In the wake of the Great War there was Dick Tuck [1], and Dick Tuck begat Donald Segretti [2], and Donald Segretti begat Karl Rove [3]. Karl Rove's further begetting remains undisclosed.

Dirty tricks come to politics when politics become seriously political. Before Richard Nixon spends those Watergate dollars burgling Democrats' offices and spying on their psychiatrists, Nixon himself is dogged by campaign mysteries and malfunctions of suspiciously organized origin. Nixon's hound is Democratic political operator Dick Tuck (his real name; you can look it up).

Tuck begins his career with Helen Gahagan Douglas, Nixon's 1950 opponent for US Senate; later he squires for presidential crusades of Adlai Stevenson, Jack Kennedy and Bobby Kennedy. In each campaign, his best remembered assignment is to make Richard Nixon look foolish. Sometimes this is not a difficult task. After Nixon's first 1960 TV debate with John Kennedy, legend portrays Tuck hiring an elderly woman, who wears a large Nixon button, to greet Nixon as he exits a plane, plant a kiss on his cheek, and gush, "That's all right, Mr. Nixon. He beat you last night, but you'll win next time." In 1968, the lore continues, Tuck hires visibly pregnant women to carry signs with the Nixon campaign slogan, "Nixon's the One," at Nixon rallies. And so on.

Tuck's peculiar pleasure is Nixon's agony. Tuck is preoccupied with Nixon, but Nixon is obsessed with Dick Tuck. The emotional open window exposes Nixon's paranoid and vengeful soul. Hunter S Thompson, a darker, less balanced Nixon antagonist, later opines, "Nixon was so aggressively evil that he almost glowed at night. His political instincts were so dangerous that he made the politics of total opposition a very honourable trade for two generations of the best people in America." Whatever. Nixon decides to hire his own Dick Tuck.

From Nixon's Committee to Re-Elect the President (CREEP) in 1972, a friend offers Donald Segretti the job. Barely out of Vietnam and the JAG Corps, a young and impressionable Segretti stalks Democrats in "black advance." His object is to sow dissension among Democratic campaigns. Dragnetted in the larger Watergate scandal, Segretti's labors earn four and a half months prison time, on misdemeanor charges of dispensing false campaign literature ("campaign literature without proper attribution," he recalls), and a two-year suspension of his California law license. At trial, Democratic prosecutors flaunt a faked letter, on Democratic presidential candidate Ed Muskie's stationery, alleging fellow Democratic candidate Henry "Scoop" Jackson had an illegitimate child with a 17-year-old.

Karl Rove comes to CREEP after dropping out of school to become College Republican National Committee executive director. Rove labors for Segretti on the 1972 campaign. 28 years later and in full control of Sauron's scepter, "Bush's Brain" finds his old boss on the opposite side. Segretti is John McCain's 2000 Orange County campaign chair. Beyond irony, a South Carolina push poll of mysterious origin ravages McCain: "Would you be more likely or less likely to vote for John McCain for president if you knew he had fathered an illegitimate black child?" The beat goes on.

April 2008, BBC News reports: A helium filled giant pig, born one of Pink Floyd's Animals and now a metaphorical billboard for Roger Waters' political agenda, floats high over the crowd at the Coachella Valley Music & Arts Festival in Coachella (where else?), California. Its belly paint spells "Obama"; adjacent is a checked box (see approx 3:30 here [6] [7]). The BBC newsreader pauses, then muses whether thousands of stoner Floyd fans will vote for Obama per instructions from a flying pig.

Later reports say The Pig "broke free from its tethers" and "drifted away." After two days, residents of La Quinta, a country club community fingered by conspicuous consumption rag the Robb Report [8] as "the nation's leading golf destination," wake to find the Capitalist Pig in pieces — "like pulled pork" says one of the finders — on their manicured lawns (no, I'm not making this up). Still later, CNN reports "organizers" had cut The Pig's mooring cables. This assertion is unconfirmed. Chris Willman of Hollywood Insider [9] is thinking black advance. "Is it possible the shredded pig was blown out of the sky by a Clinton or McCain supporter with a rocket launcher?" asks Willman.

Home in Corona del Mar, two hours from Coachella, Donald Segretti denies knowledge of The Pig's abduction and apparent assassination. He's been out of the black advance business a long time. Segretti is forthright and more than contrite about the Nixon campaign work. He decries the South Carolina tactics in 2000 and those between Obama and Clinton campaigns in 2008. Why do it? "The job is to get candidates elected," he says quietly, "There is no second place." He avers his 2000 campaign work for McCain followed the credo "no negative campaigning". "You learn a lot as you go along in life." Out of politics, he allows he "wouldn't be unhappy" with an Obama presidency, provided the product is as advertised.

Dick Tuck is unrepentant at age 85. He won't confirm or deny legends about pregnant women. Tuck has published a political newsletter for over 30 years. He called it The Reliable Source until The Washington Post [10] appropriated that moniker. "Don't even think about suing someone who buys ink by the barrel, " Tuck growls. Still a fouille-merde, he renamed his letter WashPostIt [11]. Tuck has also set up DickTuck.com [12], but to date the site is pretty bare. He says, if it's worth his while to come, he'll reserve a men's room stall at the Minneapolis-St Paul airport main terminal for the Republican National Convention, but expects "a long line". He dismisses George W Bush as inconsistent: "He lied to get us into war; why not lie to get us out?" Tuck disavows personal knowledge of Coachella events, but claims, "If it had been twenty years ago, they would have blamed me."

Dead since 1994, former President Richard Nixon could not be reached for comment on The Pig's demise. Campaign finance reports indicate daughter Julie Nixon Eisenhower has maxed out on primary election contributions to the Obama campaign.

It's unclear whether these events are related.