Nearly half a century ago, Republican President Richard Nixon was pushed out of the Oval Office over the GOP burglary of the Democratic National Committee at the Watergate building.

This time around, former President Donald Trump finds himself similarly endangered by allegations of illegal political skulduggery. In a marked difference from Trump, however, Nixon was furious at what he saw as the failure of his fellow Republicans to defend him. Nixon reportedly told his chief of staff, Alexander Haig, he lacked "people to fight. We don't have anybody." In marked contrast, Trump has been able to rally the defensive efforts of his party, by the vocal Rep. Marjorie Taylor Greene , for example.

Nixon had Vice President Spiro Agnew in his corner. He called Agnew his "insurance policy," adding that no voters would risk ousting him. "They know if they did, they would end up with Agnew!" Nevertheless, he was determined to keep Agnew out of the loop on his own Watergate problems. Captured on tape, Nixon told Agnew: "I don't expect any favors from you. I don't want you to get involved." He went on: "Those bastards in the press, you know what they are, and don't give them any opportunity to say you're against the president. Don't give them any opportunity to say you're pimping for the president. See my point? Because all they will do then is tear you down."

Eventually, Agnew's own legal troubles caught up with him. With Agnew now on the way out, Nixon wanted former Texas Gov. John Connally to be his running mate. But fellow Republicans and Democrats alike proposed to Nixon that he choose House Minority Leader Gerald Ford as his vice president.

As the Washington Post reporter covering Ford's vice presidency, I interviewed him in early 1974 aboard Air Force Two about the noose tightening around Nixon's neck and the difficulty of defending the man he might soon succeed. He did not even want to talk about the prospect, as if doing so would be an act of disloyalty. He acknowledged that he was probably hurting himself politically by defending Nixon's innocence but thought if he said anything less, it would be taken as an abandonment of the president. In similar fashion, former Vice President Mike Pence has been walking a tightrope — damning his former boss, and yet also trying to give him some praise.

Nixon did not give the country a chance to convict him. Faced with his own indictment, he resigned and told the nation, "I hope I will have hastened the start of the process of healing which is so desperately needed in America."

It was hardly a confession of wrongdoing, but it is a marked contrast to the rant Trump gave at Mar-a-Lago. Trump cited grievances and declared that the case against him was "an insult to our country." The fundamental difference between the indictment of Richard Nixon and Donald Trump is thus that Nixon believed in the institutions of the United States and the right to carry out the law of the land. Donald Trump does not.

Jules Witcover is the author of 20 books on politics, including The American Vice Presidency: From Irrelevance to Power published by Smithsonian Books