How would Nixon be remembered, if not for Watergate?

[crazy_grady]

I wonder what Pat called Dick Nixon’s sexual organ?

[Aro]

*Originally posted by UncleBeer *
What the hell are you talking about? Which campaign?

From here:
Richard Nixon’s number one campaign promise to Americans was that he’d end the war with “Vietnamization”, or systematic troop withdrawals. Yet the American presence in Vietnam remained high and casualties mounted, as did the cost of running the war effort.

From here:
In 1968, Charlie Dean, one of four brothers of a prominent New England family, supported Richard Nixon in his campaign against Hubert Humphrey because, a colleague said, he believed Nixon’s campaign pledge to end the war in Vietnam.

From here:
In 1968 Nixon became the nation’s 37th president, elected largely on his campaign promise of a speedy end to the increasingly unpopular war in Vietnam. He hoped to get American troops out in six months. In the end, it took more than four years

I realise these are all crap cites, but this has been a stock historical fact in every book I have ever read about the Vietnam war, regardless of author.

[Dryga_Yes]

*Originally posted by Apos *
**I’ve got news for you. Outside of the U.S., Nixon is not only fondly remembered, but he’s probably one of the most known and most internationally popular of all U.S. Presidents in the 20th century. **

Speaking as someone who lives outside the US, this seems utterly wrong.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

In domestic affairs, Richard Nixon fell into the political quadrant labeled as “authoritarian”–economically liberal and culturally ultra-conservative. Nixon never met a spending bill he didn’t like–in fact, many of the long-term problems with Social Security originated with generous increases in benefits signed into law by Nixon. At the same time, he lusted to wage War on Drugs, to wiretap “subversives”, and to denounce hippies, long-hairs, intellectuals, and other conservative bugbears of the era.

There isn’t much of a market for Nixon’s politics today. The country has moved in a more economically conservative, culturally liberal direction.

In foreign affairs, Nixon was more successful. He presided over improved relations with the Soviet Union and China, and did finally get us out of Vietnam, albeit only after four useless years of fighting and utterly ineffective invasions of Cambodia and Laos.

And that’s how we would have been remembered–as a relative success in foreign affairs, but with a misguided (wage and price controls :eek: ?) and out-of-fashion approach to domestic politics.

But alas, even that degree of approbation eluded him. His authoritarian instincts drove him to absolute and total paranoia when confronted with opposition to his too-slow withdrawal from Vietnam. He compiled Enemies Lists, he bugged psychiatrists offices, he rifled the FBI, CIA, and IRS for information on his many real and imagined enemies, and in the crowning act of insanity, he attempted to cover up an asinine burglary of the opposition campaign headquarters. What a doofus.

[RexDart]

I imagine he’d be remembered as the most liberal Republican ever to hold office, at least on domestic issues. He was quite big on gov’t regulation.

Also, he was quite possibly the first (and only) environmentalist president. (Unless you count a “conservationist” like Teddy Roosevelt as a proto-environmentalist.) The Nat’l Environmental Policy Act required all gov’t agencies to consider the environmental impact of their decisions. I’d say this set the stage for all environmental policy over the last 30 years.

[ElvisL1ves]

Um, Sam, no, Nixon was not a two-term president. Perhaps you could look it up.

He is remembered for who he was and what he did, and that’s completely proper.

[Melandry]

Um, he was elected in 1968 and 1972. He didn’t get to finish the second term, but I still think it counts.

http://www.whitehouse.gov/history/presidents/rn37.html

[ElvisL1ves]

Which is a total of less than two terms.

[Airman_Doors_USAF]

Does that mean that since Kennedy didn’t finish his first term he never really existed, Elvis?

What a specious argument you’re making.

[Sam_Stone]

He qualifies as a two-term president, because the chief characteristic of a two-term president is that the people liked his first term well enough to elect him to a second. Thus, Kennedy and Nixon qualify.

[Freddy_the_Pig]

*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
**Thus, Kennedy and Nixon qualify. **

:eek: Well, I suppose if Mel Carnahan could be elected after death . . .

[Baby_Fish_Mouth]

*Originally posted by Sam Stone *
**He qualifies as a two-term president, because the chief characteristic of a two-term president is that the people liked his first term well enough to elect him to a second. Thus, Kennedy and Nixon qualify. **

Does that make FDR the infinite-term President?

[Sam_Stone]

Uh, yeah, Kennedy does not count, having been assassinated in his first term and all…

[DSYoungEsq]

I always love people giving credit to the President for domestic programs put into law by Congress. Thought for the day: Nixon with a Republican controlled Congress.

I have to agree with ElvisL1ves that Nixon’s behaviour as president (not substantially different from his behaviour as a congressman) would have left most people looking back on his presidency with a bad taste in their mouth. Clearly, he understood the potential for using China as leverage with the Soviet Union, but other than that, his foreign policy really isn’t that spectacular, and his domestic policy (as established by his own administrative acts, not the legislation passed during his terms in office) certainly wasn’t able to meet all the needs of the time economically or socially. Of course, he wasn’t as bad as, say, General Grant, but he certainly wasn’t a Teddy Roosevelt or Harry Truman.