Lyric discussion by mumajor 

Here's something to muddle all conclusions:

The person of the title is Rikki Ducornet, see page 3 of:

ew.com/ew/article/0,,1174152,00.html

The short story is that Rikki was the young, pregnant wife of a professor at Bard that DF had a flirtation with.

My Interpretation

In July 1979, while hitchhiking near Stafford, Arizona, I met an old man by the side of the road who tried to convince me that the "Rikki" of this song was Richard Nixon.

The Watergate scandal was unfolding around the time the song was released -- "We hear you're leaving, that's OK..." -- and the man by the road offered a quite incredible (that's the polite way to say "implausible") explanation about a conspiracy of people who were trying to protect the president by communicating to him through Steely Dan songs. Or something like that.

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