befriend the locals—they'll need them in hard times," and it falls under the banner of Quinn's relatively new column, "The Party." The piece sheds new light on just how influential Washington's permaclass has been throughout modern history. It's a towering refutation of the hard work of so many hard-working historians, to the point that some kind of conference must be convened before Valentine's Day. Let's just look at a few of the revelations in capsule format.

*What We Thought We Knew About the Clinton Impeachment: The president abused his power, abused his family, abused the public trust, lied, acted like a cocky douchebag—all in a highly charged partisan environment. So the Senate launched impeachment proceedings.

What We Now Know, Thanks to Sally Quinn: "When the Monica Lewinsky affair turned into a debacle, during his second term, Clinton was impeached partly because of the ill will toward him in the city. After that, the Clintons went underground and very few from the administration were seen out and about."

*What We Thought We Knew About the Fall of Jimmy Carter: Fuel shortages, a hostage crisis in Iran, Soviets invading places, sputtering economy, tentative leadership from the White House—all those things authored Ted Kennedy's primary challenge and, ultimately, the election of Ronald Reagan.

What We Now Know, Thanks to Sally Quinn: "When Jimmy Carter arrived in Washington, he and Rosalynn and many of their advisers were decidedly not interested in the locals and made it known. That chill was such a mistake that Teddy Kennedy felt free to challenge Carter, which doomed Carter's reelection."

*What We Thought We Knew About the Fall of Richard Nixon: The guy was a paranoid control freak who couldn't stop himself.

What We Now Know, Thanks to Sally Quinn: "When Watergate broke, the Nixon administration, besieged, went underground, sensing that they had no support. Everybody was out to get them, including fellow Republicans. They never quite understood, nor has any other administration, that when things go badly—and they always go badly—you're going to need all the friends you can get."

Huh. So let's nail the logic here. Quinn seems to be suggesting that if the Nixon people had just come out and partied a bit, they could have gotten some valuable assistance from the establishment. But what could the establishment have done? Tell Woodward and Bernstein to take a break? Serve up some hors d'oeuvres?

Asked that question via e-mail, Quinn responded: "Nixon rejected many of his potential supporters like barry goldwater. I'm not sure all the republicans would have told him to resign and turned so totally against him if he had been more sympathetic."

“He is if I let him.”

—Mayor Adrian M. Fenty, May 26

The leitmotif of city politics in 2009 was the emergence of Fenty the Jerk—an arrogant, stubborn, uncommunicative boor who's anything but accountable. That wasn't a product so much of any isolated incident, but a narrative that was continuously sharpened by a string of small travails—secret foreign travel, hoarding of baseball tickets, his children's school enrollment, and so on—and Fenty's response to them. His knack for turning one-day stories into one-week stories or one-month stories has been preternatural. Take his response to a Washington Post revelation that he was in the habit of letting friend Keith Lomax—a construction-company owner with millions in city contracts—drive him around in his city-owned Lincoln Navigator. When reporter Nikita Stewart asked Fenty whether a non-city-worker was allowed to play chauffeur, Fenty issued the imperial declaration above—just as Richard Nixon once defended his own shenanigans by saying, "When the president does it, that means that it is not illegal." At least when Nixon said that, he wasn't in office anymore.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

More from LL's Quotes of 2009

We do need to find more names for public buildings, especially in this city.  It gets confusing when you have to differentiate between which Reagan building to meet someone at, or use first names when figuring out which Kennedy goes with which arena/school/office.  But Obama's legacy is yet to be determined.  He's the first black president, which of course gives him precedence, but maybe the citizens should hold off for a few months.  Just to save the students from any possible embarrassment.

Good morning, City Desk readers. Some news:

• OffSeventh has a message for Feinstein and Bennett, regarding extended bar hours for inauguration: "Stick to your states unless you are willing to pay for this whole thing." Edgar says, "I’m sick of these new arrivals trying to smear their smelly poop all over the most excellent party to hit DC since Nixon resigned."
• What is (was) Truxton Circle? Where would it go? (Why) Do we need it? bloomingdale (for now) makes the case for bringing Truxton back.
• Petworth News reminds you that there's an art fair this weekend at Domku. (If you're not up for Scandinavian food, check out Kilroy Cleaners–it's participating in the art fair by offering 5% dry cleaning discounts!)
• And Now, Anacostia has updates on the community's efforts to save 1357 Good Hope.
• Officer Chante Brodie, the MPD's community outreach coordinator for 4D, has some advice on how to keep your home and neighborhood burglary-free. (Speaking only for my stretch of street: I'd have to call the cops every 15 minutes if I stuck to these guidelines.)
• Jesse Jackson Jr. didn't do it.
• Those bastards in Detroit got what they wanted. If Mark Pinsky has anything to say about it, journalism is next on the list.

Photo courtesy of flickr user walknboston.