AlterNet: Nixon's Children:

"Those closest to George W. Bush – notably Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld – learned some valuable lessons from the Nixon presidency and the events that led to its downfall.

After Nixon was forced from office, Cheney became White House chief of staff for Gerald Ford. It was during that job that Cheney first showed he had learned much from his former boss's downfall. While chief of staff for Ford, Cheney earned the code name 'Backseat,' a reflection of his insistence that his work remain behind the scenes and out of the public spotlight. Rumsfeld resigned his congressional seat to join the Nixon administration in 1969 as an advisor on domestic policy.

Both Cheney and Rumsfeld had front-row seats from which to watch the self-destruction of the Nixon presidency. Finding themselves in power again, both men well understood that it was not what Nixon and his cronies did that got them thrown out of office, but the evidence of what they did – the tapes, the memos, the testimony. "