# "Show me a good loser, and I'll show you a loser." Nixon attributed this maxim to his college football coach Wallace "Chief" Newman at Whittier College in his 1978 memoir *RN: The Memoirs of Richard Nixon*. The saying predates Nixon — variants circulated among American sports coaches from Knute Rockne through Vince Lombardi and Red Auerbach — but Nixon made it a political axiom. In his framing, the line compresses an entire theory of political combat: gracious defeat is not virtue but weakness, and the only acceptable response to losing is to get angry enough to never lose again. The quote matters for the KB because it articulates the emotional substrate beneath [[Dirty Tricks]], [[Ratfucking]], and the [[Hatchet Man]] tradition Nixon institutionalized. If losing makes you a loser — not temporarily defeated but categorically diminished — then any tactic that prevents losing is justified. The line draws a straight connection from Nixon's resentment politics through [[Roger Stone]]'s self-conscious inheritance of the Nixon playbook to the contemporary refusal to accept electoral defeat. "Show me a good loser" is the five-word version of January 6. ## See Also - [[Richard Nixon]] — the speaker - [[Dirty Tricks]] — what the philosophy produces - [[Ratfucking]] — the operational expression - [[Hatchet Man]] — the personnel role the philosophy requires - [[Roger Stone]] — the inheritor (Nixon back tattoo and all) - [[Nixon Checkers Speech]] — Nixon's earlier survival-through-combat template