Over-egg

But hard riding men, in strange countries, are apt now and then to over-egg the pudding, as the Yorkshire landlord told his Grace of Cleveland.

[Seymour] Hersh vilifies the [Richard] Nixon–[Henry] Kissinger team for the way they adapted the handling of the Vietnam "peace" talks to the sordid claims of the presidential election time-table, but he over-eggs the omelette. It is reasonable to criticise them for having pretended to the American people (and perhaps themselves) that there was some way to negotiate a peace which would preserve the independence of south Vietnam. It is not reasonable to argue, as Hersh does, that the U.S. might have been able to bomb its way to such a durable peace in the spring of 1973, if the White House had not been hamstrung by the debilitating effects of the Watergate scandal.

[Hall] Caine over-eggs the omelette but it is still a strong story.