President Richard Nixon?

Question

I know this is an issue filled with a great deal of anger, but did Nixon get a raw deal? I know that he screwed up, but he also was perhaps the greatest foreign policy president we've ever had, plus he was the one who got us out of Vietnam (no one seems to remember that Kennedy and Johnson got us in). Did he get a raw deal?

Answer 1

HMMMM - - - every Nation 'needs' its Villains and Nixon fit the Bill. Actually if one truly studies the calibre of Men who have inhabited the WHite House one walks away with a Cold Chill. Although many of his observations irk me, gee I like Harry S Truman, the views of Gore Vidal on the Subject of Presidents ought to be studied...

How different would the World be if incumbent President Nixon duked it out with that upstart Kennedy in 1960. WIth the resources of the White House behind him Nixon may have won and Maybe just maybe the paranoia and arrogance that festered for a decade might not have made him resort to such clumsy tactics as those that ensured his downfall.
Actually as Vice President Nixon was a star, he took the office far from its status as a backwater and modern VPs such as Mondale and Gore owe Nixon a great deal of grattitude (we won't talk about Chaney, that would be rude).
Though Nixon did 'get America' out of Vietnam a lot of that is due to Kissinger. Actually Nixon wasn't a good team player and that too did him in.
Oddly enough what did Nixon in what the most honorable thing he did. He resigned. He stepped down. Instead of submitting Ameria to a nasty bloodbath under the Capitol Dome, a process that could have consumed a year maybe two and left the Republican Party in ruins, Nixon left the room, got in the Presidential helicopter and flew away. But doing the right thing is what gave everyone the 'right' to say, "See, he had to have done it, he quit," his actions were accepted as proof of evil & venality.
A raw deal, perhaps - - - but then as was said America needs its villains - - - where would Historians be if they couldn't kick Harding and Nixon around?

(especially when one considers that James Buchanan was the worst President America has had to endure)

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/gore-vidal/president-jonah_b_14439.html

Peace---------------------------

PS FDR was the Greatest Foreign Policy President, and a lot can be argued for Reagan and Eisenhower and Clinton all of whom utilized brilliant Secretary of States
PSS Nixon was trhe most fascinating person of the 1960 s. a failure in 1960 and 64 a victor in 68 and an appearence on Laugh In!!

Answer 2

Your mistaken, Michael J is right. Eisenhower got us into Vietnam, except it was before the French pulled out. We were giving the French material aid and there were U.S.pilots at the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954.
37 U.S. pilots flew 682 sorties during the battle, two were killed. Eisenhower then gave South Vietnam advisers and material support when the country was divided in 1956.
Nobody remembers this, Kennedy was making plans for pulling American involvement out of Vietnam but didn't get to finish.
Michael's other statements about Nixon are all correct.

Answer 3

Alley C needs to read some more. The last US troops left Vietnam in March of 1973. Nixon was President until August of 1974. So Nixon did get the US out of Vietnam. It was later that the democratic congress cut funding to South Vietnam and thus assured it's defeat.
Richard Nixon probably won the election in 1960 historians have decided but he didn't want the country to go through the nightmare of recounts and recriminations about Republicans stealing elections. (Al Gore take note)
Richard had several personality disorders; he was paranoid,
secretive, and defensive. Take a look at the media he faced and some of this is explained. As for the election of 1972, he was going to win. He failed to hold his subordinates accountable and then tried to protect them from those that he knew to be his enemies. His thinking was that a victory by those enemies was a victory against him personally.
Nixon was not a conservative by any means.
He started the EPA, pushed environmental concerns, and tried to control oil prices with regulations. Anyone who knows the 70s can tell you about gas lines and shortages.
To put things simply; Nixon was better than his critics allow him, much better when compared to other presidents in his period.

Answer 4

First off, after the French pulled out it was the Eisenhower administration that got us into Vietnam. For sure Kennedy continued those policies and Johnson had the huge troop increases.

Richard Nixon cheated on his taxes in 69 and 70 ($432,000 in arrears and penalties), used the FBI and the IRS to go after perceived enemies, bombed Cambodia illegally, completely mishandled the 1973 oil crisis, accepted illegal campaign contributions (Maurice Stans), conspired to break into the Democratic National Headquarters, conspired to hide this crime, "Saturday Night Massacre...,

nope, he didn't get a raw deal at all.

...and to the poster somewhere above....if there was suspicion of wrongdoing at the DNC HQ the FBI would have been notified. Nixon loved to use them as a political hammer.The political windfall by investigating the Dems would have been fantastic.

Answer 5

He went too far when he fired the special prosecutor and defied the supreme court.

Actually I was just thinking the other day that if Nixon had played it as cool as Bush, he probably wouldn't have gone down. But he was so paranoid by nature anyway that he just couldn't control himself. He just reacted.

It couldn't have gone any other way even though like you I have sympathy for him, and liked him and thought he had some good qualities as president.

Nixon was his own worse enemy and he knew it at the end when he gave that famous speech.

If he had held tight and let things alone he probably could have waited it out but when he tried to control the press, the courts and the prosecutor, Congress had to act.

Answer 6

Thats the thing. With Nixon, you get a really mixed bag of good and bad. He was progressive in his policies. He achieved relations with China and helped to establish the EPA. But Its also well documented that he was paranoid and would often make off the cuff racist remarks.

Answer 7

You kids.

Viet Nam was the result of Harry Truman reneging on FDRs pledge of postwar assistance to Ho Chi Minh in freeing Viet Nam of French Colonial dominance. So Ho turned to Moscow.

But back to the question. Nixon was given a raw deal compared to the deal given to his predecessor JFK who tried to assassinate Castro, who carried on sex affairs in the White House with movie starlets and mobster molls, and who unashamedly resorted to the most blatant nepotistic cronyism in appointing his own brother to the AG spot on the cabinet. But this was all OK because JFK appealed to the news media's eastern elitism. The media hated Nixon from the evening he gave his Checkers speech, and even though radio listeners gave the Presidential debate to Nixon, the TV media gave it to JFK because they thought Nixons TV makeup wasn't to their standards. So in the end, Nixon's covering up for the misdeeds of his staffers who were in turn covering up for the misdeeds of the Watergate team was judged by the public to be worse than anything preceding it, because the media pounded it into their heads day and night until Nixon finally threw in the towel.

Answer 8

Not really....

Not only did he get caught, he got caught with his pants down...

American's trusted government for the most part. Naive or not we felt the President was above lying and cheating.

It hurt us to find out the truth. It also changed things... we don't trust anyone in government any more.








g-day!

Answer 9

You'd have to go back to 1960 and admit that he should have been president then but being a real man he declined to challenge voter fraud because it would tear the country apart. You also have to know that the DNC office was broken into because they thought there was illegal activities being run through it. That isnt to say they should have broken in or lied about it but it makes it different than just trying to play politics.

Answer 10

Nixon was a worm.