Prior to the Watergate Scandal, did you believe Nixon was a successful and efficient?

Question

president? He DID have a rather successful presidency other than his whole spying on the democrats incident IMO

Answer 1

Well a Pragmatist would insist that if Nixon had been efficient he would have been successful at squashing Watergate. A Moralist might argue that Nixon was proved to be inefficient by resorting to the tactics of Watergate. A Realist would point out that the Nixon White House was inefficient in having to burglarize their opponents headquarters and that a staged burglary made no seance,

Other than that, Richard Milhouse Nixon had the smarts, he engineered two successful elections, maybe a third if conspiracy buffs & staticians are to be believed (how many dead Chicogoans voted for JFK).

It is entirely possible that if Nixon the Diplomat had been washed with waves of adoration & love in 1960 and swept into the White House, that with his prestige & Quaker qualities, there would have been no Vietnam and no Cuban crisis, in fact Californian Nixon may have forged an alliance with Senate Leader Lyndon Jognson and hammered out a ruthlessly efficient Civil Rights Act - - - Nixon used racial and religious slurs but it was a linguistic habit aquirred during decades when most everyone used racial religious epithets.

To wind this up // yes Nixon had the ability to be a great President which makes the tactics of Watergate all that more unforgivable.

Peace....

Answer 2

When looking at a president and how successful or terrible they were do not ever look at the media of their actions. Consider their actions on their own merit and compared to those men before him. If you look at Nixon on his own merit it says a man who knew who and how to work with and trade with one of the largest and growing countries in the world, China. He also knew that as president that he had to reduce if not stop the escalation of an unpopular war. He also knew that he had to strengthen the economy of this nation. All three of these things he did accomplish.

Now compare him to those men before him. No one had thought of or knew how to trade with China, Nixon did. The men before him thought the best way to “win” the war was to not call it a war and say that were only there as “advisors”. Nixon put a stop to the fierce fighting of the war and the stories of many Americans dieing and showing up dead reduced which made the American people feel like either we were winning or that the end was near. Then there is the WaterGate issue.
Now everyone then and most everyone now knows that ALL presidents have their conversations recorded on phone and most of them in person. The reason is for security and every man from Roosevelt to JFK did this. The only difference is that a few power hungry Democrats felt they could use this along with the media’s help to damage this presidency. The only difference is that Nixon had the guts to stop their plan by taking the honorable way out and he quit.

Answer 3

Nixon won the election in 1968 making vague statements that he had a "secret plan" to end the war Viet Nam. When he got into office he expanded the war into Cambodia, ultimately destabilizing their government. Almost half of US casualties occurred after he took office.
He neglected the Middle East and when war broke out there rush arms shipments to Israel , which lead to an Oil boycott and gas lines and really bad economic times in the US.
He pursued a policy of detente with Russia and "Went to China"
His domestic policy was liberal, using price controls, raising social security payments and indexing them to inflation and supporting a guaranteed income, (negative income tax).for all Americans.
Every group in America was enraged by at least one of his policies and the public had spent the winter of 73/74 sitting in gas lines, so when the Watergate scandal broke, he had no political support, unlike Clinton.
Looking back his China policy dominates, so his presidency is considered more successful than it was perceived to be at the time.

Answer 4

Yes, definitely. His foreign policy initiatives with Russia and China were the most sensible moves any president has ever made. Above all, he DID get America out of Vietnam - strange that we have forgiven the idealists who got us in, but not the realists who got us out!
He was quite a good domestic president too.
However, the damage he did to public trust by the Watergate affair seems to be permanent. It is hard to believe that it was solely zeal for justice behind the liberal glee over his fall, but in the last analysis, he brought it on himself.

Answer 5

He was incredibly conservative for the time
though he would probably be considered liberal
compared to, say, the Bushes.

Yes, "only Nixon could go to China".

What ELSE did he do? Yes, he inherited
a horrible situation with Vietnam, but he made
it worse before being forced to withdraw.

The economy was slowly collapsing under him.

No, Nixon was not successful. He was paranoid
and destructive.

Answer 6

Yes, he was very decisive and did what he had to do to stop the escalation of war in Vietnam.

Answer 7

Only if you count being ruthless, amoral, and crooked successful. His biggest regret was that he got CAUGHT.