# Was Richard Nixon That Bad? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [March 6, 2010, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508 "2010-03-06T04:49:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![AK84](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/85e7bf/32.png) [@AK84](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AK84)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 1:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/21 "2010-03-06T13:56:03Z")
I have always admired him. As a foreigner he seems the last US President who was i) willing to take unpopular but necessary decisions, and ii) he was the last President who could put his personal beliefs aside to exersize his best judgement. With the slight exception of the elder Bush, none of his successors has had the same. Read Stephan Ambrose’s biography of him. He was a man of enormoius political and physical (as he showed in S America) courage. As President, I think it would be fair to say, many of hos decisions, engaging China, getting off the Gold Standard are some of the most influential for the past 60 years. As was detante and Nuclear Arms control. ---
**Author:** ![Hellestal](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/3ab097/32.png) [@Hellestal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hellestal)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 3:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/22 "2010-03-06T15:49:48Z")
> [@Squink](#): > > You forgot Nixon’s #1 accomplishment too. Bringing inflation under control by instituting federal wage and price controls. [http://www.econreview.com/events/wageprice1971b.htm](http://www.econreview.com/events/wageprice1971b.htm) From your own link: > [@](#): > > While there were skeptics in August, 1971, there were a great many who thought “temporary” wage and price controls could cure inflation. By 1974, this notion was thoroughly discredited, and attention gradually turned toward a monetary approach to inflation. Inflation was eventually brought under control with tight monetary policy from the Fed driving up interest rates. The price controls were a mistake. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 3:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/23 "2010-03-06T15:50:08Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > And if we had supported Vietnam’s legitimate desire to end colonization by the French then they wouldn’t have been communist at all. Neither of those has fuck-all to do with Nixon. THIS! > [@DanBlather](#): > > 1968 Democratic Platform:1968 REpublican PlatformThe Democrats were running on a platform to stop bombing and negotiating to withdraw our troops. Kissinger, who was involved in the Paris peace talks fed information to Nixon about the South’s willingness to sign a peace treaty. Nixon surreptitiously encouraged the South to wait until he was in office when they would get a better deal. And THIS! **Curtis** , if you ever finally get Vietnam right, I’ll just shit. ---
**Author:** ![Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/q/f04885/32.png) [@Qin\_Shi\_Huangdi](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Qin_Shi_Huangdi)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 4:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/24 "2010-03-06T16:13:01Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > And if we had supported Vietnam’s legitimate desire to end colonization by the French then they wouldn’t have been communist at all. Neither of those has fuck-all to do with Nixon. I’m talking about the situation Nixon got into as President. > [@](#): > > Listen to the tapes. He was a bigot. Which did not stop him from supporting civil rights policies. > [@DanBlather](#): > > If you think about it, there are few things worse than having the President of the United States use criminal acts to influence an election. The only worse thing I can think of is to lie about the nature of a threat to justify putting our military in harms way. So did JFK in Illinois, and Texas. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United\_States\_presidential\_election,\_1960](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_presidential_election,_1960) > [@](#): > > Many Republicans (including Nixon and Eisenhower) believed that Kennedy had benefited from vote fraud, especially in Texas, of which Lyndon Johnson was Senator, and Illinois, home of Mayor Richard Daley’s powerful Chicago political machine.[16] These two states are important because if Nixon had carried both, he would have won the election in the electoral college. Republican Senators such as Everett Dirksen and Barry Goldwater also believed that vote fraud played a role in the election,[1] and they believed that Nixon actually won the national popular vote. Republicans tried and failed to overturn the results in both these states at the time—as well as in nine other states.[20] Some journalists also later claimed that mobster Sam Giancana and his Chicago crime syndicate played a role in Kennedy’s victory in Illinois.[20] > [@PrettyVacant](#): > > To this day the peoples of Laos and Cambodia love the guy. Can’t get enough of him. Millions of them enjoyed the illegal bombing that made him a de facto war criminal and from which they still suffer every day now. The Vietcong and other communist groups were hiding in those areas plus after the US withdrew like the Domino Effect predicted both went communist and Cambodia came under a psychopath. > [@](#): > > But lets concentrate on a visit to China, and the ‘peace deal’ that culminated in the helicopter airlift from the roof of the Saigon embassy. Genius foreign policy guy. Well had we done what liberals advocated and withdrawn immediatly from Vietnam the same thing would have happened. Had Nixon remained President and forcefully intervened in South Vietnam than South Vietnam would have survived and lasted to this day. > [@Zoe](#): > > Nixon was a liberal, BTW. And it wasn’t just liberals who “hated his guts.” He was a corrupt and whiny man who tried to use the powers of the presidency for his own purposes. His own party was about to throw him out of office. **Nobody liked Richard Nixon by August 1974.