# Was Richard Nixon great or terrible? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 4, 2014, 7:19pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-great-or-terrible/694810 "2014-08-04T19:19:23Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 1\ **Showing post:** 18
**Author:** ![BrainGlutton](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/82dd89/32.png) [@BrainGlutton](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/BrainGlutton)\ **Post date:** [August 4, 2014, 11:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-great-or-terrible/694810/18 "2014-08-04T23:59:42Z")
> [@wolfpup](#): > > It’s also a fact that the man who famously declared “I am not a crook” indisputably _ **was** _ a crook. More to the point – based on my reading of [_Nixonland,_](http://www.amazon.com/Nixonland-Rise-President-Fracturing-America/dp/B003E7ET0S) by Rick Perlstein – he was not an honest man. He had a sincere dedication to public service and he had a kind of integrity, but his integrity never included honesty. And specifically he never accepted, in practice nor in theory, any notion at all that a politician is obliged to tell the truth to the public. His attitude was always that those in-the-know will make the decisions and “the public will be told what the public needs to be told.” When Nixon was in the Navy he made a lot of money playing poker. He was a very good poker player. He had the all-important skill of dissembling his true position/intentions to other players, bluffing, keeping the poker face – which is not exactly a dishonest thing within the setting of that game, but he seems to have assumed it would be as appropriate and would serve him as well in political life. --- _[View the full topic](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-great-or-terrible/694810)._