Where do they get these guys? Over here: Teddy Kennedy's comrade John Kerry. There: Howard turned increasingly Dizzy Dean. Al Sharpton weds class clown and charlatan. Trial lawyer John Edwards never met an ambulance he wouldn't chase. George W. Bush is unlikely to knock Lincoln off Mt. Rushmore. You call this a choice?

Instead, make mine Nixon. In life, most former Presidents reap anonymity. Dead since 1994, the 37th President still compels.

For explanation, visit the town where I grew up -- Caledonia, pop. 2,188. Its people believed in work, God, family, and reverence for everything American. In Richard Nixon, they found what their parents and grandparents had rarely known. A Voice.

Meg Greenfield writes of the "Nixon Generation." More people voted for him as President than any man in history. Thrice Nixon ran for President, sweeping Rochester's six-county area. In post-World War II America, his history was our history. Nixon 'R' Us.

For me, Thoroughly Modern Milhous began in the most phantasmagoric campaign of our time. At age nine, I remember the morning-after 1960 Election headline: "Kennedy Wins." [The subhead was cheerier: "Nixon Carries Monroe County."]

In 1962, he lost for Governor of California. Amazingly, Nixon then became the leading GOP candidate for the 1968 nomination. The reason foretold his Presidency. There was nostalgia and love for Pat's cloth coats and the Nixon family, decent, much-wounded, and as straight and resolute as they came.

In 1967, I mailed a letter to Nixon's Manhattan law firm. Our church group was to visit soon, and might we meet? We talked, for half an hour. I still think of Nixon's kindness. Ironically, 1969-74 America trenched itself in belligerence. As President, he fused office and person like no chief executive since FDR.

Post-Boomers cannot easily grasp the early-1970s schism over Viet Nam, civil rights, morality, and drugs. My generation loved the beat of rock. On the other hand, Nixon told me: "My family never had the swinging times trendies think of. What we did have was fun. I loved to sit down at the piano and belt out some Christmas carols."

Mid-America could see Nixon as Father Christmas. Mocked by the manic '60s, it revered him upholding Mayberry in the emerging cultural war. Even awkwardness endeared. At a rally, Nixon heard a little girl shout, "How is Smokey the Bear?" Baffled, he quizzed an aide. "Smokey the Bear, Mr. President. Washington National Zoo." Nixon walked over, took the girl's hand, and beamed, "How do you do, Miss Bear?"

I saw him last in 1991: frail, slightly hunched, and proud of the woman whose Secret Service code was "Starlight" -- his wife of then-50 years.

On Pat Nixon's 79th birthday, I took to their New Jersey home a giant card of photos of her life and signatures of Bush White House staffers. Unpacking it, I pled for patience: "I'm the most unmechanical person you'll meet." Playfully, she replied, "No you're not. Dick is." I had never met Mrs. Nixon. For two hours we spoke of family, work, and travel. It was like talking to your own mother.

Later, Nixon called it "the most memorable birthday card she has ever received." Asked what word would engrave his heart if it were opened after he died, he said, simply, "Pat."

A favorite picture showed them on a bench, in San Clemente, espying the Pacific. In it, her head rests on the shoulder of the man who, campaigning, upheld "peace without surrender" and "the spiritual values of America" and who each election, at autumn's crest, communed with rallies in the rain.

Study the 2004 candidates. Choose the least worst. By contrast, Nixon's still The One -- the most enduring American of our time.