If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
*
I am no admirer.
At school in England when I'll have been eleven, a well-respected teacher came in one morning and said:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States of America."
I don't know if any of my classmates understood.
I did.
Living near Capetown from late 1946 till end '49, we had a steady supply of American magazines in the house.
I followed the Alger Hiss case, then all the doings of HUAC, getting to recognize all the characters in the Red Scare drama at age 8-9: Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cohn (Trump's mentor) and Schine, Whittaker Chambers and, of course, Richard Nixon.
At the same time, the National Party replaced Smuts' United Party in South Africa, bringing in Apartheid and a heap of race laws, regulations and official signs, everywhere, everywhere.
So this, together with watching the local baboon pack (once narrowly escaping death after a territorial offense, when they rolled an avalanche of rocks on me and my friend at the foot of the cliff...) was where my political education began.
I found American politics and politicians (apart from Ike) strikingly UGLY.
Especially McCarthy, Nixon and the menacing and grossly obese (rare in those days) Whittaker Chambers...
UGLY.
Likewise the faces and expressions of angry white people in the Cape when giving orders to "the lesser breeds"...
Curious, this business of ugly grown-ups and the beginnings of my political education...
Peter, I expect we are probably both not all that much in disagreement. I was trying to play a little safe in putting Nixon near the bottom, but I also agree that he, in many ways, did some things for our country that were far superior to almost anything that has been done by GOP Presidents certainly since Bush 2 and to some degree since Reagan. Nixon was a globalist, at a time when many GOP party members were clear isolationists. It is what made Nixon such a fascinating figure in my mind, both terrifically open-minded about the world condition and yet so incredibly myopic about his own (and his minions') misdeeds. He COULD have gone down as one of the much better Presidents in history (as you note, the opening to China was huge) but for his own personal failings. Trump, on the other hand, has literally zero positive outlook on the world seeing everything only in terms of what happens to him. Sigh...
If you look at what Nixon actually did and got done, I don't think that placing below W will be at all so obvious.
A crook, a sleazy politician, he was far from incompetent. And for his policies he'd have been thrown out of today's hijacked simulacrum of the onetime GOP.
Momentous, the opening to Red China, previously a hole in the map...
*
I am no admirer.
At school in England when I'll have been eleven, a well-respected teacher came in one morning and said:
"If you ever have any say in the matter, make sure that Richard Nixon never becomes president of the United States of America."
I don't know if any of my classmates understood.
I did.
Living near Capetown from late 1946 till end '49, we had a steady supply of American magazines in the house.
I followed the Alger Hiss case, then all the doings of HUAC, getting to recognize all the characters in the Red Scare drama at age 8-9: Sen. Joe McCarthy, Cohn (Trump's mentor) and Schine, Whittaker Chambers and, of course, Richard Nixon.
At the same time, the National Party replaced Smuts' United Party in South Africa, bringing in Apartheid and a heap of race laws, regulations and official signs, everywhere, everywhere.
So this, together with watching the local baboon pack (once narrowly escaping death after a territorial offense, when they rolled an avalanche of rocks on me and my friend at the foot of the cliff...) was where my political education began.
I found American politics and politicians (apart from Ike) strikingly UGLY.
Especially McCarthy, Nixon and the menacing and grossly obese (rare in those days) Whittaker Chambers...
UGLY.
Likewise the faces and expressions of angry white people in the Cape when giving orders to "the lesser breeds"...
Curious, this business of ugly grown-ups and the beginnings of my political education...
Peter, I expect we are probably both not all that much in disagreement. I was trying to play a little safe in putting Nixon near the bottom, but I also agree that he, in many ways, did some things for our country that were far superior to almost anything that has been done by GOP Presidents certainly since Bush 2 and to some degree since Reagan. Nixon was a globalist, at a time when many GOP party members were clear isolationists. It is what made Nixon such a fascinating figure in my mind, both terrifically open-minded about the world condition and yet so incredibly myopic about his own (and his minions') misdeeds. He COULD have gone down as one of the much better Presidents in history (as you note, the opening to China was huge) but for his own personal failings. Trump, on the other hand, has literally zero positive outlook on the world seeing everything only in terms of what happens to him. Sigh...