Well, that's what Nixon's last national security aide and current president of the Nixon Center, Dimitri K. Simes said yesterday here at the New America Foundation. It was a great event. For the full video and more, click here.

In 1994, with the end of the Cold War and with the end of Cuba's promotion of revolution and communism abroad, Richard Nixon wrote that the policy of isolation and embargo had failed and it was time for engagement:

''... hard as it may be to accept, our policy toward Cuba has failed and it is now time to change our focus from trying to destroy Cuba's government to helping its people.''

Washington has been a little slow on the uptake. A clear, rational calculation of the national interest has been trumped by domestic politics. Nixon was sick about it. Col. Lawrence Wilkerson (ret.) couldn't agree more and offered these words about the current state of Cuba policy 14 years after Nixon called for an end to the embargo.