# If Watergate had not happened would history regard Nixon as a good president? **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 9, 2008, 12:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-watergate-had-not-happened-would-history-regard-nixon-as-a-good-president/471864 "2008-11-09T00:29:15Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 3\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 3:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-watergate-had-not-happened-would-history-regard-nixon-as-a-good-president/471864/21 "2008-11-11T15:12:55Z")
[Review of a relevant new book, which I recommend highly.](http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/200805/nixon) > [@](#): > > And yet one doesn’t have to excuse Nixon’s many sins to wonder whether his mix of ruthlessness, self-interest, and low cunning might have been preferable to some of the alternatives on offer. Perlstein depicts a country on the edge of a civil war—a nation in which columnists openly speculated that America might embrace a de Gaulle–style man on horseback, or find a “President Verwoerd” (the architect of South African apartheid) to install in the Oval Office. It was a political moment when the old order could no longer govern, and the new order wasn’t ready. The kids who screamed for Goldwater and McGovern would grow up to be responsible Reaganites and Clintonians, but back then they had only idealism, not experience, and Nixonland is an 800-page testament to the dangers of idealism run amok. > > In this climate, the voters didn’t choose Nixon over some neoconservative or neoliberal FDR; no such figure was available. They chose Nixon over an exhausted establishment on the one hand—nobody seems more hapless in _Nixonland_ than figures like Hubert Humphrey and Nelson Rockefeller—and the fantasy politics of left and right on the other. They chose Nixon over the abyss. > > Perlstein sometimes seems to suggest that Nixon _was_ the abyss, and that by choosing him we vanished into it. But this misunderstands contemporary America, and it misunderstands Dick Nixon. A cynic in an age of zeal, a politician without principles at a moment that valued ideological purity above all, he was too small a man to threaten the republic. His corruptions were too petty; his schemes too penny-ante; and his spirit too cowardly, too self-interested, too venal to make him truly dangerous. And he was a bridge, thank God, to better times. Could America have done better? Perhaps. But on the evidence of _Nixonland,_ we could have done far worse as well. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 3:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-watergate-had-not-happened-would-history-regard-nixon-as-a-good-president/471864/22 "2008-11-11T15:20:44Z")
An aid said later that Nixon would lie constantly, even about things he didn’t need to lie about, like the date of his wife’s birthday. Watergate was inevitable and inherent in his character I think. ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2008, 6:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-watergate-had-not-happened-would-history-regard-nixon-as-a-good-president/471864/23 "2008-11-11T18:07:46Z")
> [@Exapno\_Mapcase](#): > > Was he a worse president than Bush? A different question. For long-lasting damage, probably not. However, there is no possibility that Nixon will ever improve his place amongst the lowest rung of presidents any more than Bush will. In 1999, if you had asked people, “Will we ever have a _worse_ President than Nixon?” the answer would have been, “No!” Now, however, W’s given ol’ Tricky Dick a run for his money. Do **not** think that some prick won’t come along and elevate Nixon. If we’re lucky, it won’t happen until long after we’re gone, but I, for one, am **not** going to be holding my breath. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/if-watergate-had-not-happened-would-history-regard-nixon-as-a-good-president/471864.md?page=1)