** For two years he had kept the country in a state of constant turmoil. > > By the time he left office, he was losing his mind. He wandered around the White House at night mumbling to the portraits on the walls. > > His Enemies List was a big deal back then. It got to be so ridiculous that it even listed the names of Paul Newman and Bill Cosby. The man had become totally paranoid and he was still in power. The world might have been a better place had Watergate been revealed say twenty years later when people could treat it more objectively and less emotionally. Certainly Nixon would have been a stronger President than Ford who might have blunted the worst effects of the '70s recession and malaise and saved South Vietnam. > [@](#): > > Was he for civil rights? How many women and non-white men were in positions of counsel on his staff? I don’t think there were that many experienced women or non-whites back than. ---
**Author:** ![E-Sabbath](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/e19adc/32.png) [@E-Sabbath](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/E-Sabbath)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 4:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/25 "2010-03-06T16:18:06Z")
Nixon was possibly the last president for a long time that actually worked for the good of the poor and powerless. He was a Quaker, remember. He was also a corrupt son of a bitch and possibly actually evil. He was a very complex person. Half of him could have been the best president since Lincoln, and half of him could have been the worst since Buchanan. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 4:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/26 "2010-03-06T16:22:51Z")
> [@DanBlather](#): > > 1968 Democratic Platform: Same platform that said: > [@](#): > > Until the fighting stops, accelerate our efforts to train and equip the South Vietnamese army so that it can defend its own country and carry out cutbacks of U.S. military involvement as the South Vietnamese forces are able to take over their larger responsibilities. We should simultaneously do all in our power to support and encourage further economic, political and social development and reform in South Vietnam, including an extensive land reform program. We support President Johnson’s repeated offer to provide a substantial U.S. contribution to the postwar reconstruction of South Vietnam as well as to the economic development of the entire region, including North Vietnam. Japan and the European industrial states should be urged to join in this postwar effort. from the same party that just had spent eight years escalating our war involvement. And while Nizon may have surreptitiously sabotaged the peace talks, he was running on a platform of a negotiated peace and multilateral decision making…that’s that whole “we will sincerely and vigorously pursue peace negotiations as long as they offer any reasonable prospect for a just peace” ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 5:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/27 "2010-03-06T17:47:01Z")
Nixon was a good president hounded out of office by a news media that hated his guts and had been out to get him ever since the Alger Hiss case in the forties. He had his flaws but most never came to light until after he’d left office; they weren’t apparent in his day to day governance of the country. And too much has been made of his enemy list; I doubt there has ever been a president who didn’t maintain one, even if only in his own mind. I’m sure Rush Limbaugh and Fox News have been on the lists of Bill and Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, to name but two), and like AK84 said, he was a man who did what he thought was the right thing to do even if it was politically unpopular. He was a brilliant man, very highly thought of in most places around the world and by a sizable majority of America’s own populace, having won reelection in a landslide in 1972. And contrary to what someone said upthread, he didn’t instigate the Watergate break-in; he tried to keep the people involved in it from getting into trouble. These were people acting on his behalf and he tried to protect them out of a sense of a misguided sense of loyalty. But like I said, he had his faults too, and they were considerable. It’s a shame because he really could have been one of the best presidents this country has ever had…and he was for a while. By the end of his presidency he had been driven somewhat out of his mind by the strain of trying to govern the country and contend with Watergate and its consequenses, but he wasn’t mad during all but the last few days or weeks of his presidency. And then there’s the fact that by hounding Nixon from office and creating an atmosphere focused on the perception of integrity more than competence, the U.S. media is directly responsible for the infliction of James Earl Carter upon this country. This is something I’ve never forgiven them for. > [@Zoe](#): > > Was he for civil rights? How many women and non-white men were in positions of counsel on his staff? Well, to be fair my old friend I don’t believe there were many women or non-white men in Kennedy’s or Johnson’s administrations either. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 5:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/28 "2010-03-06T17:49:28Z")
