"There is no one in Washington," Mr. Buckley begins, "with the exception of

Richard Nixon, who has had Senator Humphrey's experience within the Executive and the legislature." The Nixon Administration and Congress had been clashing regularly for four years by now--whether over Mr. Nixon's authority to order the Cambodian incursion, or, now, over executive privilege and the growing shadow of Watergate. The Senator is honest enough to admit that the growth of presidential power by no means began with the man who defeated him for the Presidency. Mr. Humphrey starts with FDR and goes on from there, with some of the more flavorous descriptions being of the man he served as Vice President: "Your lapels were never safe with Lyndon Johnson, you know.... Johnson was a total political man. I don't think that Mr. Nixon is at all. Nixon is, in many ways, a loner. That's his style."