Was Nixon so bad?

[Syzygys]

Mark Felt, the original "deep throat" died today. Beside him having a personal reason to hate Nixon, thus his actions can be viewed as revenge, I don't see why is Nixon so harshly judged today...

Of course we have 3 more decades and 2 of the worst presidents (Reagan, W.) in modern times to go by today, but really, what was so bad about a little wiretapping and obviously lying about it?

Reagan lied about the Iran contra, Clinton lied about sex, W took us to war on false pretenses. What W. did was 100 times worse than what Nixon did and he still served 2 terms.

On the other hand Nixon had redeeming qualities, W. has none (well, except good dodging skills).

So I say let's morally pardon Nixon for good and let's go for the real bad guys....

 

[mikenostic]

You're clueless if you think Reagan was one of the worst presidents.
This country flourished when he was in office.
Nixon was a piece of shit.

 

[Syzygys]

Nixon was a piece of shit.

Don't hold it back because it might cause constipation. Let it flow and ellaborate.

Reagan was only good compared to Carter, but anyway, that is offtopic in this thread.
But let's compare W with Nixon! I would take Nixon anytime over W....

 

[CheskiChips]

Many presidents have instigated or associated with wars illegally. Including the beloved John Kennedy sending arms to Iran.

First off, what did Reagan lie about in the 'contra affair'?
President Bush took us to war on intelligence estimates, wrong or right.

Nixon was a decent president, he did far less damage to America than F.D.Roosevelt...and he's considered one of the best presidents in history. If people could keep their mouths shut like they're paid to, there would have been no problem. Although Nixon used to get serious revenge on people. Funny joke I heard from Jacky Mason "Nixon was one of the greatest presidents of all time, do you know what he accomplished? Every week, they caught him. Every week, someone else went to jail."

 

[iceaura]

This country flourished when he was in office.

The hell it did. Biggest pile of debt ever up to that point, wages dropping for everybody except the rich, huge bailouts of deregulated S&Ls, multiple scandals and breakdowns in government agencies, treason and terrorism organized from the White House basement, collusion with enemies and betrayal of friends and promotion of ideological screwballs to powerful office, incompetence and corruption from one end of his government to the other.

W's administration was staffed from Reagan's, and one way to look at W's operations is that they were what a then functioning Congress prevented Reagan from doing at the time.

But Nixon set the stage for Reagan, and thus for W's orgy, and the way he did it, not just what he did, will immortalize him in US history - he was rotten, Blagojevich and Rove and Abramoff rotten, and that hasn't been all that common in the actual Presidency.

As one of Nixon's eulogists put it, from a journalist's life of following his career:

Nixon liked to remind people of that. He believed it, and that was why he went down. He was not only a crook but a fool. Two years after he quit, he told a TV journalist that "if the president does it, it can't be illegal."

Shit. Not even Spiro Agnew was that dumb. He was a flat-out, knee-crawling thug with the morals of a weasel on speed. But he was Nixon's vice president for five years, and he only resigned when he was caught red-handed taking cash bribes across his desk in the White House.
- - -
Agnew was the Joey Buttafuoco of the Nixon administration, and Hoover was its Caligula. They were brutal, brain-damaged degenerates worse than any hit man out of The Godfather, yet they were the men Richard Nixon trusted most. Together they defined his Presidency.

It would be easy to forget and forgive Henry Kissinger of his crimes, just as he forgave Nixon. Yes, we could do that -- but it would be wrong. Kissinger is a slippery little devil, a world-class hustler with a thick German accent and a very keen eye for weak spots at the top of the power structure. Nixon was one of those, and Super K exploited him mercilessly, all the way to the end.

Kissinger made the Gang of Four complete: Agnew, Hoover, Kissinger and Nixon. A group photo of these perverts would say all we need to know about the Age of Nixon.

Nixon's spirit will be with us for the rest of our lives -- whether you're me or Bill Clinton or you or Kurt Cobain or Bishop Tutu or Keith Richards or Amy Fisher or Boris Yeltsin's daughter or your fiancee's 16-year-old beer-drunk brother with his braided goatee and his whole life like a thundercloud out in front of him. This is not a generational thing. You don't even have to know who Richard Nixon was to be a victim of his ugly, Nazi spirit.

He has poisoned our water forever. Nixon will be remembered as a classic case of a smart man shitting in his own nest. But he also shit in our nests, and that was the crime that history will burn on his memory like a brand. By disgracing and degrading the Presidency of the United States, by fleeing the White House like a diseased cur, Richard Nixon broke the heart of the American Dream.

 

[leopold]

President Bush took us to war on intelligence estimates, wrong or right.

not only from the CIA but from many different countries.

 

[iceaura]

President Bush took us to war on intelligence estimates, wrong or right.
”
not only from the CIA but from many different countries.