> [@Curtis LeMay](#): > > Well had we done what liberals advocated and withdrawn immediatly from Vietnam the same thing would have happened. Had Nixon remained President and forcefully intervened in South Vietnam than South Vietnam would have survived and lasted to this day. It seems that you are saying that the death of about 2 million Vietnamese and 47,000 American US soldiers was even less than just an statistic. No, the same thing would not have happened. The pentagon papers showed that the US government was aware that the communists would win if the Vietnamese would had given the chance to vote for reunification, the USA supported the leader of South Vietnam when he decided to dump the reunification vote that was recommended by the same Geneva Accords that created South Vietnam. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 6:12pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/29 "2010-03-06T18:12:34Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > And contrary to what someone said upthread, he didn’t instigate the Watergate break-in; he tried to keep the people involved in it from getting into trouble. These were people acting on his behalf and he tried to protect them out of a sense of a misguided sense of loyalty. You must have a dictionary with a different definition of “instigate” > **[John Dean Revisits Watergate](https://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/aug/05/john-dean-revisits-watergate/)** > > John Dean, former counsel to President Richard Nixon and arguably the star of the Senate Watergate Hearings, has written a new ending for his book on Watergate and the Nixon presidency, Blind Ambition. We ask what new information he reveals and his... > [@](#): > > DEAN: But, yes, I did, what I discovered and while I didn’t find Nixon and I don’t believe Nixon did order the Watergate break-in, it’s clear what he did order resulted in the Watergate break-in. And what he wanted was financial information on what the Democrats were doing with their convention. There’s really only one or two places you can get that and that was the Democratic National Committee or Larry O’Brien’s office in Florida as they were setting up the convention. And, clearly, you know, that crazy Gordon Liddy did whatever he thought was necessary to find that information and Mitchell and Magruder had approved it. And so I actually found both documents and tapes that make that point because this has been one of the supposed mysteries the revisionists keep raising about why did they break in and everybody knows that’s stupid. Well, it wasn’t so stupid because it’s what Nixon wanted. > **[How Paranoid Was Nixon?](https://www.hnn.us/article/how-paranoid-was-nixon)** > > It wasn’t the crime, but it wasn’t the cover-up, either. Something more basic took down a president 33 years ago. > Long before prosecutors identified him as an unindicted coconspirator, Richard Nixon was a conspiracy theorist. In the last 10 years,... > [@](#): > > But the Special Investigations Unit, employing CIA assets recruited from Florida’s Cuban American community, did manage to burglarize the Beverly Hills office of a psychiatrist who had treated Ellsberg. They were looking for information on the conspiracy. They got nothing. All the president’s men never could make a case against Halperin and Gelb. The Special Investigations Unit disbanded. But some of its members got back together during the campaign for one more job, and then another, and then their luck ran out and they got themselves arrested breaking into Democratic Party headquarters at the Watergate complex. > > The president had to make a choice. On the one hand, he could let the criminal investigation proceed unimpeded, knowing it would lead from the Watergate break-in to the earlier break-in at Ellsberg’s psychiatrist’s office to the impeachable offense of a president establishing a secret police agency that operated outside the Constitution and above the law. On the other hand, he could launch a cover-up. The choice Nixon made destroyed him, but the alternative would have destroyed him, too, and probably quicker. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 6:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/30 "2010-03-06T18:38:12Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > It seems that you are saying that the death of about 2 million Vietnamese and 47,000 American US soldiers was even less than just an statistic. No, the same thing would not have happened. … In **Curtis** ’ alternative universe, American hegemony … priceless. ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 6:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/31 "2010-03-06T18:52:28Z")
> [@GIGObuster](#): > > You must have a dictionary with a different definition of “instigate” > [@](#): > > DEAN: But, yes, I did, what I discovered and while I didn’t find Nixon and I don’t believe Nixon did order the Watergate break-in, it’s clear what he did order resulted in the Watergate break-in. And what he wanted was financial information on what the Democrats were doing with their convention. It’s one thing to say you want information on where an opponent is getting their financing; it’s another entirely to say “Break into their offices and rifle their filing cabinets looking for financial info and report back to me what you find.” It isn’t Nixon’s fault that his lackeys took his request too far. What did Nixon in was his attempt to protect them once they were caught. ---
