Twenty-three years later, George W. Bush, a latter day Nixon in his lust for presidential power and obsession with secrecy, decided to give the papers back to the former presidents, not to mention future former presidents like himself.

The Presidential Records Act of 1978 gave ex-presidents a generous 12 years to make all their records public and then allowed them 30 additional days for a final review of the papers in order to make any last minute objections to their release.

But in the fall of 2001, with the nation in shock from the 9/11 attacks, Bush took a break from the war on terror to sign an executive order virtually ceding control of their papers to the ex-presidents. He accomplished this by removing the 30-day deadline and giving former presidents and their families all the time they needed to review their papers, thereby denying public access indefinitely. And to avoid slip-ups, the executive order said that even if a former president wanted to turn over his papers, the incumbent president had the power to veto his predecessor’s decision.

In typical Bushspeak, the executive order was titled "Further Implementation of the Presidential Records Act," leaving the impression Bush was making it easier to gain access to presidential papers when, in fact, he was gutting the law.

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It was surely no coincidence Bush issued the executive order as the Reagan presidential papers were to be made public. Those papers would include some pretty meaty stuff about the Iran-Contra scandal in which arms were secretly sold to the unfriendly nation of Iran in order to finance a right wing insurgency in Nicaragua. Reagan administration figures who were part of Iran-Contra included several high-ranking Bush administration officials and, of course, Reagan’s vice president, George Herbert Walker Bush.

It was Bush the father who denied involvement in Iran-Contra by memorably claiming to be "out of the loop" when such weighty matters were discussed by the big guys and the son certainly didn’t want to see old dad back in that perilous loop, so he added vice presidents’ papers to the executive order.

In normal times, Bush probably wouldn’t have gotten away with this assault on history but November 2001, when he signed his order, wasn’t a normal time. It was barely a month after 9/11, the country and indeed, the political parties, were blindly, and as it turned out, mistakenly united behind the president and even if they hadn’t been, both branches of the government were in Republican control.

There were some objections by historians, journalists, a few Democrats and other enemies of the state, but in those days, if you didn’t agree with the president, the terrorists would win. Just days after 9/11, didn’t press secretary Ari Fliescher warn Americans to "be careful what you say?"

But now, the times, as they always do, have changed. With the end of one party rule, rubber stamps are out and accountability has suddenly become fashionable again. A week ago, a bill was introduced in the House to overturn Bush’s executive order and revive the provisions of the 1978 Presidential Records Act. It is expected to pass and should not be hindered, even by one of those rare Bush vetoes.

This is but one act of congressional oversight that will herald the abrupt conclusion of Bush’s temporary revival of the imperial presidency. It is delightful to ponder how painful this must be to a pair who have sought to empower the president at any cost ever since they were young up and comers in the Nixon administration — Dick Cheney and Donald Rumsfeld.