Bullshit.

W&Co generated those intelligence estimates themselves. They didn't even use the actual field evaluations of the US agents without editing and slanting them, let alone the intelligence from other countries.

What Colin Powell delivered in his speech at the UN was not supported by the intelligence estimates of any country except the US, and not supported by the intelligence estimates of anyone in the US except W&Co's Office of Special Plans and other administration agencies promoting the invasion of Iraq. It was not supported by the UN agents on the ground in Iraq, the various monitoring agencies on Iraq's borders, or the satellite evidence from space overhead.

It was lies and garbage, and known to be so at the time by millions of people worldwide.

 

[leopold]

the netherlands, britain, and germany all provided intelligence on iraqs weapons of mass destruction.

 

[iceaura]

the netherlands, britain, and germany all provided intelligence on iraqs weapons of mass destruction.

According to their intelligence estimates, the claims of their existence were bogus.

Some British officials with security clearance even resigned over Blair's decision to back W, citing lack of support for US claims in British intelligence. There was a suicide. The Downing Street memos (there are several) show Blair relying on W to produce intelligence backing for the British decision to go to war.

The Netherlands and Germany just refused to go along.

 

[Zap]

Nixon was far worse than bad, since 'bad' could be used to describe a president with good intentions (like Carter) who simply was unable to stop catastrophe - via incompetence, the obstruction of others, and/or bad luck. Nixon, however, was a sociopathic megalomaniac who caused lasting damage from the basest of motives.

A pretty damned chilling video clip about one of his 'accomplishments':


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9QkgUkM0o6Q

 

[countezero]

Bullshit.

W&Co generated those intelligence estimates themselves. They didn't even use the actual field evaluations of the US agents without editing and slanting them, let alone the intelligence from other countries.

What Colin Powell delivered in his speech at the UN was not supported by the intelligence estimates of any country except the US, and not supported by the intelligence estimates of anyone in the US except W&Co's Office of Special Plans and other administration agencies promoting the invasion of Iraq. It was not supported by the UN agents on the ground in Iraq, the various monitoring agencies on Iraq's borders, or the satellite evidence from space overhead.

It was lies and garbage, and known to be so at the time by millions of people worldwide.

Gives us a source for all this wisdom?

Back on topic, Nixon's flaws were largely personal.

In his favor, he created the EPA, "opened" China and effectively ended the Vietnam war. He also didn't rollback most of LBJ's Great Society initiatives and continued to support Civil Rights.

 

[tim840]

You're right about all of that except civil rights. Nixon didnt care about civil rights, he was actually the one that pulled the racists and the bigots into the GOP from the Dems by trying to slow down the civil rights movement.

 

[countezero]

Nixon very easily could have rolled back what Johnson did, via Civil Rights, but he did not.

The fact the so-called "racists" and "bigots" shifted to the GOP during his reign had less to do with his policies and more to do with Southern Democrats running from the party of Kennedy and Johnson and being embraced by GOP legislators like Strom Thurmond, who had jumped parties. Nixon was never a race crusader like Johnson, but he certainly wasn't in league with the George Wallace's of the world.

Consider that Nixon "implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program."

I pulled this off wikipedia, but it jives with a bio I read of him, so I'm not too worried about the sourcing:

"In the early 1970s, Nixon impounded billions of dollars in federal spending and expanded the power of the Office of Management and Budget.

Although often viewed as a conservative by his contemporaries, Nixon's domestic policies often appear centrist or liberal to later observers, commenting after the end of the Keynesian consensus. While the rightward shift in the Republican Party started in the 1970s, Nixon, like Dwight Eisenhower and Gerald Ford, largely governed in accordance with Keynesian modern liberal principles on domestic issues, especially fiscal policy. He ran a budget deficit every year he was President except 1969. As President, Nixon imposed wage and price controls, indexed Social Security for inflation, and created Supplemental Security Income (SSI). He also had plans to create a universal minimum income and universal health care, but was not able to realize either. The number of pages added to the Federal Register each year doubled under Nixon. He eradicated the last remnants of the gold standard, created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), promoted the Legacy of parks program, and implemented the Philadelphia Plan, the first significant federal affirmative action program.

 

[pjdude1219]

outside of watergate nixon really wasn't that bad.

 

[w1z4rd]

Didnt he cancel the public health care system or something like that?

 

[tim840]

well there was FAP, which was a program that would ensure that people werent just sitting around on their lazy butts living off of welfare, but actually trying to get a job and stand up on their own. But it didnt pass.

 

[iceaura]

The fact the so-called "racists" and "bigots" shifted to the GOP during his reign had less to do with his policies and more to do with Southern Democrats running from the party of Kennedy and Johnson and being embraced by GOP legislators like Strom Thurmond, who had jumped parties. Nixon was never a race crusader like Johnson, but he certainly wasn't in league with the George Wallace's of the world.

