Richard Nixon’s Place Among Our Greatest Presidents
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Richard Nixon left a legacy
any Democrat should be proud of
Having been challenged by a regular commenter at MMA to back up my admiration of President Nixon I gladly accept. It is my view that as time marches on, Richard Nixon’s legacy and accomplishments will be more and more appreciated. He will join the ranks as one of our greatest presidents.
Why progressives dislike Nixon is quite obvious. He crushed the liberal hero George McGovern in 1972. But looking at his presidency, it makes me wonder why Nixon is not more appreciated by the left.
During a severe recession President Nixon ordered a wage and price freeze. This protected the poor and middle class far more than they want to admit. He protected Americans from pay cuts and made sure their incomes weren’t stretched by price hikes from opportunists. A true progressive position that the left seems to forget.
Nixon’s administration passed environmental laws the left should love. No mention of that though.
President Nixon’s greatest accomplishments were on the foreign policy side. He opened up relations with China which we benefit from to this day. Nixon’s visit showed the Chinese people that America is the land of opportunity. In the years following China has taken on free market reforms. There is still much to do but the end result, a free and capitalist China is their destiny and it started with the vision of President Nixon. He showed the Chinese we were open to relations. He also showed them we were not going to be their patsies either when he ordered the bombing of Cambodia. President Nixon’s commitment to keeping America the strongest nation on Earth and containing the red menace were unquestioned and good policy.
Richard Nixon entered the presidency as well qualified as anyone who has ever held the office. He was fiscally responsible and understood that respect was a key component of success.
Nixon did the honorable thing
The left likes to bring up the Watergate scandal. It was an error in judgement by President Nixon to allow some of his underlings to commit the break-in that led to his impeachment and resignation. It was though a testament to his trust and ability to manage that he didn’t micromanage, but let his subordinates operate. It is also a testament to President Nixon’s honor that when he saw how the scandal was disrupting government, rather than do like another liberal icon, Bill Clinton, and submit to drawn out and embarrassing testimony which would further damage the presidency. As well as make the office a laughing stock throughout the world, Nixon did the honorable thing and resigned. Leaving the presidency in the capable hands of the honorable and decent Gerald Ford.
I believe there is no argument. Richard Milhous Nixon was not just a great Republican President, but a great American President.
Two great Americans, Richard Nixon and John McCain
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Nixon’s crimes were sufficient to merit him being tried as a War Criminal, but that was never in the works. Too bad. If we had handed Nixon over to an international court for trial on his War Crimes, we would have avoided the many War Criminal presidents that followed, including the current president. His domestic chicanery and thuggery should have seen him removed from office and tried, but the main issue is the greater crimes Nixon brought to South-east Asia. Nixon was truly in the more final and profound sense an evil man.
Nixon was an enigma indeed, and I never liked him. He got the handle “Tricky Dick” for a reason.
Milton I have to thank you. In this discussion you helped me clarify my difference with people like you. You admire Nixon, I admire Gandhi, you admire Reagan, I admire ML King.
I admire people that suffer for others and you admire people the made others suffer for them.
Economic success is based on money Mr. Bsranch. If your idea of great success is some notion of two unkempt hippies lolling about in fields of clover wondering where their next meal is coming from then I suggest you start your own country and perhaps name it Sonny and Cherland.
If you judge your life’s worth by economic success and how much money you’ve stowed away, I am truly sorry for you and it explains a lot.
Nixon was a good president, the EPA, Vietnamization, and the mentioned pay freeze were all serious accomplishments. He was also a paranoid, narcissistic, control-freak which lead to watergate, he was certainly not a “trusting and honorable” man.
But in his defense many presidents had huge screw ups. Reagan’s Iran-contra, Clinton’s BJ. Even back to the founding fathers. Look up the Embargo of 1807 under Thomas Jefferson, it will blow your mind how bad that makes him look. The only truly great presidents were those who fought to secure the monetary freedom of the American People i.e. Jackson, Lincoln, T. Roosevelt and a few others. Now that is something you won’t see a democrat or republican trying to do nowadays.
“Secure monetary freedom” why does everything come to money why not just freedom or security or well-being, without the mention of money. If you judge your life in terms of money as you suggest we should our presidents, you really don’t have much on a life.
None of Tip O’neil’s “backroom deals” broke laws.
Nixon’s time in office brought us Watergate…The result of that means that he can never be considered a “Great President”. To say that he did great things…is not too unlike claiming that Mussolini got the trains to run on time… Actions around Nixon’s time had such wonderful people as Dick Cheney and rather glorious group of thugs that felt that if the President did it…it was legal. Regrettably we are still paying the price of Nixon and his gang.
Nixon’s action led to Ronnie’s treason before he was elected and his actions in office…Iran/Contra…selective memory on so many things. I know Democrats have done bad things as well but remind me of the Democrats that left office the way that Nixon did. But I will grant you that Nixon, as bad as he was in some ways in the long run will have had a better balance sheet than any Republican that followed him…which is a heck of a thing to say about Ronnie and Bush I and Bush II.
Get over it…Nixon left in disgrace for actions that were horrible…and the Republicans keep trying to compare it to oral sex?? If we wanted to get Presidents for sex…versus assaults on the Constitution we really do deserve to continue on the Republican drive to make America a Third World Country.
The continuing disgrace of the Republican Party is that a Republican President left office due to an assault on the Constitution and many in the Republican Party still honor him and don’t understand the disgrace.
