Richard Milhous Nixon was born 100 years ago today.
“HE WAS A LIAR AND A QUITTER, AND HE SHOULD HAVE BEEN BURIED AT SEA… BUT HE WAS, AFTER ALL, THE PRESIDENT.”
-Hunter S. Thompson, who wrote this world-class piece of invective on the occasion of Nixon’s passing in 1994.
I invite you to share your thoughts on Tricky Dick, positive, negative, or otherwise.
Does anyone know if there’s going to be any official commemorations/ceremonies for this event?
18 1/2 minutes of silence?
Joke shamelessly stolen from someone from back in 1994 when Tricky Dick kicked the bucket.
I have said, and I maintain, that Nixon was both the best and the worst President we ever had.
Pros:
He got us out of Vietnam: You might not have liked the timetable, and you might have been all wrapped around the axle over Cambodia, but the war ended under his watch.
Detente with the Soviet Union/relations with China: He was probably the only person in the United States that could have gotten away with that, President or not, if only because he was the very last person anybody would have expected to do it.
End of Bretton Woods/off the gold standard: Yeah, I know all the counter-arguments. You know what? All the prosperity that the Baby Boomers like to hype whenever they’re told that they’re eating their children and grandchildren can be directly attributed to Nixon floating the currency.
Those are all pretty big pros, if you ask me.
Cons:
Paranoia: He couldn’t have lost in 1972 had he been dead. He wrecked his legacy over nothing.
Dishonesty: Every President lies, but he took it to an extreme. If in 1973 he had simply come clean it would have been a small stain on a monster record.
Southern Strategy: 'nuff said.
Those are all pretty big cons.
All in all, a great President with a fatal flaw. His legacy in all respects has been longer lasting than any President before or since. If you doubt me, check out the politics section of the Washington Post on your Chinese-made computer you paid next to nothing for. It should all be clear to you then.
His detente with the USSR, & his watershed moment opening China may have prevented WW3.
His virtues were our virtues, his failings were our failings.
You play the Nixon tapes at midnight with some friends and every time he says “commies”, “bastards”, “Jews” or “fuck” you have to take a drink.
Last month I realized we were coming up on both Nixon’s and Ford’s centennials (Jerry’s is July 14th). Airman-IMO Nixon’s biggest problem was his inferiority complex.
Everytime he rails against “Eastern elites”-finish the bottle.
No way that’s a pro. He won election in 1968 in part by lying and giving the impression that he would end the war. Instead he escalated. He cost the lives of tens of thousands of young Americans and untold numbers of Vietnamese in a futile effort to save face for the US. Nixon’s Vietnam policy is the most despicable part of his “legacy,” far worse in my book than Watergate.
He cost them their lives? He wasn’t the one who made up a lame-o “attack” in the Gulf of Tonkin and started the full-scale escalation of the war. At no point were the troop numbers under Nixon greater than they were under LBJ. He de-escalated it almost from day one. Cambodia was a political reality, in much the same way that Obama couldn’t (or wouldn’t) keep his promise on Gitmo. He cut Cambodia in half in a vain attempt to leave South Vietnam in a tenable position when the US left.
Your statement is comparable to blaming Obama for Afghanistan and Iraq, because we were there well into his first term and, in the case of Afghanistan, still there.
Some people feel that the reason Nixon won re-election so easily in 1972 was because his campaign had helped knock the stronger Democratic candidates out of the race and get the weakest candidate nominated. If so, then the “dirty tricks” were successful.
Yes, it will take place at the Nixon Monument.
No, people are holding back, planning the really big shindigs for the centennial of his death.
Ooh, I just remembered, I do have funny Nixon story.
Long ago, when I was learning an (earlier) version of Microsoft Word, I wrote something about recent presidents. I was somewhat startled to see that the program’s spell checker passed Reagan (despite his having changed the spelling of his own name), Clinton, Bush (the elder), and Ford…but Nixon’s name was flagged as a possible spelling error.
Instantly, I envisioned some sort of tribunal passing formal judgment upon Nixon…the authoritative voice of Marlon Brando as Kal-El slowly and portentously intoning:
“Richard Milhaus Nixon, for your crimes against the United States of America, you are hereby sentenced to be stricken from the nation’s electronic spelling dictionaries!”
I note that Nixon does appear in the spell checker for the current version of Word 2010 we use here. 
It’s good to mark this event, if only to remind ourselves just how badly power and ambition can corrupt someone. While he turned out to be a pretty decent statesman, his domestic activities and his rampant paranoia sank his ship. But his ambition was always king, going back to his commie-hunting days in the Alger Hiss mess. He was not a man who accepted defeat gracefully, and who held a grudge forever. I was shocked when he won in 1968, given his performance through the years.
Whenever I see younger people opine on message boards that political discourse has never been more contentious, I think of the Nixon years. There was a pretty large and inimical divide between those in power and those who resented the way things were.
Apparently Nixon and Kennedy were, if not exactly friends, at least friendly in the early years. Both were WWII veterans, although Nixon never saw combat. There couldn’t have been two men from more disparate backgrounds, of course. The animosity didn’t happen until the 1960 election. Nixon nursed that grudge for the rest of his life. Eisenhower had no use for Nixon as VP and refused to endorse him for President.
Nixon was a very intelligent man…far ahead of Kennedy and Johnson, IMO. He was the first to realize that the “Cold War” was over, and made effective overtures to both the USSR and China. he laso recognized that LBJ’s insane war in Vietnam had caused a serious weakening of US power-he tooke effective steps to end that war. He was a serious thinker, and genuinely loved his country-he even forsaw the need for the USA to become independent of foreign energy sources. The accusation of his scatalogical private conversations is absurd-Johnson was totally foul-mouthed, and Kennedy had terrible things to say about Black people and Jews. Nixon did have one big flaw though-he3 was unable to admit his failings. Had he come clean immediately about Watergate, the world would likely be a far better place today.
While Nixon was indeed pretty smart, I think you’re overlooking his serious psychological flaws. His paranoia and narcissism warped what his intelligence and ambition achieved.
Are you sure? I always thought Ronald Wilson Reagan was his birth name.