He was in league with the Strom Thurmonds of this world. Also the Lester Maddoxes. He was in league with the people who voted for Wallace. They joined his Party. Reagan got their votes, later.

These people were (and are) racists and bigots - you don't need the quotemarks - and fundies, and they have been the core of Republican electoral victory ever since.

Nixon very easily could have rolled back what Johnson did, via Civil Rights

On what planet? He was looking at race riots, big ones.

Although often viewed as a conservative by his contemporaries, Nixon's domestic policies often appear centrist or liberal to later observers,

"Later observers" such as the recent ones who think Obama is a socialist, or McCain is a centrist who opposes lobbyists, or the current Dem leadership is extremist, left, and liberal. The nuttery we have for a media pundit class, in other words.

created the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA),

All of those, the EPA most obviously (which was a consolidation of existing agencies, reducing their collective power and bringing them more closely under Presidential control without increasing their collective budget or scope at all), examples of authoritarian expansion of Executive power and deflection of regulatory interference with actual corporate behaviors.

Most of them reactions to more ambitious Dem proposals that were likely to take effect (Muskie's proposed environmental agency and powers, say). Crediting Nixon with that is like crediting W with the improvements in the Texas schools while he was governor - he fought them, curbed them, deflected them into his channels, and then took credit for them.

Expansion of the Fed is not necessarily left, or liberal. It is often authoritarian - such as in Nixon's case, or Reagan's or W's.

In his favor, he - effectively ended the Vietnam war.

His bombing of Laos and Cambodia belongs on the lists of major 20th century massacres, and set the stage for the Khmer Rouge. His management of the retreat from Vietnam was botched and shaming.

And under all of this, not what he did but how he did it: his close collaboration with Hoover and the secret police, his paranoia and vindictiveness, his corrupt associates and Blagojevich style, his destruction of honest governmental workings and degradation of government in general (my favorite: his procurement of women for Kissinger).

He was a crook.

 

[countezero]

Yes, he was totally evil, Ice. I get it. All Republicans are evil and nothing they do can ever be good or noble. That you actually believe this shit is what is scary. . .

 

[Fraggle Rocker]

Nixon got credit for improving U.S. relations with China. It's not clear whether he might simply have been in the right place at the right time, when China was ready to open up.

It's interesting that since I've been old enough to vote, so many Presidential elections have come down to Americans voting against a candidate, usually the incumbent, rather than for the opponent. Humphrey was associated with Johnson so Americans voted against him in 1968 and handed the office to Nixon, a man who was not terribly popular, especially in his home state, and who had already lost one Presidential election as outgoing VP, which is usually a shoo-in.

This occasionally becomes comical. They voted against Ford in 1976, just because he was associated with Nixon and because he hadn't been elected to the VP office. They didn't know who the hell Carter was, he was just not Ford, so they marked that box on the ballot. Then they got so disgusted with Carter once they found out who he was, that they voted against him in 1980. Oh by the way who did I just vote for? Reagan??? Oh well I guess it will be all right. He's a Republican so we'll at least have fiscal responsibility.

Then in 1992 they were so fed up with George H.W. Bush that they voted for Clinton. Then in 2000 they were a little tired of Clinton politics so they did not elect his VP, Gore, and by voting against him they ended up being for George W. Bush.

Oh dear, did I say this could be comical? In this case it was tragic.

Anyway, to bring it up to date, in the 2008 election it would have been difficult for any Republican candidate to win because they all inherited Bush's legacy whether they wanted it or not. The Democrats got cocky and were determined to nominate either a woman or a minority, which is normally something you do when you already have zero chance of winning. They could have blown their natural advantage. But America is so ready to be rid of anyone remotely connected to Bush, that they elected a dark-skinned candidate. A generic Democrat.

 

[countezero]

Your analysis has some merit, even if it overlooks how the policies of the president play a role in the perception of voters. That is, people elected Bush 41 primarily because they liked Reagan and wanted to continue his policies (not to mention Dukakis was a terrible candidate).

Additionally, I think your argument is a little simplistic. Elections and campaigns have too many moving parts to really boil them down to voters making either/or decisions at the ballot box. Who can account for the impact of Gore's poor campaigning? Kerry's ridiculous flip-flopping? Or McCain's confusion? There are so many moments that cause a voter to decide. . .

We're getting way off topic here, but it is interesting to note that in recent times only Democrats who were spirited and enertaining candidates -- Kennedy, Clinton and Obama -- have been elected to the presidency, whereas hopelessly stiff dullards like Dukakis, Kerry and Gore were rejected by voters.