Please save us your rants until you understand just what crimes Nixon did against all of us.
Agnew if memory serves sold his office while being such a great politician…a crime now and a crime then and always should be punished. Weiner’s “crimes” are not crimes but stupidity. If they are indeed crimes let’s see him in criminal court. I really fail to see how Weiner’s idiot actions can compare to taking bribes as Vice President (and Maryland Governor and Baltimore County Executive) except in a die hard Republican that has two codes…Republican “problems” and Democratic Crimes! As I mentioned in response to your other posts remind us of your concerns about the budget and other matters when Bush I or Bush II was in office…then I might think you are a concerned American rather than just another Republican apologist!
I know that I am in your mind a “pervert”, seems to be your derogatory term of choice, but my wife and I are coming up on 32 years of marriage (only marriage for both of us) and I think that there might be a few active and vocal members of the “morals” party that cannot make that claim. (I think that it is not all that much to be proud of…the marriage…since that is what we signed on for and the example of our parents and to be honest it might be that we are both a bit stubborn and early in our marriage we agreed that the person asking for the divorce gets the kids and the other gets the cats…) However I think that my definition of “pervert” might not be as broad as yours…I don’t care all that much what people do in private UNLESS it is in opposition to their publicly stated values and against the law…I have no problems with gays or swingers. But I do have problems with gay hating politicians tap dancing in rest rooms and thrice married blowhards taking Viagra to “vacation” destinations known for the underage sex trade…and not taking their current wife…or any woman? I do wonder how someone on their second or third wife and fourth affair can have the gall to “defend” marriage when they seem to be attacking it by their very lifestyle!
So mr. Lazersedge; you wish to criminalize politics. No doubt your hero Tip O’Neill never had any backroom deals. oh wait! he admitted he was the master of them, like the one he made with President Reagan to keep Social Security solvent.
Save us your righteous rants unless you’re willing to thrash your Daly machine democratic party as well as republicans.
Milton, I think you missed the part where I pointed out that Richard Nixon. according to the White House Tape Transcripts was implicated in a conspiracy to aide and abet a felony and destroy evidence which is, in and of itself, a felony. I was not saying that anyone else was a good guy or a bad guy. Are you trying to say that if a Democrat committed treason then a Republican then has a right to commit treason. Trying to have an intellectual conversation with you is like trying to play twenty questions with the one year old child next door. You started this by saying how great Nixon was and I granted you that he had made some good contributions, but they did not overcome the wrongs he had done. Leave him alone so we can at least dwell on some of his accomplishments you nut.
You are trying to remind of of Nixon’s first Vice President, Spiro Agnew, I presume Mr. Bsranch?
Yes. Agnew also resigned under unfortunate circumstances. He didn’t draw it out like your pal Anthony Weiner though. And to remind you, Agnew was an excellent prosecutor and governor from Maryland who was noted for his fight against racism.
You lefties only want to see the bad. I look for the good.
Unfortunate circumstances that is an understatement! He cut a deal to resign in exchange for one minor income tax invasion charge in leiu of bribery charges. But he later lost a civil suit, and was disbarred, in Maryland for hundreds of thousands of dollars over bribrey charge while he was Governor of Maryland.
He was asked to resign in April of 1973 when the story started to break and eventually did resign after cutting his deal in October 1973. 5 months, that was faster than Weiner?
You have a short or selective memory but some of us don’t and we won’t let you retell history as some bedtime story where you can make up you own happy ending.
That administration went from being one of the most popular and trusted in our history to a major disgrace and the reason many people still don’t trust government.
I actually am an optomist and I still believe that most in government mean well even if I think they are wrong-headed. Nixon may have meant well but his tactics crossed the line, Agnew never meant well he was total in it for himself.
Uncle Miltie you are undeniably a wart that keeps coming back. Richard Nixon most likely would have gone done as an adequate president. He did do a couple of good things but not anything to do back flips over. His biggest failing was his so called underlings committed felonies, perhaps with his prior knowledge or not, but he did nothing honorable. He went into instant cover up mode to protect himself. To protect himself he threw his underlings to the wolves, and, with help, destroyed evidence. Nixon most likely was going to win that election without the dirty tricks, but even then that just wasn’t the Repubs way of doing things. If he had not had any part or knowledge of the scandal he could have outed the whole bunch, but he didn’t. I refer you to hard evidence, the now infamous White House Tapes. While the critical 18 minutes were erased, the surrounding conversations left enough to conclude that the unscrupulous fox was, in fact, in the hen house. If you haven’t actually read any of the transcriptions or the Watergate Investigative Reports. don’t even try to respond.
I occurred to me while awaiting a response, that neither of your heroes Nixon or Reagan could win a primary in the republican’t party today. What does that say for your values and the direction of your party?
Remind me again how did Ford become president? He was never elected as VP was he? I seem to forget how all that went down and you seem to have all the answers.
I don’t dispute that he did good things. But the things that he did that were bad were inexcusable and malicous and calculated. To say he allowed underlings a free reign that led to his down fall is to not really know Nixon.
His work on the HUAC at times was good for the country and at others deplorable. That is the story of Nixon an unstable egomaniac that would do good things for himself and if was good for the country all the better.
I don’t condone what Clinton did but it was not premeditated, to compare Nixon’s calculated and machevillian deeds to Clinton’s is laughable.