A month before he died in April 1994, former President Richard Nixon wrote a letter to then-President Bill Clinton offering what Clinton later called "wise counsel, especially with regard to Russia." The contents of that letter have now been declassified by the Clinton presidential library and appear prophetic.

In the seven-page letter, dated March 21, 1994, and discussed by history professor Luke Nichter in the Wall Street Journal, Nixon gave a blunt assessment of the political situation in Russia, predicting accurately that relations between Moscow and Kyiv would deteriorate and that someone like Putin could come to power. Nixon, 81 at the time, wrote the letter after he returned from a two-week trip to Russia and Ukraine. 

While the former president is infamous for departing the White House amid scandal in 1974, his legacy includes being the architect of détente with the Soviet Union during the Cold War. In 1972, Nixon became the first U.S. president to visit Moscow, where he signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty and the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty with Soviet General Secretary Leonid Brezhnev. Nixon spent the years following his presidency taking foreign trips on behalf of the United States and offering counsel based on decades of experience to guide U.S. policy in the post-Cold War era. 

Nixon considered the survival of political and economic freedom in Russia "the most important foreign policy issue the nation will face for the balance of this century." With that understanding, he told Clinton that based on what he saw in Russia, a fledgling democracy under former Russian President Boris Yeltsin was in danger. 

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"As one of Yeltsin’s first supporters in this country and as one who continues to admire him for his leadership in the past, I have reluctantly concluded that his situation has rapidly deteriorated since the elections in December, and that the days of his unquestioned leadership of Russia are numbered," Nixon wrote. "His drinking bouts are longer and his periods of depression are more frequent. Most troublesome, he can no longer deliver on his commitments to you and other Western leaders in an increasingly anti-American environment in the Duma and in the country."

Nixon foresaw that relations between Russia and Ukraine would dissolve. He called the situation in Ukraine "highly explosive." 

"If it is allowed to get out of control," Nixon told Clinton, "it will make Bosnia look like a PTA garden party." 

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The former president advised Clinton to strengthen American diplomatic representation in Kyiv, recounting conversations with American businessmen who complained that the embassy was "understaffed and inadequately led." 

Nixon also urged Clinton to develop relationships with Yeltsin's potential successors. "Bush made a mistake in sticking too long to Gorbachev because of his close personal relationship. You must avoid making that same mistake in your very good personal relationship with Yeltsin," he wrote. 

He was unsure who would rise to power next. "There is still no one who is in Yeltsin’s class as a potential leader in Russia," Nixon wrote. He informed Clinton that a nationalist and populist tide in Russia could produce a "credible candidate for president" — a mere five years before Putin's Russian nationalist regime took hold. 

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"The Russians are serious people. One of the reasons Khrushchev was put on the shelf back in 1964 is that the proud Russians became ashamed of his crude antics at the U.N. and in other international forums," Nixon wrote.

The letter also reveals some of Nixon's dislike for career diplomats. "I learned during my years in the White House that the best decisions I made, such as the one to go to China in 1972, were made over the objections of or without the approval of most foreign service officers," he wrote. Nixon advised Clinton to chart his own course and not to be held back by his staff. "Remember that foreign service officers get to the top by not getting into trouble. They are therefore more interested in covering their asses than in protecting yours."

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Clinton in later years would remember Nixon's advice fondly. "After he died, I found myself wishing I could pick up the phone and ask President Nixon what he thought about this issue or that problem, particularly if it involved Russia," he said in 2013. 

As he runs for the GOP presidential nomination, Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis repeatedly points towards his overwhelming gubernatorial re-election last November and his hand in turning what was not long ago the nation’s most populous battleground state into a solidly Republican bastion.

"What we did was not just a big victory. It was really a fundamental realignment of Florida from being a swing state to being a red state," DeSantis recently touted on the campaign trail.

It’s an argument DeSantis has been making for months.

In an April speech to the Midland, Michigan GOP in the run-up to his presidential campaign launch, the governor argued that "the Democratic Party in Florida is a hollow shell… It’s like a dead carcass on the side of the road."

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Florida was once the most high-profile swing state in the nation, and the state that handed former President George W. Bush the White House in the 2000 presidential election thanks to a miniscule 537 vote margin.

Former President Barack Obama narrowly carried the state in 2008 and 2012, and former President Trump captured Florida’s 27 electoral votes by lower single-digit margins in his 2016 White House victory and his 2020 re-election defeat.

In 2018, DeSantis narrowly won the governorship to succeed Gov. Rick Scott, who edged out Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson in the Sunshine State’s Senate showdown.

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But fast-forward to last November and the one-time purple state turned ruby red, as DeSantis secured a second term with a 19-point re-election victory and GOP Sen. Marco Rubio cruised to a third term in the Senate with a more than 16-point win. 

Four House Democratic incumbents also went down to defeat, as the GOP expanded their congressional majority in the state. Republicans also increased their already sizeable lead in the state legislature, securing a super majority, and Democrats were shut out of all statewide offices for the first time since Reconstruction a century and half ago.

Some Florida political insiders point to the coronavirus — the worst pandemic to strike the globe in a century — as the catalyst for the state’s rightward shift in recent years. The COVID crisis precipitated lockdowns and restrictions in many states across the country, and led to an influx of new voters in the Sunshine State. Many of them were conservatives drawn by DeSantis’ controversial and well-publicized pushback against coronavirus restrictions as he moved to keep the state and its schools open for business.

"I think we drew people who believed in what we were doing," DeSantis said on the campaign trail in Iowa earlier this month. "I think most of these people said, You know what, Florida is a free state."

DeSantis noted that due to the migration, "the political orientation of it actually turned out pretty good."

Rick Foglesong, a Florida based historian and political scientist, told Fox News "I think migration and immigration are one factor."

"But I think that there is a legacy advantage that Republicans enjoy just because they’ve been winning so long," he added. "You could call it an incumbent advantage… that the Democrats just don’t have the ability to match at this point.

Foglesong also spotlighted that "Republicans are making big inroads among Hispanics" in Florida.

Earlier this year Republicans surpassed Democrats in voter registration for the first time in state history.

"In 2018, Democrats outnumbered Republicans by nearly 300,000. By Election Day 2022, Republicans outnumbered Democrats by 300,000. Today, we can announce that Republicans outnumber Democrats by 400,000," DeSantis touted in a February tweet. "Freedom is here to stay."

The question is whether DeSantis is correct in his assesment that the Democratic Party in Florida is a "dead carcass." Or, if it will stay that way.

Democrats obviously disagree and point to their upset victory this spring in the Jacksonville, Florida mayoral race as they flipped the office by beating a Republican endorsed by DeSantis.

Florida Democratic Party chair Nikki Fried took to twitter after the election victory to declare that the Democrats "are back."

But whether the victory in Jacksonville was an isolated case or the start of the Democratic Party comeback in Florida was far from clear.

Michael MacDonald, a professor at the University of Florida who specializes in elections, said that "2022 was an aberration for Florida. I don’t think it’s a long-term trend."

Pointing to the Democrats' victory in the Jacksonville mayoral election, he argued "I think we’re seeing a reversion back to the sort of normal politics of what Florida is."