**Author:** ![GIGObuster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gigobuster/32/421_2.png) [@GIGObuster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GIGObuster)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/32 "2010-03-06T19:07:05Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > It’s one thing to say you want information on where an opponent is getting their financing; it’s another entirely to say “Break into their offices and rifle their filing cabinets looking for financial info and report back to me what you find.” Nixon was aware of the “Break into their offices and rifle their filing cabinets” in the early plumber action. He never took the lackeys to task, or told them that what they did was criminal. Nixon allowed it to continue. ---
**Author:** ![waterj2](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/w/858c86/32.png) [@waterj2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/waterj2)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 7:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/33 "2010-03-06T19:22:42Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > It’s one thing to say you want information on where an opponent is getting their financing; it’s another entirely to say “Break into their offices and rifle their filing cabinets looking for financial info and report back to me what you find.” > > It isn’t Nixon’s fault that his lackeys took his request too far. What did Nixon in was his attempt to protect them once they were caught. So, he didn’t order them to steal, he just ordered them to give him other people’s property? ---
**Author:** ![Starving\_Artist](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/aeb1de/32.png) [@Starving\_Artist](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Starving_Artist)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 7:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/34 "2010-03-06T19:27:18Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > So, he didn’t order them to steal, he just ordered them to give him other people’s property? He ordered them to find out more about other people’s finances. Call me crazy but I would think there would be legitimate (or at least legal) ways to do that. ---
**Author:** ![Captain\_Amazing](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/6de8d8/32.png) [@Captain\_Amazing](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Captain_Amazing)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/35 "2010-03-06T20:15:57Z")
> [@waterj2](#): > > So, he didn’t order them to steal, he just ordered them to give him other people’s property? I think a better analogy would be “I want this stuff. I don’t particularly care how you get it.” ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 8:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/36 "2010-03-06T20:22:16Z")
Nixon was brilliant. Nixon was also off his rocker. Smart and crazy sometimes do occur in the same person. And never forget, his “idea” that it isn’t illegal if the President does it, did come back later on, under new labels. Yes, he was a crook. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 9:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/37 "2010-03-06T21:54:49Z")
Nixon did do a few good things during his career, and yes, he was possessed of great personal courage. At the same time, from his first election (where he fraudulently blackened his opposent’s repotation intentionally and by repeated lies) until the day he resigned, he was an amoral crook much more interested in power than in what good hings it could be used for. If invading Red China rather than recognizing it would have advanced him politically, I have little doubt he would have invaded. His “secret plan to win the war” is probably in the Library of Congress right next to the book detailing the locations of Iraqi W.M.D.'s. ---
**Author:** ![Polycarp](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/82dd89/32.png) [@Polycarp](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Polycarp)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 9:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/38 "2010-03-06T21:59:18Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > He ordered them to find out more about other people’s finances. Call me crazy but I would think there would be legitimate (or at least legal) ways to do that. To make my repeated posts, check out the Fourth Amendment. If there _had been_ legitimate governmental reasons to obtain this information, he, or his Attorney General or White House Counsel or their staff, could have gone to a judge giving him probable cause for issuance of a search warrant. Also, read up on why men from Robert Taft to Earl Warren, from Roman Hruska to Hubert Humphrey, distrusted and despised him well before the 1960s. ---
**Author:** ![SteveG1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bb73d2/32.png) [@SteveG1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SteveG1)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 10:17pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/39 "2010-03-06T22:17:55Z")
> [@Starving\_Artist](#): > > He ordered them to find out more about other people’s finances. Call me crazy but I would think there would be legitimate (or at least legal) ways to do that. He sent them to break in and steal stuff. ---
**Author:** ![adhay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/ecd19e/32.png) [@adhay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/adhay)\ **Post date:** [March 6, 2010, 11:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508/40 "2010-03-06T23:10:15Z")
> [@Polycarp](#): > > … > Also, read up on why men from Robert Taft to Earl Warren, from Roman Hruska to Hubert Humphrey, distrusted and despised him well before the 1960s. Back in '71, I returned to earth after dropping out and moving to the mountains 5 yrs before. I saw Nixon on tv for the first time as he addressed who knows but I see this guy checking out the audience reaction every time he says something, looking sideways, back and forth like (I suppose) a cornered rat and I said to myself, he’s a crook. I voted for the first time in '72 against Nixon (who did he run against?) and when he won 49 states, I decided that they either didn’t count the votes or I was living with idiots. Didn’t vote again until I voted for Obama and I’ve come to think that I’m just another idiot. :o [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508.md?page=1) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/was-richard-nixon-that-bad/531508.md?page=3)