Flawed, brilliant, a giant compared to anyone we've seen in the past twenty years.

Better than Bush. Better than Obama. By a factor of a thousand.

Underrated. If only we could have him now. We need him - badly.

Jesus christ.

nah

While I will not defend Nixon as President, but I have heard many folks (and I believe even Dan in one of CC podcasts) praise his skills and insight as an author.

I feel Nixon did some good things and in some way gets a bad wrap. I think establishing relations with china, easing tensions with the soviets, and finally bringing an end to the war with vietnam were good things that he did that contradict his image as paranoid insane right winger. He still was that imo, but he did do some good things during his time in office.

Would I want him in power today? Hell. No.

Nixon said, "Well when the president does it, that means it is not illegal."

Nixon: I am above the law!



1+

I think Nixon is a nightmare we can't let go because it is so plainly obvious we sometimes need people like him. It's quite easy to dismiss him because of all the bad things he did. It's not so easy to dismiss his political and negotiating skills. In politics, he was like that poker player who always wins the tournament. When the stakes are not chips but the fortune of our nation, I find myself hesitant to dismiss Nixon. He was a very complex and brooding man. His mind never stopped knocking over dominoes of actions and reactions. Yes, he did bad things to defeat his opponents. That was what made him such an effective leader against his counterparts in the Soviet Union who themselves only rose to power through a deadly bureaucracy with those same skills. Nixon could beat them at their own game *and* he rose to power in a democracy. He was among the worst and best presidents in our history. I have no idea where you can place him. It just depends upon the context of your query. There will be historians in the future who focus on this guy.


That is my take on it.

Did anybody see this story? One general stabbed in the back by Nixon. Wow.



http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20100805/ap_ ... am_general

IMO even though he did some pretty shocking stuff, he still solved a LOT of issues. Maybe it's the fact that we haven't really seen a US president the last two decades who really did something without thinking of the consequences it would have for himself. I think Dan mentioned something like it in CC. It seems like US politicians today worry more about their own future than the country's (Which they should in fact be serving!). I mean, if you get paid by the state, the least you could do is actually accomplish something.
Though Nixon placed himself above the law, he still solved more issues than for instance G.W. Bush. Which is kind of scary when you think about it. Perhaps the Romans were right after all with their practice of nominating someone to be a dictator. Maybe a country needs an authoritarian ruler once a while to solve the problems. (Again, Dan mentioned this in CC some time ago.)

Reinstating Nixon in today's world might change something, but hey, I'm not even sure he could evade the political pressure from lobbyists and fellow partymembers. What we need is something I'd like to call a Kamikaze-president. Someone who won't hold back when fixing a problem. Someone with a total disregard for his own political future (and his party's for that matter). Yet I don't think we'll be seeing someone like that anytime soon...
out of pure frustration

True, however I think we have to understand the reasons Nixon did all these things. He opened relations with China as a way to counter the Soviets in the Sino-Soviet split. More of a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" than open mindedness on the part of Nixon and our friend Henry.
As for the Vietnam war, they had extended it as much as they could already and public opinion was strongly against a continued engagement in what was very patently a lost war that had run for almost ten years already. So Nixon did what any politician with a brain would have done in '73: declared victory and left.
You want something good from the Nixon era? The space shuttle!