Unfortunately, so many citizens feel this way, too. It never occurs to them that the government never gives power back. Look at the Patriot Act. It just keeps going and going and going.

It never occurs to them that when you give a president some obscene unchecked powers (and especially when you have a legislative branch that abandons their responsibility to be a check and balance and becomes a bunch of bi-partisan yes-men, you are giving that power to every president that comes afterward. Including the next Nixon. Which I guess is what we have today, when you think about it.

We like to blame "the government", but I'd blame most of our current situation on an entire population that we have failed to educate on civics and how government works. They don't even know the basics and they give up or dismiss so much, because they don't know better.